@WalterScheidel @BjoernGehrmann We've just experienced a wave of deadly collective violence. That's different from peaceful demonstrations. Of course, dozens killed and hundreds of thousands killed are very different orders of magnitude. But the nature of internal warfare is that it easily escalates.
@WalterScheidel @BjoernGehrmann Historically and statistically, smaller-scale outbreaks of political violence serve as a reliable leading indicators of worse to come. For example, incidence of deadly riots started to increase in Antebellum America in the 1830s and exploded during the 1850s.
@WalterScheidel @BjoernGehrmann If you look at the statistical distribution of sizes (number killed) of internal collective violence, it doesn't have two humps corresponding to "riots" and "civil wars". Instead, it is a continuous "fat-tailed" distribution.
@WalterScheidel @BjoernGehrmann The dynamical nature of these events is that violence escalates. It's like forest fires. If there is enough fuel, then a spark can lead to a small fire or a huge conflagration.
