Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Cause and Effect in Complex Systems - Think in Terms of Reinforcement Cycles

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In the last post , I wrote about the virtuous cycle of labor gradually getting more valuable, driving the development of machines to extend ...

The Value of Labor Over Time Is Still Increasing Over Time, Even Since the 1980s

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As time moved forward, early economists increasingly appreciated the value added by the labor component. In the mid-1700s the physiocrats (...
Saturday, April 20, 2019

Violence Control and the Mutual Recognition Cartel

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Modern states are a cartel that mutually recognize each other's right to hold a monopoly on violence within their territory. The prospe...
Thursday, March 28, 2019

Evidence for Coordinated Labor in Agriculture Hypothesis of Early State Formation (CLAHSF)

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Early states tended to emerge in places that were actually somewhat marginal for agriculture , quite counterintuitively. ( Most recent disc...
Thursday, March 21, 2019

The Three Ways of Dealing with Outsiders: Sub-Humans, Ignorance, or Evangelism

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Humans have so far fully developed only three ways of dealing with outsiders: remaining ignorant of them (or feigning ignorance) consideri...
Sunday, March 17, 2019

A Morbid Calculation: Conquest Rate of the Americas and Cultural Assimilation Rates

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The first European set foot on what would later become the United States in 1513. The last uncontacted indigenous person was captured in...
Saturday, March 9, 2019

How Do People Decide Which Experts to Trust?

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A summary of the aim of modern propaganda is this: dictators don't do propaganda so people believe something but so they believe nothin...