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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."

5 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. 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. 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.

  4. 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...