Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
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Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#2For an analysis of warfare, progression of technology and its influence on warfare, and war's influence on society, I recommend reading A History of Warfare by John Keegan. It does explore war as an extension of politics and can lead to nice thought exercises about how war does influence the creation and destruction of civilization.
1. Wiki About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Warfare
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#3Next: Computer Simulations Reveal Computers Will Drive the Demise of Civilisation
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#4Next: Computer Simulations Reveal Computers Will Drive the Demise of Civilisation
Computer Simulations Reveal Best Option for Civilization is to Cede Control to Computer Simulations, Trust Us You Guys
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#5(2013)
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#6It seems to me that "reveal" must be the wrong word here, basically by definition.
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#7Of which we had not the slightest inkling until a computer simulation told us so.
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#8It seems to me that "reveal" must be the wrong word here, basically by definition.
Indeed. The model is seeded with only two interesting bits of information: agricultural capacity and military technology. They then compared that model with one that only knew about agriculture. Because the first model was more predictive, they concluded war was the primary cause of civilization. That result seems suspect.
Looking at the little maps in the article, I might hesitate a guess that this model has been over-fit to a certain idea of "civilization". It predicts Egypt and Rome and Greece, things people know about. But it doesn't seem to predict the Byzantines, Sogdian and other Central Asian empires, peaks and troughs of Chinese dynasties, etc., which were just as long-lived and influential but are less well-known.
I wonder what would happen if they modeled resource availability, language overlap over time, political ideology (large empires tend to become inward-looking), etc. War is certainly an important factor, but not the only one.
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#9Turchin, like I suspected. War and Peace and War is his first book on the subject, which is well worth reading. He's an ethnic Russian in the US, and focuses on US and Russian history; his model explains both countries very well, but he openly admits in the book that it doesn't explain Italy (or Aquitaine), so we know that there are other factors in life.
I'm not convinced that "Turchinian cohesion" is really a good thing, though; it seems to be a way to get people who hate each other to toe the line and work together nonetheless, and he kind of praises how all cohesive societies suppress dissenters...
Another book to read, for those interested in neo-Toynbean searches for underlying patterns: The Fourth Turning, which deals with generational cycles of values. The authors, writing around 1990, expected a high risk of some sort of crisis -- possibly even a large terrorist attack -- somewhere around 2000, and a general atmosphere of crisis that would last about 20 years afterwards. Either their model's pretty good, or they just got lucky; if they followed their own investment advice, I imagine they came out pretty well.
Re: Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013)
#10Computer Simulations also suggest reality is simulated in a computer.