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"So this is how drives intraelite competition, intraelite conflicts, rise of the counter-elites and then sociopolitical instability."
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Peter TurchinLet me go back to 2010 when Nature, the journal... asked a number of s — Peter Turchin
"Let me go back to 2010 when Nature, the journal... asked a number of scientists to make some forecasts for the next decade... (2010-2020) and thats when I published the forecast that.., the growing political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade. ...10 years later ...together with my coauthor, , we have revisited this forecast to see whether it had anything to do with reality, and... this is one of the graphs... We looked at several measures of instability, one was anti-government demonstrations. A very similar picture shows up when you look at violent riots. And so we submitted this paper in early 2020 saying that this forecast was actually right... [A]s the paper was [under] review, the summer of 2020, the riots following the death of George Floyd have exploded and... in January of 2021 we had the shocking event... known as the Storming of the Capitol."
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Peter Turchin
Peter Turchin
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Peter Valentinovich Turchin is a Russian-American scientist who specializes in an area of study he and his colleagues developed called cliodynamics—mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of the dynamics of historical societies.
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"A group consisting entirely of self-regarding agents will never be able to cooperate. So cooperation is possible only if some agents are motivated by ‘extra-rational’ prosocial norms, including the norm of moralistic punishment."
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Peter TurchinQuote
"This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010."
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Peter TurchinQuote
"In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These... social indicators are... related... dynamically. They... experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. ...50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020."
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Peter TurchinQuote
"All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020."
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Peter TurchinQuote
"[T]he "crude" Malthusian explanation, which connects popular immiseration to social breakdown, fails to account both for the start and end of the "Time of Troubles."
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Peter Turchin