I really would love to try modelling some of these things, myself, as an enthusiast. Many fields benefit from a base of hobbyists to support them, and to educate their communities, why not this one? I know many of the important datasets are public domain, but as for the tools to use them :P I'm really more of a game developer, so I don't know. I imagine a lot of people would be interested in fish-tank empires.
Yes, I think video game development can potentially push the field forward. I think gamers are open to making some of their games more historically accurate and so are video game developers.
The game “Civilization” is one of the closest approximations for how human societies develop that is accessible to a wide audience. Of course, there is a big trade-off between historical accuracy and fun game play, but I think more accurate databases would drive forward historical inquiry and game development. The profit motive of gaming companies can also help.
By the way, I used to work for Wizards of the Coast and a history buff, so I am comfortable in both worlds.
I myself got a BA in history before I got into game development and learned how to code. Even beyond the more goal-oriented and competitive play of genres like strategy (which is a logical choice for modeling the history of nations) I think there's a lot of potential even as simulation. For decades now, companies have just re-made Sim City. I think it would be interesting if, for instance, the player's natural inclination towards economic growth and an educated population led to elite overproduction and catastrophe - doesn't that sound like a challenge to contend with? Even just being able to experiment with different economic, religious, political systems, and underlying biomes to "see what would happen" could be fun, in that Dwarf Fortress "losing is fun" kind of way.
Bret Devereaux's blog has a four-part series describing how the Europa Universalis strategy games succeed and fail at simulating the political and technological effects of changes in political demographics. One item he privileges, glossed over in War and Peace and War, is the "red queen effect" of military expansion where personalist states are forced to expand their territory to maintain relative parity with expanding rivals.
I agree that putting assumptions into a mathematical model is a good idea. However the Fernández-Villaverde seems to fail in India which has its own dominant plains area (Indus-Ganges plain) but has rarely been unified.
For that matter how unified has China been historically? As I count it out, only about 2/3 of the time since large-scale state formation started.
It also seems misleading to compare Western Europe with China. Western Europe should be compared with the entire East Asia region. If you include Japan, Korea and Vietnam, East Asia does not seem so unified.
I am working on a territorial control database which should be useful for answering these kinds of questions, however I am only up to "Algeria" in alphabetical order.
a territorial control database — will it contain historical data on the change in the territory of different countries? Or which countries were present in a certain territory?
The database will show what state controlled territory in each year from 3000BC within the boundaries of today. If different states controlled territory within today's boundaries, I identify major cities and indicate who controlled them. The territory information is coming from Geacron, Centennia Historical Atlas and Wikipedia.
This is related to economic information on GDP compiled by the Maddison project and population data from the HYDE project.
This started as an effort to get better economic values for use in board wargames (and their computer equivalents). My plan is also to use the data to compare the GDP and population sizes for past states. I will be able to answer the questions like what were the world's largest economies in 1800.
Economic size is important (although not necessarily decisive) in military and economic disputes. For example, China's economy is about 25% larger than that of the US so intimidating China economically is not going to work. Iran's economy is 3 x larger than Israel's, so a war of attrition would probably not go well for Israel.
Based upon other data, once the US & USSR entered WW2, the Allies had a GDP about 4 x larger than the Axis.
I fully understand your goal - to get better economic values for use in wargames (especially computer ones). I got a good grounding in education - in mathematics and programming
"China's economy is about 25% larger than that of the US so intimidating China economically is not going to work. Iran's economy is 3 x larger than Israel's, so a war of attrition would probably not go well for Israel." - in long run what is important is the composition of an economy. If the economy is large because it consists of a huge number of agricultural and clothing enterprises, it is doubtful that this will help it much. In the end, just think of the UK and India. In many ways, it remains the same today.
I looked at your table, and I wonder what is the "Population-Proportion" and "GDP-Proportion"?
Here's another explanation. The Roman Empire was actually able to unite "Mediterranean Europe." Later, during the feudal era, it was impossible to unite Europe. These kingdoms themselves were barely united, and feudal lords would only agree to fight for 28 days without pay. From the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe was united in many ways economically, first by the united provinces, and then by Britain. They were still at war with each other, but they were now a single economic entity.
Yes having more counterfactual research would be great. I wrote about this a while back (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/counterfactual-catastrophes). Another approach that could be quite helpful here are storylines. Taking an existing event and mapping out (both qualitatively and quantitatively) how it might have played out differently if the original shock would have been X % worse.
There is a school of thought that major differences between European countries in either prioritizing out-marriage and high acceptance of strangers versus prioritizing family ties with cousin marriage and suspicion of strangers goes back to the types of feudalism that existed..The first group, generally located in Western Europe, adopted manorial feudalism...The second group adopted clan based feudalism...I wonder whether that type of distinction couldn't apply to a lot of other societies...
So, with all these people possessing deep historical knowledge and having predicted crisis and collapse as part of an evolutionary societal phase transition (through Big History and other frameworks)...
Were any actions discussed for modeling societal development pathways, evaluating risks to avoid, or proposing blueprints and best practices drawn from past experiences for sustainable development across all areas and at all scales?
Was anyone present from the fields of education, engineering, management, law, or policy-making—those with practical experience in creating and maintaining real-world complex systems in various domains?
Or were the intellectuals, as usual, content in their isolated bubbles, scratching each other’s egos and ignoring the physical realities of processes already affecting everyone?
Productive—for whom? And what products or actionable outcomes are to be expected?
[assistant suggestion]: Perhaps it’s time to connect historical foresight with engineering foresight—by building a transdisciplinary forum focused not just on what is known, but on what must be done.
Discovery of the WWII treatment of Jews saddled Boomers with guilt. That history has put the US in a bind, given the unseen collaboration the Israeli security system has turned into political power. 47 was not pushed, but did a Dr. Strangelove leap into the Iranian attack. Childish compensation for the flop of his birthday party parade. War is obsolete. Its engine, unmetered consumption of the world's future using debt is simple to see. Historian blindness is not objectivity. Data does not make it science.
Remember, everything Trump does is explained by the fact that he is under Russian control. Putin no longer needs Iran (Russia is now producing Shahed drones itself and supplies of Iranian ballistic missiles are very slow), but he desperately needs high oil prices. So far the only real change resulting from the war is that the EU abandoned lowering the price cap for Russian oil.
Cannot wait for your forthcoming book! The comparison of China and Europe in the article discussed is insightful. The fragmentation of the agricultural Mediterranean and cold climate of the northern plains makes me wonder how climate change may change coastal regions for better or worse in coming years and potentially confirm this models’ general findings. I wonder if such models would also include variables that have historically affected the global south - diseases (particularly passed along via mosquitos) as well as other difficult types of terrains such as dense jungles. Changing climate may also be a factor in these models, hoping you have some thoughts on that in upcoming articles and what level of randomness that variable would have on the model. Also the comparison of island empires versus coastal peninsula empires (British empire and Roman empire come to mind first). Thank you! 🙏
Dear Prof Turchin, reading (and greatly enjoying) your "War and Peace and War", I've been wondering about quantifying asabiya.
It is obviously different from simple individual cooperativeness - but what could be the specific quantifiable traits to faithfully measure something that complex?
1st thing that comes to mind is a kind of involved multyplayer video game exploring various Prisoner's Dillema-type situations - but that couldn't be enough. There must be other, higher-level traits and skillsets involved.
Building and testing a high-level "asabiya simulator" would be an extremely interesting project. I imagine the product would be in high demand by all sorts of organizations, for both diagnostic and personnel development purposes.
I can’t speak for Turchin, but this book summary is a good non-technical place to start. It mainly focuses on the emergence of complexity among human societies and animals:
I really would love to try modelling some of these things, myself, as an enthusiast. Many fields benefit from a base of hobbyists to support them, and to educate their communities, why not this one? I know many of the important datasets are public domain, but as for the tools to use them :P I'm really more of a game developer, so I don't know. I imagine a lot of people would be interested in fish-tank empires.
Yes, I think video game development can potentially push the field forward. I think gamers are open to making some of their games more historically accurate and so are video game developers.
The game “Civilization” is one of the closest approximations for how human societies develop that is accessible to a wide audience. Of course, there is a big trade-off between historical accuracy and fun game play, but I think more accurate databases would drive forward historical inquiry and game development. The profit motive of gaming companies can also help.
By the way, I used to work for Wizards of the Coast and a history buff, so I am comfortable in both worlds.
I myself got a BA in history before I got into game development and learned how to code. Even beyond the more goal-oriented and competitive play of genres like strategy (which is a logical choice for modeling the history of nations) I think there's a lot of potential even as simulation. For decades now, companies have just re-made Sim City. I think it would be interesting if, for instance, the player's natural inclination towards economic growth and an educated population led to elite overproduction and catastrophe - doesn't that sound like a challenge to contend with? Even just being able to experiment with different economic, religious, political systems, and underlying biomes to "see what would happen" could be fun, in that Dwarf Fortress "losing is fun" kind of way.
Bret Devereaux's blog has a four-part series describing how the Europa Universalis strategy games succeed and fail at simulating the political and technological effects of changes in political demographics. One item he privileges, glossed over in War and Peace and War, is the "red queen effect" of military expansion where personalist states are forced to expand their territory to maintain relative parity with expanding rivals.
I request a tailored mini-model for the Dutch, as we live ibeneath sealevel in our man-made polders.
I agree that putting assumptions into a mathematical model is a good idea. However the Fernández-Villaverde seems to fail in India which has its own dominant plains area (Indus-Ganges plain) but has rarely been unified.
For that matter how unified has China been historically? As I count it out, only about 2/3 of the time since large-scale state formation started.
Not "only about 2/3 of the time", but "a full 2/3 of the time" :-)
This is quite enough.
It also seems misleading to compare Western Europe with China. Western Europe should be compared with the entire East Asia region. If you include Japan, Korea and Vietnam, East Asia does not seem so unified.
I am working on a territorial control database which should be useful for answering these kinds of questions, however I am only up to "Algeria" in alphabetical order.
a territorial control database — will it contain historical data on the change in the territory of different countries? Or which countries were present in a certain territory?
The database will show what state controlled territory in each year from 3000BC within the boundaries of today. If different states controlled territory within today's boundaries, I identify major cities and indicate who controlled them. The territory information is coming from Geacron, Centennia Historical Atlas and Wikipedia.
This is related to economic information on GDP compiled by the Maddison project and population data from the HYDE project.
This started as an effort to get better economic values for use in board wargames (and their computer equivalents). My plan is also to use the data to compare the GDP and population sizes for past states. I will be able to answer the questions like what were the world's largest economies in 1800.
Economic size is important (although not necessarily decisive) in military and economic disputes. For example, China's economy is about 25% larger than that of the US so intimidating China economically is not going to work. Iran's economy is 3 x larger than Israel's, so a war of attrition would probably not go well for Israel.
Based upon other data, once the US & USSR entered WW2, the Allies had a GDP about 4 x larger than the Axis.
If you are interested, I have a link to the data using today's boundaries at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BIUEYoBt-MHcz63NoxLYTKg0RQcHghIH/view?usp=drive_link
I fully understand your goal - to get better economic values for use in wargames (especially computer ones). I got a good grounding in education - in mathematics and programming
"China's economy is about 25% larger than that of the US so intimidating China economically is not going to work. Iran's economy is 3 x larger than Israel's, so a war of attrition would probably not go well for Israel." - in long run what is important is the composition of an economy. If the economy is large because it consists of a huge number of agricultural and clothing enterprises, it is doubtful that this will help it much. In the end, just think of the UK and India. In many ways, it remains the same today.
I looked at your table, and I wonder what is the "Population-Proportion" and "GDP-Proportion"?
The proportion is the proportion of the world population or GDP.
Some interesting observations from the existing data (using today's boundaries). The peak GDP as a percent of the world.
China 1100: 40%
India 1000BC: 34%
US 1945: 28%
United Kingdom 1870: 9% (does not include colonies)
Soviet Union 1961: 9% (Maddison's data does not split out the Soviet Union during its lifetime)
Here's another explanation. The Roman Empire was actually able to unite "Mediterranean Europe." Later, during the feudal era, it was impossible to unite Europe. These kingdoms themselves were barely united, and feudal lords would only agree to fight for 28 days without pay. From the 16th and 17th centuries, Europe was united in many ways economically, first by the united provinces, and then by Britain. They were still at war with each other, but they were now a single economic entity.
Yes having more counterfactual research would be great. I wrote about this a while back (https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/counterfactual-catastrophes). Another approach that could be quite helpful here are storylines. Taking an existing event and mapping out (both qualitatively and quantitatively) how it might have played out differently if the original shock would have been X % worse.
There is a school of thought that major differences between European countries in either prioritizing out-marriage and high acceptance of strangers versus prioritizing family ties with cousin marriage and suspicion of strangers goes back to the types of feudalism that existed..The first group, generally located in Western Europe, adopted manorial feudalism...The second group adopted clan based feudalism...I wonder whether that type of distinction couldn't apply to a lot of other societies...
So, with all these people possessing deep historical knowledge and having predicted crisis and collapse as part of an evolutionary societal phase transition (through Big History and other frameworks)...
Were any actions discussed for modeling societal development pathways, evaluating risks to avoid, or proposing blueprints and best practices drawn from past experiences for sustainable development across all areas and at all scales?
Was anyone present from the fields of education, engineering, management, law, or policy-making—those with practical experience in creating and maintaining real-world complex systems in various domains?
Or were the intellectuals, as usual, content in their isolated bubbles, scratching each other’s egos and ignoring the physical realities of processes already affecting everyone?
Productive—for whom? And what products or actionable outcomes are to be expected?
[assistant suggestion]: Perhaps it’s time to connect historical foresight with engineering foresight—by building a transdisciplinary forum focused not just on what is known, but on what must be done.
Discovery of the WWII treatment of Jews saddled Boomers with guilt. That history has put the US in a bind, given the unseen collaboration the Israeli security system has turned into political power. 47 was not pushed, but did a Dr. Strangelove leap into the Iranian attack. Childish compensation for the flop of his birthday party parade. War is obsolete. Its engine, unmetered consumption of the world's future using debt is simple to see. Historian blindness is not objectivity. Data does not make it science.
Remember, everything Trump does is explained by the fact that he is under Russian control. Putin no longer needs Iran (Russia is now producing Shahed drones itself and supplies of Iranian ballistic missiles are very slow), but he desperately needs high oil prices. So far the only real change resulting from the war is that the EU abandoned lowering the price cap for Russian oil.
Cannot wait for your forthcoming book! The comparison of China and Europe in the article discussed is insightful. The fragmentation of the agricultural Mediterranean and cold climate of the northern plains makes me wonder how climate change may change coastal regions for better or worse in coming years and potentially confirm this models’ general findings. I wonder if such models would also include variables that have historically affected the global south - diseases (particularly passed along via mosquitos) as well as other difficult types of terrains such as dense jungles. Changing climate may also be a factor in these models, hoping you have some thoughts on that in upcoming articles and what level of randomness that variable would have on the model. Also the comparison of island empires versus coastal peninsula empires (British empire and Roman empire come to mind first). Thank you! 🙏
Dear Prof Turchin, reading (and greatly enjoying) your "War and Peace and War", I've been wondering about quantifying asabiya.
It is obviously different from simple individual cooperativeness - but what could be the specific quantifiable traits to faithfully measure something that complex?
1st thing that comes to mind is a kind of involved multyplayer video game exploring various Prisoner's Dillema-type situations - but that couldn't be enough. There must be other, higher-level traits and skillsets involved.
Building and testing a high-level "asabiya simulator" would be an extremely interesting project. I imagine the product would be in high demand by all sorts of organizations, for both diagnostic and personnel development purposes.
Just a thought.
Do you have any advise on where to start reading more about complexity, method-wise??
I can’t speak for Turchin, but this book summary is a good non-technical place to start. It mainly focuses on the emergence of complexity among human societies and animals:
https://techratchet.com/2020/05/20/book-summary-emergence-the-connected-ants-brains-cities-and-software-by-steven-johnson/
The literature on Economic Complexity is also fascinating:
https://techratchet.com/economic-complexity-learning-path/
Another book:
https://techratchet.com/2021/01/15/book-summary-scale-by-geoffrey-west/
Thank you :D
If you want to read more about the systemic risk side of complexity, I recently wrote a short intro text: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/systemic-risk-and-the-polycrisis
I am reading the intro. And your piece on how to write a living literature review is also amazing. Thank you
Happy to hear that it was helpful!