Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, are welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Christian Seger. You know, Christian.
Speaker 1: It seems that we should be able to look at
Speaker 1: where we've been in the past and therefore extrapolate, predict,
Speaker 1: even simulate where we're going in the future. Right, it does.
Speaker 1: It does seem that way, And I think that that
Speaker 1: maybe is a product of like the last century of
Speaker 1: our uh scientific thinking. Does that make sense? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's definitely one line in particular that we're
Speaker 1: that we're often referring to and uh and in generally
Speaker 1: misquoting I think a lot of the times, and that
Speaker 1: comes from a philosopher, Georgia Santayana, who said, quote, those
Speaker 1: who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Speaker 1: That would of course tend to imply, Hey, if you
Speaker 1: can remember the past, then you can avoid these pitfalls
Speaker 1: in the future. That there's some uh, there's some system
Speaker 1: that can be employed that even though we're we're strapped
Speaker 1: to this linear existence just hurdling through time into the future. Um,
Speaker 1: if we have some concept of the road that we've traveled,
Speaker 1: we'll have a better idea about the road to come right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so of bring it back around to our nerdiness. Uh.
Speaker 1: In our fandom for Stephen King and the newly popular
Speaker 1: Dark Tower Universe. Uh, there's a quote from King here
Speaker 1: that he used in the stand under the Guise of
Speaker 1: Randall flag. Life was such a wheel that no man
Speaker 1: could stand upon it for long, and it always, at
Speaker 1: the end came around to the same place again. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a terrifying concept though, right, And at the
Speaker 1: same time it is an idea that seems to fill
Speaker 1: a lot of people with purpose because they can say, ah,
Speaker 1: hold on, wait, I've got it figured out, and I
Speaker 1: can predict what's going to happen next. And in fact,
Speaker 1: we had a listener right into us about this very idea.
Speaker 1: Her name is Allison, and she wrote us and said
Speaker 1: she was wondering if we would do a show about
Speaker 1: this is something that's been mentioned a lot on the
Speaker 1: internet lately and apparent eighty year cycle of political social
Speaker 1: upheaval in our world. And she said she was horrified
Speaker 1: and intrigued the first time that she heard about it,
Speaker 1: and so she started looking into this. Uh. And she
Speaker 1: said that she's heard about the idea in general, but
Speaker 1: that this the whole like seventy to eighty year cycle
Speaker 1: as a devastating shake up, whether it's via war, war
Speaker 1: or turmoil, was kind of new, right, and she wanted
Speaker 1: to know if we could do some research on it
Speaker 1: and see what we came up with and provide some
Speaker 1: perspective on it. And interestingly, because I have also heard
Speaker 1: about this in the last couple of months, Um, we
Speaker 1: did the research and it turns out that the one
Speaker 1: that's making the rounds is not the one that is
Speaker 1: being academically researched. There's like a little bit of uh
Speaker 1: confabulation going on here between two different uh specific theories
Speaker 1: and one is more well, I guess we can describe
Speaker 1: them as the fifty year theory and the eighty year theory. Yes, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and these this is this is this is getting into
Speaker 1: a realm of what is known as cleo dynamics, that
Speaker 1: is cl i o dynamics. Yeah. So this is a
Speaker 1: field where scientists are attempting to find meaningful patterns in history.
Speaker 1: And it was named by a guy named Peter Turch.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk a lot about him today after Cleo,
Speaker 1: the ancient Greek muse of history. I have been having
Speaker 1: the hardest time remembering this name trying. You came up
Speaker 1: with a good idea earlier picture Cleo as miss Cleo
Speaker 1: the psychic. Uh. The other one I'm thinking is like
Speaker 1: letters to Cleo Dynamics, Like, I gotta figure out a
Speaker 1: way to remember this because it's been hard for me.
Speaker 1: But anyways, there's been a swell of efforts to apply
Speaker 1: scientific methods to history by identifying in audeling broad social forces.
Speaker 1: And one argument in favor of this is that historians
Speaker 1: are too qualitative and that they point to samples of
Speaker 1: cases from observations that Cleo Dynamics wants to use tools
Speaker 1: like nonlinear mathematics and simulations that can model the interactions
Speaker 1: of millions of people at once. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: be clear about this upfront. It's criticized by traditional historians.
Speaker 1: They usually believe that there are countless variables interacting within
Speaker 1: a society that lead to violence and social unrest, and
Speaker 1: they don't think that there's any one unified theory or
Speaker 1: general law to history. So so what are we talking
Speaker 1: about here? Then, Well, we're looking at decades or even
Speaker 1: century long periods of population expansion, followed by long periods
Speaker 1: of stagnation and decline price dynamics mirroring population oscillations, strong
Speaker 1: expansionist phases followed by state failure socio political instead of
Speaker 1: build pity and territory loss, repeated back and forth swings
Speaker 1: in demographic, economic, social, and political structures. Uh, just to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of what what kind of patterns
Speaker 1: we're talking about here when we're when you're imagining, say
Speaker 1: the the Cleo dynamics weather person standing in front of
Speaker 1: green screen, like these are the kind of movements they
Speaker 1: would be talking about her chart. That's a perfect analogy. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: an example I came across was in the work of
Speaker 1: two and two individuals, one of whom of which we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about in greater depth, Peter Turchin and
Speaker 1: Sergey A. Nevadov, And they have a book titled Secular
Speaker 1: Cycles in which they looked at England, France, and Russia
Speaker 1: throughout both the medieval and early modern periods and they
Speaker 1: closely observed cycles of inequality. So, uh, Nevodov has a
Speaker 1: great rundown of cleo dynamics and economic inequality as well.
Speaker 1: In Ian magazine and a couple of other publications. I'll
Speaker 1: try to include a link to this on the landing
Speaker 1: page for the episode. But he says that in this case,
Speaker 1: the cycles break down to this, you have expansion, stagnation, crisis, disintegration,
Speaker 1: sort of a life cycle of a story arc for
Speaker 1: for civilization. Right. However, uh Nfidov is quick to point
Speaker 1: out that we're not talking about rigid clockwork here, So
Speaker 1: these cycles don't occur in a machine. They occur in
Speaker 1: a chaotic system in which a great number of variables
Speaker 1: play apart. So in a way it is it is
Speaker 1: a lot like the weather. The weather is a system.
Speaker 1: We know what what's factors influence the movements of atmosphere
Speaker 1: and weather patterns, but there's so many it's ultimately such
Speaker 1: a chaotic system it becomes difficult to make um. You know,
Speaker 1: long term predictions, even short term predictions are are are
Speaker 1: open to uh to misinterpretation. And does anybody who's checked
Speaker 1: the weather channel or their weather app on their phone
Speaker 1: and gone outside and its raining. It's not that a
Speaker 1: meteorologist doesn't know what they're taught king about. It's that
Speaker 1: the the system is just that complex and difficult to
Speaker 1: simulate even with the with our most complicated simulation systems.
Speaker 1: So the idea here's the human cultures and civilizations. Also
Speaker 1: that they're bumping up against each other, they're influencing each other.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there are so many factors that make it
Speaker 1: complex and it's it's again, it's not as simple as
Speaker 1: just you know, running a computer versus computer game inside
Speaker 1: of of a closed system. Still, he maintains that complex
Speaker 1: interactions do add up to a general rhythm. So if
Speaker 1: you kind of take a god's eye view of everything,
Speaker 1: the idea here is that, yes, you will see patterns
Speaker 1: emerge and then you can extract late that to the future.
Speaker 1: So Cleo dynamics then is about observing these trends, observing
Speaker 1: these cycles, this ebb and flow, and then predicting them
Speaker 1: in the future. And you have a note here about
Speaker 1: Mercy a eliads book The Terror of History, which I
Speaker 1: remember reading in grad school. Yeah, and of the Eternal Return,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, he involved in myth studies. Yeah yeah, So
Speaker 1: he talks about this concept of the terror of history
Speaker 1: in which humanity has abandoned a cyclical mythic view of
Speaker 1: time that we used to have in favor of a
Speaker 1: purely linear existence. We're forced to see history for what
Speaker 1: it is, a senseless stream of blunders, atrocity, collapsed ideals
Speaker 1: of fallen states, ruined megaprojects, and just sort of failure
Speaker 1: in general. Um, it sounds like the greatest setting for
Speaker 1: a role playing game. Yeah, but not one to live in.
Speaker 1: It's what it is, legitimately worth thinking about when you're
Speaker 1: when you're toying with, you know, dungeons and dragons, histories,
Speaker 1: you know, or thinking about stuff like Game of Thrones. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why all of these, like fantasy worlds
Speaker 1: that are built from the ground up, have ruinous histories
Speaker 1: to them that that they kind of look back on
Speaker 1: in wonder. Yeah. So here's a quote from the myth
Speaker 1: of the Eternal Return. Ileoti says, quote, in our day,
Speaker 1: when historical pressure no longer allows any escape, how and
Speaker 1: man tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history, from collective
Speaker 1: deportations and massacres to atomic bombings, if beyond them he
Speaker 1: can glimpse no sign, no transistorical meaning, if they are
Speaker 1: only the blind play of economic, social, or political forces,
Speaker 1: or even worse, only the result of the liberties that
Speaker 1: a minority takes and exercises it directly on the stage
Speaker 1: of universal history. So Eliade says that for the longest
Speaker 1: humans were able to place everything within a metahistorical framework.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, something fell apart because it was the
Speaker 1: end of a decade an age. It was the punishment
Speaker 1: of God, et cetera. Now, Cleo dynamics stands in an
Speaker 1: interesting place by comparison, because they are, in a way
Speaker 1: attempting to resurrect a cyclical view of history. There they're
Speaker 1: turning not to divine mechanics, however, or the imagined astrological
Speaker 1: influence of the spheres. Uh, but rather to a modeling
Speaker 1: of history sort of fluid dynamics based on cultural evolution,
Speaker 1: macro sociology, economics, and other factors. Plus in a refreshingly
Speaker 1: optimistic humanist twist that I really like. It also opens
Speaker 1: the door for control over those cycles, right Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think that's absolutely crucial to keep in mind with
Speaker 1: all of this. It's not just another version of Oh,
Speaker 1: humanity is screwed. And here's why. There's the potential for
Speaker 1: self awareness. Here, there's the potential for change. Right. So,
Speaker 1: the general methodology that's being used in these studies at
Speaker 1: least at least church and studies is to focus on
Speaker 1: four main variables that are measured in several ways, and
Speaker 1: and Robert you just mentioned many of these. He boils
Speaker 1: them down pretty quickly to population numbers, social structure, state strength,
Speaker 1: and political instability. And then he says, the way to
Speaker 1: measure these is actually through proxies that are connected to
Speaker 1: these things that you can measure quantitatively. So he looks,
Speaker 1: for instance, at social structure, He looks at the quantitative
Speaker 1: data on life expectancy and wealth in a quality, and
Speaker 1: that's one of his measurement points. So who's this Peter
Speaker 1: Churching guy that that like has just come out of
Speaker 1: nowhere with the cleo dynamics At least it seems like that, right,
Speaker 1: He's actually been doing it for a while. He's an
Speaker 1: ecologist and evolutionary biologist and a mathematician out of the
Speaker 1: University of Connecticut and stores he studies population dynamics and
Speaker 1: takes mathematical techniques that he used to use to track
Speaker 1: predator pray cycles in forest ecosystems, and then he applies
Speaker 1: those to human history. Now, Turchen looks at historical records
Speaker 1: of economic activity, demographic trends, and outbursts of violence in
Speaker 1: the United States, and he argues history is not just
Speaker 1: one damn thing after another. His main research questions are essentially,
Speaker 1: first of all, what general mechanisms explain the collapse of
Speaker 1: historical empires? And then how did large scale states and
Speaker 1: empires evolved in the first place. So this is some
Speaker 1: pretty big heavy stuff when it comes to anthropology. Now,
Speaker 1: church and first conceived of Cleo dynamics in nineteen seven
Speaker 1: when he felt that all major ecological questions about population
Speaker 1: dynamics had been answered, so he turned to that's a
Speaker 1: direct quote from him. That's not me. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know necessarily that they have all been answered. But
Speaker 1: he turned to history. And actually his father had previously
Speaker 1: looked into us. His father was Valentine Church and a
Speaker 1: computer scientist, and he had written dissident writings about the
Speaker 1: origins of totalitarianism that got him exiled from the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union in nineteen seventies seven. Now, the younger Church and
Speaker 1: he recognizes that this kind of search for patterns in history,
Speaker 1: this is not a new thing, right. Obviously, we're all
Speaker 1: familiar with the idea of there being a cyclical nature
Speaker 1: to history. I remember learning about this in like, uh,
Speaker 1: probably like a junior high history class. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just basically pattern recognition in history class. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: an empire rye is and then it falls, you know,
Speaker 1: you have you're gonna end up with some sort of
Speaker 1: horrible emperor ruler and then then there's a revolution that happens.
Speaker 1: Like you just you just began to recognize the same
Speaker 1: patterns within these different stories. Yeah, that was the way
Speaker 1: it was framed to us when I was like whatever,
Speaker 1: twelve maybe thirteen years old. They're essentially like war happens,
Speaker 1: then like there's peace, then there's war, then there's peace,
Speaker 1: then there's war, and they happen in these like they
Speaker 1: actually were able to this elementary school tape teacher was
Speaker 1: able to map it out for us, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's essentially what he's doing, but with just like a
Speaker 1: broader set of data points, right. And he's really currently
Speaker 1: focused on coordinating something called the c CHAT Global History
Speaker 1: Data Bank, And this is a database of history and
Speaker 1: cultural evolution that is hoped to be used to empirically
Speaker 1: test out theoretical predictions from Cleo dynamics. So they're essentially
Speaker 1: housing as much data as they possibly can gather to
Speaker 1: run these predictive models against. So there are a couple
Speaker 1: of moments of other Cleo dynamics though too rite and
Speaker 1: we don't want to confuse Urchin with too many of
Speaker 1: the other folks that are involved in this. And we
Speaker 1: haven't even gotten to the actual purported eighty year cycle
Speaker 1: that is making the rounds right now. What we're really
Speaker 1: talking about with Urchin is the fifty year and then
Speaker 1: two hundred year cycles. But uh, there's actually and you
Speaker 1: and I both found this. There's a peer reviewed journal
Speaker 1: on Cleo dynamics and it's open access, meaning anybody out
Speaker 1: there can get get it, and you can share it
Speaker 1: and reuse it under a Creative Commons attribution. You'll find
Speaker 1: lots of different articles about cleo dynamic views of history.
Speaker 1: You try to include a link to that on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode is stuff to about your
Speaker 1: mind dot com. Yeah, so here's a couple of people.
Speaker 1: Uh they they have been doing similar work to church In,
Speaker 1: but they're not, you know, part of his necessary research projects.
Speaker 1: So you've got Claudio sea Offee Reveala, who is a
Speaker 1: computer social scientist in Virginia, UH. They're trying to use
Speaker 1: cleo dynamics by running simulations on computer models. Specifically, his
Speaker 1: team is looking at the Rift Valley region of East
Speaker 1: Africa and the effects of modern climate change there. And
Speaker 1: so they've seen that there was a drought there and
Speaker 1: then subsequently labor specialization and vulnerability emerged spontaneously. So they
Speaker 1: hope to be able to predict the flow of refugees
Speaker 1: and identify potential conflict hot spots in the region using
Speaker 1: using these Cleo dynamic methods. Another guy, Jack Goldstone, is
Speaker 1: the director of the Center for Global Policy at George
Speaker 1: Mason University. He's also a member of the Political Instability
Speaker 1: Task Force, which is funded by the CIA to forecast
Speaker 1: events outside of the United States. He's tried finding patterns
Speaker 1: in past revolutions and he projects that Egypt will actually
Speaker 1: have a few more years of struggle and another five
Speaker 1: to ten years of rebuilding its institutions before it can
Speaker 1: regain stability. Now this is in reference to the Arab
Speaker 1: Spring Revolution of uh That might be a little bit this.
Speaker 1: The information here might have been written closer to that
Speaker 1: date than to our present date. So I take those
Speaker 1: those numbers with a grain of salt. Goldstone, though, thinks
Speaker 1: that cleo dynamics is only useful for looking at broad
Speaker 1: trends and not useful for predicting unique events, so he
Speaker 1: wanted to be clear about that. I think that's important
Speaker 1: to note. And when we get into criticism later, you
Speaker 1: do find that it's not necessarily the situation where people
Speaker 1: are like cleo dynamics is awesome or Cleo dynamics is
Speaker 1: is trash. It's a lot a lot of times it's
Speaker 1: a discussion about to what extent these kinds of exercises
Speaker 1: are useful or accurate. Right, Yeah. So another person who
Speaker 1: felt the same way is Herbert Gentis, and this is
Speaker 1: a retired economist working out of U mass Ammerst, who
Speaker 1: also doubts that cleo dynamics can be used to predict
Speaker 1: specific events, but he does think the patterns and causal
Speaker 1: connections within it can reveal lessons for policymakers. So he's
Speaker 1: essentially arguing this is something that people who are constructing
Speaker 1: policy in our government should be paying attention to. And
Speaker 1: the last person here I have here is Harvey Whitehouse,
Speaker 1: who is an anthropologist at the University of Oxford, and
Speaker 1: he oversees the construction of a database on rituals, social structures,
Speaker 1: and conflict around the globe. Now, he believes this research
Speaker 1: can complement the approach of Cleo dynamics by shedding light
Speaker 1: on the triggers of political violence. In his argument, this
Speaker 1: violence happens when individuals strongly identify with a political group,
Speaker 1: and that identification is cemented through what he calls rituals.
Speaker 1: And these can be frightening and painful. And the reason
Speaker 1: why is the more frightening and painful they are, the
Speaker 1: stronger the shared memories they create. Are This sounds very
Speaker 1: familiar to us. We are you know, we're trying to
Speaker 1: keep this episode evergreen, but we were actually recording this
Speaker 1: the weekend after the riot events in Charlottesville, Virginia and
Speaker 1: uh where you know, there were collisions between I guess
Speaker 1: white nationalist protesters and counter protesters and there was a
Speaker 1: woman killed by a car that drove into a number
Speaker 1: of the participants in this. Uh, it's it was super upsetting.
Speaker 1: It's still super upsetting. And as I'm reading about cleo
Speaker 1: dynamics and these applications of it, it seems to be
Speaker 1: like a moment that will obviously join this data set,
Speaker 1: which sounds sounds somewhat unemotional, right because these are like
Speaker 1: real people that it's affecting. But it also makes me
Speaker 1: wonder like, how can this How could could we have
Speaker 1: predicted events like this? Or can we trace back why
Speaker 1: events like this are happening? Yeah, exactly, because again, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not just about knowing where we're going. It's
Speaker 1: it's about being able to take control of it, being
Speaker 1: able to sort of take control of the wheel to
Speaker 1: a certain extent. Alright, let's take a break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, let's jump into this fifty year cycle,
Speaker 1: this fifty year scale. Alright, we're back. So yeah, So
Speaker 1: Turchen is actually the one who came up with the
Speaker 1: fifty year scale, and this is the one that's getting
Speaker 1: conflated with the eighty year scale that's making the rounds
Speaker 1: on the internet right now. Uh, And we'll explain all
Speaker 1: that later, but let's talk about what he actually means
Speaker 1: with this fifty year scale. So the theory goes, he
Speaker 1: calls this the father and Son's scale. The theory goes
Speaker 1: that every fifty years there's a moment of violent upheaval
Speaker 1: in the United States, and he looks at this as
Speaker 1: beginning in eighteen seventy with the Civil War, then in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty there was violence over labor and race. Then
Speaker 1: again in nineteen seventy we had the Vietnam War and
Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement. So he's our you doing that
Speaker 1: twenty is around when we're going to have our next
Speaker 1: cycle and basically saying everybody needs to prepare themselves. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go through another moment of turmoil. You know, I, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't want to criticize this this because obviously there
Speaker 1: are a number of issues going on, but I mean
Speaker 1: instantly you think to yourself, oh, I'm glad there was
Speaker 1: that stretch of a relative peace between ninety uh and
Speaker 1: the and the nineteen seventy Um, you know obviously that's
Speaker 1: when we had the World War two Great War. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: He's not tracking events like that because they aren't, I guess,
Speaker 1: specifically within the borders of the United States. So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting But you're making a really interesting counter argument here,
Speaker 1: which is like, what's the then diagram of overlap of
Speaker 1: global events on top of this right? Right? And then
Speaker 1: you I guess you can also say two are you
Speaker 1: have these key moments generationally where you have all these
Speaker 1: factors coming together and opening us up for the potential
Speaker 1: for unrest. But I guess there's also going to be
Speaker 1: this um, this possibility for cascading effects, and I imagine
Speaker 1: you could apply that to to the you know, the
Speaker 1: decades to follow. He sort of addresses that, and I'll
Speaker 1: get to that in the future, because he calls that's
Speaker 1: part of his two hundred year scale. But let's wrap
Speaker 1: up the fifty year scale. Yeah, Actually, that's a good
Speaker 1: that's a good times you're going to have like two
Speaker 1: different bruds of cicadas emerging at the same time exactly.
Speaker 1: So he argues all of this in a published article
Speaker 1: in a July issue of the Journal of Peace Research,
Speaker 1: and he believes the model that he presents there suggests
Speaker 1: that violence will be even worse because of quote demographic
Speaker 1: variables such as wages, standards of living, and a number
Speaker 1: of measures of intra elite confrontation. Now, his reasoning for
Speaker 1: all of this is that there's a period of sustained
Speaker 1: explosive violence, and then that is usually followed and maintained
Speaker 1: as peace for around twenty to thirty years until a
Speaker 1: new generation arises and this generation hasn't experienced any of
Speaker 1: the horrors of the previous generations. So church And thinks
Speaker 1: that this cycle occurs every two generations, or every forty
Speaker 1: to sixty years. So that's why he places its smack
Speaker 1: in the middle there with a fifty year cycle. This
Speaker 1: is why he calls it the father's and son's cycle,
Speaker 1: which is a little gendered. But the idea here is
Speaker 1: that the father responds violently to perceived social justice, and
Speaker 1: then their son lives with that legacy of conflict and abstains.
Speaker 1: But with the third generation, the cycle begins again. Now
Speaker 1: church And compares this to a forest fire, and he
Speaker 1: says it will burn out until underbrush accumulates, and then
Speaker 1: the cycle recommences again. Okay, I can definitely follow that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like looking at my life and how my lifespan
Speaker 1: has played against the cycles that he's outlining. I can
Speaker 1: see this, you know, Like I was born just after
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights movement, just after Vietnam. I learned from
Speaker 1: my parents that those events were catastrophic and that it
Speaker 1: was you know, essentially I learned to try to be
Speaker 1: peaceful as as he's arguing here, and then I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing like the generation maybe two generations behind you
Speaker 1: and I are they didn't they didn't have those lessons, right,
Speaker 1: and so subsequently they're sort of feeling the pressures of economy.
Speaker 1: Really is what it comes down to with Turchin's arguments
Speaker 1: upon themselves and then looking for a scapegoat. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I have thought a lot in the past about what
Speaker 1: it means to be entering into an age in which
Speaker 1: there are no uh, you know, fewer and then ultimately
Speaker 1: no firsthand accounts of the Second World War, you know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that totally ties into this. Yeah. So he also identifies
Speaker 1: the cause as get this political entrepreneurs who are trying
Speaker 1: to get power. There are people who are already in
Speaker 1: the elite, but they want to overturn the political order
Speaker 1: to better suit themselves. Does this sound familiar anybody? And
Speaker 1: he says that this subsequently has a historical precedent of
Speaker 1: leading to revolution. But hold on a second. You're probably
Speaker 1: saying to yourself, wait a minute, there was no peak
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties. If this fits a fifty year model,
Speaker 1: If I go back to the eighteen twenties, there wasn't
Speaker 1: any upheaval, then why and he says, actually, that's because
Speaker 1: the social variables like wages and employment were excellent at
Speaker 1: that time. So he's looking at and he's thinking that
Speaker 1: our current polarization here in the United States and the
Speaker 1: current amount of inequality we're experiencing will reach a peak
Speaker 1: in our discourse and political class will become even more
Speaker 1: fragmented than it already is right now. In addition, he
Speaker 1: finds uh things that are indicators are corruption increase and
Speaker 1: political cooperation unraveling. Right before there are these big periods
Speaker 1: of instability or violence that are imminent. And again this
Speaker 1: sounds eerily familiar. I guess I should try to place
Speaker 1: this too. So the article was written in twelve. He
Speaker 1: started talking about this stuff back, and what would I say? So,
Speaker 1: you know, he's been talking about this for a while now,
Speaker 1: and now here we are in seventeen and we're experiencing
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that he predicted. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that that necessarily means for I agree with his
Speaker 1: prediction or I agree with this model, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of scary how a lot of this is playing out.
Speaker 1: So remember that other CLEO dynamic speaker I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: Harvey white House. He says that if Turchin's prediction of
Speaker 1: unrest in the United States is correct, we can actually
Speaker 1: expect to see an increase in tightly knit groups who
Speaker 1: use rituals with a threatening quality. But these ritual is
Speaker 1: also promised great rewards for their members. And again I
Speaker 1: have to remind us we're recording this a couple of
Speaker 1: days after Charlottesville, and that describes that to a t
Speaker 1: is a group with a threatening quality that's promising great
Speaker 1: rewards to its members. What's the great reward in that case?
Speaker 1: I wonder, well, I think that talking about greatness. They
Speaker 1: so I've told a lot of people about this. Their
Speaker 1: Vice actually made a video on the ground there. It's
Speaker 1: about like minutes long. It's super upsetting, but I highly
Speaker 1: recommend watching it to sort of get a first hand
Speaker 1: account of what's going on there. When you when you
Speaker 1: watch the people in these groups talking about why they're there,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is about it comes down to
Speaker 1: a cultural reclamation of the country and economic like they
Speaker 1: feel like something's been taken away from them that they deserve,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's what the groups are sort
Speaker 1: of promising. It's like, if you part us have paid
Speaker 1: in this you will reap rewards in the end. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's talking about like the return of say jobs,
Speaker 1: uh so you know, manufacturing jobs in particular, that may
Speaker 1: not actually be coming back. Then they're talking about like
Speaker 1: some sort of a cultural focus that that either you know,
Speaker 1: previously was in place or is misremembered as being um,
Speaker 1: you know, more central than it was. Yeah, exactly. In fact,
Speaker 1: like there's there's an idea along these lines. So remember
Speaker 1: that eighteen twenties example. That's sort of like if we can,
Speaker 1: as a entire society and with our government get it
Speaker 1: together and try to pull together are for instance, make
Speaker 1: our wages better and make sure everybody is employed, that
Speaker 1: would be something that could stave this off. But basically
Speaker 1: the argument is like there's so much chaos going on
Speaker 1: with all of this, this complex system at work right
Speaker 1: now that people like church and doubt that that's possible
Speaker 1: at this point. Now. Church And also identifies three kinds
Speaker 1: of violence that he said leads to these upheavals. He
Speaker 1: calls these group on group violence. This is when you
Speaker 1: see riots in modern day America, just like what we
Speaker 1: were just talking about. There's groups against individuals and his
Speaker 1: his example of this is lynchings. And then there's individuals
Speaker 1: against groups, which we refer to as rampage killings. And
Speaker 1: Urchin makes a point that we could identify a person
Speaker 1: killing a group by themselves as terrorism, except he needs
Speaker 1: to make a specific here in America. When this violence
Speaker 1: is an American on American, we tend not to talk
Speaker 1: about it in terms of terrorism. So his examples are
Speaker 1: the Dark Knight shooting in Aurora or Timothy McVeigh. These
Speaker 1: are usually rampage attacks that are directed in institutions like
Speaker 1: education or government and church, and says they've grown by
Speaker 1: a factor of twenty in the last generation. So this
Speaker 1: is actually I have to provide a personal note aside here.
Speaker 1: This is why I find it really troubling when I
Speaker 1: see a positive reaction to violence against white supremacists or
Speaker 1: white nationalists. We're talking about the like punching Nazis thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this on the internet. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of this right after that one I don't
Speaker 1: remember this guy's name, but that that one guy who's
Speaker 1: like a leader of one of these groups got punched
Speaker 1: in the head earlier this year, and everybody was sort
Speaker 1: of with schaden freud laughing at him, and then, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, after this weekend, there's just an increase of
Speaker 1: rhetoric from people who are friends and family with that
Speaker 1: are saying like, yeah, this is great, let's get them,
Speaker 1: you know. And and the rhetoric of using violence really
Speaker 1: troubles me, and especially because it comes right back to
Speaker 1: what Church and saying. He's saying, if you allowed these
Speaker 1: three types of violence to grow, it's going to lead
Speaker 1: to this up evil where it's going to be even worse.
Speaker 1: And I for and I makes the world go blind,
Speaker 1: right exactly. So you actually have something here that's a
Speaker 1: quote of hope after that maybe ten minutes of dour
Speaker 1: research prediction. Well, yeah, I have a couple of quotes here.
Speaker 1: The first one is from Sergey A and Nephidoff, who
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, one of the co authors with the Church,
Speaker 1: and and he said in his Ian magazine piece quote,
Speaker 1: we are rapidly approaching a historical cusp in with the
Speaker 1: US will be particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval. This prediction
Speaker 1: is not a prophecy. I don't believe the disaster is preordained,
Speaker 1: no matter what we do. On the contrary, if we
Speaker 1: understand the causes we have a chance to prevent it
Speaker 1: from happening. But the first thing we have to do
Speaker 1: is reverse the trend of ever growing inequality. And then
Speaker 1: church In himself said, the descent is not inevitable. We
Speaker 1: can avoid the worst, perhaps by switching to a less
Speaker 1: harrowing track, perhaps by redesigning the roller coaster altogether. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I um, I don't know if I a hundred percent
Speaker 1: subscribe to Turchan's version of Cleo dynamics, but it does
Speaker 1: seem a lot more grounded and quantitative data to me
Speaker 1: than than other sort of predictive factors. I've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before about how my father thought the
Speaker 1: world was gonna end like two years ago, and he
Speaker 1: was like absolutely certain that there were It was exactly
Speaker 1: like this, but it also like included historical events tied
Speaker 1: into religious predictions, and he was certain the world was
Speaker 1: gonna end. This is also like, uh, when we thought
Speaker 1: like the Mayan predictions were gonna come true right or
Speaker 1: well not weak, but you know, there there was a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about about that, like, oh, is is
Speaker 1: the world going to end in twelve because the mind's
Speaker 1: predicted it. It's on these calendars. Yeah, I mean and
Speaker 1: of course this comes back to weather forecasts again. You know,
Speaker 1: it didn't rain on Wednesday, but they were saying it
Speaker 1: was gonna gonna rain on Wednesday back when I checked
Speaker 1: the weather on a Sunday. That doesn't mean the the
Speaker 1: forecast was not based on scientific principles and and uh
Speaker 1: an x up to patterns, but they're just too many
Speaker 1: factors to properly chart. So and and to throw another
Speaker 1: wrench into the works, this is where Turchands starts talking
Speaker 1: about the two hundred years scale, and you alluded to
Speaker 1: this earlier with the paper you referenced. He calls this
Speaker 1: the secular cycle um and he talks about how there's
Speaker 1: these two types of cycles. It's the fifty year wave
Speaker 1: that we were just talking about. Then there's a longer
Speaker 1: term oscillation that repeats every two hundred to three hundred years,
Speaker 1: and depending on how these land, they can augment or
Speaker 1: suppress those fifty year peaks. So his examples are the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, medieval France, and ancient China, with societies swinging
Speaker 1: between peace and conflict every one hundred to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years. And he sees the United States as
Speaker 1: a similar society to these previous empires, so he's predicting
Speaker 1: that it will follow the same route. Now, he and
Speaker 1: his associates, like I said, they call this the secular cycle.
Speaker 1: They say it starts out first with an egalitarian society
Speaker 1: where supply and demand for labor is roughly balanced out.
Speaker 1: But then what happens is as the population grows, labor
Speaker 1: begins to outstrip demands. Subsequently, you get elite classes that form.
Speaker 1: This allows living standards for the poor to fall. Society
Speaker 1: becomes top heavy with elites who start fighting for power,
Speaker 1: and then political instability ensues and leads subsequently to collapse.
Speaker 1: So his example of this, actually going back to that
Speaker 1: other example earlier, is the Egyptian Uprising of eleven. He says,
Speaker 1: you saw an interaction of the two cycles. They're explaining
Speaker 1: events uh in Egypt, So he said, it seems like
Speaker 1: Egypt's economy was growing and that poverty levels were low,
Speaker 1: so you would have assumed that there would be stability.
Speaker 1: But he argues that in a decade leading up to
Speaker 1: the revolution, the country actually saw four times its amount
Speaker 1: of graduates come out with no employment prospects. So for
Speaker 1: church and it ultimately boils down. This is kind of
Speaker 1: like a Marxist prediction, right, like it's based on economic factors,
Speaker 1: how many workers you have, how many jobs are available,
Speaker 1: how much money they've spent on education, so on. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, let's take one more break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll we'll discuss clear dynamics a little
Speaker 1: bit more and then get into some of the some
Speaker 1: of the criticisms and critiques. Thank alright, we're back. So
Speaker 1: turch And he's actually taken the models of Cleo dynamics
Speaker 1: and applied them as well to models of religious growth. Now,
Speaker 1: one model he looks at here is linear. He says,
Speaker 1: as believers start seeing the light quote unquote, the religion
Speaker 1: will start to grow, right. But then he's got another model,
Speaker 1: and he says religion can grow like a contagion sometime,
Speaker 1: where converts increase exponentially. And so what he says is
Speaker 1: he's he's mapped conversions for Islam in medieval Iran and
Speaker 1: Spain and found that the data fits the contagion model
Speaker 1: more closely than it does the linear model. There. Likewise,
Speaker 1: he argues that there's models that explain the expansion of
Speaker 1: Christianity in the first century a d. And Mormonism here
Speaker 1: in the US since World War Two, so that's also
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. Again, I don't know, I feel like you'd
Speaker 1: really have to drill down deep to determine, like how
Speaker 1: methodologically sound this is, um, But there is, like we said,
Speaker 1: like there's this growing group of academics who are writing
Speaker 1: about it and researching it and accumulating data to try
Speaker 1: to see if it if it pans out, you know.
Speaker 1: In researching all of this, I am, once again, in
Speaker 1: my life, um disappointed that I have not read Isaac
Speaker 1: Asimov's The Foundation books, because I know that what I
Speaker 1: know of the books without getting into deep because I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil myself, is that it does concern
Speaker 1: predictive models of the future and uh and and does
Speaker 1: so you know, in great depth because it's Isaac Asimov,
Speaker 1: So of course, of course you put a lot of
Speaker 1: time into it. But sadly I have not. I have
Speaker 1: not read those and did not have time to read
Speaker 1: them before this recording. But I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from anyone out there who has read the Foundation series
Speaker 1: and and and has related inside on this topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious if if those asthma seems like the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who would explore through fiction like the arguments
Speaker 1: against these kind of predictive models, right, because one thing
Speaker 1: that people are concerned about is if you apply these
Speaker 1: predictive models and then you start using them on a
Speaker 1: policy level through government, then what happens when the predictive
Speaker 1: model says things are going to get dire in in
Speaker 1: the government suddenly becomes like really dictatorial trying to make
Speaker 1: sure that that that negative outcome doesn't happen. Right, So
Speaker 1: so you can get like a minority report kind of situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like envisioning. Okay, you're you're predicting the weather.
Speaker 1: You're basing it on the natural state of the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and weather patterns, and of course you're factoring and human
Speaker 1: influence on the weather pattering patterns. But if you reach
Speaker 1: the point where they humans can can and are intentionally
Speaker 1: altering the weather, so like you know, I guess like
Speaker 1: blasting tornadoes out of the sky or turning off her
Speaker 1: acnes or diverting them, then you're you're having to factor
Speaker 1: intentional human interaction, uh into the overall simulation and forecast
Speaker 1: for the atmosphere. Yeah, wow, that's true. So that would
Speaker 1: really that would be another factor added on to cleo dynamics.
Speaker 1: Then is trying to figure out outside of the predictive models,
Speaker 1: then what the influence of humans using the predictive models
Speaker 1: upon the actual events would do to change the predictions.
Speaker 1: I think so yeah. I mean, if you have individuals
Speaker 1: who understand how it was working and are manipulating it,
Speaker 1: then they have to factor that in. It's kind of like,
Speaker 1: if you have one wizard in the world who can
Speaker 1: bend uh natural law to their will, then that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But then what if you have two wizards? Now it
Speaker 1: seems like that that just doubles the complexity of the scenario. Well,
Speaker 1: there is another wizard here, but he's not Churching and
Speaker 1: so his name is Charles Hughes Smith and he writes
Speaker 1: for Business Insider. I don't know necessarily that he considers
Speaker 1: himself a cleo dynamicist. Is that what you would refer
Speaker 1: to them as damn dynamos dynamo? Yeah? Maybe? Uh so Smith.
Speaker 1: He's written about this in like I said, Business Insider,
Speaker 1: in his own books. He has a website that's full
Speaker 1: of this stuff. To the all of his theories, he
Speaker 1: argues there are other reasons why we're looking at seeing
Speaker 1: trouble somewhere between, he says, or two, so we can
Speaker 1: put it off a couple of years. That's how he's frying.
Speaker 1: I want to get all the Avatar sequels in before
Speaker 1: that four or five movies. Man can't reme better start
Speaker 1: cranking those out. So Smith says, there's four grand cycles.
Speaker 1: And let me be clear. That eighty year cycle that
Speaker 1: we were talking about that's floating around right now, that
Speaker 1: is one of these four grand cycles. Now that that
Speaker 1: first one is it's a generational cycle of eighty years,
Speaker 1: that's every four generations, and it is said to lead
Speaker 1: to nation changing social, political, and economic upheaval. This is
Speaker 1: referenced in a book called The Fourth Turning by Willem
Speaker 1: Strauss or William Strauss and Neil how And it also
Speaker 1: argues that after eighty years, there are few humans who
Speaker 1: can actually recall the last crisis. So your example of
Speaker 1: World War two there, now, this is the one that
Speaker 1: that's currently making the rounds uh. It's part of Hughes
Speaker 1: sort of thing. His other cycles included here that we're
Speaker 1: gonna hit peak oil, where there will be a depletion
Speaker 1: of the global economy's reliance on fossil fuels, that credit
Speaker 1: expansion and contraction will transition from a bubble to a collapse,
Speaker 1: and that's subsequently going to lead to a global depression.
Speaker 1: And I have to say from other articles, like all
Speaker 1: of this doesn't really seem to be quantitatively mapped the
Speaker 1: same way that Hurchin and other cleo dynamos are. This
Speaker 1: seems to be more based on him citing other books
Speaker 1: and he that includes Churchen's work. He does cite urchins work,
Speaker 1: but he's providing observational, qualitative examples. And the last, the
Speaker 1: last factor he throws in here is a hundred years
Speaker 1: cycle of price inflation that is met by a stagnation
Speaker 1: of wages. So this this seems a little bit closer
Speaker 1: to what Churchens talking about here that leads to shortages, famine,
Speaker 1: and crisis. He says this is because humanity is a
Speaker 1: species tries to expand into every ecological niche when food
Speaker 1: and energy supplies are rising, and so this he calls
Speaker 1: a hundred years cycle of rising prices for food, energy,
Speaker 1: and water. Uh And and Smith's argument is essentially, the
Speaker 1: government might be able to deal with any one of
Speaker 1: these things, but four of these things at once might
Speaker 1: prove to be too much for any institution of human beings.
Speaker 1: So I don't know where I really fall in terms
Speaker 1: of these arguments, Like, if you apply traditional syllogistic logic
Speaker 1: to these arguments, do they do they still hold up?
Speaker 1: Does the evidence for these claims actually warrant a connection
Speaker 1: between them? I'm not sure about that, So I want
Speaker 1: to throw that out there. This is just we're accumulating
Speaker 1: and presenting to you the variations on these cyclical theories.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's get into some of the
Speaker 1: the arguments against cleo dynamics, some of the critiques of
Speaker 1: cleo dynamics. So the weekend, you know, maybe wave this
Speaker 1: out a little bit, right, So some people are arguing
Speaker 1: that the mathematical models may simply be a case of
Speaker 1: seeing patterns in random data. So so once again the hindsight,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Uh. And then also the data set that
Speaker 1: Turchin is working with has been criticized for being too
Speaker 1: short because it only covers a period from seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: to So maybe cleo dynamics does work, but humanity probably
Speaker 1: needs to back up another couple of centuries of good
Speaker 1: record keeping before we can actually apply it in any sense. Also,
Speaker 1: historians in general argue that cleo dynamics weakness is that
Speaker 1: when it attempts to make predictions based on trends when
Speaker 1: historical information availability is usually patchy at best. Right, So
Speaker 1: our records are preserved or destroyed based on chance, for instance,
Speaker 1: our palam sess episode, right, uh, and knowledge tends to
Speaker 1: pool around narrow subject areas. The example that immediately comes
Speaker 1: to mind for me on this, pop culture wise is
Speaker 1: The Strain. I've started watching The Strain again. Oh man, well,
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm watching season three. I haven't hit the
Speaker 1: final season yet, but yeah, they've got that book the
Speaker 1: Lumen that is like the book of all the answers
Speaker 1: on how to deal with these vampires translates to how
Speaker 1: to kill vampire basically, yeah, yeah, And it's like they're
Speaker 1: facing in the world of the Strain, this this total
Speaker 1: upheaval as vampires start taking over the world and killing
Speaker 1: off the human race. But the only record of how
Speaker 1: to deal with this is in this one book that
Speaker 1: takes what two seasons to find ye, and then they
Speaker 1: find it and it takes another season to translate it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think that's like, you know, that's obviously
Speaker 1: a fictional example. But to be fair, you know, our
Speaker 1: record keeping is hasn't been that great until recently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually a recent by the time it's published, as it
Speaker 1: will be a recent episode. But Joe and I did
Speaker 1: an episode on Greek Fire, the Byzantine secret weapon, so
Speaker 1: secret in fact that that it's a mystery regarding exactly
Speaker 1: what it entailed in terms of formula and the system
Speaker 1: of deployment. Yeah, you just have to go under King's landing.
Speaker 1: That's where it's Okay, that's that's true, alright. So I
Speaker 1: mentioned the you know, hindsight is because again that's one
Speaker 1: of the criticisms here, that it's one thing to inflict
Speaker 1: cyclical order on the past, because historians have been doing
Speaker 1: this for ages. Right, Even our systems of the system
Speaker 1: of years or classification of the ages and empires are
Speaker 1: boiling down of of the past into narratives is ultimately
Speaker 1: a form of this UM. And then plus there's always
Speaker 1: the potential impact of unforeseen events that buck perceived patterns.
Speaker 1: So we've talked a lot about outside context events um
Speaker 1: the terminology coined by Ian and Banks before, but there's
Speaker 1: also a similar notion explored in black swan theory. So
Speaker 1: this was this is an idea that came from an
Speaker 1: seem Nicholas Taleb and he he uh he takes this
Speaker 1: to the name of this black swan theory from the
Speaker 1: fact that before the discovery of Australia, scientific observation suggested
Speaker 1: that all swans were white. Huh okay, there was no
Speaker 1: such thing as a black swan as there uh was
Speaker 1: a you know, no more than there was a green
Speaker 1: or a purple one. But then the European explorers discovered
Speaker 1: the world down under and they discovered black swans, so
Speaker 1: that which was you know, possible but but had not
Speaker 1: been observed yet, became reality. So the black swan here
Speaker 1: was an outlier existing beyond the realm of reasonable expectation.
Speaker 1: But the human mind depends on pattern recognition, so to
Speaker 1: Leb writes in his Black Swan book that we humans
Speaker 1: uh think up explanations for an outlier's occurrence after we
Speaker 1: encounter it to make it explainable and predictable. So, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea here is that we were looking back in time,
Speaker 1: we're looking at history, and we're just reinterpreting black swan
Speaker 1: events as being something that could have been predicted and foreseen,
Speaker 1: and therefore thinking they will be foreseen uh perceived, perceivable,
Speaker 1: and predictable in our future. But by their very nature,
Speaker 1: outliers are unpredictable, and according to to to leave Uh,
Speaker 1: this implies the inability to predict the course of history,
Speaker 1: given how much outliers um have impacted our past, such
Speaker 1: as he brings up the nineteen eighty seven market crash,
Speaker 1: the demise of the Soviet block, uh, the September eleven
Speaker 1: two one terrorist attacks. How these drastically informed the shape
Speaker 1: of human events. But we're not necessarily predictable. Now that's,
Speaker 1: of course, you can get into a whole argument about
Speaker 1: to what degree these were predictable, But that's kind of
Speaker 1: playing into his argument to saying that again you look
Speaker 1: back hindsight. It's one thing to look back and say, no,
Speaker 1: this was predictable, look at these patterns, but are you
Speaker 1: just informing? Are you are you just enforcing a pattern
Speaker 1: on the past. Now, all of this being said, I
Speaker 1: want to stress what I restress what I said earlier
Speaker 1: is that there you don't see a lot of people saying, oh,
Speaker 1: cleo dynamics, who just is just all crap? Just throw
Speaker 1: it all out the generally, your argument is, I don't
Speaker 1: think that these models are as precise as you would
Speaker 1: want them to be, or that we can predict the
Speaker 1: future as well as as the proponents of cleo dynamics
Speaker 1: are claiming. Right, Yeah, And also like this isn't a
Speaker 1: again bringing it back to minority report, It's not like
Speaker 1: if we get cleo dynamics just right, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: the equivalent of psychics in a bathtub that tell us
Speaker 1: you know when crimes are going to be committed, Like
Speaker 1: and even that, as we've seen in that Philip K.
Speaker 1: Dick story, is fraught with peril. Right, So where does
Speaker 1: that leave us at the end here? Well, I think
Speaker 1: what we have to ask, and I'm asking you too, listeners,
Speaker 1: is this a valid scientific method? Like like, is cleo
Speaker 1: dynamics something we should be continuing to look into? And
Speaker 1: like should we be following what's going on in this journal? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then how does you know somebody like a smith
Speaker 1: for instance, like how did his predictions which don't seem
Speaker 1: to be as as grounded in data sets? How do
Speaker 1: how do those play together with it? So I'm curious
Speaker 1: about that. But then also many of you, like myself
Speaker 1: are probably wondering during these events of turmoil we're experiencing, now,
Speaker 1: how do we prevent this violence? Right? Well, Urchen, he says,
Speaker 1: if I'm right, this is how I think we can
Speaker 1: help things. He argues, first of all, inequality is almost
Speaker 1: always a bad thing for societies, So he says, to
Speaker 1: prevent violence, we have to learn from history, and to
Speaker 1: do that, we need to create more jobs for our
Speaker 1: graduates while acting decisively to reduce inequality. But others are
Speaker 1: arguing maybe a revolution, maybe uprisings, These are for the
Speaker 1: best because they can remedy social stresses. For example, people
Speaker 1: look back at the Civil rights movement and they say,
Speaker 1: was that a bad thing? What came out of the
Speaker 1: Civil rights movement is quote good, right, But there were
Speaker 1: certainly violent upheaval and turmoil during that period of time
Speaker 1: as well. I guess it depends on what what uprising
Speaker 1: you're looking at, because certainly, you know, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to say, you know, the civil rights movement was it
Speaker 1: was a positive movement, but nobody wants an uprising, say
Speaker 1: like the kind we see in the hands tail Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: And I think to like when you're talking about it
Speaker 1: in those terms, like it's sort of like talking about
Speaker 1: a fever burning and illness out of your body, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I don't know. I try to
Speaker 1: as much as possible. I try to fall back on
Speaker 1: non violence and so any ways in which we can
Speaker 1: try to avoid that. Look, I'm gonna be supportive of
Speaker 1: So I look at this and I see what turch
Speaker 1: and saying. It doesn't sound illogical to me. It sounds like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: if there were more jobs available for graduates in this country,
Speaker 1: that would be great. I don't I don't know how
Speaker 1: to do that, right, And then how do you reduce
Speaker 1: inequality across a broad band? You know, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: something we've been working on for decades. Now. We get
Speaker 1: into some of those wicked problems, right exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you don't know what we're speaking of there, we
Speaker 1: have another episode similar to this one actually kind of
Speaker 1: looking at broader sociological issues about a theory called wicked problems.
Speaker 1: If you go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,
Speaker 1: type in Wicked Problems that episode of them up, or
Speaker 1: you can find it on any of your podcast readers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does get into a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the similar territory here, So I would highly recommend
Speaker 1: that episode if you found this episode of very thought,
Speaker 1: Let's try to uh on the landing page for this episode,
Speaker 1: let's try to link back to Wicked Problems. Okay, So
Speaker 1: I asked you that question. Do you think it's a
Speaker 1: valid scientific method? If you do, If you don't, there's
Speaker 1: ways to let us know. We're on social media. You
Speaker 1: can talk to us about Cleo Dynamics on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. We also have our Facebook discussion module up
Speaker 1: where if you want to have just like a closed
Speaker 1: conversation with people who are like fans of the podcast. Specifically,
Speaker 1: it's a closed group on Facebook. Uh, try to join
Speaker 1: us over there. You can find the link to that
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page. Right. Yeah, And you know, I
Speaker 1: just in all of this, I do want to stress
Speaker 1: that I think there is optimism in this topic. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the very fact that people are doing this
Speaker 1: research lends to optimism. So I would I would encourage
Speaker 1: everyone to take the optimist excite of this because for starters,
Speaker 1: optimism is a place of action. You can you can
Speaker 1: act out of optimism. Uh, It's often very difficult to
Speaker 1: act in any constructive way out of a state of pessimism.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, take take this as you know, individuals
Speaker 1: who are trying to use the best tools available to
Speaker 1: us to figure out where we're going, and how how
Speaker 1: to get to the places we want to go, how
Speaker 1: to avoid all the strife, you know, and and and
Speaker 1: maybe even get to that point where we eventually have
Speaker 1: some sort of a post scarcity society and will be
Speaker 1: arguably largely immune to some of these societal pitfalls. Exactly.
Speaker 1: I think you said that perfectly, all right, And uh yeah, finally,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us directly,
Speaker 1: then you know which email addressed to turn to. That
Speaker 1: is blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com.