#Cliodynamics

[azspot]

Unraveling the 'Age of Discord': Insights from Cliodynamics Expert…

[strike-debt-bay-area]

Book Group: END TIMES by Peter Turchin

We meet on Saturday, August 19, at 5:00 pm PDT on Zoom. You can email us for the Zoom link. We'll read the first two (long) chapters of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin.

“History is hopelessly complex and unpredictable’: so say most historians. If they were right, we would all be in deep trouble, helpless against a myriad of looming disasters. But Peter Turchin has pioneered a new science of making history predictable–by applying methods that had already succeeded in other complex fields. You’ll want to know what he sees lying ahead, and what we can do about it.” 

—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns Germs and Steel

[geopolicraticus]

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

A Complexity Ladder for Big History

A paper of mine has just appeared in the Journal of Big History special issue on complexity. This paper isn’t specifically about philosophy of history, but it does touch on some philosophical problems, so I will consider some of these problems in the context of philosophy of history. In particular, I will discuss definitions and the use of scientific measurement in the increasing formalization of knowledge and what this could portend for history. 

Nielsen, J. N. (2024). A Complexity Ladder for Big History. Journal of Big History, VII(2); 1-8.

DOI | https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v7i2.7202

Paper:              https://jbh.journals.villanova.edu/index.php/JBH/article/view/2976/2780

Quora:              https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ 

Discord:           https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD

Links:              https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/

Newsletter:      http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

Video:              https://youtu.be/DzQcJtZ8zTc   

Podcast:          https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/nick-nielsen94/episodes/A-Complexity-Ladder-for-Big-History-e2iksuo   

Text post:        https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/a-complexity-ladder-for-big-history     

[sustainableyadayadayada]

Turchin's End Times

I got through Peter Turchin’s book End Times. It is definitely an interesting book. To summarize, organized human societies tend to develop a “wealth pump” whereby the wealthy and powerful influence the rules of the game to appropriate an ever larger share of a society’s wealth and power for themselves, at the expense of ordinary people. “Ordinary people” is not just the median or what we think…

[calicojack1718]

In My Free Time: From Israel-Hamas to "Enough" to Blogs

Last week, I published The Week’s News Through a Psychology Lens, which other than being a poster child for my award winning tortured syntax and awkward wording, was a regular blogging feature that had been kicking around in the old noggin for awhile. However, as the following week progressed and I collected articles to use in this week’s edition, I realized I wanted to share more than just the…

[moreconomics]

"Liberty and Prosperity: A Cliodynamic Defense of Libertarianism"

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that advocates for individual liberty and the protection of individual rights, including the right to own private property and the freedom to engage in voluntary exchanges without interference from the state or other external authority. Proponents of libertarianism argue that this approach is best able to promote individual flourishing and social prosperity. In this essay, I will use cliodynamics – the study of long-term historical dynamics using statistical and mathematical models – to argue in favor of libertarianism.

One of the key arguments in favor of libertarianism is that free markets and individual liberty lead to greater economic prosperity and social well-being. Cliodynamics provides support for this view through its analysis of the long-term consequences of different economic and political systems. For example, a study by economist Peter Turchin and his colleagues used cliodynamic models to analyze the relationship between state intervention in the economy and social instability in pre-modern societies. They found that societies with greater levels of state intervention in the economy tended to be more unstable and prone to conflict, while societies with more limited government intervention and a greater reliance on market forces tended to be more stable and prosperous (Turchin et al., 2010).

Other research has similarly found that societies with greater economic freedom – as measured by indices such as the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom – tend to experience higher levels of economic growth and development (Gwartney et al., 2020). This is likely due to the fact that free markets allow for the efficient allocation of resources and the creative destruction of old technologies and business models, leading to innovation and economic progress. In contrast, government intervention in the economy can distort prices and create inefficient resource allocation, leading to slower economic growth and development.

In addition to its economic benefits, libertarianism also promotes social harmony and cooperation. A study by sociologist Joseph Tainter and his colleagues used cliodynamic models to analyze the long-term consequences of different forms of governance on social cohesion and cooperation (Tainter et al., 2014). They found that societies with more decentralized and voluntary forms of governance – such as those found in traditional tribal societies – tend to be more cohesive and cooperative, while societies with more centralized and hierarchical forms of governance tend to be more hierarchical and prone to conflict. This suggests that libertarianism – which emphasizes decentralization and voluntary cooperation – may be more effective at promoting social harmony and cooperation than more centralized and hierarchical forms of governance.

In conclusion, cliodynamics provides strong support for the view that libertarianism – with its emphasis on individual liberty and free markets – is the best political philosophy for promoting economic prosperity and social harmony. While there may be other factors to consider in determining the appropriate balance of individual liberty and state power, cliodynamics suggests that a greater reliance on market forces and voluntary cooperation is likely to lead to better outcomes for both individuals and society as a whole.

References:

Gwartney, J., Lawson, R., & Hall, J. (2020). Economic freedom of the world: 2020 annual report. Fraser Institute.

Tainter, J., Turchin, P., & Turner, E. (2014). Sustainability and collapse: An integrated history and future of people on earth. University of California Press.

Turchin, P., Currie, T. E., Turner, E. A. L., Gavrilets, S., & Hall, S. J. (2010). War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies. Journal of Peace Research, 47(6), 719-726.

[thosearentcrimes]

The TESCREAL acronym is bad because it puts excessive focus on fairly unimportant aesthetic and occultish curiosities and ignores the actual ideological baggage of the vague movement it identifies. The vague movement does exist and is probably worth naming but I think Rationalism worked just fine despite the ambiguity. The various apocalyptic prophecies and cosmologies and rituals and vocabulary quirks are easy to sneer at but they don't really tell you what the ideology is or if it's bad.

The reason they name Transhumanism and Extropianism and Singularitarianism is pretty obvious, it's a geneaology of Yuddism. And Yud is certainly worth discussing, both because of his role as a nucleus for the movement and because he was somehow let into Time Magazine to call for unilateral air strikes on datacenters and such. But if you want to say Yuddism you could probably just say that. Bringing Cosmism into it seems especially strange, sure it developed some ideas that rhyme but then so did Mormonism. Suspect that one's there just for the russophobia, honestly.

Rationalism and Effective Altruism are the main brands under which the subculture can be found. From what I can tell the overlap between these groups is massive (I would guess it's roughly similar to the overlap you would find between, say, the Catholic Church and a Catholic charity) so it makes sense to consider them together. I've seen the connection denied, which I suspect to be merely a manifestation of the standard Rationalist escape from terms (post-rat, post-post-rat, rat-adj, tpot, etc). It doesn't really matter though, if the overlap exists then you can just say Rationalism, and if it doesn't there's no point to a term. Longtermism is just a branch/faction of Effective Altruism that skips the Altruism part.

If you really wanted to create a novel term then I think the best place to start would be with the actual intellectual influences of the movement. The main beliefs that repeatedly crop up throughout Rationalist thought can broadly be characterized as Positivism, Utilitarianism, Neoliberal and Austrian Economics, and Sociobiology. This is combined with great interest in and optimism for technology, especially "AI" but also various forms of biotechnology. The reason these ideas tend to be popular among Rationalists is that they promise quantitative explanations and possibly exploitations of complex phenomena dense with qualitative evaluations.

Rationalists also have unusual epistemic commitments, strong group identity, and jargon, well beyond what is typical of fandoms and ideologies, their closest peers as collectives. This makes them somewhat vulnerable to cult formation. In my opinion it also explains some of the strange behavior of certain ex-rationalists (including Emile Torres by the way). It can also make them rather frustrating to argue with on occasion.

[racefortheironthrone]

Are you familiar with Peter Turchin’s work and if so, what are your thoughts? Is he considered a serious historian?

After researching this guy’s bio for a bit, I can say that he’s not a historian - his PhD seems to be in Zoology - and this whole cliodynamics business seems to be a discipline that he invented in a brazen act of academic columbusing/academic imperialism. Historians do not consider him a serious historian, and nor do I.

The problem with Turchin’s entire academic project is twofold: first, there is not enough data to do the kind of precision mathematical modeling that he purports to do. When it comes to pre-modern history, there are huge swathes of time and space and human experience for which we do not have records, either because the records didn’t survive to the present, literacy rates weren’t high enough to produce the desired types and levels of records, or the literate classes simply didn’t consider worthy of being written down. When it comes to modern history, things are a bit better because modern societies tend to produce written records at an incomprehensible volume, but here the problem is that the sheer mass of records plus certain specialized problems in library sciences that are too complicated to go into in this post (but I’ll explain if someone asks me) means that only a tiny fraction of these records are digitized, let alone digitized in a way that they can then be put into a database and modeled upon. As my old professor Eric Foner put it during new major orientation: “the difference between ancient history and modern history is that in ancient history you know all your sources but there aren’t any, and in modern history there are tons of sources but you don’t know them.”

Second, even if there was enough data, trying to accurately and meaningfully model all of human history is a futile endeavor. This is something that we discuss in introductory theory courses - the complex interplay of historical forces and individual agency/contingency, the literally infinite number of factors that influence human society and behavior, and so on. The historiography of ideas is littered with failed attempts to construct total theories of history - the Hegelians, the Marxists, the objectivists (which isn’t the same thing as Randian Objectivism, it’s complicated and I’ll explain in another post if anyone really wants to know), huge swathes of sociology but especially the structuralists, significant swathes of political science and psychology, and oh my god so many economists. It’s pretty much a cliche at this point for social scientists to say they were inspired to become social scientists by childhood dreams of becoming a psychohistorian like Hari Seldon. The problem is that psychohistory is science fiction, it’s not real, and it can’t be real because humans are too damn complex and contradictory. It is a massive red flag that Turchin has explicitly compared cliodynamics to psychohistory; it’s like when some Silicon Valley disruptor starts talking about how their latest project was inspired by their favorite sci-fi series.

So yeah, this guy seems like a total quack.

[silka73]

Hello! Could I please request something with sapiosexual reader, which can freely keep up a discussion about cliodynamics or smth, but is a complete imperturbable failure when it comes to flirting? Like, suddenly scratching their knee in an unnatural pose in the middle of conversation or using dumb but cute lines? With Alhaitham or like just any genshin men you'd find suitable in such.

Sorry if it was messy! I'm still a newbie in Tumblr terminology, so idk if its an imagine idea, a scenario idea or what. Thank you in advance if you decide to write it🐛

Don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this before but I am happy to write it! Apologies if it isn’t what you imagined <33

•︵‿︵‿ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ︵‿︵‿•

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE

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.

.

The random persons eyes fluttered open and closed as they continued to listen to your rant about cliodynamics.

You’d been going on about sumeru economics for awhile now, To be fair, the topic wasn’t particularly boring.

To you atleast,

“Hey, I think I have a class soon I’ll talk to you later.” The random person would say, interrupting your lecture.

“Oh, alright!” You said awkwardly.

You sat there for a minute, now not really knowing what to do. You’d begin reading as a past time.

.

.

.

•︵‿︵‿ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ︵‿︵‿•

“Ahem.”

“Really you fall asleep in the strangest places,”

Jolting awake, You’d look up from the pile of books you had seemingly fallen asleep in.

“Alhaitham?” You asked confused

“Yes,” He said, “Why are you asleep in a cafe with a pile of books. Then again, this has happened more than once for what I’ve witnessed.” He lightly chuckled

“Well uhm, I uh..” You where embarrassed, it was showing.

“You where tutoring someone correct?”

“I was but I kind of got distracted and went on a whole rant about economics,” You nervously chuckled.

He laughed with you.

You two continued having a pleasant conversation, it was going well.

You hadn’t completely embarrassed yourself yet or blurted anything out, that was enough for you.

Just these light hearted conversations. Usually happening when you dozed off somewhere.

As soon as he arrived he left,

You kept going over the conversation in your head, I mean you had been crushing on alhaitham for a bit now so these small interactions in your day just warmed your heart.

When you kept going over everything, fanning a bit about it you started to realize some certain comments he had made.

Wait, was he flirting with you?

Surely not, those where just small complements.

Trying to think of every other thing they could’ve meant you almost drew yourself mad.

He’d chuckle, he originally had gone back into the cafe because he left something there but seeing you sitting flustered he had decided to grab it later.

⋆˙⟡♡

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•︵‿︵‿ ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ ︵‿︵‿•

I’m sorry this was so short lmao,

[sunou-kitsune]

For a history class on the collapse of societies I'm having to read an odd book about cliodynamics, a foolish "science" that thinks extrapolated data points are any more accurate at predicting the future better than the traditional methods of having the priests sacrifice animals or the dreams and visions of someone freaking out on hallucinogens

[acerboni]

End Times by Peter Turchin

From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America’s civil strife and its possible endgames Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.  Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why. The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it’s very hard to exit. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture.  That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.

More at: www.penguinrandomhouse.com

[nextwavefutures]

Elites, political disintegration, and ‘cliodynamics’

Elites, political disintegration, and ‘cliodynamics’—an extended review of Peter Turchin’s ‘End Times’. New post.

In his recent book End Times, Peter Turchin tries to lay out his story about social, political, and economic change for a popular audience. The book is given added immediacy by its publisher’s subtitle: “Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration”. I know Turchin’s work quite well, and I know his underlying model well enough, and I think that End Times fails in this…

[geopolicraticus]

Peter Turchin on End Times

I have finished listening to End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin. Turchin comes out swinging on the first page asserting that history can be pursued scientifically. The first appendix digs a little more into why he thinks cliodynamics is the answer to the ancient question of whether history can be a science. I find it strange that Turchin cites two fictional examples—cliology from Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind, and Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory—but does not seriously engage with the significant literature in history, historiography, and philosophy of history that explicitly takes up this question.

In any case, Turchin argues that societies pass through integrative periods (marked by income compression) and disintegrative periods (marked by income disparity). Disintegrative periods are largely driven by popular immiseration and elite overproduction, the latter process largely driven by what he calls the “wealth pump,” which sluices most of a society’s wealth to the elites when these elites serve only their own interests exclusively instead of the interests of wider society. Getting the wealth pump under control is one of his policy prescriptions.

At several points in the book I was saying to myself, “But what about…?” and then he took up the objection I had in mind. For example, in his discussion of popular immiseration I was wondering about those who argue that things have never been better, and then he discussed exactly this objection. So, for that, I give him credit. On the other hand, his normie assumptions (he cites the ADL, the SPLC, and the NYT as though they are credible sources) blind him to certain developments in society. For example, he cites some elite financial publications as promoting “market fundamentalism” and discusses how injurious he believes this to be. And not too many years ago this was true, but all of the elite organs of opinion now follow the same ideological line, and it certainly isn’t market fundamentalism. (Are ESG scores and DIE mandates “market fundamentalism”?)

I have run into something like this on several occasions, and I always take the opportunity to throw it back in the face of anyone who utters something they think can be passed off as common knowledge and will not be challenged. The most glaring example of this, as far as I am concerned, is the common claim that the captains of the tech industry are “libertarian.” Again, some years ago this was the case, but now the technology industry is onboard with the same party line ideology as all other institutions. I recently pointed this out in a discussion, when someone brought up this talking point, so I said that the technology industry has produced the most elaborate censorship regime in human history, and my point was acknowledged. Turchin doesn’t make the libertarian tech bro claim, but the claim that elite organs of the financial industry are promoting “market fundamentalism” is comparable.

I have a lot of sympathy for elite theory, and have discussed it (for example, in newsletter 227), but I think it requires some tweaks to get it right. While Turchin does recognize the role of both the one percent (and, he often adds, the 0.10 percent) and the ten percent, which latter largely consists of aspirant elites, I think that elite theory could benefit from a greater focus on these classes and the differences between the two. The relation of the one percent, the true elites, and the ten percent, the aspirant elites, is like that in fiction between vampires and the human beings who serve them. Vampires possess the special power of their undead status, and the human beings who serve vampires have none of these powers, but are promised to gain these powers if they faithfully serve the vampires.

The existence of a class of aspirant elites who feel they are on track to ultimately join the elites, but only if they obey, creates a class of persons who are willing to do anything to please their masters. This is a promise that is held out, but is always vulnerable to being snatched away at any moment, whether by circumstance or by the whim of the vampire elite—as such, the ten percent constitute a different kind of precariat (a power precariant rather than an income precariat). Because of this tantalizing promise, seemingly within reach, but always potentially withdrawn, the aspirant elites who have been allowed into the charmed circle of power, even if they do not yet themselves wield power, may be more vicious and craven than the elites themselves. To take a real world example (not vampires and the supernatural), when dictators like Stalin or Kim Jong-Il hold absolute power of life and death over their subjects, these subjects vie with one another to prove their loyalty. No one wants to be seen as the first to cease clapping, and so the applause goes on and on.

The larger pool of aspirant elites consists both of those who are on track to real elite status, and those who have no realistic hope of “success” so defined. The further into the margin of potential power we trace the aspirant elites, the more desperate they are to prove their loyalty to the elites, and so it is we find that lower-level functionaries are the most brutal and unapologetic in their enforcement of the dictates of the elites; they are hanging on to their potential elite status by a mere thread. These contemptible actions of the aspirant elites in their quest to retain their grasp on potential power serve as a kind of self-hazing and self-blackmail, by which their perspective on the world is irredeemably damaged. They cannot understand that others despise them for the lies they tell, because they can no longer recognize them as lies. The aspirant elites, on the other hand, who have no possibility of ultimately joining the elites, have their perspective sharpened by the bitterness of the denial of their (potential) elite status. They can see all-too-clearly the transformation of their former fellows and take a certain pride in not having engaged in the same craven behavior of the aspirant elites who are confident in ultimately gaining power.

Where this touches on Turchin’s argument is that quite a larger pool of aspirant elites see themselves as viable candidates for elite status than would be apparent from their place on the fringes of the outer party. Turchin discusses the difference between two bumps in the income distribution of lawyers, noting that being a lawyer is not sufficient to be a viable aspirant elite, and that the two groups—viable and non-viable aspirants—are separated by their average income. But I think the important lesson to take away here is that even the lawyers in the lower income bump are not likely to break ranks with the lawyers in the upper income bump (any number of psychological and sociological arguments could be made to show this).  

The power of the elites is largely maintained through the threat of what happens to those who break ranks with the elite’s preferred narrative (exemplary justice is meted out to those who break ranks), and this serves to corral all aspirant elites, and not only the viable aspirants. How far down does this extend through society? Morgoth recently wrote that, “The primary function of journalists in the modern West is to tell lies on behalf of Power and hold the weak and powerless to account.” Morgoth humorously compares narrative policing to a superorganism, and says that journalists are the lowest caste of the superorganism. That is how far down it extends. Marxists had a similar niche in their social ecology, which they called the Lumpenproletariat.   

[sustainableyadayadayada]

Peter Turchin has a new book

His new book is called End Times but it does not appear to be about the apocalypse, but about a cyclical view of political history with some evidence to back it up. When a state, such as the United States, has stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt, these…

[calicojack1718]

How Does the Wealth Pump Work to Transfer Billions from the Middle Class to the 10%?

We are systematically transferring billions of dollars a year from the middle class to the wealthy, increasing the wealth gap & impoverishing everyone else. Here are two examples of how the wealth pump is taking your money & Biden is stemming the flow.

SUMMARY: In this post, we use Cliodynamics, which involves studying history through big data analysis, to explain how the wealth pump transfers wealth from the 90% to the top 10%. That’s called the wealth pump, and it signifies hard times ahead. We’ll look at two examples, Vivek Ramaswamy’s pump and dump scheme using an Alzheimer drug and subsidies for the fossil fuels industry. We’ll also look…

[qidynamics]

Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution

Factors of Deconsolidation of a Liberal Democratic Regime: The Case of the United States

Introduction

The United States is one of the longest-lived democracies in the world, whose institutional framework has remained basically unchanged throughout its history. For political science, the United States has long been an example of a “reference” consolidated democracy. High indicators of socioeconomic development, along with stable institutions, ensured the survival of the democratic regime despite many serious challenges. Though the Great Depression, the struggle for civil rights, and the Cold War were serious challenges for the institutional structure of the United States, they did not lead to negative dynamics within the liberal democratic system. From the end of the Civil War until recently, not a single case of “subsidence” of the level of democracy has been observed (Lijphart 1977: 149). At the same time, some researchers observe trends towards crisis in the most economically, socially and culturally developed democracies, namely in the Euro-Atlantic region. The deconsolidation of liberal democracy is especially evident in the United States (Norris and Inglehart 2019: 429). Some researchers, such as Barbara F. Walter, argue that the United States is sliding into “anocracy,” a transitional stage between democracy and autocracy. The presence of “anocracy” significantly increases instability and the likelihood of a civil war. After the events of January 6, 2021, rather bold statements are heard in modern political science, such as “In terms of executive constraints, the United States is now classified in the same category as Ecuador, Burundi, and Russia” (Walter 2022: 120).

https://escholarship.org/uc/item/49k6n01t

This article analyzes the hierarchy of factors in the development of crisis trends in a consolidated democracy using the example of the United States of America. The authors assess the surge of political instability in the United States, which led to the deconsolidation of the liberal democracy regime, through the prism of centrifugal processes within the American elite and the erosion of democratic institutions over the past 30 years. The main problem of the study is the contradiction between the crisis of democratic regimes in the countries of the Euro-Atlantic region and the high indicators of the factors of the consolidation of democracy, according to classical political science theories. The authors use the path analysis method to determine the main path and hierarchy of factors of erosion of the liberal democracy regime in the United States, which is an example of the "old" democracy and, according to traditional political science, is the most protected from destructive processes. Consideration of the case of deconsolidation of the liberal democracy regime in the United States, thus, sheds light on the possible ways of democracy reversion and risk factors for stability of democratic political systems.