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It has been said that if police did their job too well, they would put themselves out of a job.  Criminality thus becomes job security.
Many so-called "revolutions" are merely expressions of factionalism totally contained within an existing power structure.
Do most of us labor under delusions imposed on us by the power structure concerning social realities?
Is "social media" actually centrally directed to entrain behavior?

These are just a few questions that come to mind when I think how, many years ago now, we were told that somehow social chaos was a different animal from dynamical systems that could be studied.  I am not so sure about that.  Are you?  Is this even a "new" idea?  Yet, there is almost no public discussion about quantifiability.
For starters, I can see some variant of the logistical equation coming into play in the examples above.  However, anyone familiar with my work will know that my fascination is with the behavior of numbers themselves, and I have very poor skills at application.  If I can't do a thing well enough, I'd leave it to others who can.  I could at least moderate such a discussion, for those with similar curiosity.

Your thoughts on viability of such an exploration would be very welcome.

I'm tired enough of the box to step outside it.  How about you?

you mean: "arab winter" poor arab world under 100% sharia now)  .... i encountered similar behaviour in germany, concerning social workers in lower social areas schools where are at least 3 social workers, who just do nothing, and dont care about the poor living conditions of the people they are obliged to work with, one reason is that they are scared about " if i do my job too well, i loose it " it is this problem that they just do nothin .... in my eyes any social worker is somehow useless, because they study abstract theoretical stuff in the university, but are ashamed of the poor standards they encounter in real live, and ther academic views do not adopt easily ...

it wouldnt be a problem to have no crime, but a police men anyways, they could help old people crossing streets, or protect children when crossing streets

nowadays many many social jobs are useles - when viewed the results - anti aggression training in box-camps !??! WHAT ?! why dont the do marathon running for anti agression !? especially in germany we have severe social problems that can not be handled by the brainwashedhappygolucky social worker sucker stuff

enough rage!

I have often thought the social interactions could be studied using spin glass models. The simplest of these is probably the binary Ising spin glass. In this model each site can be pointed up or down. Each site can be positively or negatively coupled to neighboring sites. The Ising model expresses these couplings as energies and uses temperature (also expressed as energy) as a parameter to study thermodynamic properties.

The happiness condensate:
One simple mapping would be to consider each site to be a person and the binary states to be happy and sad. The connections are determined by how much each person likes the other people he/she interacts with. The temperature is the frequency of interactions. A group of people who like each other and interact often will tend to freeze into either the happy state or sad state. So as an individual it is in your best interest to hang around people you like and influence the group to condense in the happy state.
(An alternate strategy is to hang around people you don't like and try to make them miserable.)

"Would ignoring them make them go away?" No. Thats what the tinfoil hat is for! Like you Monk I can't add to the mathematics of this debate but I would say we all have even more in common than just a survival instinct. Advertisers and psychologists have piles of data on the way we make choices that seem to us "free" but are in fact driven by deeper common desires.

Like the caged bird I joke because I can't do higher math.

Before any math is applied, social chaos is a very rich subject.  cKlienhuis gave an example (social workers) parallel to my police one.  More generally, managers often value obedience over competence.

We should first try to identify all social phenomena that have systematic dynamical properties that serve as inputs.

Social behavior goes across species boundaries, so I must betray a prejudice of mine (one of many) that we can organize ourselves as humans better than dogs or baboons.  Such animal studies win funding, this one probably won't.  Become deeply suspicious of it if it does.

There is the problem of map/terrain.  We are not only in the terrain, but part of it.  Mapping a thing, not all details can be included, or the map would be as complicated as the terrain.  In time, essential principles can emerge refined.  For example, polls are conducted to measure reaction to policies past or proposed, and statistics are distilled, and used, often by few to the detriment of many. (Like data mining, effie)

Some social phenomena are naturally rooted, while others have artificial origins.  But either way, what is, still is.  We think using many dualities: dichotomies, opposites, compliments, etc.  Boole had a great impact on how we understand and manage them mathematically.

Would the most relevant duality in a social system be friendly/hostile?  Then, honesty/deception might be assigned operators, like true/false, +/-.

Just thought I'd put all that out there upon some reflection.

Your thoughts?

I personally define economics as studies concerning whether outcomes are worth efforts necessary to bring them about.  If(f) one accepts that most basic definition, finance has shown itself to DISTORT economic realities (for fun and profit), not to mention (though I do) distorting the STUDY of economics itself to that same end.  Fiat currency imposition and subsidies are good examples of the mechanisms employed.

Quantifying economics statistically is nothing new, however.

My last post at least implied that the majority of social interaction is economically inspired.  I'm surprised no one jumped on that.

The point is that social chaos could be seen as an economic phenomenon and then could be quantified similarly.  Sure, it's noisy, but statistical methods produce quiet averages.  No?

Later.

I continue to see the validity of this post and see many examples. This from yesterday:
http://money.msn.com/investing/why-all-signs-point-to-chaos-mirhaydari.aspx

Here is my take. Fractals have beauty because we see the balance between order and chaos. The simple rules (z=z^2+c) for order mixed with complex behavior (multiplying complex numbers) create this balance. In society these two are represented by laws and the complex nature of man. Rules only work to create beauty when they are simple. Think 10 commandments, golden rule, eye for an eye?? When laws are manipulated to create an outcome we get social cauliflower.

When there are together many humans, they act not much more sophisticated than ants. There are civil defense research in that direction, say to have better fire evacuation. But this is when hudge masses of people are together.