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Math Models Predicted Global Uprisings

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-food-no-peace dept.

retroworks writes "Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest."

10 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Hindsight? by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is that with hindsight or without?

    How many "models" are going unreported because they didn't work out too well?

    --
    No sig today...
    1. Re:Hindsight? by Splab · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Racists much?

      Currently there are massive riots in The Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand; signs of growing civil unrest in central Europe - reports of riots in Brazil; All countries of course known for their muslim leadership...

    2. Re:Hindsight? by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Occupy wall street was a protest against the rich in the little country known as USA.

      A typical muslim country is it ? Not really.

      Well, it's at least a land full of religious conservatives who don't drink tea but rather push it into the river.
      There are many people who read and think too much about ancient obsolete books and think they have all the answers.

      --
      Just saying it like it are.
    3. Re:Hindsight? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I dont see any riots that do not meet their own agenda on it

      Or, they're simply trying to demonstrate that lack of food security causes riots, not that all riots are caused by lack of food security.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Your masters will learn to tune the system by nut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What worries me about this sort of knowledge, is that it could make it possible for political leaders to keep the masses working their asses off just above the breadline. But they can avoid pushing it so far that they get the kind of political activism that might result in regime change.

    --
    Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
  3. Re:Callous knobhead by benjfowler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oohhhh, and if we don't always, constantly show "empathy" (and of course, soon after, give free money and lebensraum to people who fuck up, and want everyone else to take responsibility for it) for others, we are BAD people.

    Right.

    This place is turning into a low-rent knockoff of Comment Is Free.

    Fuck "empathy". If Third World assholes can't keep their legs crossed and they end up in a Malthusian catastrophe, why should we bail them out.

  4. Just as much by Chrisq · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Racist much? Maybe not. Islamaphobic much, though?

    If you mean hating an ideology that wants to subdue or kill all others then I suppose I am just as islamaphobic as the allies in WWII were naziphobic.

    1. Re:Just as much by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually, most Muslims are by no means radical. Quite a few are pissed at the radical asshats who give the whole bunch a bad name. And bluntly, most of the "radicals" don't give a shit about Islam actually. They just noticed that this is how they get us to listen. Just say "I'm gonna bomb your $place" and suddenly the "Westener" shuts up and listens. They found out that this works. Not only that, but that we start apologizing for "insulting" them. So anything we do or say is suddenly an insult.

      Fuck it!

      If you don't wanna see caricatures of your prophet, you can do what I did because I didn't like "2 girls 1 cup". I simply didn't look. Yes, whoever looks at it is a sicko, or for you, dear Islamist, a heretic but guess what, it's none of your business. I will not apologize for not being like you want me to be. Why? Because in my country where I live I can be the way I want to be! If I come to some country where the Islam is considered the state religion, I will of course heed the laws there and yes, that means that I will certainly not show around caricatures of your Prophet, because that's not allowed there. No problem. Your country, your rules.

      But my country, my rules! And it's gonna be a very cold day in HELL before I let some radical, religious idiot rule my country.

      (which is, btw, also a reason why I'd rather not move to the US)

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:Populations go up... by silentcoder · · Score: 1, Insightful

    >Sadly people like you are part of the problem. But keep your head in the sand if it makes you feel better.

    People like me ? And what pray-tell kind of people, am I ?
    You know exactly fuckall about me.
    You don't know if I'm married or single. You don't know if I have children. You don't know if I'm monogamous, polyamorous, a swinger. You don't know which gender I identify with, what my sexual orientation is, whether I'm religious and if so what religion.
    You don't know if I like anal sex, giving or receiving, you don't know whether I like bagels or pizza more.
    You literally know absolutely nothing about me - except the one thing I have told you in that comment: a clear indication that I believe birth control should be readily available.
    Considering I am not biologically capable of having children - clearly this is not out of personal concern.

    Absolutely everything else you may think you know about me is based entirely on extrapolation from that solitary un-contexted statement with zero affirming evidence.

    I will therefore, take your declarations regarding my head and sand (about which I'll tell you something new about me: I know that this expression is fucking stupid because no animal actually does that - least of all the ostrich and I should know as I live in their native habitat) and being part of "the problem" as just more utterly ignorant claptrap.
    How can you know whether I'm part of what you perceive as the problem ? How can you know what I propose to do about it ?
    You have no idea of my thoughts on *anything at all* !
    Yet you feel you know me well enough to make such declarations based purely on what you imagine I may, possibly, think.

    Now that is arrogant and stupid in the extreme - just like the comment I replied to.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  6. I call BS... by captainpanic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In 2006, the food index was only 127. Yet, there were 15 large scale riots, 9 large scale strikes, 6 wars, of which at least 2 new wars in 2006, and countless other conflicts not mentioned on the wikipedia page about conflicts in 2006. And I just picked a random year.

    Conflicts (general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    Strikes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    Riots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
    Food index: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsi...