Currents 063: Jessica Flack on nth-Order Effects of the Russia-Ukraine War

Jim talks with Jessica Flack about nth-order effects of the war in Ukraine. They discuss the meaning of second- and nth-order effects, black swans, Gaussian vs fat-tailed distribution models of extreme social events, the factoring in Ukraine's wheat & Russia's fertilizer production, agency & reflexivity, how perceptions of events as extreme can amplify second-order effects, the "hot hand phenomenon" in sports, the black swan of war in Europe, swift coordination against Putin as an effect of collective intelligence failures around Covid, Russia's "escalate-to-de-escalate" doctrine, arena selection & lessons China might take from the war, the possibility of a bipolar war between democratic-leaning & authoritarian ones, network effects of excluding Russia permanently, and much more.