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Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

talesoftimesforgotten.com

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Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#201

Post by dukeofdoom »

jcranmer wrote: post #181
dukeofdoom wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point. But the flip side is how better off people do these silly calculations how they can penny pinch a 10% cheaper price on something the poor person should buy instead of what they want. What they neglect to consider is the experience of trying to penny pinch. And the decreased value of what they end up getting. I can penny pinch and buy a really crappy loaf of bread for $3.5 or pay $6 for sourdough bre…

Which campsite costs $59/night? Looking at Algonquin Provincial Park, a full RV hookup comes out to $53.68/night, the most expensive non-hookup is $47.46/night, and the cheapest one is $42.38/night. (Prices quoted from https://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/visit/general_park_info/fees... ).

https://www.ontarioparks.com/fees/camping/2022

Fee Level - AA Base Fee HST Total

Electrical Regular $52.50 $6.83 $59.33

Also, I remember being charged a convenience fee for booking online on top of everything.

Even at these prices I still think a provincial park is the best value for what you get. The park will be your entertainment for a full day, as it most likely has access to water for swimming, or places to hike. Unlike a cheaper private campsite.

Also, I personally had a really crappy experience staying at a private campsite before in Northern Ontario. Got yelled at for starting a fire after 11 pm, and subsequently followed around, including when I went to the bathroom. The campsite was run by mennonites, but it felt like I was on some cult's compound. Cameras everywhere and people walking behind you with walkie talkies. And it wasn't even that much cheaper and had to pay for showers.

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#202

Post by jhbadger »

gjm11 wrote: post #198
rurban wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close. This was the downfall in popular belief. The real cause was of course the victory of Christianism over Rationalism, which caused hundreds of years of dark ages.

Do you think the Roman empire was notably rational, and that if Constantine hadn't converted to Christianity it would have been more rational than it was under Christianity? That seems highly not obvious to me, and I would be interested in any evidence you have.

Kind of the reason Christianity got a foothold is that belief in the traditional Greco-Roman gods was dropping in late antiquity. Lots of new religions were beginning to pop up -- Christianity, the cult of Isis (which was based on a Egyptian goddess but the way they worshiped her was new), the cult of Mithras. At one way, the death of traditional paganism can be seen as a win for rationality, although subsequent events suggests that getting rid of religion entirely is difficult because new religions tend to fill the vacuum left by the old making no net increase in overall rationality.

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#203

Post by dllthomas »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #179
panick21_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the empire didn't fall and we don't see continues degradation over time, we see ups and down as the political winds shift. The Roman empire by 600 was arguably more powerful then it had been for 100s of years before. Did they remove lead pipes in that time and that made everything go faster again?

This is not true, you can check https://acoup.blog . He has a series on it. In very real terms Rome fell and the caloric intake and bone length of the Romans and their livestock took a massive nosedive. https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-f...

I think the distinction that the parent is making is that Rome fell in the West, but the Eastern Roman Empire lived on for quite a long time afterwards.

Bret agrees, and notes this repeatedly in that series.

Where I think he would disagree with the parent is that they seem to be implying that the fall in the West was therefore not a particularly significant event that might deserve explanation, whereas Bret would point out that cities shrank, cows shrank, mail links got bigger (more vulnerable, less material, less effort) while fewer people were armored, and on and on... Things changed for the worse for a huge number of people. That things didn't change the same for another group of people (who, in some contexts, are quite reasonably treated as part of the same larger group of people) is interesting! But it doesn't make the changes in the West unimportant or uninteresting.

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#204

Post by johnwalkr »

eastbound wrote: post #88
johnwalkr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated. Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically. This leads to less disposable income obviously. I’m 40 and grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed expensive at the tim…

I’ll take the devil’s position: Your are not owed by nature a footprint on the ground, or a weekend camping. Manille (Manila? Capital of Philippines) has 43079 inhabitants per square kilometer (23sqm per person, including agriculture), China tries to do the same. The key is nature doesn’t owe you democracy, and governments neither. We can store many people vertically if we remove their personality. What I mean is pov…

I don't know why I'm replying to someone who thinks governments don't owe us democracy but people are allowed to complain when things get worse and I would prefer if previous policy didn't disallow increasing density in Canada. Incidentally I live in Tokyo now and it's now cheaper than Vancouver and the density (which is actually not as high as people think[1]) is a positive, not a negative.

[1] Just for fun, I checked densities. Tokyo 23 wards (the actual city of Tokyo): 14,500/km^2. Downtown Vancouver: 17,000/km^2. Downtown Edmonton: 5,000/km^2

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#205

Post by monkeydreams »

Ekaros wrote: post #15

So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system survived previously with mostly same things in place there is really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in such case should be some disruptive innovation. In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much mo…

> So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan.

So often people forget the last 'W' question - Who, What, When, Where, Why and Why Now?!

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#206

Post by rurban »

gjm11 wrote: post #198
rurban wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close. This was the downfall in popular belief. The real cause was of course the victory of Christianism over Rationalism, which caused hundreds of years of dark ages.

Do you think the Roman empire was notably rational, and that if Constantine hadn't converted to Christianity it would have been more rational than it was under Christianity? That seems highly not obvious to me, and I would be interested in any evidence you have.

That's what we learned in our history lessons. The roman empire was not build upon military, technological or social achievements, but on a strong organizational and legal structural framework, the res publica. A rational framework.

Which was based on philosophical and political advantages (still a monarchic slave economy), but mostly it was a stable and written groundwork. Different to the US legal system btw, which bends fore-, backwards and even more backwards all the time, depending on your social and economical status.

The allowance and then even the adoption of Christianity allowed the Christians to refuse to pay the Fiscus Judaicus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan Before, their refusal with their continuous insurgencies led to drastic persecutions, and now this principal to honor the res publica was just abolished, the roman state gave up on the martyrs. Monotheism led to sanctioning of completely irrational stories as told in the bible and various other lunatics, in contrast to the more rational polytheist societies.

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#207

Post by nraford »

geranim0 wrote: post #184
marcosdumay wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complex systems fail due to single causes exactly that way. First the system runs well; once the cause is introduced the system adapts so that the visible cost is minimal, but the adaptations are costly by themselves, and demand further adaptations; then the adaptation cycle runs for a while (that can be very long), until everything finally breaks down. It is very unlikely that the lead pipes that were there since th…

Curious if you have any reading suggestion on how complex systems fail?

The two iconic texts are:

- "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...)

- "Normal Accidents" by Chuck Perrow (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Tec...)

Tainter deals directly with the Roman Empire, but the nutshell is the cost of complexity begins to outweigh its returns, requiring more and more resources just to maintain the status quo, until the entire thing becomes weak and susceptible to failures large and small.

- "Panarchy: Understanding Human and Natural Systems" (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Panarchy-Understanding-Transformation...) is also a fantastic book drawing from ecosystem science and proposes a general model for this. It's pretty well accepted in ecological circles but has been criticised for a lack of empirical data. The general model is the same as Tainter's though.

- "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner is also a classic! (https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...)

Well worth reading all of the above.

Re: Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the Roman Empire

#208

Post by gjm11 »

rurban wrote: post #206
gjm11 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the Roman empire was notably rational, and that if Constantine hadn't converted to Christianity it would have been more rational than it was under Christianity? That seems highly not obvious to me, and I would be interested in any evidence you have.

That's what we learned in our history lessons. The roman empire was not build upon military, technological or social achievements, but on a strong organizational and legal structural framework, the res publica. A rational framework. Which was based on philosophical and political advantages (still a monarchic slave economy), but mostly it was a stable and written groundwork. Different to the US legal system btw, which…

I wonder whether we are using the terms "rational" and "rationalism" in different ways.

To me, "rationalism" means one of two things. When talking about the history of philosophy, it's the opposite of "empiricism", the idea that we can know important things by means of pure reason without observation of the world around us. When not talking about the history of philosophy, it means something like "trying to believe things to whatever extent there are evidence and reasoned arguments supporting them, and no further" (notable subtype 1: "rationalist" used to be a common term for a particular sort of atheist; notable subtype 2: "rationalist" these days often means "person who hangs out on the Less Wrong website").

But you're talking about "a strong organizational and legal structural framework", which is the sort of thing that might be designed rationally or that highly rational people might turn out to like, but having one versus not having one doesn't seem like the sort of thing I would want to call "rational" or "rationalism", and it doesn't seem particularly opposed to Christianity as such.

When the Roman empire embraced Christianity it didn't abandon the idea of the "res publica", or stop having an elaborate code of law. The only specific thing you point to is that it stopped imposing extra taxes on Christians and murdering them when they wouldn't pay, which seems to me a good thing however wrong Christians are (I agree that they are very wrong), and not obviously "irrational" in any sense I recognize.

I do not see how the stories in the Bible are any more irrational than the stories told in the Roman polytheist traditions about their gods. Could you explain?

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