Interview With Math Legend Benoit Mandelbrot

Vertigo01 writes "New Scientist is currently featuring an interview with Benoit Mandelbrot the father of the Mandelbrot set, and the man who discovered fractals. 'What motivates me now are ideas I developed 10, 20 or 30 years ago, and the feeling that these ideas may be lost if I don't push them a little bit further.'"

Comments

OT

[hitchhacker]

Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None, obviously market forces will take care of it.

Libertarians believe in a stong national defence.. not offence. I'm aware a strong offence makes for a stronger defence, but experience shows that we can't trust politicians with deadly force.

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Re:Mandelbrot's ideas...

[DarkSarin]

There is, unbeknownst to most people, a branch of psychology called mathematical psychology. I've never studied--I am focusing more on statistics and behavior (specifically motivation of behavior, which is something a strict behaviorist, such as BF Skinner, would have boohooed greatly, but is a very important part of psychology).

This area includes game theory, psychophysics, Neural Networks, and more. I think that this is the most likely area in which such a fusion of chaos theory and psychology could easily be melded. Behavioral psychology is ultimately concerned with the prediction of behavior based on what is known about the individual. Behavioral psychohistory would be concerned with the behavior of the society, based on what is known. The more that is known, the more accurate the model. Chaos theory should go a long way in helping with this.

(Just as an aside, there isn't much difference between group psychology and sociology--Asimov's psychohistory, as he described, was more of a branc of sociology than psychology, especially as known at the time he wrote those books).