Using Claude and the Davies curve to study revolutions

Claude as a tool for mapping revolutions: putting the Davies curve to the test

Artificial intelligence no longer just writes memos or generates code. A developer has used Claude, Anthropic's model, to create an interactive website that analyzes historical revolutions through the Davies curve. The central thesis: revolutionary outbreaks are not born of absolute misery, but of frustrated expectations after a period of prosperity cut short.

The interactive website and the frustrated expectations thesis

The project — now in its ninth version — allows users to explore revolutions from a multidimensional approach. The author makes it clear that he directs Claude like a "diligent machine scribe" to whom he grants some degree of initiative. The tool seeks a structure common to different revolutionary processes, starting from the hypothesis that they occur when a period of prosperity is abruptly interrupted, creating a gap between what was expected and what actually peine.

The American exception that challenges the model

One of the participants points out the absence of the American Revolution from the analysis. Unlike France — hunger, poverty and bankruptcy — the Thirteen Colonies were enjoying an era of abundance and low tax pressure. The trigger was precisely that Britain tried to charge the costs of empire after decades of self-government. This counterexample enriches the debate over whether the Davies curve holds up or needs adjusting.

The full calculation, with prosperity indicators from 1675 to 1775, remains to be incorporated into the project. The underlying question: do revolutions happen when people start climbing out of the pit, right at the start of the recovery? No clear answer yet, but with a wealth of data on the table.