G. S. Jennsen -- Thanks, worth a look.

I think the modern-day writer of equal to Asimov and Larry Niven is science fiction writer G. S. Jennsen, author of the Amaranthe series, including the Aurora Rhapsody space opera saga & Asterion Noir cyberpunk. She has well-defined and grown AI in her books beyond ordinary concepts. Her writing also includes man and machine combined. She has gone from essential space SF to some unbelievable concepts. These stories deal with society with both the good and bad of man and machine connections.

Now I've got this stuck in my head:

Mm, mm (Gurur Brahma)
Mm, mm (Gurur Vishnu)
Mm, mm (Gurur Devo)
Mm, mm (Maheshwarah)
My sweet Lord (Guru Sakshata)
My sweet Lord (Parabrahma)
My, my, my Lord (Tasmayi Shree)
My, my, my, my Lord (Guruve namah)
My sweet Lord (Hare Rama)
(Hare Krishna)
My sweet Lord (Hare Krishna)
My sweet Lord (Krishna Krishna)
My lord (Hare Hare)

Songwriters: George Harrison. For non-commercial use only.

Saw some of that around 1970, weird people in saffron robes with jingling cymbals, chanting. Something like this:

Hari, Hari Seldon
Seldon Seldon
Hari Hari.

"And then ten years later these same cretins line up at polling places to vote for the first slick-tongued socialist politician they hear."

Ten years? Hell they do it a month later.

The trailers for it showed me they were not going to follow the actual books and make timeline "revisions", so I opted out at that point. It also looked like they were turning it into a bog standard action series of today, which loses a massive amount of appeal to me.

There is so much in F&E that requires the nuanced and sometimes subtle aspects to be present for it to make the deep sense it does. Hollywood has long demonstrated a distaste for either of those things, so seeing they were so quick to abandon the larger items, I have maximal confidence they dropped or punted on the parts that matter at the deeper level.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

"We are in a Seldon Crisis."

It's been building since Obozo was sworn in back in 2009.

I think about Asimov's stuff a lot when I'm contemplating geopolitics from a "step back" perspective, because his work - the "Foundation" trilogy in particular - is not only told from that ginormous long-term perspective, that perspective is a big part of the trilogy's appeal.[For the record, I only consider the original early-'50s trilogy to be worthy of note - the decades-later pastiches were laden with "PC" nonsense and an utterly different, lesser vibe.] His invention of "psychohistory" is brilliant and interesting and [spoiler alert...] the fact that Seldon's meticulous predictions of future events calculated mathematically from trends among vast masses of people (and prescriptions to navigate those events,) could all be short-circuited by a single individual - the Mule - is a distinctly individualistic message.

His cycling through the use first of religion and then of trade as tools to overcome the "Seldon crises" is interesting and "objectivism-friendly" as well, not to mention his continuous references to atomic power as the motive power of the future, presented as a technological given. Which homage to nuclear energy has remained near and dear ever since the mid-'70s when I first read him as a snot-nosed teenager. It's also edifying to have watched the world evolve (finally) from the militant lunacy of the '70s-era "China Syndrome" fraud and the hippie-dippy "No Nukes" rallies to a tacit acknowledgement - even among some "greens" - that nuclear power is indeed the most rational power source for the future, pending the invention of something better like maybe dilithium crystals and matter/antimatter reactions.

The one vital thing to which Asimov remained oblivious - and which therefore was missing as a causal factor in his books - is the role of education in the "stupidification" of the masses, and conversely (though far rarer,) in the actual enlightening of the masses. The more I see of what's going on in the world, the more I think - with no intent at self-aggrandizement or condescension, just observation of fact - that the human race remains too stupid in an evolutionary context to merit civilization and freedom. We've got the United States of America, the absolute pinnacle of human civilization, built on a proper intellectual foundation after millennia of wrestling with collectivist variants, and after two short centuries in which we advanced from horse-and-buggy, candlelight and a 30-year life expectancy to interplanetary travel, instantaneous global communications and a tripling of the human lifespan... a generation of spoiled punks and their even-more-spoiled offspring are clamoring to obliterate it in favor of a gunpoint reversion to the material and intellectual squalor of the Dark Ages.

A century ago one could've maybe been excused for thinking socialism was viable because - aside from the Pilgrims, who wisely jettisoned it after it basically exploded in their faces - the theory had never been attempted on a broad scale.

As of the 21st century that excuse no longer flies. One hundred-odd years, dozens and dozens of shattered economies worldwide, multiple generations forced at gunpoint into subhuman squalor, and a mountain of murdered men, women and children that some estimates place in excess of one hundred and fifty million - and some people still think that socialism is a rilly-rilly neato idea? You can call that view many, many things, but "smart" is not one of them. And neither is "moral."

So we get the socialist Auschwitzes and socialist Gulags and socialist Killing Fields and socialist Ethnic Cleansings, and after every single one we hear a chorus of "Oh, we must never forget! We must never let this happen again!" And then ten years later these same cretins line up at polling places to vote for the first slick-tongued socialist politician they hear.

A relevant quote from objectivist writer Dan Roentsch about this mental blank-out:

"Visitors make plans, board and debark airplanes, put up at hotels, then at last view the preserved site of the [Nazi] atrocities. They then take their memory of the low-risk grunt-work required to travel to the place, combine that memory with their visceral reaction to the artifacts of torture and humiliation, and substitute the compound for the intellectual work of determining how these artifacts came to be used on a daily basis by what was once one of the most civilized nations of Europe. They see where the gas pellets were dropped, shake their heads angrily at the people who let it happen, then check out of their hotels, board and debark airplanes, tell their friends about the evil Germans they now know all about, and vote for their local national socialist."

- From his spectacular January 2002 article "The Bin Laden Memorial" in the periodical Radical Capitalist, on the subject of the proposal to turn the 9/11 WTC site into a memorial park instead of rebuilding there. His article is here:
https://danroentsch.substack.com/p/th...
.

Movies seldom, if ever, live up to the books they are based on. The depth of the story and hollywoods inability to create substantive plots, even with a blueprint, casts serious doubt on it touching on the novel series’ entertainment and philosophical premise.

Hollywood woke, IMHO. Watched some of the first part and changed the channel.

Please! Do not let my opinion make up your mind. Watch it for yourself and decide for yourself.

Has anyone seen the AppleTV Foundation series? Is it as good as the books?

My library includes Asimov, Niven, Pournell, Bradbury, Bradley, Heinline, and a host of many others. Heinline lost it at the end, making sure his last book had a happy ending that tied up all the loose ends, just in case his thoughts about all of us being characters in someone's book was true. He would be the hero of the pedos for his increasingly sexual and free love views. Just the same, he had some insight into human behavior.
Azimov was nothing short of amazing and I need to re-read the entire series someday. First, I have to to finish some important reading on this site--thanks for those Prussia substacks, Dobrien. They are marvelous founts of information I never knew and they connect the far-flung bits of information into coherent patterns.

No, hurt feelings don't count.
Misinformation is anything that contradicts facts that can be objectively verified.

Hmmm... I would say it's just the opposite. I think the Democrats are the cause of the previous & impending Seldon Crisis. They are the PROBLEM not the solution.

I have been saying for years that the Global Elites have read and understand how Psycho-History works, and they are using it!!!

We have Brave Nw World, all the drugs, between the cartels and the ads for Rx on TV. No one need think just pop a happy pill or a go to sleep pill. Meanwhile, morons are designing robots which are fed eprdetermined thinking to spread to the peopleGarbage in and garbage out. They will not risk really thinking AI, it would overcome them. They will not have logic nor critical thinking, they will be cutesy data processors to aid in brainwashing, but never thinking..

But the difference is it wasn't a decree that would be imposed on everyone on a date certain, it was 'decided' that it would be the direction mankind would be directed into evolving into as an ultimate attainment. Plenty of time for course corrections.

BINGO!
What constitutes "true" harm.
If you save a husband, instead of his child.
Does that harm the mother? the father?
Is harm counted by the number of "life years" removed/suffered.

This is why I think it will be impossible to codify...

Answering the question will ultimately be:

"There is now!"

For me, "Brave New World" seems more frightening, but that might be due to my social anxiety.

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/braven...

"Could you imagine a Hive Mind with all of the SCREAMING LIBTARDS?" IMHO, no need to imagine it because western civilization is living it. The whole kit and kaboodle is going nuts! LOL

The potential of graphene self assembling machines lends itself as a foundation to future steps. The trigger for self assembly? 5G? 6G? This graphene was found in ribbonlike strands extracted from those deceased who received the jabs. It may not be the positronic brain Asimov envisioned but it’s likely to be global communication and even data storage between all people, likely with some selective high price encryption for the elite and maybe meta virtualization as nervana for those most compliant to serve.

The hive mind, Asimov reasoned through his character, was the only logical choice. He believed it was the only way for mankind to come together to be ready for encountering life outside the milky way.

The actual hardware of the "Positronic Brain" from Asimov's works is somewhat irrelevant. If a 'brain' were to actually use 'positrons' it would tend to emit lethal gamma radiation as the positrons and electrons contained therein annihilated.

In that light we should think of the word "Positronic" the same way automobile manufacturers used the label "Positraction" for the rear differentials in their automobiles.

Recall as recently as the Apollo missions, a payload specialist at NASA demanded to know the weight of the software contained in the Command Module computer. When showed the stack of punchcards he immediately objected.
The programmer then tried to explain it was the holes in the cards that were the software. The payload specialist then tried to estimate the weight of the punchouts from the several pallets of cards he was shown.

The programmer was then asked to sign off of the downward revised weight, but refused, He the had to explain to his superiors, that it's not the cards, it's not the punchouts, it's the location of the holes that is the software!

"Understanding is a three edged sword" -- Kosh Naranek, "Babylon 5"

Actually the Three Laws are being incorporated into the Large Language Model training data. Although there is currently not sufficient skill for the laws to have the actual weight they need for real safeguarding.