Top all-time · #1591
Peter Turchin
Personal blog · peterturchin.comhistorypoliticsscience
Peter Turchin's personal blog at peterturchin.com covers history, politics and science. Since 2015, 48 different Hacker News readers have linked it 76 times, most often ““The Mad Prophet of Connecticut””. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
The official site for Peter Turchin’s research, publications, books, public writing, and media appearances.
Most-linked posts?
- /ages-of-discord/3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-10-26
- “The Mad Prophet of Connecticut”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-11-13
- Intra-Elite Competition: Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies (2016)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-08-12
- Cliodynamics: History as Science3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-10-27
- /cliodynamica/psychohistory-and-cliodynamics/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-26
- /cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-01-10
- Age of Discord II2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-09-14
- The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-20
- Structural-Demographic Theory2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-16
- /PDF/Turchin_JPR2012.pdf2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-01-30
What Hacker News says?
The framing in the article is ahistorical. The post-WW2 period was a period of exceptionally _low_ inequality. If you look back to just the 1800s there were swings in inequality comparable to the present day. We're now moving back to the historical baseline. There are some contributing factors to the shift in inequality, a major one being that labor is now oversupplied compared to the post-war period, and the compet…
Comment linking /ages-of-discord/
on “America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%”Submitted The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013) as a story · 167 points
HN discussionI was going to suggest Peter Turchin as an outsider to history / sociology but he seems to have been able to get published in highly reputable journals http://peterturchin.com/academic-publications/#Articles_in_N...
Comment linking /academic-publications/
on “Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database”Submitted The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013) as a story · 97 points
HN discussionAnother driving factor is intra-elite competition: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/
on “Rideshare operations are being suspended in California”Submitted War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies (2013) [pdf] as a story · 69 points
HN discussionI think social media and technology in general ism while important, to some extent a second order effect response to a breakdown in community This is measured in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone as occurring after 1965-ish[1] through a variety of measures, or for example more recently measuring where couples meet in the US, [2] which were declining well before the 2010s. The Middletown studies of the 1920s for example…
Comment linking /the-double-helix-of-inequality-and-well-being/
on “The teen mental illness epidemic is international (2023)”Submitted Structural-Demographic Theory as a story · 34 points
HN discussionhttps://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competitio...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/
on “The Most Dangerous Censorship”Submitted Economics Can’t Answer Why Inequality Sometimes Declines as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI would say the best analysis of this is by Peter Turchin: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/population-immiseration...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/population-immiseration-in-america/
on “What the Hell Is Going On? Effects of Information Abundance”Submitted Does America Have a Long-Term Strategic Plan? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionLook up Peter Turchin. http://peterturchin.com
Comment linking /
on “Lessons of an MIT Education”Submitted Cliodynamics – History as Science as a story · 5 points
HN discussionPerhaps you'd be interested in Peter Turchin's theory of "overpopulation of elites" being a root cause of societal dysfunction. http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/
on “The Problem at Yale Is Not Free Speech”Submitted Intra-Elite Competition: Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Societies (2016) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBe careful what you wish for: it's a good book, but an unnerving read: http://peterturchin.com/ages-of-discord/
Comment linking /ages-of-discord/
on “RIP Culture War Thread”Submitted Age of Discord II as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOvereducation may itself be a problem: Elite overproduction, and especially overproduction of the youth with advanced degrees, continues unabated. Our institutions of higher education have been churning out law, MBA, and PhD degrees, many more than could be absorbed by the economy. In a Bloomberg View article published just a few days ago Noah Smith provides the numbers for the overproduction of PhDs (America Is Pum…
Comment linking /cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/
on “Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'”Submitted On Social Power (2023) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAnd overeducation may itself be a problem: Elite overproduction, and especially overproduction of the youth with advanced degrees, continues unabated. Our institutions of higher education have been churning out law, MBA, and PhD degrees, many more than could be absorbed by the economy. In a Bloomberg View article published just a few days ago Noah Smith provides the numbers for the overproduction of PhDs (America Is…
Comment linking /cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/
on “Facebook Says It Is Removing All Content Mentioning 'Stop the Steal'”Submitted The Scythian Empire as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPretty much, he wrote an article comparing the two a while ago. http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/psychohistory-and-cliod...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/psychohistory-and-cliodynamics/
on “A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism”Submitted On Social Power as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAssuming you're referring to [1] or [2] or [3], it doesn't look like a debunking to me so much as healthy scientific debate, specifically between the Seshat and DRH projects who are both competing for limited resources-The John Templeton Foundation funds both for example. In such a case the criticism of not being a professional historian seem odd, as the credentials of Edward Slingerland and Bret Beheim, the lead au…
Comment linking /cliodynamica/what-came-first-big-gods-or-big-societies-round-two/
on “A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism”Submitted Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTurchin has also correctly predicted that the elections would be very close : http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/america-in-november-202... However, so far he has been "wrong" about his "prediction" that after that the events would be completely unpredictable. In fact, so far events have been very predictable - this might change after the inauguration though?
Comment linking /cliodynamica/america-in-november-2020-a-structural-demographic-view-from-alpha-centauri/
on “Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (2012)”Submitted How to Overthrow an Empire – and Replace It with Your Own as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTurchin discusses this here: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/prophecy-fourth-turning...
Comment linking /cliodynamica/prophecy-fourth-turning/
on “Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (2012)”Submitted U.S. Working Class is worse off, in absolute terms as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
