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by science4sail 656 days ago
I think that historical cycles have been a popular topic ever since at least the days of Socrates and his philosophical peers.

That said, have any of these predictions ever managed to stop the cycle? As far as I know, both Turchin and Ibn Khaldun (who Turchin calls out a lot in his books) felt that such cycles were inevitable. The more common response to these predictions seems to be some variant of "this is cherry-picked data, our society is different!"

Or are such predictions instead intended to speed the advent of the next cycle? Perhaps we should be like King Wen Zhou in pre-imperial China, watching the skies for a sign from heaven to bring about the new age.