From Distance: Lessons from Psychohistory

Note: As it has been a quiet week in the NBA, I thought I’d try something different. I invite you to read the following with different glasses. Try reading it while thinking of team draft/tanking approach, or politically, or simply about relationships.

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, the character Hari Seldon, a psychologist, sociologist, and statistician, develops a branch of science called psychohistory. His science basically examines the actions and reactions of societal history in order to formulate a predictive model for future macro-societal events.

Seldon doesn’t portend the actions of individuals. The science recognizes that an individual is too limited in sample size, and generally too…