Slashdot Mirror
Math Models Predicted Global Uprisings
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."
Is that with hindsight or without?
How many "models" are going unreported because they didn't work out too well?
No sig today...
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
Meanwhile, here in Norway the VAT for food items was reduced from 25% down to half. The consumers didn't notice because the shops just pocketed the difference and pretended nothing had happened.
Everything is not always the govt's fault.
http://news.slashdot.org/story... A rare instance of getting it right. This very prediction was predicted before the riots happened. Predicted when, and wasn't too terribly far off I suppose. Of course slashdot having no memory didn't even realize it was already covered.
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.
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...
But it's ok to bail out banks that can't keep their act together and invest sensibly, right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
He attempted a coup in 1992, but that failed.
He gained the presidency though legitimate elections in 1998.
Though he certainly wasn't very committed to democracy while in power.