S. Schutte on perdicting large scale violence and civil conflicts

Last week we have talked about what drives formation of social groups. We have understood that people both want to belong to some group and also want to feel special. Having many different social groups is natural, but also dangerous as the need the groups need to feel safe and somewhat superior to the other groups. These needs might be manipulated to give rise to a social conflict or war.

Another theory claims that social conflicts or wars might be driven by the greed, will to obtain some resource. This type of conflicts were modeled by Sebastian Schutte of International Conflict Research Group at ETH Zurich. While his work is built upon something similar to regression models, his insights are nevertheless valuable in the context of Physics of Risk. We invite you to watch the videos below.