Jukka Aakula > Recent Status Updates

Big Goods theory is wrong according to the Seshat analysis.

Chapter 7.6 was partly too difficult for me to understand, even if the threshold model of Collective computation and Scale is clear. I skipped part of the text.

90% of the book is accessible with basic knowledge on statistics, cultural evolution, multilevel selection, agent-based models, etc.

Military technologies and agricultural intensity are the evolutionary drivers for complex societies. Other drivers are not very relevant. Also the affect is pretty much unidirectional. E.g. military technology (until 1500) has been external cause.

"Can different human societies, from different parts of the globe and from different historical eras, be meaningfully compared in their complexity? And how many measures do we need for this comparison: one, two, or many?

The answers to these questions are “yes” and “one,” respectively. Furthermore, we now have a quantitative answer to what is meant by the “bulk of variation”—79 percent, captured by PC1."

"The synthetic theory (Chapter 3) postulates that technical advances in the military sphere increase the intensity of interpolity competition, thus selecting for larger-scale, better-organized, and more cohesive societies. The Seshat project has developed a sophisticated approach for quantifying this potential driver of social evolution (Turchin et al. 2021c)."

Dynamic regression is used to analyze dynamism.

Chapter 3 provides the theoretical synthesis for the Great Holocene Transformation. Probably the main non-formal argument of the book is now defined.

War and CMLS and technology.

"I can now make the Big Question...more specific. How did the early Holocene world of small-scale polities of foragers and farmers become a world dominated by MPIS?" in 1600/1700. MPIS stands for mature preindustrial states.

This is an evolutionary theory based on the theory of Cultural Evolution by people like Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, Joseph Henrich, etc., and the theory of Multi-Level Selection by David Sloan Wilson et al.

Started reading.

Green hydrogen sounds like the most complicated thing to create a tipping point for. Electric cars and green power production are pretty straightforward compared to that. Innovation is needed.

But, there must be a big business potential in the long run. But who would ever invest in border countries like Finland, which carries a significant country risk due to its proximity to Russia?

Nice discussion on EV positive tipping point. "As we saw from Norway and China, policies including subsidies and tax credits can help trigger positive tipping within a country. But they can also trigger a positive tipping cascade across countries. To see that we can turn to a unique model developed by my colleagues Jean-Francois Mercure and Aileen Lam, which captures the feedbacks that can propel technology change."

Abolishing the slave trade and enforcing the abolition was a success because not all participants in the slave trade had to participate in the enforcement. Britain was strong enough to enforce.

The Montreal agreement was a success also because the early signers benefited, and after that, others had an incentive to join.

Decarbonization WAS thought to be very different. Is it?