[nephihaha]

I am trying to trace where Asimov got the basic idea from. I think Marxism is the most likely source, because he admitted to reading up about it.

But we do see power structures actively trying to anticipate the future and navigate it... with limited input from the general public.

[gaigalas]

Quick question: are you familiar with sci-fi themes from that era?

[nephihaha]

To some extent. Science fiction from the mid 20th century — especially the less trashy variety without bug eyed monsters — was pretty optimistic about what science could do. In the late sixties and seventies, writers were more cynical about it.

[gaigalas]

So, you do understand that the great majority of science fiction at that time was trying to predict the future, right?

Their Asimov was probably Verne, which already was trying to predict the future before them.

Around Verne's time (and a little later too), it was the 1889 Paris Exibition, the invention of the airplane, telegraph, lightbulb. Those were worldwide phenomena.

Asimov (and others of his time) probably read all of that. He then saw the "new science": computers, space, the atom, and wrote about those.

I also believe the great recession contributed to a certain degree of awareness not to be too optimistic.

It seems very obvious for me to trace the pedigree of this futurism to those references, it's all over his writing. Foundation reminisces about a lot of those ideas.

Also, it seems very obvious that politicians and regimes of all kinds used the public excitement with science as a populist move, not the other way around. Those ideas never came from them.

[nephihaha]

In the broadest sense, yes, but not necessarily claiming scientific methods to make those projections. We can often guess from current trends. Some science fiction isn't aiming to be predictive, but more in the direction of escapism or what if?

You are right about politics and science. One uses the other. Politicians tend to use emotional rather than logical arguments to persuade people.

[gaigalas]

Something is not clicking here.

If Asimov wanted to give a good impression about exact predictive science, he made some terrible mistakes:

- In his story, Hari Seldom predictions failed a lot. They had to be amended, fixed and tweaked several times by other characters.

- The predictions sound powerful, but also implied an unavoidable series of crisis. Not the best story to push your propaganda.

- The Mule is overall more powerful than Seldom, and actually achieves a stabilization of Empire's ruins. Not what you write if you want to make sure your idea is the only path forward.

These make me believe he was more interested in portraying those ideas with healthy doses of skepticism, not pushing them willy-nilly.