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The causal factors of revolution and civil war are straightforward to propose. The interesting part is the quantitative analysis; the validation of the causal m
by esafak 1y ago
The causal factors of revolution and civil war are straightforward to propose. The interesting part is the quantitative analysis; the validation of the causal model.
The author goes into more detail in Modeling Social Pressures Toward Political Instability (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qp8x28p https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6qp8x28p)
On a fun note, I was reading the Wikipedia article on cliodynamics (the discipline whose name the author coined) and saw that the article drew an apt comparison between cliodynamics and Asimov's psychohistory.
- mdorazio 1y agoThanks for linking the full paper. The most worrying part is that the numerical study is from 2013 and two of the key factors (government debt to GDP and trust in government) have both gotten significantly worse since then.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoTurchin has waffled back and forth on whether he likes the comparison to psychohistory. Broadly, he doesn't. It's also worth reading Bret Devereaux's discussion of cliodynamics if you're interested in the subject: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-2021/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-202...