Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war

http://www.ted.com By pulling raw data from the news and plotting it onto a graph, Sean Gourley and his team have come up with a stunning conclusion about the nature of modern war -- and perhaps a model for resolving conflicts.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10


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• Category

  Science & Technology

[TDeltablues]

Not to slight Mr. Gourley, he is clearly an intelligent man..

..but that being the case, I must point out the inconsistency at 0:50..why would a clearly intelligent, well spoken man watch Fox News?!?!

[Johnnydbad]

Because this falls under the TED program, wherein experts in certain fields explain and present their (innovative) ideas.

This didn't explain anything, it was more like a DOD staff presentation than anything else.

Some people are just dissapointed in this presentation and they are allowed to express this.

[Max Langford]

Maybe he likes listening to fairy tales?

[samala51]

Good talk, but the point was?

[jesse cunha]

A loucura humana não tem limites. O positivismo já foi desmontado a bastante tempo e, vamos assim dizer, "devidamente esclarecido". Os estudos do século XIX, nele lastreado, já foram engaveitados e hoje qq. ciência que queira ingressar no "mundo do razoável" terá que aceitar as novas regras do jogo da ciência. No caso da Geografia Política, os seus paradigmas também terão que se adequar a estas exigências. Não há como se pensar em construir modelos matemáticos para dar conta desta realidade.

[Wieke Meilink]

haha the english subtitles are hilarious.

[Matt Wilson]

We can draw bigger conclusions. Which systems have a power-law distribution?

Forest fires, sandpile collapses, earthquakes, financial market collapses, serial killers, riots, attacks within wars and wars.

These systems follow a positive feedback loop process. Collapses are automatic and unstoppable. Suppress small collapses and one gets bigger collapses. Suppress all collapses and one gets the mother of all big collapses - the forest gets wiped out. Think about the financial crisis. 1913intel

[heseme2]

I think that is the first TED talk I have seen that did not contribute substantially.

[ISMOPANAMA]

"MEGA CORPORATIONS" will not let "PEACE" happen. Not Entirely at least. Corporations need global CHAOS from time to time to have "Massive Profits". Anyone that has watched the documentary "THE CORPORATION" knows that Companies as they are designed today will lead to DESTRUCTION. 51 of the 100 largest Economic Powers of the world are now Corporations, this number is growing. I'am not against Corporations, but the way they are currently designed (ONLY FOR PROFIT) will lead to EXTINCTION!!!



[thebestsumoeva]

All he has discovered is the probability of a large successful attack is lower than the probability of a small less successful attack. It is peculiar how this data does seem to follow a power law though.

[akallabror]

He literally made no sense. No sense at all.

[Gypsy Leah]

I knew there was a reason I liked Data Mining.