MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. We're on Schedule | Hacker News Reader

MIT Predicted in 1972 That Society Will Collapse This Century. We're on Schedule

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35 pointselsewhen19 comments

Back in 2014-2015ish, a few different articles were published about how everything was going to unwind around the 2019-2021 time frame. Social unrest, economic problems, etc were all predicted and it would take about 8-10 years to climb back out. There was a particular article that was incredibly fascinating, a researcher who studied the hunting habits of predators (ex:wolves) was able to use the same metrics and apply them to humans/society and also predicted societal unrest/collapse. I've never been able to find the articles again, it disappeared from the Internet. Nothing lasts for ever, there is always calamity at some point whether it's natural or man made. I figure without a world war, climate change will probably be the catalyst. On that note, I remember a ship that landed in BC, Canada with 300 Sri Lankans about a decade ago, it caused an uproar across Canada. People were so pissed off that they wanted to send them back and were even saying the Canadian Coast Guard should have sunk the ship at sea. Can you imagine what happens when climate change sends 100's of ships a day with 10's of thousands of people everyday. I suspect the southern US boarder will be overwhelmed with millions of refugees also. It all feels like the beginning of the end,interesting times....

Bummer you couldn't dig that up, sounds interesting.

Another theory that has been circulating around is "The Fourth Turning" based on a book authors writings. You can find various Youtube videos on this. [1] This describes 80 year cycles that break down into 4 phases / generations. I don't have an opinion on it.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9FT1ObIYLc

Hmm I think I've heard that mentioned before. Here's a primary source describing the idea:

https://app.hedgeye.com/insights/87922-the-fourth-turning-wh...

I remember these articles, but sadly didn’t save them either. I believe the author was Peter Turchin, who studies “structural dynamic cycles” and advanced a theoretical framework called “cliodynamics”. He certainly seems to be onto something…[1]

[1] https://time.com/5852397/turchin-2020-prediction/

It's not the first time someone predicted the end of the world. I'm old enough to have been through enough of these that I've got apocalypse fatigue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...

We hit peak coal in 2013. We peaked in the discovery of oil in the 1960s, and probably hit oil production a few years ago, and nobody noticed.

Capitalism has its awful downsides, but it sure does provide incentives to work around supply constraints.

Past performance is not indicative of the future. I see no reason to think that we'll be able to get out of the upcoming collapse of the Amazon, Western California, and a host of other places due to global warming.

Civilizational collapse was a common feature of the past.

Humans are incredible when they set their minds to something. But it remains to be seen how we can balance out all the remaining CO2 and emissions, or somehow suck it out from the atmosphere without harm. The problem has to be identified, acknowledged, analysed and the correct approaches taken. It's a tall order, but we also need to find new energy sources, clean the environment and stop destroying the wilderness that is left.

First and foremost, we need to start listening to the knowledgable scientists and naturalists.

Most farming in the US is actively destructive to topsoil. We could turn it around, but it would hurt the bottom line of Monsanto, et al.

See Gabe Brown's videos about regenerating topsoil.

>Past performance is not indicative of the future.

So you will consider it even ods for the sun to rise tomorrow?

Past performance is no guarantee, but ignore the pretty big hit at your own peril.

I can't believe I'm taking the time to write this, but that's not a valid analogy. The predictions of civilization collapse by all manner of people and orgs using vastly differing methods, skills, and assumptions at varying times is on a different level of complexity than a well-understood celestial cycle used to keep time for millennia.

In short: past performance predicts future performance if the thing that's performing is predictable.

I assure you everybody noticed peak conventional oil though (peak production in north sea was 2005 i think?). According to WEO the conventional/crude oil production peaked in the west in 2007 (between 2005 and 2010). This could've caused a production slump and might have affected other markets in the US. A bubble burst rarely happen in a nutshell.

Oil-dependent countries like Italy and Spain realized their "euro crisis" was a production crisis (and certainly not a liquidity crisis), caused by a lack of energy availability (Lybia war did not help with oil import tbh, and algeria/Syria peaked around 2010). There is a reason why they are changing their energy mix, its not only because "green" is better.

US production peaked in 2019 [0].

Central & South America peaked in 2015 [1].

There is no bubble peak before that (except for individual countries like Venezuela).

[0] - https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

[1] - https://www.eia.gov/international/data/country/VEN/petroleum...

World War 2 must have felt like the end of the world, and for millions of individuals, it was.

But the world continued, civilization did not collapse.

I don't buy these predictions, but WWII isn't a good argument. War also unites societies sometimes. So maybe WW3 will save us from the next collapse.

When the height of lockdown and the gas shortage in the US showed more people hoarding and scalping goods than trying to self-regulate and ration, I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like if people had to wartime ration in today's culture. There is a narcissistic streak in the Baby Boomers (they were called the Me Generation previously).

Link to paper: https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/y...

This work is based on one person's Master's thesis in Sustainability. I lack the tools to determine if her work actually does vindicate the original study or not. It's frightening if so, but I'd also like to hear other experts weigh in before I start prepping for the end times.

The last century was by far the best century in the whole of humanity history. Specifically switch of China from centrally planned economy to "socialism with Chinese characteristics" [0] was the biggest miracle ever. Especially after the absolute disaster of the Great Leap Forward that caused the Great Chinese Famine and other failures of centrally planned economies like Holodomor.

The default for humanity is ever-present death due to diseases, hunger and thirst.

In 1820 6 out of 10 kids would die before they would get to be 5 years old.

Imagine having 6 kids just for 4 of them to be dead before they got to be 5 years old.

Today poverty is the lowest it has ever been, basic education and literacy is the highest it has ever been [1].

If this is how the collapse will look like then I'm all for it.

I also recommend "Don't Panic" by Hans Rosling [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_with_Chinese_charact...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/01/Two-centuries-Wor...

[2] https://vimeo.com/79878808

Well I predict we'll collapse in the next few billions of years

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