
We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say - ca98am79
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/9/10/we-are-now-one-year-away-from-global-riots-complex-systems-theorists-say
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cs702
Any analysis of this kind is by necessity an oversimplification of complex
reality, but I have lived, traveled, and done business in several 'developing'
countries, and this makes a LOT of sense to me. In my experience, when most
adults in a country can earn a living and feed their children, people don't
take to the streets.

These findings by complex systems theorists also remind me of a powerful map I
saw in the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond (of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" fame)
-- a map showing that the areas around the planet which are currently
suffering from the most political, institutional, and even societal breakdown
also happen to be those that have suffered the most ecological damage, such
that self-sustaining agriculture is not a viable option for them in the
immediate future.

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samwilliams
Repost [1]. The other thread has some interesting comments too.

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4503104>

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scrrr
The [1] is a little bit too much, no? First, it's just one URL, secondly, it's
right there. Or is this a convention when posting on HN?

~~~
sp332
It's not a strong convention but it's used fairly often. It makes the text
more readable.

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paulsutter
It seems the article is predicting riots on global television (which recently
happened), not global riots (a scary thought never experienced in history).

The riots we see on television are about camera work and a vocal minority. The
news doesn't try to represent reality. They take any anecdote they can find
and do everything they can to turn it into riveting television.

On TV San Francisco appeared to be destroyed in the 1989 earthquake. I lived
in Cupertino. It didn't seem a big deal till power came on in the morning, and
we saw the news. Wow! A major disaster! I drove north to see the devastation.
When I arrived in San Francisco, 99.99% of the city was completely normal.

Quick, what percentage of the population of NYC participated in Occupy Wall
Street?

~~~
mainevent
Living in Clapham Junction, an area that was severely affected, during the
London riots in 2011 I would say the opposite was true. Whilst many parts of
the city were being trashed, the news struggled to keep up. It was much worse
and widespread than they were able to depict.

Video I took at the end of my street whilst a local shop was torched:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4n7uCeV5nU&feature=plcp](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4n7uCeV5nU&feature=plcp)

FWIW, earthquakes are different to riots. I did the same as you in
Christchurch, New Zealand recently after the earthquake there and would agree,
the majority of the city was untouched with the epicentre being destroyed.

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rickmode
I wonder how much of this is over-fitting.

When I see statistical predictions like this I always wonder about the over-
fitting problem.

~~~
Peroni
Usually I would agree 100%. This stuff reeks of scaremongering however given
the source you would have to assume that the Complex Systems Institute
wouldn't allow themselves to be susceptible to overfitting.

~~~
majorapps
Peer-reviewed science is built on anonymous reviewing so that assumptions like
this are not an issue. Look at the data, not the publisher.

~~~
lambersley
Well said. Is the data suggesting causation or correlation?

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tocomment
I've been wondering. Every time we have major droughts does that cause more
irrigation infrastructure to be built? So do we become more resistent to
drought each time we hit one?

I'd imagine farms also adapt by planting more drought resistant crops in the
future.

~~~
graeme
Irrigation water has to come from somewhere. In most areas the renewable
aquifers are already tapped above refill rates, and the fossil aquifers are a
fragile source, as they will run out.

Saline conversion plants are one option, but much more expensive than rain.

More droughts will obviously lead to more drought adaptation, but the
effectiveness of the adaptation isn't automatic. I imagine they will encourage
more efficient irrigation techniques though.

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mhb
The claim that _...we maintain a global food system perennially subject to ...
exploitation from speculators..._ and the link they provide which doesn't
support that does not enhance the credibility of this article.

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gambiting
I think the main problem is, that there is simply too many people in the
world. Of course it's very politically incorrect to say so, every politician
will say that we need to increase our birth rates,not decrease them. But
honestly,if we reduced the population to around 1-2 billion, we could all
afford to live like we do today, with all our consumerism, fossil-fuel burning
and so on. 7 billion people just cannot sustain that kind of lifestyle, not on
this planet.

~~~
hosh
I used to say that too. However, I could not get over this part: are _you_
volunteering to be one of the 1-2 billion in the die-off so that rest of
humanity can survive with this current lifestyle?

Barring people who are already suicidal, I doubt anyone would want to
volunteer. This is a hard problem, well beyond the concerns of political
correctness.

~~~
kvnn
He didn't say anything about a die-off. He said we need to decrease birth
rates.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
That's already happening, and birth rates tend to go down as median income
goes up.

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anonimo
I'm very skeptical of the validity of this study.

The graph shows no riots at all between 2008 and 2012. E.g. there are no data
points in the graph for the riots related to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad
cartoons. They resulted in more than 100 deaths! [1]

In 2011, from the top of my head, there were riots in the UK, the Vancouver
Stanley Cup riots in Canada [2], and anti-government riots in Thai.

In my country, Brazil, football hooliganism is rampant, there are at least a
few riots a year.

In short, they must be using a very arbitrary definition of "riot", that just
so happens to coincide with their theory.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
Posten_Muhammad_cartoo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-
Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_riot>

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ceejayoz
Why does the graph only go back to 2006?

~~~
dhx
For data going back to 1990 see [1] and [2].

In figure 2, the paper [3] tries to fit the data to an exponential curve
starting at 2004. The longer term data at [2] does not appear to support this
fit.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_riots#1990s_-_2000>

[2] [http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-
home/foodpricesind...](http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-
home/foodpricesindex/en/)

[3] <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.2455v1.pdf>

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chaostheory
While the information is sparse, I think it's good that articles with this
theme get posted on HN a little more often. With few exceptions most of the
startups and projects that I see (including my own) do little to address more
important problems like this one. It's good to be reminded of that every now
and then.

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Tichy
I must admit, this doesn't quite sound like rocket science. When food prices
soar, the likelihood for riots goes up. Who would have thought?

~~~
kvnn
What is your point? There are many things we can predict intuitively, but
thats all we can do until someone puts in the time and effort to use the
scientific method.

Once someone puts in this time, we can see _why_ there is a cause, and how to
affect it or learn from it.

For instance, the real reason people are rioting when food prices go up is
that, in those parts of the world, the people spend 80% of their money on
food.

Without knowing that, you could make all sorts of predictions about why people
in Syria are rioting while people in the U.S. are playing Fifa.

~~~
Tichy
Come on, was this really the first time somebody correlated hunger with riots?

Also, I appreciate the scientific method, but it is not true that we can not
know things without it. For example the people who go rioting because they are
hungry know that they go rioting because they are hungry.

Over time, lots of people have rioted because they were hungry, and the
knowledge has slowly attritioned into the public body of knowledge...

