Anything to that view? A sort of synthesis of your two views. It's hard to predict where a 5-year old will suddenly decide to run next, adult behaviour is more predictable, and as we approach death, perhaps most us become depressingly predictable.
Civilisation may also follow a similar pattern. Youthful, surprise victory of an underdog against the incumbent empire, then a growth path that defies expectations, and then, increasingly, a repeat of predictable failures, along the same failure modes that don't get fixed anymore, until a depressingly predictable final one.
Very cool views, btw, both yours and Rose's MARA. Thanks.
Predictability is strongly affected by the cumulative "noise" that creeps in over time. This cumulative noise causes the spread of potential outcomes. Just like you see in hurricane predictions. They are pretty good when predicting a day out, but a week out they have quite the cone of possible locations. However, it does seem to me that bigger or more encompassing predictions (e.g. predicting a mass emigration as a result of climate change vs predicting exactly where that emigration will be to) are more possible. This may not be the best example, but I think you get my drift.
On the contrary, long-term forecasts are much easier to make, and often more accurate, when the trend is clearly visible. For example, the trend that was already clearly visible about ten years ago that right-wing forces would increasingly come to power in Europe. The same goes for the trend toward Europe moving in the direction of religious conflicts, as well as the trend toward a rise of left-wing forces in America.
Here's where the chaos theory helps. Walter is right that in a chaotic system with noise, your ability to accurately predict the future trajectory rapidly degrades. On the other hand, a long term forecast is still possible, because the system remains on the same attractor. Thus, these are different kinds of predictions: (1) where precisely in the state space the trajectory will be at some future t, or (2) what kind of dynamics we will expect at that future t. If the attractor is characterized by booms following busts, then we will know that if at that time t we are in a boom, then a bust is coming up, and vice versa.
//Walter is right that in a chaotic system with noise, your ability to accurately predict the future trajectory rapidly degrades.// ---Not at all. Accuracy does not disappear you simply get an OR, a branching point.
Right now, America is in political chaos, but the future is still clearly visible. There is a struggle between revolutionary forces on the left and conservative forces on the right and in the center. The country will either split apart, OR one side OR the other will win and then ban its political opponents. These two forces simply will not be able to coexist indefinitely.
America has already gone through a period like this, when communists were banned.
The future is visible. It has different possible paths, but each of those paths can be seen.
Very interesting. Can you explain a bit more what you mean by cumulative "noise"? I'm a historian looking at causation for particular events. What types of cumulative noise could appear to change various outcomes besides usual things like enviornmental or political change?
Or unpredictable actions of individual people -- it all accumulates, because such "fluctuations" at the micro level are translated by chaotic systems to the macro level (this is want "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" means).
The prefrontal predicts only to know what stimuli to ignore and react to the unpredictable unpredictably which is what individual survival is.
“low-complexity, high-predictability state results from a passive cortical state, represented by a stable repetitive attractor, that hinders the flexible formation of neuronal ensembles necessary for conscious experience.” Sima Mofakham
A simple analogy is Thermodynamics (deterministic) vs Statistical Physics (stochastic). Unpredictability of particles at the very foundational level (thanks to quantum mechanics) does not prevent us to confidently (and accurately) predict the behaviour of an oxygen tank at industrial scale and plan accordingly.
"Dancing, by contrast, is a highly patterned activity — you need to be completely predictable to your partner (or partners, if it’s something like the square dance)."
Although some dance styles like square dance or contra dance, you are trying to exactly execute a step dictated by an external caller, in most couple dance styles, one or both of the partners are improvising, within the limits imposed by the dance style and the music. (This an area my wife and I have a lot of expertise in).
As for predictability, consider for that if Gavrilo Princip had worse aim, WW1 would not have started. A general European war might have started at some other time, but it would have been different in circumstances, antagonists and outcomes.
Yes, but the reason you and your wife can improvise effectively is that you've been dancing together for a long time and each other responds in a predictable way to cues you send each other.
First of all, free will is an illusion. Second, as the author pointed out around the very moment in the article where I was thinking the same thing, there may be some small amount of unpredictability at the individual level, but groups are completely predictable. That small amount of individual predictability can only be a driver of history if you embrace the great man theory, which I categorically reject.
If there was a way to pin posts that everyone encountering your work for the first can see, I'd put a link to "Psychohistory and Cliodynamics" on that list ;-) ("Have you heard of Hari Seldon would have to be on the Turchin FAQ")
That observation "an individual suicide is quite unpredictable, but at the level of the United States, the number of suicides by Americans in 2026 is predictable with a small margin of error" is astounding.
On the question of pinning important posts, I myself am interested in finding a solution. Over the past decades (including previous locations of my blogs) I've written literally hundreds (even a couple thousand) posts. I now use AI to find them and link from the current post, but this is very ad hoc. I wonder if a general solution exists.
It would be straightforward to create a site that hosted, indexed and backed up all the existing content. Then just link to that site (and with the capabilities today, even getting it built and having the posts found and added would be reasonably simple)
Moore's Law isn't working anymore. The doubling time is now 3 years rather than 2. If you see a pattern but can't explain it, it's just a pattern, not a law, and you can't predict how long it will hold.
The first side is completely wrong when it claims that the future cannot be predicted at all based on the past and on those very same numbers.
The second side is partly wrong when it tries to reduce and explain everything purely through numbers and order.
History cannot be reduced to mathematics. It is far more complex than numbers and formulas. A human being and human actions cannot be explained by numbers alone. There is also something that cannot be calculated, something that exists, for example, on the level of metaphysics. Yes, numbers are historically important too, and they help us better understand historical events and cycles, but numbers alone do not give us the whole picture or a complete understanding of historical events. Numbers, for example, cannot explain what people are willing to die for, what exact form an explosion will take, or why rational calculations of costs cease to work.
Here is a simple and recent example.
Take the war in Ukraine.
Today Lavrov (Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs) comes out and essentially says almost word for word what I wrote back in 2023 about why there would be no freeze in the war. I simply described it more broadly and more roughly at the time, because an official cannot speak that way, but the meaning is exactly the same.
‼️ So, given a kind of religion built around the victory over Nazism in World War II, it would be strange to come out and say: you know, we have signed a temporary peace with the “Nazis” here (they themselves had been calling them that for the past year) and frozen the conflict.
In other words, our grandfathers sacrificed almost 40 million lives and defeated the Nazis, while now we have lost only a hundred thousand and are already giving up and looking for peace with the “Nazis.” That would not fit with the religion of World War II at all. It would run completely against it. Instead of defeating Nazism, they would be making peace with it.
And to make peace because you are weak and cannot defeat Nazism, because only weakness could force you to freeze the war now. And somehow that would look utterly pathetic. So our grandfathers defeated mighty Germany and its allies, while we are so weak that we are forced to make peace with Ukraine. ‼️
You could not explain with numbers back then, and you still cannot explain with numbers now, why the Russians will not stop despite the losses, because this is pure metaphysics. And it was precisely through this metaphysics that I wrote that accurate analysis and forecast three years ago.
This is something you cannot capture with numbers, and you cannot explain with numbers why, despite the heavy losses on both sides, this war continues and will continue further.
Meanwhile, the duration of this war is changing the world. We may not see it clearly yet, but the future will show it plainly. If this war had ended in 2023, the consequences for the world would have been one thing. If it ends in 2028, the consequences will already be different, and those consequences will affect far more than just Russia and Ukraine.
So the optimal construct is cliodynamics plus metaphysics. By metaphysics, I mean psychology, faith, identity, historical memory, symbols, the so-called “social bonds,” ideas of honor, humiliation, justice, duty, and the sacred.
Personally, metaphysics comes first for me. Through metaphysics, I arrive at the same conclusions that you arrive at through numbers in cliodynamics. For me, numbers are not primary. They merely serve as confirmation of the logical chains constructed in my head.
I think you are leaving out individual decision-making. Had Putin listened to his chief of staff, there would have been no war. Governmental hiearchies concentrate a lot of power at the top, where leaders surrounded by yes-men often make odd decisions.
Very interesting.
Thanks!
As systems age, they become more predictable.
Anything to that view? A sort of synthesis of your two views. It's hard to predict where a 5-year old will suddenly decide to run next, adult behaviour is more predictable, and as we approach death, perhaps most us become depressingly predictable.
Civilisation may also follow a similar pattern. Youthful, surprise victory of an underdog against the incumbent empire, then a growth path that defies expectations, and then, increasingly, a repeat of predictable failures, along the same failure modes that don't get fixed anymore, until a depressingly predictable final one.
Very cool views, btw, both yours and Rose's MARA. Thanks.
Predictability is strongly affected by the cumulative "noise" that creeps in over time. This cumulative noise causes the spread of potential outcomes. Just like you see in hurricane predictions. They are pretty good when predicting a day out, but a week out they have quite the cone of possible locations. However, it does seem to me that bigger or more encompassing predictions (e.g. predicting a mass emigration as a result of climate change vs predicting exactly where that emigration will be to) are more possible. This may not be the best example, but I think you get my drift.
On the contrary, long-term forecasts are much easier to make, and often more accurate, when the trend is clearly visible. For example, the trend that was already clearly visible about ten years ago that right-wing forces would increasingly come to power in Europe. The same goes for the trend toward Europe moving in the direction of religious conflicts, as well as the trend toward a rise of left-wing forces in America.
Here's where the chaos theory helps. Walter is right that in a chaotic system with noise, your ability to accurately predict the future trajectory rapidly degrades. On the other hand, a long term forecast is still possible, because the system remains on the same attractor. Thus, these are different kinds of predictions: (1) where precisely in the state space the trajectory will be at some future t, or (2) what kind of dynamics we will expect at that future t. If the attractor is characterized by booms following busts, then we will know that if at that time t we are in a boom, then a bust is coming up, and vice versa.
//Walter is right that in a chaotic system with noise, your ability to accurately predict the future trajectory rapidly degrades.// ---Not at all. Accuracy does not disappear you simply get an OR, a branching point.
Right now, America is in political chaos, but the future is still clearly visible. There is a struggle between revolutionary forces on the left and conservative forces on the right and in the center. The country will either split apart, OR one side OR the other will win and then ban its political opponents. These two forces simply will not be able to coexist indefinitely.
America has already gone through a period like this, when communists were banned.
The future is visible. It has different possible paths, but each of those paths can be seen.
Very interesting. Can you explain a bit more what you mean by cumulative "noise"? I'm a historian looking at causation for particular events. What types of cumulative noise could appear to change various outcomes besides usual things like enviornmental or political change?
Or unpredictable actions of individual people -- it all accumulates, because such "fluctuations" at the micro level are translated by chaotic systems to the macro level (this is want "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" means).
Human unpredictability is the essence of success.
The prefrontal predicts only to know what stimuli to ignore and react to the unpredictable unpredictably which is what individual survival is.
“low-complexity, high-predictability state results from a passive cortical state, represented by a stable repetitive attractor, that hinders the flexible formation of neuronal ensembles necessary for conscious experience.” Sima Mofakham
Peter - I’m sure you are asked this frequently: how close are you to Strauss-Howe and Fourth Turning generational cycle theory?
I would assume you share much underlying premise in common.
A simple analogy is Thermodynamics (deterministic) vs Statistical Physics (stochastic). Unpredictability of particles at the very foundational level (thanks to quantum mechanics) does not prevent us to confidently (and accurately) predict the behaviour of an oxygen tank at industrial scale and plan accordingly.
"Dancing, by contrast, is a highly patterned activity — you need to be completely predictable to your partner (or partners, if it’s something like the square dance)."
Although some dance styles like square dance or contra dance, you are trying to exactly execute a step dictated by an external caller, in most couple dance styles, one or both of the partners are improvising, within the limits imposed by the dance style and the music. (This an area my wife and I have a lot of expertise in).
As for predictability, consider for that if Gavrilo Princip had worse aim, WW1 would not have started. A general European war might have started at some other time, but it would have been different in circumstances, antagonists and outcomes.
Yes, but the reason you and your wife can improvise effectively is that you've been dancing together for a long time and each other responds in a predictable way to cues you send each other.
First of all, free will is an illusion. Second, as the author pointed out around the very moment in the article where I was thinking the same thing, there may be some small amount of unpredictability at the individual level, but groups are completely predictable. That small amount of individual predictability can only be a driver of history if you embrace the great man theory, which I categorically reject.
If there was a way to pin posts that everyone encountering your work for the first can see, I'd put a link to "Psychohistory and Cliodynamics" on that list ;-) ("Have you heard of Hari Seldon would have to be on the Turchin FAQ")
That observation "an individual suicide is quite unpredictable, but at the level of the United States, the number of suicides by Americans in 2026 is predictable with a small margin of error" is astounding.
Thanks!
On the question of pinning important posts, I myself am interested in finding a solution. Over the past decades (including previous locations of my blogs) I've written literally hundreds (even a couple thousand) posts. I now use AI to find them and link from the current post, but this is very ad hoc. I wonder if a general solution exists.
It would be straightforward to create a site that hosted, indexed and backed up all the existing content. Then just link to that site (and with the capabilities today, even getting it built and having the posts found and added would be reasonably simple)
Moore's Law isn't working anymore. The doubling time is now 3 years rather than 2. If you see a pattern but can't explain it, it's just a pattern, not a law, and you can't predict how long it will hold.
Both sides are wrong.
The first side is completely wrong when it claims that the future cannot be predicted at all based on the past and on those very same numbers.
The second side is partly wrong when it tries to reduce and explain everything purely through numbers and order.
History cannot be reduced to mathematics. It is far more complex than numbers and formulas. A human being and human actions cannot be explained by numbers alone. There is also something that cannot be calculated, something that exists, for example, on the level of metaphysics. Yes, numbers are historically important too, and they help us better understand historical events and cycles, but numbers alone do not give us the whole picture or a complete understanding of historical events. Numbers, for example, cannot explain what people are willing to die for, what exact form an explosion will take, or why rational calculations of costs cease to work.
Here is a simple and recent example.
Take the war in Ukraine.
Today Lavrov (Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs) comes out and essentially says almost word for word what I wrote back in 2023 about why there would be no freeze in the war. I simply described it more broadly and more roughly at the time, because an official cannot speak that way, but the meaning is exactly the same.
‼️ So, given a kind of religion built around the victory over Nazism in World War II, it would be strange to come out and say: you know, we have signed a temporary peace with the “Nazis” here (they themselves had been calling them that for the past year) and frozen the conflict.
In other words, our grandfathers sacrificed almost 40 million lives and defeated the Nazis, while now we have lost only a hundred thousand and are already giving up and looking for peace with the “Nazis.” That would not fit with the religion of World War II at all. It would run completely against it. Instead of defeating Nazism, they would be making peace with it.
And to make peace because you are weak and cannot defeat Nazism, because only weakness could force you to freeze the war now. And somehow that would look utterly pathetic. So our grandfathers defeated mighty Germany and its allies, while we are so weak that we are forced to make peace with Ukraine. ‼️
You could not explain with numbers back then, and you still cannot explain with numbers now, why the Russians will not stop despite the losses, because this is pure metaphysics. And it was precisely through this metaphysics that I wrote that accurate analysis and forecast three years ago.
This is something you cannot capture with numbers, and you cannot explain with numbers why, despite the heavy losses on both sides, this war continues and will continue further.
Meanwhile, the duration of this war is changing the world. We may not see it clearly yet, but the future will show it plainly. If this war had ended in 2023, the consequences for the world would have been one thing. If it ends in 2028, the consequences will already be different, and those consequences will affect far more than just Russia and Ukraine.
So the optimal construct is cliodynamics plus metaphysics. By metaphysics, I mean psychology, faith, identity, historical memory, symbols, the so-called “social bonds,” ideas of honor, humiliation, justice, duty, and the sacred.
Personally, metaphysics comes first for me. Through metaphysics, I arrive at the same conclusions that you arrive at through numbers in cliodynamics. For me, numbers are not primary. They merely serve as confirmation of the logical chains constructed in my head.
I think you are leaving out individual decision-making. Had Putin listened to his chief of staff, there would have been no war. Governmental hiearchies concentrate a lot of power at the top, where leaders surrounded by yes-men often make odd decisions.
History is always made by specific individuals.