Fellow insects... it can only get worse!

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TheGreenGoblin
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Fellow insects... it can only get worse!

#1 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:09 pm

Can human society and its future be equated to the rise and fall of insect colonies?
Peter Turchin is not the first entomologist to cross over to human behaviour: during a lecture in 1975, famed biologist E O Wilson had a pitcher of water tipped on him for extrapolating the study of ant social structures to our own.

It’s a reaction that Turchin, an expert-on-pine-beetles-turned-data-scientist and modeller, has yet to experience. But his studies at the University of Connecticut into how human societies evolve have lately gained wider currency; in particular, an analysis that interprets worsening social unrest in the 2020s as an intra-elite battle for wealth and status.

The politically motivated rampage at the US Capitol fits squarely into Turchin’s theory. In a 2010 paper, Dynamics of political instability in the United States, 1780-2010, Turchin wrote that “labour oversupply leads to falling living standards and elite overproduction, and those, in turn, cause a wave of prolonged and intense sociopolitical instability.”

Turchin’s Cliodynamics, which he describes as “a more mature version of social science”, rests upon 10,000 years of historical data, as such there is, to establish general explanations for social patterns. He predicts that unrest is likely to get worse through this decade, just as it has in roughly 50-year cycles since 1780.

Historians don’t necessarily like the proposal, he acknowledges. “They bring general theories through the back door. Our job is to be explicit.”

Explicitly, then, Turchin explains current political warfare as a battle between an overpopulation of elites to some degree exacerbated by a decline in general living standards or immiseration, and financially overextended governments. Initially, Turchin applied the theory to pre-industrial societies, but a decade ago he travelled forward in time, predicting unrest – Ages of Discord – that would intensify in 2020 and endure until reversed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -and-biden

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... re/616993/
Though you remain
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"To be alive
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To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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TheGreenGoblin
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Re: Fellow insects... it can only get worse!

#2 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:14 pm

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Fellow insects... it can only get worse!

#3 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Jan 17, 2021 4:19 pm

I am also a big fan of Jared Diamond...

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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