Many d*gs - none ours

Danny Finkelstein has a characteristically smart piece in today's Times. If I were still a Trotskyist writer, I would add that Finkelstein hides his devotion to the British Imperialist neoliberal project under a veneer of sweet-reasonableness. Yet there is always the barest hint of sophistry in his arguments .. if you can lift up the right piece of the carpet.

He starts with an endearing dig at the bluff, unreconstructed Scottish Nationalists:

" The day after last week’s debate on Syria I bumped into a Scottish Nationalist MP who had spoken forcefully against the action recommended by the prime minister. I told him truthfully that I thought his speech the best on his side of the argument.

"The MP thanked me and told me that his intention now was to do all he could to undermine David Cameron’s claim that there were 70,000 non-jihadist Syrian fighters. This, he said, was exactly like Tony Blair’s dodgy 45-minute claim.

"As people often do in politics, he said this with a stare and in a stern, unyielding way that didn’t leave much space for questioning. His eyes didn’t say: “And what do you think, Danny?” So I took the hint, nodded politely, and left him to it."

Beautifully written. That's exactly how the SNP come across - dogmatic and immune to argument. Next Finkelstein takes us through the many d*gs in the fight, all of them pretty bad.

"The idea that we should join with Assad has the support of foreign policy realists such as Julian Lewis and Boris Johnson. They accept the moral case against the Syrian regime, but Lewis points out that there was a moral case against working with Stalin in the Second World War. Assad can be our ally, as the Soviets were, in delivering us from the greater evil of Isis.

"On its own terms — on realist, practical, pragmatic terms — this argument is utterly wrong.

"Assad is now in alliance with Shia Iran and its proxies to suppress a mainly Sunni revolt. As Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan describe in their book Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, his strategy has been to make the West believe he is fighting only jihadists and thereby to draw us in on his side. Throughout the conflict he has therefore been aiding Isis, while fighting the Free Syrian Army and other factions.

"If the West joins with the regime to assist Shia suppression of the revolt against the regime it will drive even more Sunnis into the hands of Isis, making the problems in Syria worse, not better."

It is worth recalling that in the old days, when Syria kinda worked, the neighbouring Israelis always gave the Alawites implicit support. Running a fragile, unstable dictatorship over a majority Sunni population made the Assad regime weak; Israel liked it that way.

"There are many Syrians living in or near Isis-controlled areas who accept jihadist rule for entirely practical reasons. There is fear, of course. But it is also because Isis keeps the lights on and suppresses crime (except its own) and ensures the supply of food (having first taken control of the grain stores).

"One might think of these Syrian acceptors as “shy Isis”. They have little ideological commitment to Isis. They resent the jihadists’ medieval social ideas as much as one might imagine they do. Yet Isis protects them from the regime and from Shia revenge. Western support for Assad would deepen and widen Sunni commitment to Isis, pulling in moderate Syrians. It would be a disaster."

Politicians and the media have demonised Isis as uniquely awful. Yet they are on a continuum with pretty much every Islamic fundamentalist outfit: a little more observant, a little less corrupt, a little more ruthless. Hamas in Gaza, tainted by compromise and corruption, is presently losing members to Isis for just these reasons.

So if supporting the Assad regime would put us on the wrong side of the majority Sunnis, but the Sunnis themselves are dominated by fractious, clannish Islamic fundamentalists, perhaps we should admit our limitations and just clear out?

"Those who don’t want to support Assad argue that our best course is just getting the hell out.

"I think there is quite a strong argument for this. After all, the conflict seems never-ending; the moderate forces, however many there are, appear not that forceful and dubiously moderate; and the sectarian battle is not something we want to be muddled up with.

"There is no clean finish, no victory, so what’s the point?

"The point is that leaving the whole thing alone altogether won’t work either. We can’t allow the creation of what one might call “terrortories” — lands where either Sunni or Shia jihadists settle and can turn from fighting the near enemy (each other) to fighting the far enemy (us).

"So our best bet is to see that we are involved in something that is better thought of not as a war, but as a police action, one that sits alongside our domestic anti-terror policies. One that won’t have a neat ending but will carry on for many years. One in which conquering and concluding is not likely to be an option.

"We have to work with the bogus battalions and the shy Isis and the many Syrians willing to live in peace and under law. There are many of them, however weak or fractious they may be, and however much their status as fighting forces may be questionable.

"We have to help them — that means them, not us; we can’t do it for them — to take control using every lever we have, diplomatic, economic and, where necessary, military.

"I can’t see that we have much of an alternative."

Have you ever seen a more feeble argument? We have a murderous civil war dominated by extremely-unpleasant militias, with no significant forces aligned with objectives any bien-pensant Western liberal would sign up to. And Finkelstein talks about a police action?

When you see logic replaced by artful sophistry, you know that the real reason for intervention is going unmentioned. And what would that be, Danny?

Yes, it's the Great Game all over again.

"Hive Mind" by Garett Jones: a review

Amazon link

The long, slow march of Darwinian Evolution applied to the human sciences continues. For more than a decade the work of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen on ‘IQ and the Wealth of Nations’ was ostracised and ignored; now, in Garett Jones’ new book, it is re-appraised and rehabilitated.

In 2007 James Watson was, well, ‘Watsoned’ for suggesting, "[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa [because] all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really." Since his views are validated in this book, I imagine his re-admission to public life cannot now be long delayed.

What else do we know? From genome studies and CSI police procedurals, we know that humanity exists in genetically-distinguishable ethnic groups, both within ancestral Africa and (via complex historical migrations) in the rest of the world. We know that intelligence as measured by IQ is strongly heritable (0.75). We know that the genetic component of intelligence is polygenic, and that the (thousands of) alleles positively associated with IQ are slowly being identified (the Beijing Genomics Institute is aiming to produce substantive results in the next few years).

And we expect, when we have this sequencing information, that different ethnic groups will exhibit different cognitive genotypes. It will then be clear that to elevate ethnic group (‘country’) intelligence up to (and perhaps beyond) the current East Asian level of IQ 105 is going to require DNA editing – there is a limit to how far good nutrition and iodine supplementation will take you.

Naturally Professor Jones knows all this - as does everyone else who takes the trouble to enquire. Unfortunately in the present state of public discourse, it cannot all be said without the Watsoning process re-engaging.  So in ‘Hive Mind’ Garett Jones had a tough task: to synthesise the current state-of-the-art through the lens of economics while not getting fired. The scientific constraint? Not to say or imply things which are actually untrue or gratuitously mislead in the process.

As many have observed, the book starts well. Rehabilitating the concept and utility of IQ is not new science, it’s a defence and popularisation of what every informed person already knows but of course, it’s necessary and done well. Similarly, the detailed re-examination of national/ethnic phenomenological IQ differences (mostly from Lynn and Vanhanen) is both clear and brave.

IQ is then linked with patience, propensity to collaborate and future-orientation, as Jones reviews research in psychology, political science and game theory. Applied to economics, he describes how, in complex technologies where mistakes can break the whole process (‘O-Ring technology’), there are surprising returns to pervasive intelligence. To put it crudely, high-IQ countries can do leading-edge high-tech, and low-IQ countries can’t (note that this is hardly a surprise when one observes the world).

So far so good, but now the wheels begin to come off a little. As if concerned by the consequences of his argument, Jones feels the need to signal his essential liberalism and humanity. There are long accounts of the Flynn effect to motivate speculation about increasing the IQ of poorer, more corrupt and disorganised nations (really ethnicities). Here he presents intelligence (as measured by IQ) as far more plastic and environmentally-malleable than it actually is.

Finally he plays with some oversimplified economic models to suggest that immigration from low-IQ countries is in the interests of the inhabitants of high-IQ countries (it’s plainly in their own interest - to a point). Naturally he equivocates (consequent damage to existing high-quality institutions). But he seems to ignore both the evidence from history and the increasingly-scary predictions of a hollowing-out of demand for low-and middle-skilled jobs. I’m sure he felt he had to write this but it breaks the rule: do not mislead the reader.

Perhaps in five years or ten years, it will be possible to write a well-balanced public-policy book starting from humanity as it actually is. In such a more enlightened time, a Garett Jones revision of this book would be well-worth reading.

---

Here is the list of national IQs from the book.

Greg Cochran's review - be sure to read the comments.

Slate Star Codex review - be sure to read the comments.

Funeral Music

Let me recall to you the case of Paul, the husband of a relation on my wife's side. Paul was a middle-manager in the nuclear power industry and a staunch Catholic; in fact he was a member of the Catenians. Slightly shy in person and middle-class, Paul was socially awkward - he may even have been a little bit 'on the spectrum'.

In December 2006, Paul unfortunately died. His Funeral Mass was well attended and solemn, the priests (more than one) gravely peregrinating around the large, echoing church. As the ceremony ended the presiding priest announced that Paul had chosen the accompaniment for our exiting the church en route to the grave.

At this point, a ghetto blaster was produced, as if from nowhere, and a cassette inserted. We departed the building to the jarring, amplified sounds of ABBA's "Thank You For The Music".

I was delighted. Paul had managed, in the end, to subvert the formalities with the power of kitsch. At that moment I decided that I could never match this. Put me down instead for the aria from the Goldberg Variations (by Murray Perahia please!).

A Basic Income in Finland?

Marginal Revolution links to this article - "Finland plans to give every citizen a basic income of 800 euros a month":

"The Finnish government is currently drawing up plans to introduce a national basic income. A final proposal won’t be presented until November 2016, but if all goes to schedule, Finland will scrap all existing benefits and instead hand out €800 ($870) per month - to everyone.

"It sounds far-fetched, but it’s looking likely that Finland will carry through with the idea. Whereas several Dutch cities will introduce basic income next year and Switzerland is holding a referendum on the subject, there is strongest political and public support for the idea in Finland. ..."

The Economist had an article about this a while back:

"... The left has usually viewed such policies as a way of beefing up the social safety net and fighting inequality. That is particularly appealing in a world where technology creates unimaginable riches for some, but threatens the jobs of others. As early as 1964 James Meade, an economist, argued that technological progress could reduce the demand for labour so much that wages would fall to intolerable lows. In a world where a computer can suddenly make a profession redundant, those who have worked hard cannot be certain of a decent standard of living. That may justify more generous state support.

"For their part, right-wing advocates of the citizen’s income view it as a streamlined replacement for complicated means-tested welfare payments. A system where everyone receives the same amount requires fewer bureaucrats to administer. Existing schemes withdraw benefits from low earners as they earn more, discouraging work and so trapping some in poverty. For this reason, Milton Friedman, an economist known for his laissez-faire beliefs, wanted to replace all welfare with a simpler system that combined a guaranteed minimum income with a flat tax."

The Economist then looks at the costs:

" In 1970 James Tobin, an economist, produced a simple formula for calculating their cost. Suppose the government needs to levy tax of 25% of national income to fund public services such as education, policing and infrastructure.

"Paying for a basic income worth 10% of the average income requires average taxes to rise by ten percentage points, to 35%. A basic income worth 20% of the average income requires average taxes to be 20 percentage points higher, at 45%, and so on. Eradicating relative poverty, defined as income beneath 60% of the median, would require tax rates approaching 85%.

"The Swiss proposal is absurdly expensive: a rough calculation suggests it would cost about SFr 197 billion ($210 billion), or 30% of GDP.

"A generous basic income funded by very high taxes would be self-defeating, as it would reintroduce the sort of distortions that many of its advocates hope to banish from the welfare system. Loafers could live comfortably without lifting a finger.

"...

"A better system might also be financed by a return on assets, rather than by taxes. Alaska pays its residents an annual dividend - $1,900 in 2014 - from the returns on its oil fund. An asset-financed basic income would remove welfare distortions without introducing new ones through higher taxes.

"Unfortunately, few governments have wealth funds. On the contrary, they are mired in debt (though some think they could monetise public assets, including land, more effectively). In any case, many would worry that widespread government ownership of financial assets would lead to bureaucrats meddling in the private sector.

"Fans of the basic income make plenty of good arguments. A welfare system riddled with complicated means-testing distorts incentives and is a headache to run. Paine’s intellectual case for all citizens to be entitled to a return on the bounties of the earth is compelling. But a basic income is too costly and inefficient to act as a wholesale replacement for welfare. It is feasible only if it is small, and complemented by more targeted anti-poverty measures. Basic income: the clue is in the name."

Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It's worth recalling that both abilities and needs have quite a broad statistical distribution: there are always going to be those whose lack of useful abilities make them essentially unemployable yet who happen to have very expensive needs (physical/mental disabilities and/or dependents, for example).

A one-size-fits-all basic income is an ill-fitting panacea despite its intellectual attractions, even if we ignore the enormous transfer payments implied.

The article about Finland concludes:

" ... But, as Bloomberg calculated, giving €800 of basic income to the population of 5.4 million every month would cost €52.2 billion a year. Finland only plans to give the basic income to adults, not every citizen, but with around 4.9 million adults in Finland, this would still cost €46.7 billion per year. The government expects to have €49.1 billion in revenue in 2016."

A laboratory for true libertarians, then.

Nativity Crib Festival

A visit to the Nativity Crib Festival at St. Cuthbert's Church in Wells, Somerset this afternoon.

Alistair Glanville's Model Village (video below)

Angels at the Altar

Some of the Cribs from surrounding churches and individuals

More Cribs

The Crib from the local Catholic Church - St. Joseph and St. Teresa

The presiding minister

And here's a video of Alistair Glanvile's Model Village - it's quite impressive to watch the village come to life.

James Clerk Maxwell on TV

BBC2 in Scotland had an hour-long documentary earlier this week presented by Prof Iain Stewart, a geologist. The programme was probably not bad for a general audience. After all, how do you explain Maxwell's equations to anyone without a good background in vector calculus?

I think you should try. Maxwell himself constructed an elaborate edifice of cogs and mechanisms in space to aid his intuitions about the behaviour of electric and magnetic fields (div and curl). The eponymous equations followed, and his newtonian-physicalist model was thrown away; it took a major cultural shift in physics to accept the validity of equations that seemed to have no intuitive or obvious underlying interpretation.

Of course, modern physics is all like that: no-one has a good intuitive model of Minkowski spacetime, its variably-curved analogue in GR or most particularly for what the equations of quantum mechanics are telling us about 'reality'.

The BBC programme carefully took the lower path, more travelled. But at least they showed Maxwell's equations on a blackboard with a competent professor 'explaining' them to the hapless Stewart. A geologist faced with differential equations! He explained to camera that he understood none of it - he gave a convincing impression of a man whose head hurt.

He could be right. Geologists are, I would guess, less bright than biologists these days ... and how bright are they? Razib Khan had a post about that with this diagram ...

This diagram is from the science journal Nature

and this explanation (noting that green is not good) (and also see this):

"The above is from an article in Nature, A test that fails. ...

"My physicist friends always enjoy a chuckle whenever I honestly state that physicists are smarter than biologists, as I am a biologist. There are rare cases, such as Ed Witten, of people entering physics from other fields, but in general it’s the physicists who are the imperialists. And that’s because they’re smart, able to decompose general problems rapidly and decisively. In contrast, biologists are somewhat narrow in their focus, and plodding in their reasoning.

"These are generalizations, but I think they’re roughly correct (I had a friend at a prominent non-profit who was irritated with how difficult it was to find Ph.D. biologists who were flexible thinkers in interviews). And standardized tests bear out my generalization (though honestly, it is a pleasure talking to physicists and mathematicians about out of topic fields compared to biologists partly because they’re so mentally acute; you don’t need GRE stats to get this)."

So Professor Stewart, shape up or ship out of this presenting lark!

Some really good-bad books

Fay Weldon writes one of my favourite classifications:

"In the nineties, moved by the new GOO (‘GOOd read’) classification in Camden public libraries, I devised my own classification scheme as follows.

Good-good books – the best of contemporary literary novels, plus classics which were best-sellers in their day and have withstood the passage of time: all engaging with the intellect, if ‘difficult’.

Bad-good books – pretentious and dreadfully boring, yet taken seriously by the occasional reviewer (usually a friend of the author) and funded by the Arts Council.

Good-bad books – intensely readable, unpretentious and seldom reviewed.

Bad-bad books – worthy only to be hurled into the corner or dropped in the bath."

Sometimes you just need to switch off your intellect and enjoy a piece of page-turning escapism. If you are a science-fiction fan, you could do considerably worse than turn to B. V. Larson, for example his Undying Mercenaries series of exceedingly good-bad books.

The first volume ...

Larson also writes insightfully about the craft of successful, self-published writing ("Advice Concerning the Self-Publishing Game ").

---

Steve Hsu has an interesting post on the interpretation of quantum mechanics (PDF here). Basically he does a good job of explaining where the many worlds interpretation comes from, and how decoherence plays a critical role in 'separating branches'. He then sheds a really clear light on the issue of 'where do the Born Rule probabilities come from?' concluding this is still an unresolved problem.

As a bonus, the comments feature the infamous Luboš Motl who is coaxed to clearly explain his own views on quantum reality. As a hard-line 'Copenhagenist', Motl appears to believe that reality is both ill-defined and lacks objective (classical-ish) reality in the absence of sentient observers - a highly counter-intuitive view for sure! Here is how he explains things:

"The conceptually right to describe a world without sentient beings is that an unspecified and unknown initial wave function evolves unitarily according to Schrödinger's equation and never collapses because it's only measurements that may collapse and there are none in your theory. The complete "diffusion" of the wave function (into the linear superposition of dead and alive cats and all objects, small and big, in the most general superpositions of all conceivable states) may be said to be a problem - but another problem is that the initial state is totally unknown, too.

"It makes no sense to say that the initial wave function is a particular thing because one may only say that the wave function is a particular thing [if] something is [a] measurement - if a sentient being becomes aware of the result of some measurement. This is not happening in a universe without sentient beings. So there's no specific science to discuss in a universe without sentient beings at all. The laws may still be the same as they are in our world but they won't be applied in any particular situation because there are no particular situations or particular special wave functions in a world where no one ever measures anything.

"Einstein asked whether there is any Moon over there if no one looks. In practice, classical physics is a good enough approximation, so one may assume that the Moon is pretty much there even before observers look etc. But conceptually, if you care about similar objects for which the quantum effects are strong, the right answer is that the Moon just isn't at any particular location and has no other particular properties if no one looks. The wave function isn't a real object of any type. Its amplitudes can't be measured in a single repetition of the situation. It is only a template storing information allowing to predict probabilities of things that actually can be measured - the observables."

This is all accessible to anyone who has taken and understood QM at an undergraduate level.

The onset of Christmas

The Market Square at Wells this afternoon

Clare and myself visited my mother in Swindon this morning and returned via IKEA in Bristol. The Christmas season is just getting underway, and we stocked up on candles, new bedding and other seasonal fare.

Clare thinks big thoughts about the next purchase

Do Swedes really drink alcohol-free Glogg?

We were watching the excellent Channel 4 programme "The Murder Detectives" last night so I offered Clare a drive-by tour of St Paul's, very close to IKEA.

She declined.

Hive Mind: to buy or not to buy?

I've mentioned this before. Here's an extract from the blurb at the book's Amazon page.

"... Over the last few decades, economists and psychologists have quietly documented the many ways in which a person's IQ matters. But, research suggests that a nation's IQ matters so much more.

"As Garett Jones argues in "Hive Mind," modest differences in national IQ can explain most cross-country inequalities. Whereas IQ scores do a moderately good job of predicting individual wages, information processing power, and brain size, a country's average score is a much stronger bellwether of its overall prosperity.

"... Jones argues that intelligence and cognitive skill are significantly more important on a national level than on an individual one because they have "positive spillovers." On average, people who do better on standardized tests are more patient, more cooperative, and have better memories. As a result, these qualities and others necessary to take on the complexity of a modern economy become more prevalent in a society as national test scores rise.

"What's more, when we are surrounded by slightly more patient, informed, and cooperative neighbors we take on these qualities a bit more ourselves. ... "

According to the Wikipedia article, the average IQ for sub-Saharan Africa is 82. For ethnic Europeans the average IQ is 100 and for East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) the figure is 105. It's not hard to get significant correlations between such disparate national IQ figures and levels of economic development.

The validity of IQ as a predictor of achievement in very diverse milieux has been empirically verified time and time again so in a sense, what Hive Mind is talking about is hardly very new. This could be a reason not to buy it.

Greg Cochran reviewed it and said some nice things - quite rare from curmudgeon-central! Apparently Jones is quite a good writer too. So why not buy it?

The Hive Mind reviews on Amazon are quite amusing. Most of them are from Garett Jones's colleagues at GMU - as befits academics, they can't just summarise the book and say they like it, they have to write not-so-mini essays! Consider this review from colleague Timothy J. Groseclose, from which I quote this excerpt:

"Jones constructs an example, which I call “the parable of the vases.” In a moment I’ll explain the details of the example, but first let me briefly discuss its importance. The example has significantly affected my thinking, and it is one of the highlights of the book. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the parable ranks as one of the all-time great examples in economics. Although it is not quite as insightful and important as Ronald Coase’s crops-near-the-train-track example (which illustrates the efficiency of property rights), I believe it is approximately as insightful and important as: (i) Adam Smith’s pin-factory example (which illustrates the benefits of division of labor) and (ii) Friedrich Hayek’s example of an entrepreneur knowing about an unused ship (which illustrates the value of particular, versus general, knowledge).

"The parable begins with a simplifying assumption. This is that it takes exactly two workers to make a vase: one to blow it from molten glass and another to pack it for delivery. Now suppose that two workers, A1 and A2, are highly skilled - specifically no matter which task to which they are assigned they are guaranteed not to break the vase. Suppose two other workers, B1 and B2, are less skilled - specifically, for either task each has a 50% probability of breaking the vase.

"Now suppose you are worker A1. If you team up with A2, you produce a vase every attempt. However, if you team up with B1 or B2, then only 50% of your attempts will produce a vase. Thus, your productivity is higher when you team up with A2 than with one of the B workers. Something similar happens with the B workers. They are more productive when they are paired with an A worker than with a fellow B worker.

"So far, everything I’ve said is probably pretty intuitive. But here’s what’s not so intuitive. Suppose you’re the manager of the vase company and you want to produce as many vases as possible. Are you better off by (i) pairing A1 with A2 and B1 with B2, or (ii) pairing A1 with one of the B workers and A2 with the other B worker?

"If you do the math, it’s clear that the first strategy works best. Here, the team with two A workers produces a vase with 100% probability, and the team with the two B workers produces a vase with 25% probability. Thus, in expectation, the company produces 1.25 vases per time period. With the second strategy, both teams produce a vase with 50% probability. Thus, in expectation, the company produces only one vase per time period.

"The example illustrates how workers’ productivity is often interdependent—specifically, how your own productivity increases when your co-workers are skilled.

"The example generates an even more remarkable implication. It says that, if you are a manager of a company (or the central planner of an entire economy), then your optimal strategy is to clump your best workers together on the same project rather than spreading them out amongst your less-able workers.

"The parable has some interesting implications for immigration policy. Namely, it suggests that Ann Coulter and Donald Trump may be more correct than they realize. Coulter and Trump, when arguing for more restrictions on immigration, most often invoke political and cultural reasons - e.g. they note that more immigrants will cause crime to increase or cause the U.S. to adopt more left-wing policies. The parable of the vases, however, provides an economic reason: Specifically, when the U.S. allows more low-skilled immigrants into the country, it can lower the productivity of native workers.

"Perhaps more profound is the following implication. Immigration opponents usually make their argument from an own-country perspective. E.g. Trump and Coulter usually focus on the fact that a more open-borders policy hurts American natives. They rarely discuss the fact that such a policy helps potential immigrants. Related, they do not consider the net effect - that is, whether the costs to American natives are greater than the benefits to potential immigrants. The parable-of-the-vases example, however, takes a worldly perspective, not U.S.-centric perspective, and it suggests that the net benefits are negative.

"For example, it suggests the following: Suppose you were the secretary general of the U.N. - someone who is interested in the total economic output of the entire world, not just the output of the U.S. If so, then the parable-of-the-vases example implies that you would want the world’s smartest people to clump in only one or a few countries. You’d want the U.S. to restrict immigration from low-IQ countries because it increases the world’s economic output, not just the U.S.’s. As far as I’m aware, the people who favor more restrictive immigration policies - including Coulter and Trump - have never made this argument."

His rather gushing review is exactly how you write as an academic for whom the scales have just fallen from the eyes!

On balance, I think I ought to buy it, if only to provide a review not from George Mason University.

---

Update: here is my review.

Ultrasociety: an astonishingly insightful account of historical dynamics

Human beings cooperate in their millions, a scale of sociability only equalled by some of the social insects - but those are highly interrelated. So two questions: how did large-scale societies emerge from small-scale hunter-gatherer groups in the not-so-distant past; and how were genetically-diverse humans able to make such a transition at all? Here is a brief and highly-oversimplified summary of Peter Turchin’s answer to the first question, the main concern of his book.

Compared to the dominance hierarchies of chimpanzees and gorillas, human hunter-gatherer groups are much more egalitarian. This is the basis for enhanced cooperation, necessary for cooperative hunting and defence against large predators. Around 11,000 years ago, however, there was a  turn to agriculture, first seen in the middle-east.

Agrarian societies, even early, small-scale ones are not viewed with admiration by hunter-gatherers. They are inegalitarian and bad news for the overwhelming majority. Even the concept of private ownership of lands and crops is anathema to the HG mindset. Most likely it was the improved productivity of agriculture in the presence of constant conflict which led to the first war-leader ‘upstarts’ establishing a durable hold on power.

The first ‘archaic states’ arose in southern Mesopotamia and south-western Iran around 6,000 years ago. These were led by ‘upstarts’ who had successfully legitimised their on-going rule by self-deification, the ‘God-Kings’. Archaic states were bloodthirsty, used extensive human sacrifice and oppressed their subordinate groups who lived in constant fear.

Between 800 and 200 BCE we see the Axial Age, the period of great (and less internally blood-thirsty) empires. Despotism doesn’t scale well, particularly amongst multiple ethnic groups. Great Religions became the glue (Confucianism and Taoism, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Greek Religion/Philosophy all developed around this time). The empire’s rules became decoupled from the person of the ruler, and a theological egalitarianism bound diverse ‘citizens/subjects’ together.

So again, why the transition? The new driver of change was the arrival of the steppe nomads, with their highly mobile cavalry and composite bows - so effective that defence required a further increase in agrarian state size – only empires could defend themselves. The empires themselves now became strong enough to engage in expansionary offensives against other states in winner-take-all conflicts.

The new great religions helped to pacify relationships within the empire, increasing both internal political stability and the cooperation which permits economies of scale. And in an important sense, that has been the historical story to the present day.

This account is grossly unfair to Turchin’s detailed argumentation founded upon his encyclopaedic knowledge and sharp insights into fundamental causal mechanisms. The author is a key leader of the ‘cliodynamics’ movement which seeks to give a mathematical expression to historical evolution;  the material in this book is underpinned by computer simulations of the onset of the Axial Age as explained in his 2013 PNAS paper ‘War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies’ (available as a PDF online and worth reading - h/t Razib Khan).

There is a gene-culture coevolution story waiting to be told here – recent work in population genetics based on historical genomes suggests significant plasticity over the time periods of interest in this book. Most likely this has some causal input into why certain transitions took thousands of years: it seems unlikely that it merely took that long to come up with the required new ideas.

In summary, Peter Turchin has written a gripping, original, thought-provoking book which offers a new way of thinking about human history: it is highly recommended.