(08-26-2019, 09:39 PM)Marc Lamb Wrote: Mr. Horn writes: "In short, you believe that the theory supports everyone's biases, but provides no real guidance. So why bother? If, after the fact, it is what it is, it will be that without any interstitial handwringing."
In short, I left the fourthturning.com because I was convinced it, and the S&H theory it was based on, was fast becoming a "interstitial" cult.
History simply turns via the evolution of human perception's of truth. And lots of grand ideas lie upon the ash-heap of history, no matter what we'd like to believe, in the light of "self-evident truth."
The theory does not work (i.e. it does not do what it is purported to do) as I pointed out years ago. The question I was always concerned with was whether there was enough evidence for it to establish its existence, S&H neglected to provide evidence. I thought I had established it, but a more rigorous analysis showed this was not the case. I could get up to 80-90% confidence with the first few data correlations, but as I added more and more data series, the significance did not move up.
I finally resorted to making explicit predictions. Initially these were successful, but then there were some failed one and eventually it became coin flips. I have since moved on from the generational theory as a useful way to understand historical dynamics and started working in the discipline of cliodynamics. I have published three papers in cliodynamics journal. That said, the long cycles (the class of cycles into which S&H, K-cycles, and political cycles fall) has not been completely invalidated) so I post here too from time to time. I am of the opinion that we are in a social moment turning that began around 2008, but so far it does not resemble a secular crisis. I was able to come up with a math model for the S&H theory some years ago, but it does not generate a fixed number (4) of turnings per saeculum. The civil war saeculum has six turnings for example. It is possible this turning in one of the third type of social moment turning, or it could pan out as a secular crisis after all, it depends on how it turns out. The data below shows a measure of sociopolitical instability that is a hallmark of what Turchin calls a "fathers and sons" cycles, which is type of long cycle. In the US it roughly corresponds to what Samuel Huntington called "creedal passion periods" and approximately map on to some, but not all, of the S&H social moment turnings. Anyways, a rising trend is evidence after 2008, suggesting the start of social moment turnings around then. Turchin predicted in a 2012 paper that this trend should peak around 2020. So far, we are on track. The key will be if it starts coming down in the 2020's. This data is a measure of the frequency of rampage killings (mostly mass shootings). The data are smoothed with an exponential average (alpha = 0.2).
1985 2 1996 5 2006 5 2016 20
1986 3 1997 5 2007 6 2017 19
1987 3 1998 5 2008 6 2018 20
1988 3 1999 6 2009 8 2019 22
1989 3 2000 6 2010 8
1990 3 2001 5 2011 8
1991 3 2002 5 2012 11
1992 3 2003 5 2013 13
1993 5 2004 5 2014 13
1994 5 2005 5 2015 18
