Mathematician Predicts Wave of Violence In 2020 397
ananyo writes "In a feature that recalls Asimov's Foundation series and 'psychohistory', Nature profiles mathematician Peter Turchin, who says he can see meaningful cycles in history. Worryingly, Turchin predicts a wave of violence in the United States in 2020. Quoting from the piece: 'To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator-prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analyzed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. 'I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,' he adds."
We recently discussed similar research into predicting violence in the short term.
It won't happen (Score:5, Funny)
We already know the world ends on December 21, 2012, so why is he speculating about a future that won't even happen?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It won't happen (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, several times [wikipedia.org]
Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].
Re:Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:5, Funny)
One can learn a great deal about Statistics by having multiple Statisticians perform multiple predictions based on a series of datasets with reduced sample sizes, all the way down to one sample.
(un)Surprisingly, the prediction accuracy is only very weakly related to the dataset accuracy, and varies wildly between predictioneers. One can thus conclude that Statistics are Statistically worthless.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like a badly designed experiment. If the statisticians were required to make extrapolations from many inadequate samples, of course their agreement with each other would be drastically reduced. However, given that accuracy increased with dataset size (and with that, agreement necessarily too), statistics seems to be vindicated within its claimed scope of utility.
It would be more correct to say statisticians without data are statistically worthless.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Always be wary of extrapolating (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wish people would apply the same skepticism with the climate change extrapolations.
The guy in TFA is seeing some fluctuations, and despite having no idea what is causing the pattern, he is predicting the pattern will repeat.
With climate change the warming was predicted, and climate scientists have models that explain the underlying cause for the trend. So the situation is not the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Just because the Petroleum Institute believes tomorrow will be just like yesterday does not make it so... [note I say 'believes' for without any corresponding proof or research it is belief not science -- see http://berkeleyearth.org/ [berkeleyearth.org] for a skeptic's results]...
completely idiotic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:5, Funny)
It just makes me so angry! If they keep up this nonsense for another 8 years, I think it might push me over the top!
Re:completely idiotic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Patterns! Patterns everywhere! Ahhhhhhh!
Thinks he sees patterns in history (Score:2)
"Thinks he sees"? Doesn't that strongly suggest that we're dealing with a lunatic here?
Re: (Score:3)
Past explanations were due to crop productivity related to long-period oscillations in ocean currents (El Nino / La Nina). [wikipedia.org]
Major ENSO events were recorded in the years 1790–93, 1828, 1876–78, 1891, 1925–26, 1972–73, 1982–83, 1997–98 and 2009–2010,[50] with 1997-1998 being one of the strongest ever.
Going by the wiki page, 2020-2025 should also be a El Nino period
Re: (Score:2)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
I think his "50 year" number is a bit odd, as it's based on absolutely no foundation, other than a few loose correlations.
Instead, he should model it like you do for animal patterns: generational trends.
It makes a lot of sense that violence would peak every two generations... which these days, is about every 50 years. If people start having children later, I'd expect that number to get larger... and if people start having children younger, I'd expect it to be shorter.
Added to that, he tossed out war, but war will have an extremely powerful influence on this pattern -- it probably won't distort it too much in the long-term, but it will definitely affect the surrounding periods of incidence.
Re:completely idiotic (Score:4, Interesting)
And yet you haven't even heard it, because you haven't read the article. Same with the people who ignorantly modded you up. The idea is not that there will be a bump in a graph every 50 years and therefore we are due in 10 more.
In a nutshell, to me the theory sounds basically like marxism. It is the view that history is driven by a recurring cycle of inequality and revolution:
Re: (Score:2)
Re:completely idiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "mortality". Given enough time, the memory of the previous time a bad idea was tried fades, and the new generation does it all over again. How long it takes depends on the depth of the trauma and how fast the nasty effects take hold: for example, the recent rise of Western police states is due to the memory of Nazism finally fading, while it was Reagan who began ignoring the lessons of the Great Depression, yet it took until now for deregulation to finally lead to a new economic collapse.
Basically, you get a new Great War as soon as those who survived the previous one are too frail to prevent it anymore. Or earlier, if enough charisma and stupidity are involved.
Re:Regulation caused the Great Depression (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the basic story of the Great Depression, which is very similar to the story of the more recent financial crisis.
1. Times were good in the 1920's on Wall St. People could and did make good money trading stocks.
2. A bubble began to form, with financial companies willing to extend credit in order to buy stocks. For instance, you could buy a $1 stock for 10 cents and owe your banker for the other 90 cents. They were willing to do this because the stocks were constantly going up, so this was a good investment.
3. Of course, the stocks were going up because people were entering the market with only 10% of the value of the stock in hand, which meant they could pay 10 times what they previously could.
4. Eventually, somebody discovered that the underlying assets were worth, at most, 10% of what they were priced at in the market. When this became public knowledge, everyone tried to get out at the same time.
5. End result: Crash. And when one business crashes, their stock, which was considered good, is now worthless, so businesses holding their stock also crash, so it cascades through the system leaving things worse than if the Crimson Permanent Assurance had hit them.
Replace "stocks" with "mortgage backed securities", fast forward 70 years or so, and the same thing happened. It happens any time that a con man can successfully make worthless pieces of paper look like representations of valuable property. And yes, it could conceivably happen that the pieces of paper that say "One Dollar" on them will also become worthless - if it does, you want to have land and a team of people who will help you defend it.
Re: (Score:3)
Of course, my assertion is. But why isn't all that stimulus that the US and the rest of the world burned, doing much? That's supposedly a huge spur to demand, but it's fallen pretty flat.
There are two things to keep in mind here. First of all, there wasn't that much stimulus happening in the first place. All those huge sounding numbers that the Fed throws around with various QE activities does almost exactly zero to stimulate the demand, and economists who focus on how the financial sector works have been able to predict that quite accurately.
Second, the Obama stimulus has in fact helped soften the recession according to most simulations, including those of the CBO. The stimulus simply wasn
Re: (Score:3)
Even in a do nothing scenario, eventually the uncertainty goes away.
You're missing the point.
To paint an obviously exaggerated picture, if a prolonged global depression causes so much social unrest that the global supply chain disintegrates, then what good does it do if uncertainty goes away afterwards? When living standards declined after the fall of Rome, do you really think people thought that was just fine, since after all, uncertainty eventually went away?
Now of course nobody expects anything quite so stark, except perhaps limited to countries like Greece and Spain. Bu
Predicting violence is easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It will happen.
If you're vague enough about your predictions... you won't be wrong often.
Not necessarily (Score:4, Insightful)
e.g. the American South wasn't fighting to defend slavery, but to defend the right to oppress blacks. Blacks were oppressed not for the economic benefit (immigrants where cheaper and disposable) but because it gave poor white southerns someone to look down on and kept them from asking questions like, how come I barely make it through the winter while that guy sips mint juleps? Don't take my word for it, google Karl Rove and the Southern Strategy.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Systemic violence is an outgrowth of poverty...
No, poverty is the result of systemic violence. You have to steal from people to make them poor.
Re: (Score:2)
+1. Eruption of violence is the result of poverty is the result of systemic violence.
I don't think so (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I think its also important that the poor people in the society are aware that there is no reason that they *must* be that poor except that the system (tax laws, political structure and who has influence etc) is set up by the rich and wealthy and that they are using it to ensure they remain rich and wealthy and that the poor remain barely able to get by.
This is what I see in North America at the moment, and what the Occupy folks were upset about. The system is unequal, inherently so, and thus while its possi
Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Interesting)
People who have options don't get violent. Not in mass anyway (yes, chemical imbalances will result in the occasional horror story like that Batman shooting). That's why Canadians are so well behaved. They feel secure in their well being thanks to an extensive safety net and healthcare system. Systemic violence is an outgrowth of poverty. The single most enlightening moment of my life was when I realized that every war ever fought was over money in one form or another.
e.g. the American South wasn't fighting to defend slavery, but to defend the right to oppress blacks. Blacks were oppressed not for the economic benefit (immigrants where cheaper and disposable) but because it gave poor white southerns someone to look down on and kept them from asking questions like, how come I barely make it through the winter while that guy sips mint juleps? Don't take my word for it, google Karl Rove and the Southern Strategy.
Um... you do know about things like the Vancouver Riots (mk I and II) right? Canadians might not be as brutally violent as their neighbours to the south, but they tend to be just as physically violent. The difference is that population density in Canada is much lower (except at major sporting events, where, surprise! you end up getting violence).
A better case study would be somewhere like Singapore that has a high population density, but relatively low societal violence.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>> That's why Canadians are so well behaved.
I take it you don't watch much hockey, eh?
Re:Not necessarily (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_and_the_slave_trade [wikipedia.org]. But nice try at blaming the Jews once again for everything bad that ever happened. I guess when you're proud of a slave-trading past you have to reframe the whole discussion so as not to appear inhuman.
Re: (Score:3)
Calling Stalin's government "Jewish" is a bit weird. I have really no idea as to what the ethnic background of the Soviet leaders, but they definitely weren't religiously Jewish. AFAIK, they were from a mixture of backgrounds, though I doubt that there were many Ukrainians among them.
As for "slave traders", this depends a lot on exactly which period of time you are looking at. The Teutonic Knights used to find the slavic slave trade quite profitable, and they weren't exactly Jewish. I'll admit that I do
Re: (Score:2)
Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see:
1. "Extrajudicial" killing of US citizens
2. Use of drones against US citizens
3. Cameras recording activities
4. Government snooping into private conversations
Good damn thing there is a 2nd Amendment.
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Use of drones against US citizens
This is fodder for some good discussion right here, and Id like to get something cleared up.
I understand the importance of jury trial and the dangers of an unchecked government. I understand that the last thing you want is an executive that can freely ignore the judicial branch.
But if a US citizen in 1942 were to go and fight for the Nazi's, and lets say he became a high-up officer-- would we not be justified in going after his life "extrajudicially"? What if a US citizen went to Mexico and became a higher up in the militarized drug cartels (lets not turn this into a discussion on drug politics)-- would we be justified in assisting in his death if capture were not an easy option? What if in those situations the choice was between his death, and him going free?
It seems to me there IS some line for when someone takes up arms in a foreign theatre against US forces; I might be wrong here, which is why Im hoping for constructive responses which could demonstrate my error if there is one.
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:4, Interesting)
I totally agree on this.
Seriously, though, if we actually look at the underlying problem behind the use-of-drones against US citizens issue, one key point stands out. In my assessment, the reason for these deaths is that it is virtually impossible for an enemy of the US to relinquish his citizenship.
If you actually look at the people who are killed, none of them consider themselves US citizens. They are people often in the direct service of foreign states or state-like actors, who dedicate themselves to the destruction of the US. They aren't going to vote, pay US taxes, or make use of US services any time soon. They profess no loyalty to the US, nor to its values, nor to its flag or any symbol, and would probably *prefer* to die in combat rather than be captured and go through a trial as a criminal.
The thing is, under the present system, the only way for someone to end his citizenship, is by appearing, in person, at an US consulate. This is obviously a suicidal move for these people. Therefore, due to the requirements of the system, these people must necessarily remain, on paper, US citizens. What actually needs to be done here is that it should be more simple for people to safely and voluntarily declare themselves enemies of America. Farcical as it sounds, otherwise the present situation will inevitably and pointlessly continue.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We also carpet bombed cities full of innocent civilians and dropped nukes on whole cities in the middle of the day. At one time, we had laws in this country forbidding white people and black people from using the same facilities. We had a "foreign policy" of extermination regarding Native Americans at another point as well. I suppose that means we should do it again, right? Precedent does not make something justified. That mindset completely flies in the face of any notion of human progress. If that line of
Short answer no (Score:5, Insightful)
So we are speaking of assassination(the correct word in absence of due process) of citizen from your (or other) country.
*Shrug* . I don't expect that to change any time soon. Your military right now is probably creaming in their pants just as the amount of data they got about their toy used and potential advance.
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm all for second amendment rights but I really don't think they are going to help with any of these things. If we can't live together as a society without the threat of violence, there is not much hope of maintaining a stable, long-lasting state. It is violence spurred by political unrest and divisiveness that the OP is predicting, go figure.
Re: (Score:3)
I keep saying this, but yes, the second amendment is no protection against tyranny. It merely allows a transition to the rule of the strong, instead of the systemised albeit flawed democracy we presently have. Unless a government is really stupid and alienates *all* of its citizenry (which admittedly, has happened, but seems unlikely to be the case in a place as polarised as the US), civilian held weapons are about as likely to be used to terrorise opponents of the government, as anything else. Recall how N
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you.
You think you can just start murdering people to fix all your problems. It doesn't work that way. You spill blood, and other people will fight back, and we'll end up in a 3rd world hellhole for a century. You will not live to see a return to peace. None of us will.
Go visit other countries, if you think things here are bad. See hundreds of millions of people living in shantytowns. See the bribery that is required on a daily basis. See people sentenced to years in prison because they spoke out against Putin or Ahmadinejad or some other despot. See life behind the Great Firewall, or in Brazil where it is illegal to be anonymous.
Life in the US is unbelievably wonderful compared to damn near everywhere else in the world. And you want to destroy that, because of some fucking security cameras? Well thank God for those cameras! I hope some are pointed squarely at you. As soon as you seek to end a human life, you deserve to be taken away and locked up in a place where the world can forget you.
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:5, Insightful)
*What socialist governments* since LBJ? The tax rate pretty much dropped uniformly after the end of his presidency. It's the lack of socialism that has fucked the US up.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/sjh11/images/mtrgraph.gif [psu.edu]
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:4, Informative)
Better graph: http://visualecon.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/Income_Corp_CapitalGains_Rates.png [netdna-cdn.com]
Re: (Score:3)
So we have tax rates now, almost as low as just before the Great Depression. Yet companies are at an all-time high for diverting profits away so they don't have to pay.
Rich getting richer, poor getting poorer is happening at a record pace as well. A recipe for trouble?
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good damn thing there is a 2nd Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment has failed to prevent any of the things that you listed. What was your point again?
Re:Government needs to be slapped down again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government needs to be... (Score:2)
Knock, knock. Hello we're FEMA/police [1/2 minute of polite conversation] "Do you have guns" as if making sure you're adequately prepared for self defense. Dumb, honest homeowner: "Yes"
CRAAAASH, armed invasion and personal injury follows. No sh|t.
Heard this one before (Score:3)
Not scientific, but not unreasonable (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree that the sample size is small, there is certainly reason to think that if the political discourse continues as it is now, in eight years we could be in for that talk to start manifesting itself physically.
Re:Not scientific, but not unreasonable (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree that the sample size is small, there is certainly reason to think that if the political discourse continues as it is now, in eight years we could be in for that talk to start manifesting itself physically.
You have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning. It is close to saying, "Even though he doesn't have to evidence to back his claim, it fits my world view so I will use it to reinforce my current beliefs." This is the same kind of thinking that spreads conspiracy theories and group think, and it is an extraordinarily easy trap to fall into.
Stupid (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh duh, the Aztecs already did this, the world is ending in 2012.
The world better end I'll have my last credit card maxed out in November and I don't know how I'm going to buy Christmas presents! Come on Mesoamericans! I'm unemployed with no retirement or health insurance so I'm counting on you guys. Given how they have been handling things I think Congress has the same end of the world economic plan.
I wonder if this cycle follows (Score:2)
Buried in Last Paragraph (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA: "For example, it seems that indicators of corruption increase and political cooperation unravels when a period of instability or violence is imminent."
Why do articles like this act as though "violent acts" were the essential force, and "corruption" some kind of indicator symptom? I submit that the latter is the cause and the former the resulting symptom.
The article includes this viewpoint, but you have to get all the way to the very last paragraph to see it -- "But perhaps revolution is the best, if not the only, remedy for severe social stresses. Gintis points out that he is old enough to have taken part in the most recent period of turbulence in the United States, which helped to secure civil rights for women and black people. Elites have been known to give power back to the majority, he says, but only under duress, to help restore order after a period of turmoil. “I'm not afraid of uprisings,” he says. “That's why we are where we are.”"
compare resources per person (Score:2)
Similarly, the differences between groups, say Sunni and Shi'ite to let Americans off the hook, does not _cause_ the fighting between them. They live together side by side in other countries and they live together side by side in the same country before an
Re: (Score:2)
You could simplify it down to "virtually all wars are essentially economic."
Psychohistory (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, psychohistory doesn't work if you publish the results -- so all of this is bullshit. This implies that the psychohistorical result is actually not violence in 2020, but something else that they're trying to steer us towards. Maybe this is also why we're not supposed to be aware that psychohistory exists.
Back to the Prime Radiant, guys.
Re: (Score:2)
Income inequality. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the current trend of inequal distribution of wealth continues then yes, we will see increased violence. It's a formula that's a old as civilzation itself. Poverty is and always has been the root cause of most crime, including violent crime. (Some of it is due to crazy. You will always have jealousy, rich people shoplifting for thrills, adultery, etc)
Whatever your political creed or economic philosophy, you must recognize that gross wealth inequality /always/ leads to bad things. It's a common theme of all civilizations world wide throughout all recorded history. It's the destroyer of nations. It's the murder of kings. It's the ruin of the most mighty military forces. It's the trigger of violent, bloody revolution where the innocent and the guilty both suffer alike.
Our country used to recognize this function but in the last few decades it's been ignored wholesale. The rich are getting very very rich and have somehow convinced everyone that they "deserve" it while our nation stumbles with infective public programs and crumbling infrastructure. Wealth redistribution used to be a clear, stated goal of our government and now, somehow that idea is taboo and evil.
Utterly Stupid (Score:3)
Linear time is useless to predict cyclic anything where modern human society is involved. Ten years of innovation today (and its effects on society) is greater than thirty years of innovation two hundred years ago. The scale just isn't linear. Nothing has a significant long term stable frequency.
If you are a cicada, you have reasonable grounds to disagree. Sadly, you can't talk and aren't real big in the innovation space.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, but the trouble with that theory is that "generations" are continuous, not discrete. What is the generational difference between someone born in 1962 versus 1967? Unless the government passes some extreme law, the answer is "it's just a label." They will behave differently, but on a continuum, not because one is a baby boomer and the other is GenX.
1870? What about 1861??? (Score:3)
Moreover, it was a unique peak in US history.
This guy's model needs an overhaul -- either that or its intend use is useless for phenomena that are really interesting.
Correlation is Not Causation (Score:4, Insightful)
In the mid-twentieth century, cliometrics (ah, look how much it reads like cliodynamics!) was going to save us all from the loosey-goosey styles of history that just weren't as good as honest-to-gosh social science. (This is why many mid-twentieth century universities placed history in their social science faculties rather than humanities where it was categorized in older university systems.) Certainly, learning how to handle large data sets and tackle questions of change over time with accurate analysis has been good, but stats wasn't the smoking gun to solve historical debates. Look how hard some of the great works of cliometrics crashed and burned when they tried to assert a grand rule of human behaviour: just two examples off of the top of my head, the Tilly's "The Rebellious Century, 1830-1930" which tried to unify the study of European revolutions over a century or Theda Skocpol's "States and Social Revolution: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China" which claimed that you could come up with a universalizing analysis of authoritarian state collapse. Both are interesting and ambitious books but ultimately unconvincing as they attempted to assert a general rule-set for history.
Now we're told that cliodynamics is going to solve the problem. Again, as the original article notes, most trained historians are skeptical. It's not just that we like futzing around with old documents, it's that we're aware of the weaknesses in ongoing research, holes in observations and the biases in the data. You want to point to huge amounts of populist violence in the U.S. circa 1920 as proof that it was a high in a fifty year cycle? I and other historians can point to stunning outbreaks a decade earlier related to the anarchist movements and a decade later with the unrest regarding the Great Depression. It's not so much cherry-picking counter examples: it's the wrongheaded concept of seeing people as pawns of historical forces. Asimov was fun to read, I'll grant you, but I'd hope that people can see that human agency has an awful lot more to do with historical change than the rules of psychohistory.
Stop looking for general rules of what's going to come next and consider, instead, clear-sighted analysis of how we've come to where we are and what that tells us about problems we've had and continue to experience.
Hmmmm.... (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin [wikipedia.org]
This was on Doctor Who already (Score:4, Interesting)
1913: The eve of the First World War
1938: Hitler annexes Austria
1963: Kennedy assassinated
1988: The Lockerbie bombing
It's 2013 we need to worry about, sheeple!
A la Terminator? (Score:2)
Title gets it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The guy isn't a mathematician, he's an ecologist. And I find it hard to believe that by 2020, social acceptance of domestic violence (say) rises again to mid-20th century levels. The reporter's suggestion that the precise moment in time of the Egyptian revolution was predictable is likely based on a misunderstanding of Turchin's work.
By the way, the field isn't as new as the article suggests. Steven Pinker's recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, collects quite a bit of quantitative research in this area, most of which does not support the existence of stable cycles.
Re:Title gets it wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
Pinker only briefly touches upon the reduction in violence before recorded history. For that we can look at Nicholas Wade in "Before the Dawn". The gradual thinning of human skull from 200000 years ago to 75000 years ago shows the reduction in violence. (The older skulls were "robust" and the modern skulls were "gracile"). Basically skulls less able to withstand thumping blows from clubs and stones actually survived and thrived.
So the general arc of violence has been on the downward path. There would be short term fluctuations. But 2020s will not be like 1970s. No way. Steven Levitt first broke the taboo and mentioned the link between legalization of abortion in 1970 and the reduction in violence in 1990s. 2020s will be when the grand children of unwanted babies aborted in 1970s will be missing from the crime age pool. Very unlikely we are going to see any spike in violence in 2020.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, you have to ignore the decline in violence (simply looking at absolute numbers would help in a few cases). But there could still be periodic patterns against the general backdrop of decline. However, there is little evidence for that.
Now all kinds of things could go wrong and lead to rising violence levels in the next years (global financial meltdown followed by a drop in international trade, countries trying to collect on their debts by military force etc., which would eventually have an effect on pe
contradictory opinion (Score:5, Informative)
Cliodynamics is viewed with deep scepticism by most academic historians, who tend to see history as a complex stew of chance, individual foibles and one-of-a-kind situations that no broad-brush 'science of history' will ever capture.....Most think that phenomena such as political instability should be understood by constructing detailed narratives of what actually happened — always looking for patterns and regularities, but never forgetting that each outbreak emerged from a particular time and place.
Nothing new.... (Score:2)
Cliodynamics seems to be the new, trending name for... Cliology [see the afterward of the hard cover edition of "In the Country of the Blind" by Michael Flynn which originally appeared as a two part article 'Introduction to Psychohistory' in Analog magazine in 1988] and "Cycles Research" founded by economist Edward R. Dewey http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/ [cyclesrese...titute.org] Also a book by Dewey "Cycles, The Mysterious Forces that Trigger Events..." and some of the papers presented in the Journal of World Systems R
meanwhile... (Score:2)
It would still be a good idea to get guns off the street. There's a number of ways to do that:
-turn the underground drug market into an above-board, regulated market (with broad social programs to help people off their addictions).
-take a serious look at just what sort of weapons *are* constitutionally supported.
It's not likely for such measures to *increase* drug/gun related violence.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean all those Muslims who, much like the Minutemen and colonists, have risen up and overthrown oppressive regimes in many middle eastern countries?
Re:There are those of us who can see it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean all those Muslims who, much like the Minutemen and colonists, have risen up and overthrown oppressive regimes in many middle eastern countries?
Ha ha ha .. tell that to the non-Muslims in those countries. They were actually a lot better off under the "oppressive regimes"
Re: (Score:2)
Because as things get closer to home they become more important.
For example, my child cutting himself on some broken glass is more important to me than an African child starving to death. In fact it's more important to me than hundreds of African children starving to death. Sure that sounds terri
Re:There are those of us who can see it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
You are full of shit and hatred. There are over 2 million muslims in the USA who have been here for over 2 decades who haven't been "biding their time" to do anything. I have over a dozen muslim friends, their families came over here to get away from the B.S. at home and to live a happy non-violent life in a prosperous country. they excel in business and academics, asian people tend to be funny that way (there is a racial stereotype for you, and it's a useful generalization)
Re:There are those of us who can see it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
And what makes you an authority on the matter? Fuck, you don't even have the balls to post with an account.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You basically slander a billion people and when cornered on it try to shut up your opponents with being autistic homosexuals, before explaining how bad it is for homosexuals. You're a loud mouthed halfwit
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
We were hardly any better 100 years ago, and there are no lack of Westerners who wouldn't mind seeing homosexuals shoved back in the closet.
And what is with these Aspergers accusations?
Re: (Score:2)
Frankly you're showing more signs of Aspergers than anyone else here.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The US populace is majority christian nation and they caused hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilizans, and their president said "God told me to invade Iraq". Truly a bloody religion.
One also wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of religion, have you ever actually read the Christian Bible? You can do all sorts of things to people you don't like and it's A-OK. And don't forget, blacks weren't people until the last 1970, so says Mitt Romney (or at least his religion). Every religion that's existed for any length of time has terrible things in it's dogma.
We're not pretending Islam is just fine. But we're rationalists. Give people enough food, shelter and some discretionary income for hobbies and they mellow out. Ever wonder why terrorists don't send deep cover moles over here? It's because give them a taste of good life and they stop being psychotic extremists. The challenge is giving that life to everybody. Not just the vague promise that you might have a chance at it that economic conservatives and 'libertarians' favor, but the real thing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You sound like you have not read much if any of the new testament. You know the whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or "love thy neighboor as thy self" or "ask ye oh man what is good and what does the lord require of the but to do justly love mercy and walk humbly with thy god." Sound fairly peacefull. I don't see any excuse for being terrible toward others. The being terrible to others comes from human nature.
Re:One also wonders (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh.. yeah I have those things (Score:2)
Yes, I know I have it relatively good. But I also know there is virtually no safety net for me and I can slip into third world poverty. I know that kind of poverty exists and is tolerated in America. Did you?
But another way, just because things could be worse doesn't mean they SHOULDN'T be better.
Re: (Score:3)
Seems to me that it says it's ok to be a slave which if I were a slave, I would take to heart as a validation of me, and a reflection of on the importance of my conduct in the household, not a validation of slavery itself. Also I note that there is a whole letter of the New Testament written to a slave owner, whose slave has run away - urging him to accept the slave back as a brother, and not a bondser
Re:There are those of us who can see it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
The muslims in the west are just biding their time until they are strong enough to act like muslims in the middle east [thereligionofpeace.com].
Heh.
One wonders why the Mayors of Chicago and Boston go off on fundamentalist Christian Chick-Fil-A, which voices opposition to gay marriage, but are silent against fundamentalist Islam extermination of gays themselves.
Probably because the Christians won't kill 'em.
Just ask Theo Van Gogh.
Oh, wait. You can't. Muzzies actually KILLED him.
Wonder if the Piss Christ artist has the balls to do a Shit Koran?
Yeah, we know the answer to that, don't we.
Very true. The thing that gets me is that everyone knows that Islam is evil and violent, they know that they cannot criticism them for opposing gay marriage and so on, but they all pretend that Islam is just fine because they are sheep following the "PC" herd.
Let me rephrase that to make ti a bit more on-topic:
Very true. The thing that gets me is that everyone knows that humans are evil and violent, they know that they cannot criticize them for opposing gay marriage and so on, but they all pretend that humanity is just fine because they are sheep following the "PC" herd.
Point being: people are greedy and violent and abuse power structures. The degree to which this happens in a given society seems to go in cyclic 2-generational waves, and this mathematician has found a way to model it. The rhetoric in this thread ascribing human faults to specific people groups (faith based or ethic based) and pointing out specific failings inside these groups is totally beside the point. If there were no non-white muslims living in the US, there'd be someone else, and the rhetoric would be almost identical. Eventually, the overall level of societal dissatisfaction with the way these issues are resolved by "peaceable" means will come to a head, and people will look to physical solutions. This will carry on until there is a majority formed who share strong core societal values that they then shove down the throats of everyone else, at which point "peace" returns and "everyone" is happy.
They say history repeats itself, and in this case they (and this mathematician) appear to be spot-on.
What these models don't factor in especially well though, is population density. I'd like to see this guy do a slightly more complex model that ties in the affects of density on the level and duration of the violence.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me break it down for you. Christians are white therefore it is perfectly politically correct to demonize them. Contrast this with muslims. I'm not trying to conflate your viewpoint with racism and I wish there were a better explanation because I do not consider myself a racist but that's the explanation occam's razor leads me to.
Well, that can't be right. My family is Baptist and Negro.
Re: (Score:2)
Dear Coward: you don't consider yourself a racist yet you claim "Christians are white"? I _suspect_ you are a racist, but I _know_ you are an ignorant SOB.