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

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

#121

Post by phkahler »

School-Cotton wrote: post #98
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cursory reading of history is enough to show that civilisations collapse regularly. It's not possible to comment on this topic credibly without being aware of this. As for "flexible social norms" - there was an attempted coup in the US, South Africa is on fire, Brazil is literally on fire, and the UK is opening up to Delta having apparently persuaded itself that 50,000 cases and 500 hospital admissions a day aren't…

> there was an attempted coup in the US No there wasn’t. A rowdy protest is not “an attempted coup”. All actual institutions behaved according to the law.

>> A rowdy protest is not “an attempted coup”.

Oh is this referring to the so called "insurection"? That was like a mild protest compared to other recent ones.

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

#123

Post by maCDzP »

chestertn wrote: post #60

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…

I had never heard of Neo-Malthusianism but I realize that I ascribe to this school of thought.

What ideas made you change your view?

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

#124

Post by DennisP »

Models like this are as much about understanding the dynamics as making specific predictions.

A key dynamic that impressed me from LtG is that as pollution accumulates, you spend more and more of your resources dealing with the damage, and less making the sort of investments you used to make. But things can still carry on just fine, until suddenly the bottom drops out.

Since we're already dealing with significant damage from greenhouse gases, I find that a little disturbing.

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

#125

Post by cortesoft »

notjes wrote: post #99
chestertn wrote: post #60

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…

Human ingenuity might be infinite, but we also do really bad shit all the time that causes horrible suffering and death.

We had a world war less than a century ago that killed around 80 million people. Did it end the world? No, but it ended the world for 80 million people.

So yes, you might be right that the world won't end from any of these scenarios.... but a lot of people might die horrible deaths, and I don't want me or my loved ones to be among them.

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

#126

Post by twobitshifter »

Isamu wrote: post #102

Each of these predict food production will decline starting soon, although the optimistic ones forecast a recovery in production. Any idea why the imminent decline in food production in all cases? It’s as though they are expecting global food producers to be caught off guard, as if they haven’t been planning against disaster since… forever. [edit] Food production seems to be a function that is negatively affected by…

I have heard soils have become depleted of nutrients and ammonium fertilizers are not enough. There’s also the possibility of drought and loss of pollinators.

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

#127

Post by ianai »

My suspicion is that skepticism has morphed into denialism in general. We’re seemingly at a point where any assertion will get attacked so many times that eventually even chimps on keyboards would come up with a reasonably credible (seeming) critique despite having no deep knowledge of the original point or underlying system.

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

#128

Post by fabianhjr »

chestertn wrote: post #60

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…

> I believe that reductionist (materialistic) approaches to analyze human endeavor are misguided.

A systems theory approach is an opposite of a reductionist approach. From Wikipedia ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Complex_system ) :

> The study of complex systems regards collective, or system-wide, behaviors as the fundamental object of study; for this reason, complex systems can be understood as an alternative paradigm to reductionism, which attempts to explain systems in terms of their constituent parts and the individual interactions between them.

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

#129

Post by alasdair_ »

Isamu wrote: post #102

Each of these predict food production will decline starting soon, although the optimistic ones forecast a recovery in production. Any idea why the imminent decline in food production in all cases? It’s as though they are expecting global food producers to be caught off guard, as if they haven’t been planning against disaster since… forever. [edit] Food production seems to be a function that is negatively affected by…

> It’s as though they are expecting global food producers to be caught off guard, as if they haven’t been planning against disaster since… forever.

My belief in disaster preparedness from the powers that be was severely shaken by the early to mid term response to covid in the US.

I genuinely thought we’d handle a large scale disaster that had been prepared for forever much, much better than we did.

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

#130

Post by marcosdumay »

twobitshifter wrote: post #126
Isamu wrote: post #102

Each of these predict food production will decline starting soon, although the optimistic ones forecast a recovery in production. Any idea why the imminent decline in food production in all cases? It’s as though they are expecting global food producers to be caught off guard, as if they haven’t been planning against disaster since… forever. [edit] Food production seems to be a function that is negatively affected by…

I have heard soils have become depleted of nutrients and ammonium fertilizers are not enough. There’s also the possibility of drought and loss of pollinators.

Yeah... I think it's pretty hard to believe a model from the 70's could predict the change on any of those with any accuracy, even less that it can predict the timing. I don't think we could do it now.
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