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Peter Turchin

87 quotes

“The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability... which could undermine... scientific progress...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ref: P. Turchin, S. A. Nefedov, Secular Cycles (2009)
“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.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are also entering a dip in the so-called ... This could mean that future recessions will be severe.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We need to find ways to ameliorate the negative effects of globalization... Economic inequality, accompanied by burgeoning public debt, can be addressed by making tax rates more progressive.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e should not expand our system of higher education... An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This article revisits the prediction, made in 2010, that the 2010–2020 decade would likely be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected... the Political Stress Indicator, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ortmans et al. Turchin P. 2010 conducted a similar structural-demographic study for the United Kingdom.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract. Ref: O Ortmans, E Mazzeo, K Meshcherina, A Korotayev "Modeling Social Pressures Toward Political Instability in the United Kingdom after 1960: A Demographic Structural Analysis" Cliodynamics (2017) 8:113–58
“Here we use the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive for the US, UK, and several major Western European countries to assess these structural-demographic predictions.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract. Ref: Cross-National Time-Series Data (CNTS) from Databanks International. More than 200 years of annual data from 1815 onward.
“[S]uch measures of socio-political instability as anti-government demonstrations and riots increased dramatically during the 2010–2020 decade in all of these countries.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How resilient are our societies to internal and external shocks?”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can we model and forecast the dynamics of social resilience and its opposite, social breakdown?”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[G]rowing socio-political instability results from multiple interacting factors: economic, political, and cultural.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(SDT) offers a... wholistic framework for investigating such... forces that... lead to revolutions, civil wars, and other major outbreaks of socio-political instability.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“SDT can be... an explicit computational model capable of forecasting future... social unrest and political violence in specific social systems.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... was proposed by and further developed and tested by... investigators, including [S.] Nefedov, Turchin, [and] Korotayev et al.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The SDT proposes that the causes of revolutions and major rebellions are... similar to processes that cause earthquakes. In both... it is useful to distinguish "pressures" (structural conditions, which build up slowly) from "triggers" (sudden releasing events, which immediately precede a social or geological eruption).”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Specific triggers... are difficult, perhaps... impossible to predict. ...[S]tructural pressures build up slowly and more predictably, and are amenable to analysis and forecasting.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many triggering events... are ultimately caused by pent-up social pressures ...[i.e.,] the structural factors.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main focus of SDT... is on the structural pressures undermining social resilience.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The theory represents complex human societies as systems with three main compartments (the general population, the elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with socio-political instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The focus [is] on only these four structural components... [E]ach component has a number of attributes that change dynamically in response to... [the] other... variables.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction. Ref: Turchin P. "Modeling Social Pressures Toward Political Instability" Cliodynamics (2013) 4:241–80. Ref: Turchin P. Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History (2016)
“SDT is a general theory that guides our understanding of political violence dynamics and social breakdown in all large-scale state-level societies.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e need to translate the general theory into a specific computational model tailored to the focal state. Over the past four decades this has been accomplished for... historical case-studies, ranging from Ancient empires to Early Modern states and nineteenth century’s revolutions and civil wars.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 1780 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction. Ref: JA Goldstone. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991) Ref: Turchin P. Historical dynamics: why states rise and fall (2003) Ref: Turchin P. "Dynamics of Political Instability in the U…
“[T]he theory has been applied to two contemporary societies. The first... is a structural-demographic model for the... USA... the basis for the 2010 prediction. The details... were published [by] Turchin and later expanded into a book-length treatment.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction. Ref: P Turchin, "Modeling Social Pressures Toward Political Instability" Cliodynamics (2013) 4:241–80 Ref: P. Turchin, Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History (2016)
“[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.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many of the historical "Golden Ages" were... golden... only for the elites, whose high levels of consumption were based on low real wages and falling consumption levels of the great majority...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hile declining living standards are often a contributing factor to... instability, reversing this trend does not end instability until elite overproduction is... reversed...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discussion Ref: P Turchin, S Nefedov, Secular Cycles (2009)
“Making scientific predictions about the events that happened, but are not known to the authors of the theory, is a valid scientific approach in historical sciences, such as geology, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and (history as science). It is sometimes referred to as "". ...[T]he primary way of testing theories in historical dynamics is retrodiction. But when mulitple successful tests using retrodiction (prediction about the past) are complemented with a few cases of prediction about the future, our degree of confidence in the theory is... enhanced.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The SDT is not merely a theory for understanding why internal violence outbreaks develop and spike. By providing... understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and societal breakdown, SDT... gives us tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers of instability.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discussion Ref: Turchin P, Witoszek N, Thurner S, Garcia D, Griffin R, Hoyer D, et al. "A History of Possible Futures: Multipath Forecasting of Social Breakdown, Recovery, and Resilience" Cliodynamics (2018) 9:124–39
“[N]one of the fundamental structural-demographic drivers have been reversed, so far. Thus, the American social system continues to be very vulnerable to additional "quakes".”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[U]ntil the fundamental SD drivers for instability are reversed, there will be other triggering events... social turbulence may continue for years ahead.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Historical data indicate that periods of enhanced instability and internal warfare usually extend for many years, with the median length... 10–15 years range.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“SDT gives us understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and... tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers... It remains to be seen whether our society will be able to use these tools.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]here are important recurring patterns... throughout... human history over the past ten thousand years.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[C]omplex human societies at base and at some abstract level, are organized according to the same general principles.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]y colleagues and I... focused on cycles of political integration and disintegration, particularly on state formation and state collapse.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It became clear... through quantitative historical analysis that [throughout time] complex societies everywhere are affected by recurrent and, to a... degree, predictable waves of political instability, brought about by the same basic set of forces...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 2010... Nature asked specialists... to look ten years into the future, and I made this case... judging from the pattern of US history, we were due for another sharp instability spike by the early 2020s. ...The book is my best attempt to explain this model... I make no claims of radical originality.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[S]ocieties have arrived at this crossroads before, and though... most of the time...the road has led to great loss of life and societal breakdown, sometimes it has led to a far happier resolution ...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hen a state... has stagnating or declining ... a growing gap between the rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, declining public trust, and exploding public debt... Historically such developments have served as leading indicators of political instability. In the United States all of these... started to take an ominous turn in the 1970s. The data pointed to... around 2020... a spike in political instability. And here we are.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... uses the methods of data science, treating the historical record... as Big Data. It employs mathematical models to trace the intricate web of interactions...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main question... Whether there is economic inequality, and social and political instability? Growing economic inequality, especially inequality in income and wealth, is currently a broadly shared concern. It has been a lot of the topics in the Davos meetings... and it is often adduced that growing inequality is a source of political discord. But is it? And if it's the case, how does it do it? What is the direct mechanism?”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]here are some reasons to doubt that growing inequality might be a direct mechanism... of instability, because humans are very bad at perceiving inequality. ...[A] number of studies ...show that people, when... asked to estimate the degree of income or wealth inequality... their opinions essentially have nothing to do with what is actually... measured by economists.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]nequality is an excellent proxy for the actual mechanisms that drive instability, but the actual drivers... are several, of which I will focus on two: popular immiseration and . ...[A]t a deep structural level the force that drives those and ultimately instability, is what I would refer to as the "wealth pump.”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So the forecast seems to have been quite good. The question is "What was it based on?" It was not... a prophecy, it was a scientific prediction because there is a specific mechanism on which it was based. ...[T]he forecast was a scientific prediction in the sense that I wanted to stick my neck out [and] make an out-of-sample prediction to see whether the mechanisms that have been identified by our theory... actually are working in the way that we thought...”
Peter Turchin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source