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

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 attention through alarmism). Whatever the case, I've found it to be a good policy to ignore doom scenarios; and

2. There's a concept I like that I've heard described as "betting with the Mayans". The Mayan calendar "predicted" the end of the world in 2012. There are two approaches you can take with this: you can bet they're right or bet they're wrong. But simple game theory tells you that you should bet that they're wrong. Why? Because if they're right. It doesn't matter. The only thing you "win" is a brief sense of smug superiority as you suffer the same fate as everyone else. So why bother betting on that outcome?

So let's take this lens to a polarizing issue like climate change. I personally hold all of the following to be true:

1. Man has clearly had an impact on climate, as in a relatively rapid rise in global temperatures, due to CO2 emissions;

2. It's not clear to me that this is entirely man-made (eg higher Solar output). Of course, this may not even matter one way or the other as we still have to deal with the results;

3. Abrupt climate change isn't as rare as people make out. It's happened a ton of times in the last 100,000 years. They're called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles [1]. This isn't some crackpot fringe publication. This is Nature.

4. At different points in the Earth's history it has been both substantially hotter and colder than it is now;

5. It's likely that climate change is a major contributing factor to what is essentially a mass extinction event that we're undergoing now (most of the rest being human activity and ecosystem destruction).

6. Altruism won't solve carbon emissions. Economics will. Humans are unwilling and incapable of making long term sacrifices for the planet that inconveniences them in any way.

7. I know some reading the above will have an immediate reaction to label me a "denier". That attitude really has no place in scientific discourse.

So I just don't believe we'll have runaway heating as some argue. Why? Because the Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and despite higher temperatures that hasn't happened. I don't think we can definitively describe all the self-correcting processes that have kept Earth within a habitable band for literally billions of years.

But even if I'm wrong, we're screwed anyway because global population won't change and deviate from the current course.

So yeah, worrying about a global collapse in 20 years? That's a hard pass.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-cli...

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 meteor to the dinosaurs, and maybe they would’ve been fools for not listening, but there was also very little any of them could have done to change the outcome.

Pick your favorite civilization collapse story. What would you have done, at that time, to change it?

One could argue “at least I would’ve seen it coming.” That’s true; be informed. But I object to the idea that everyone is generally foolish for not taking these concerns seriously. The concerns are mistaken far more than they’re correct.

She pointed out that the central idea of Armageddon, Judgement Day or the end of everything is largely common to most societies. If you look at the core of the philosophical concept and strip away any religious parts, it doesn't normally imply the end of all humans. But for you as an individual, the distinction is moot if your village is burned down and everyone killed or sold into slavery.

I think this concept represents a fundamental fear which most humans go to great length to reduce the risk of. Lots of potential doomsday scenarios can be viewed with this lens. It doesn't mean that the risk being discussed is non-existent, but mitigating measures will most likely reduce the risk and impact dramatically.

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 followed Rome was a period of unrest and lessened commerce. From that aspect at least it was “worse”.