Is the American Civilization Falling? Was 2020 Just the Beginning of a Really Violent Historical Cycle? What About the Prediction that Says Humanity Ends In 760 Years?

The Best Paragraph I've Read: Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—­­to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Peter Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working.  He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst... ... ...  The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. This paragraphs comes from an article in The Atlantic titled: "The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse."  The Article is written by Graeme Wood.  You can read the article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/ Zac and Don discuss the potential fall of America and the merit of the ideas presented in the article.   Zac would like to state for the record that it was his mother who brought this article to his attention. Another Best Paragraph I've Read: Demographers have estimated the total number of people who ever lived at about 100 billion. That means that about 100 billion people were born before me. Currently, about 130 million people are born each year. At that rate, it would take only about 760 years for another 100 billion more people to be born. That’s the basis of the claim that there’s a 50 percent chance that humans will become extinct within about 760 years. The flip side of the claim is there’s also a 50 percent chance we’ll survive past 760 years, possibly long past that. This paragraph comes from an article on www.vox.com.  The article is titled: "A math equation that predicts the end of humanity."   The article is written by William Poundstone.  You can read the article here: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/28/18760585/doomsday-argument-calculation-prediction-j-richard-gott Zac and Don discuss whether humanity will end in 760 years.