SOCIAL EVOLUTION FORUM BLOG Institutions Are Software; Organizations Are ‘Meatware’ Building a theory that could explain the evolution of ‘interesting’ institutions requires that we treat organizations and institutions as entirely separate things. - Peter Turchin 7
Blueprint for the Global Village Commentaries: The Beauty of “Getting to Norway” Human Cooperation is a Complex Problem with Many Possible Solutions: Perhaps All of Them Are True! Nordic Magic and the Paradox of Asocial Sociability What’s The Unit of Analysis for Building Villages? Something is ‘Off’ in the State of Denmark
Bringing “Geo” Back into Politics: Evolution, Territoriality and the Contest over Ukraine Commentaries: ‘Devoted Realism’ Devoted Actors, Devoted Realism, and the Territorial Imperative Keeping the Focus on Geopolitical and Geoeconomic Dynamics Territoriality and Conflict: an Economist’s View Adaptations for Territoriality and the False Residency Problem Was Territoriality Important in the Pleistocene?
February 18, 2015 Institutions: What Are They Good for? It is clear that institutions play an immensely important role in the rise of complex societies. But what precisely do they do? And how can we study institutions theoretically and empirically? By: Peter Turchin
February 9, 2015 Economics Superbus II Economists should become more evolutionary and use more the methods of complexity science, but many characteristics of Economics as a profession make economists an unlikely target of persuasion by outsiders. By: Peter Turchin
February 8, 2015 Economics Superbus I A caricature of the core models that inform economic theory assume that humans only care about getting material rewards and avoiding punishments, excluding consideration of morality, honor, and the welfare of others as motivating concerns. By: Peter Turchin
War and Peace and War Like Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Peter Turchin in War and Peace and War uses his expertise in evolutionary biology to make a highly original argument about the rise and fall of empires. Turchin argues that the key to the... By Peter Turchin
