How mining historical data can predict societal collapse

Nathanial Greenfield of University World News interviewed SoDy Director Dr. Daniel Hoyer about his work as a Cliodynamicist and building the CrisisDB — the ongoing collaboration with Peter Turchin, Samantha Holder, Rachel Ainsworth, and other researchers in the Seshat Databank trying to untangle why crises in the past have taken the course they have, and how that can help us understand our modern polycrisis.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

While “there is no single equation to rule them all,” said Hoyer, riffing on Lord of the Rings, math plays a major role in ‘cliodynamics’, named for the Greek goddess of history, Clio, and dynamics, the study of how and why complex systems change over time.

“We employ a host of techniques and a number of different statistical analyses and methods, including simple regression analyses, sometimes plotting measurements of, for example, population or the size of a country over time on a graph. Behind everything we do are deep dives into the historical context. So whatever numbers we produce are always informed by documentary evidence.

“What we’re trying to do is explore different theories of what people have said are the key factors of major social phenomena like social strife or societal collapse and test them. Is it environmental or ecological stress that causes societal collapse or is it internal unrest and economic inequality, for instance? We explore the data and weigh it statistically and see which one holds more water,” said Hoyer.

Read the full article here:

How mining historical data can predict societal collapse. Nathan M Greenfield  01 March 2024.