Quotes from Peter Turchin

find it difficult to believe that economic or information-processing advantages were the primary drivers of the transition to large-scale societies. Archaic-style states of which we have direct knowledge, such as Hawaii, did not have complex economies or specialized decision-making procedures (to deal with what kinds of problems?). The chiefs were involved with war and ritual; the economy worked well enough when left to the commoners. In any case, it's hard to imagine that

For tens if not hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture, human societies had very effective social norms and institutions for controlling bullies. Why would they suddenly (in a few thousand years) replace them with institutions that gave the upstarts legitimacy?

We may become the first species to spread beyond the limits of the Earth and colonize other planets.

This is how upstarts succeed—by avoiding arrogance and cultivating modesty. But even more important, they need to demonstrate to the people that the hierarchical social order is preferable to the alternative. In the Roman case, it was the fatigue of persistent internal wars that led to the re-establishment of monarchy. Monarchies

There is a heuristic "rule of thumb" in modeling dynamical systems: do not attempt to encompass in your model more than two hierarchical levels.

Bowling Alone

Let's step back from this debate and consider how it affects the question we are currently investigating, the role of war in the rise of archaic states. While there is confusion resulting from competing definitions, and a great degree of controversy about evidence and how to interpret it, all parties agree on one thing: warfare was particularly vicious among pre-state farming societies.

great empires die not by murder, but by suicide.

Ranged weapons, together with the mastery of fire, literally made us human. They also defined what may be called the "human way of war." The distinguishing characteristic of human combat is the ability to strike from a distance coupled with mobility.

Cultural traits, however, are a more general category than memes, because they also include quantitative (smoothly-varying) characteristics that cannot be easily represented as discrete alternatives: for example, the inclination to trust strangers. (More on that below.)

Just because we cannot imagine our actions leading to disaster, it doesn't mean that such a disaster cannot happen.

In fact, the most important influence predicting a person's level of generalized trust is the attitude of his parents.84 And that would make generalized trust a culturally transmitted trait. Lorenzo

Randomness is a general model that scientists use for things they do not understand.

it is one thing to have a qualitative impression of something, and a very different thing to have a quantitative estimate of the same thing, based on cold, hard numbers. Science thrives on numbers.

Our behavior and decisions are based on a mixture of calculation, emotions, and internalized norms, with calculation often a minor component of the cocktail.

Ironically enough, although externally corporations brutally compete in the free market, their internal workings rely not on market forces, but on group solidarity!

These windows were dedicated to the patron saints of the guilds and often showed the donors at work: furriers displaying a fur robe, money-changers testing their coin, butchers killing oxen. Even the common laborers, who somehow managed to pool their meager resources, donated a window, which was dedicated to Adam, "who first dug the earth by the sweat of his brow."5

For example, the populations of both the Roman Empire and Han China grew to 50–60 million people at the peak. This is the point when we surpassed the social insects. During the past two millennia no other animal anywhere has rivaled human societies in size and complexity. ·Ã¢â'¬Â¢· In