Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

dana11235.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 520 posts

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#71

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

OliverGilan wrote: post #56
Qem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. The same thing, but now with 7 billion+ people. It's a lot of deforestation just to feed all these campfires.

Except we aren't running out of forests any time soon [1] and they're actually growing back to levels we haven't seen in decades. [1] https://phys.org/news/2018-08-global-forest-loss-years-offse...

Monocultures are not forests.

https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/study-finds-chinas-new-for...

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#72

Post by nemo44x »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #33
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilization is fragile. Take the US, for instance. The constitution has been in force since 1789. That's 222 years. You don't get to 222 years by not being stable. If the Civil War and the 1960s didn't destroy the US, it's pretty stable. And yet... we have historical examples of civilizations collapsing. When it happens, it often happens fast (or at least sl…

Oh, to be clear, I think it will happen. I just don’t think it’s going to be something so predictable. Almost by definition, a civilization collapses due to a surprise — some belief was wrong. And there’s value in questioning our (often unexamined) beliefs. But taking it too seriously, thinking that you’ve got it figured out and that others are fools for not listening to you — well… Maybe you would have predicted the…

Rome didn’t really collapse but rather wither away slowly over hundreds of years. Even still the most useful parts lived on five without the empire aspect which didn’t matter for most people.

In the end I think we overestimate the effects collapse. Look at much of Europe over the 19th and 20th centuries. Unbelievable levels of suffering and many millions needlessly died over those 200 years. But for most life just went on.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#73

Post by anyfoo »

pfdietz wrote: post #44

I remember someone took one of those global models and noticed all the equations were time reversible. So they asked "what does the model 'predict' the past looked like?" And it turned out the model predicted the world population was infinite sometime in the 1800s. :) I have very little faith in any of these models.

Any sources for that? Right now it's just "I have very little faith in these models because I remember someone trying to reverse them and coming up with nonsensical results", probably coupled with "and that is so much more comforting".

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#74

Post by elihu »

XorNot wrote: post #66
tablespoonsruby wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There actually was a shortage--of residential TP, due to people spending more time at home instead of at work, where commercial TP is used.

There wasn't really much of a shortage though - at any given time there were warehouses full of residential toilet paper, what their wasn't was capacity to keep supermarket shelves stocked when regular customers all suddenly doubled their purchasing pattern. A supermarket stocks maybe 150 packs but sees well over that in foot traffic per day: if a relatively small number of people simultaneously think "hmm, I might n…

Another thing that happens is that when Costco is the only place in town with TP in stock, then you end up buying 48 rolls or whatever because that's the minimum purchase size.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#75

Post by nemo44x »

johnisgood wrote: post #25
overscore wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an infantry soldier and learnt very fast how fragile the logistics of necessities can be in the modern world. I don't believe that world civilisation will collapse (at least not in any way that can be prepared for), but I have moved out of the city, begun to farm organically, and have a plan to cook and live without mains power or fuel for months on end. I know people think I'm a nutjob, but I've also seen firs…

> live only 1.6m above the high water mark/strand line of the sea. Wow. I put myself in your shoes for a second and felt fear. Otherwise your life sounds pretty desirable. I always wanted to do the same (be self-sufficient in such ways). I probably will never be living like that (unless homelessness count, bleh), but good for you, I envy you. :)

You can engineer yourself out of this pretty easily. The Netherlands are a fine example.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#76

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #33
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilization is fragile. Take the US, for instance. The constitution has been in force since 1789. That's 222 years. You don't get to 222 years by not being stable. If the Civil War and the 1960s didn't destroy the US, it's pretty stable. And yet... we have historical examples of civilizations collapsing. When it happens, it often happens fast (or at least sl…

Oh, to be clear, I think it will happen. I just don’t think it’s going to be something so predictable. Almost by definition, a civilization collapses due to a surprise — some belief was wrong. And there’s value in questioning our (often unexamined) beliefs. But taking it too seriously, thinking that you’ve got it figured out and that others are fools for not listening to you — well… Maybe you would have predicted the…

Of course it's foolish not to take an obvious concern like climate change seriously.

The consequences are predictable, and they should be avoidable and unnecessary.

For most of the population there is no downside in avoiding them, any more than there was in mitigating Y2K or making seatbelts compulsory.

This isn't mythology we're talking about, but science.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#77

Post by msandford »

JackFr wrote: post #40
falcolas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A relatively simple lockdown was enough to drastically impact our “just in time” supply and manufacturing system. We’re still recovering from that, and likely will be for months, if not years. Even mere rumors of TP shortage caused such a shortage to actually occur through mostly social interactions. Larger scale disasters will definitely screw things up for us all.

Yes there was a brief TP shortage. I think the bigger takeaway was that a large portion of the workforce just stopped and there wasn’t a material reduction in the standard of living. I’ve come to believe fraction of of the workforce could keep the economy going at current levels and much employment is only marginally productive and exists only to distribute the wealth of society.

That's a sort of tempting thought and it's mostly right IMO. My suspicion is that it doesn't take that many people to keep the factories running but it does take a lot of people to make new factories and improve efficiency at existing ones. And modern society is so predicated on growth that you literally need these efficiency improvers or the wheels fall off. On any give day or week or perhaps even year they don't matter. But over a decade they probably do.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#78

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nemo44x wrote: post #75
johnisgood wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> live only 1.6m above the high water mark/strand line of the sea. Wow. I put myself in your shoes for a second and felt fear. Otherwise your life sounds pretty desirable. I always wanted to do the same (be self-sufficient in such ways). I probably will never be living like that (unless homelessness count, bleh), but good for you, I envy you. :)

You can engineer yourself out of this pretty easily. The Netherlands are a fine example.

You can't engineer yourself out pretty easily if you don't politics yourself out first.

The Netherlands are also a fine example of this, for now at least.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#79

Post by justbored123 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #11
thewarrior wrote: post #3

I’ve become a follower of the Collapse subreddit. I initially dismissed it as a bunch of alarmist doomers but the more I looked into the more I realized that even if they end up being wrong modern civilization is a lot more fragile than most people think. Climate change, resource depletion and environmental damage all have the potential to severely destabilize the entire system we have built. I really wish we had a l…

I used to be in the “peak oil” scene — and by that I mean, I listened carefully to my friend, who was really into the peak oil scene. It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round. It’s the same thing humans have done for a hundred thousand years: sit around a campfire telling ghost stories. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, it’s fine to enjoy it. But I think it’s a mistake to get too into the idea that civilizat…

> “peak oil” ... It’s an illusion. The world goes ‘round.

Are you suggesting that oil is not finite??? Or that we have an easy replacement at hand contrary to the people that says otherwise such as in the "Planet of The humans" documentary?

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#80

Post by Swizec »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19
Swizec wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are almost certainly plummeting towards the next collapse of the roman empire. This time "western civilization". But it's not that bad! Rome's collapse took around 100 years, from 376 - 476[1]. If you consider Byzantine as a continuation of Rome, the final collapse didn't happen until 1453 [2]. So it took a full 1077 years for Rome to fall. Plenty of time for our lifetimes to pass in relative comfort. We're, what,…

> we're mostly seeing that's giving us the fear of collapse is a slowing of rapid growth after WW2 We grow more in a few days than the world did at the height of Rome's power. We're also richer almost everywhere on the planet than we were at the peak of the post-WWII boom. These ghost stories are a cheap way of defending complacency. If everything is going to shit in 2040, why bother acting now to better yourself, yo…

> If everything is going to shit in 2040, why bother acting now to better yourself, your community, your country or the world?

If you might get hit by a car tomorrow, why bother with anything at all?

We assume the best and keep going. Make contingency plans.

Post reply on HN