Mathematical Models of Warfare

"At first sight, warfare seems an unlikely subject to admit of mathematical analysis. However, analyses of the conduct of wars or, more importantly, the strategies and economic situations prior to the outbreak of wars, have suggested that although no two wars are the same there are sufficient similarities between some wars to merit attempting to fit them into a suitable model."

You'd create a persuasion model

"Hull is most animated by those aspects of campaigning that can be quantified and formulated. "Politics is very unpredictable," he told me. "More so than blackjack." I asked if he really could write an algorithm to help win the election. His face lit up, and his press secretary winced. "Sure!" he replied. He reached for my notebook and began scribbling as he spoke: "You'd create a persuasion model based on canvassing that says 'the probability of voting for Hull is ...' plus some variable on ethnicity ... with a positive coefficient on age, a negative coefficient on wealth, and that gives us an equation ..." Sure enough, a lengthy equation unfolded across the page that to my untrained eye looked like part of the human genetic code:

Probability = 1/(1 + exp (−1 * (−3.9659056 + (General Election Weight * 1.92380219) + (Re-Expressed Population Density * .00007547) + (Re-Expressed Age * .01947370) + (Total Primaries Voted * −.60288595) + (% Neighborhood Ethnicity * −.00717530))))

Hull looked pleased. "That's the kind of innovation I will bring to problems in the United States Senate."

You are Too Late!

"I have always tried to automate every possible decision. If we wanted to make a trade, we would determine why, then quantify the factors and design an algorithm to produce the trade so it could be done time and time again without error."

The enormity and intrerconnectedness of six specific threats

"The 16-member panel was created by Secretary General Annan in a speech to the General Assembly in September, 2003 in which he said that divisions over how to achieve collective global security had brought the world institution to a moment as critical as the post-World War II moment of its inception."

The Empire of Reason

"There is a Reason at work in history which ensures that past history is comprehensible, that future history is desirable, and that the apparently blind necessity of facts is secretly arranged in such a way as to give birth to what is good."

Superimposed Oscillations

"We present a non-traditional general methodology for the scientific predictions of catastrophic events, based on the concepts and techniques of statistical and nonlinear physics."

Detach as separate power centers, and assert political and cultural dominance.

"To predict history on the broadest level we cannot rely upon any particular set of events proceeding from the present situation but only on general expectations based on the nature of human societies like the following: What goes up usually comes down. What is born dies. People fight for rank and position. Powerful interest groups try to protect their own turf. These are some of the "lessons" to be drawn from past history. On the positive side, the new is youthful and vigorous and creative, but also unpredictable. One must make allowance for unexpected paradigm shifts. Future history will frustrate our best efforts to project a certain vision unless, perhaps, we ourselves participate in the fulfilling events."

Reverse History Project

"The idea, then is to have short bursts of history, focused not only on the events but on the people and why they did what they did, which lead to multiple other short bursts of history."

Waves of Optimism and Pessimism

"The theory of rational expectations was first proposed by John F. Muth of Indiana University in the early sixties. He used the term to describe the many economic situations in which the outcome depends partly upon what people expect to happen."

Knowledge Protects

"Housed in a fifteenth century Chateau in the South of France, the Quantum Future Group has created an ideal environment in which to pursue research and education based on ethical shaping of the future, considering all variables including ethics of interhuman dynamics, respect for the environment, and the effect of technology on the environment."

Clay Shirky

"Let me offer a definition of social software, because it's a term that's still fairly amorphous. My definition is fairly simple: It's software that supports group interaction. I also want to emphasize, although that's a fairly simple definition, how radical that pattern is."

Straussed Out

"A recognition that the greatest thinkers often wrote with both exoteric and esoteric teachings, either out of fear of persecution or a general desire to present their most important teachings to those most receptive to them. This leads to an attempt to discern the esoteric teachings of the great philosophers from the clues they left in their writings for careful readers to find."

Rock the CASBS

"Our programs produce some of the most consequential research in the humanities and social sciences, research that is enormously influential in American and global intellectual life even as it has real-world implications."

Millennial Files

"We are here to show and to tell you that the 21st Century and the Third Millennium are yours, are all of Ours, to shape as we wish. No longer need we be continually acted upon by external events. We can be the very agents of history we choose to be."

Winter Is Coming

"America feels like it’s unraveling...Though we live in an era of relative peace and comfort, we have settled into a mood of pessimism about the long-term future, fearful that our superpower nation is somehow rotting from within."