111–120 of 520 posts
So two things spring to mind with this and any doom scenario or predictions: 1. People tend to exaggerate such doom. The reasons for this vary. A lot of the time it's unknowing. It could be as simple as assuming a constant function will remain constant beyond normal boundaries. Or that a dynamic function will continue forever. Or it's sometimes disingenuous (eg to promote a particular agenda or simply to gain more at…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Civilizational collapse is not a change of borders. It’s when knowledge becomes lost, social networks get disrupted and people’s welfare goes down.
That is supposedly what happened with Rome. A very modern society (by our standards) was replaced by barbarians (by our standards). Those barbarians eventually developed a lot of the same social and political structures as Rome. It was a regression from a unified pan-continent society to isolated tribes. How advanced those tribes were is hard to say because most didn’t write things down. As far as I know what followe…
> One reason for this is that in Herrington’s words, “the scenarios do not significantly diverge until 2020.” After that point, the scenarios start to diverge drastically ... This sounds more like a selection bias. If any model drastically diverged from reality earlier, then it would have been already discarded, and we won't be talking about it. So, we'll be only talking about models that start to diverge around 2020…
So as an example, if in October 2019 someone said a virus outbreak that could be largely prevented would be lead cause of over 100k deaths over climate change, you would be laughed at. Yet here we are. The largest hidden risk is often what is right in front of our eyes that we don’t acknowledge as a risk.
For example if there is a >9 magnitude earthquake due to San Andreas fault, I have zero doubt California has any preparedness and if will even be able to airlift millions of people even though everyone knows it’s a ticking time bomb.
> One reason for this is that in Herrington’s words, “the scenarios do not significantly diverge until 2020.” After that point, the scenarios start to diverge drastically ... This sounds more like a selection bias. If any model drastically diverged from reality earlier, then it would have been already discarded, and we won't be talking about it. So, we'll be only talking about models that start to diverge around 2020…
I am a huge fan of Nassim Taleb and his book Fooled By Randomness really impacted the way I look at a lot of doom and gloom scenarios. His notion of fat tailed events/tail risks along with survivors confirmation bias is a central theme of many of the risks he describes. So as an example, if in October 2019 someone said a virus outbreak that could be largely prevented would be lead cause of over 100k deaths over clima…
What does that even mean?
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The part that I don't get about this is it rests on the narrative that such drastic societal collapse has happened on a grand scale. While small civilizations here and there have collapsed and political orders have gone away and been replaced by others at no point do we see humans descend into mass anarchy only to have to rebuild civilization. Many doomsayers point to the fall of Rome as a supposed example of a major…
>at no point do we see humans descend into mass anarchy only to have to rebuild civilization The Bronze Age Collapse is pretty close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
As the article you linked points out, Egyptian and Greek civilizations were affected, but apparently there were other strong civilizations that were doing exceedingly well at the time at the expense of Egypt and Greece.
That's my point. Certainly, from any one perspective, societies can collapse, but that's just a localized problem. Never have we seen humanity suddenly thrust wholesale into some fantastical dark age.
> One reason for this is that in Herrington’s words, “the scenarios do not significantly diverge until 2020.” After that point, the scenarios start to diverge drastically ... This sounds more like a selection bias. If any model drastically diverged from reality earlier, then it would have been already discarded, and we won't be talking about it. So, we'll be only talking about models that start to diverge around 2020…
Will we have societal collapse at 2 degrees or 3 degrees warming seems speculative but the general consensus is that it'll be in range of bad to terrible to apocalypse.
All eyes on those slope lines!
And yeh, phone your representatives and demand faster and more consequntial action!!
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…
So it is and so it does. And while it does, empires collapse, species go extinct...
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I am a huge fan of Nassim Taleb and his book Fooled By Randomness really impacted the way I look at a lot of doom and gloom scenarios. His notion of fat tailed events/tail risks along with survivors confirmation bias is a central theme of many of the risks he describes. So as an example, if in October 2019 someone said a virus outbreak that could be largely prevented would be lead cause of over 100k deaths over clima…
> would be lead cause of over 100k deaths over climate change What does that even mean?
When I was an undergrad I discovered blogs about peak oil, the limits to the growth, and Turchin’s cliometrics. As an adolescent I really enjoyed Asimov’s Foundation and all of this knowledge resonated with me. I had a fried who read Von Mises’ Human Action and he labeled me as a neo-Malthusian . And, according to his “school of thought”, my understanding of the world and economics incorrect. We had many interesting…
Someone once said: If you are a teen and you aren't a lefty, you have no heart. And if you are in your 30'S and you are still a lefty, you have no brain. Many travel along those lines. And in analogy to this, I am very optimistic about the future, because the resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite. There is no peak oil. There is no peak food. There is no peak climate. There is no water…
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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.