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Comment by ivraatiems | Hacker News Reader

This is a Very Online taxonomy; I don't think it incorporates the vast majority of normal, not particularly Online people who are aware of these problems but aren't spending most of their energy on them. The vast majority of people are fundamentally outside of this taxonomy because even if they are thinking about ideas related to "collapse", it's as a problem someone else is going to solve for them. The biggest challenge in climate change (for example) is that it's simply happening on too long a timescale for the average person to pay much attention to it. That will change in the coming decades, but by the time it does, it'll probably be too late to avoid the biggest harms.

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I've always found Collapse believers to be composed of mostly people from highly developed Western nations. From what I've read online, many of these folks cannot visualize a world where their society/nation may backslide in a couple aspects (e.g. government corruption or infrastructure standards), but still continue to function mostly normally. Most of these folks have never seen rampant political corruption, low hygiene standards, political instability, broken/lacking infrastructure, or general unsafety that often comes up in developing nations. The West _is_ going through a lot of change/political soul searching right now, so it's understandable, but I highly suggest visiting developing nations to see how everyday people live, succeed, and thrive despite many problems around them.

Even the historic concept of "collapse" is ill-defined. It's widely accepted today that the Western Roman Empire (probably the most written-about "collapse" event) didn't really collapse at once as much as it slowly changed from within and without. Is this "linear collapse"? I mean maybe, but it may just be the process of change itself.

well, they are already living it, westeners have the privilege to believe it's not something that is happening but something that will happen in the future and take distance from it framing it as a collapse after peak prosperity. Third world never had peak prosperity or at least it didn't look particularly different from their past. But they are gonna starve and migrate too even if they don't call it collapse.

I think you’re discussing a very different thing to the parent and grandparent comments. Yes, by the standard that counts the end of the Roman Empire as a collapse, any given nation or union of nations may still collapse and those within may starve or migrate; this still won’t look like any of the post-apocalyptic narratives that represent the loudest and most obvious examples of this topic.

I expect that, much like every other community, the loudest “collapsers” are merely an embarrassing minority, and certainly I hear that the people who stockpile food and maintain a strong relationship with their neighbours roll their eyes at those who stockpile ammunition and do nothing else.

The city of Rome went from 1 million people to 20-30 thousand. Literally 97-98 % shrinkage.

If the same happened to New York, with the subway abandoned, whole neighbourhoods overgrown by poison ivy and the skyscrapers collapsing from lack of maintenance, "post-apocalyptic" would probably be a fitting word.

I am not sure how you can call such a massive loss of complexity and population something else than a collapse.

My understanding is the population estimate for 300 AD was ~1 million, declining to ~800k in 400 AD, ~500k in 450 AD and down to ~100k in 500 AD.

It’s the timescale that makes it. I’m thinking Methyr Tydfel in the UK as a point of reference for similar fractional change in the first roughly century of decline, but peaking in the Industrial Age.

If this happened in NYC, I’d expect (say) Queens to turn to rubble while (say) Manhattan is getting freshly built skyscrapers. Plucky adventurers with assault rifles and bows looting tinned food from a suddenly abandoned Whole Foods is more of what I expect during hurricanes than as a standard result everywhere all at one.

I think the bottom was reached around 800 AD with 20-50k people in entire Rome. Admittedly, it is not easy to estimate population development in a city like Rome that has been built several times over and people still live above the ruins. It must nevertheless been quite obvious to the early medieval inhabitants of Rome that the city used to be far bigger, far more populous and far richer.

> Third world never had peak prosperity or at least it didn't look particularly different from their past

If that's what you legitimately think of the developing world, then no wonder you believe in collapse so strongly (almost like the inverse of the "noble savage"; a fear of letting go of the "Western enlightenment" even if it comes from critics of modern Western regimes). Please, go outside and experience the world. Life has fundamentally changed for most of humanity, except for the occasional isolated remote community, over the last 50 years. I urge you to define what "peak prosperity" is and how developing nations lack it before we discuss what "collapse" is and the loss of "peak prosperity".

I have lots of family in developing nations and their lives have absolutely, fundamentally changed. It's borderline insulting to imply that developing nations still live like they did in the past.

My mother grew up in southern Europe in conditions that were bordering middle-age conditions and now life there is completely different.

Prosperity is always relative to the system you're immersed in and in a globalist world, your prosperity is defined by the prosperity of how people on the other side of the world live. Americans can believe they have the best living conditions in the world and same can do northern Europeans and maybe Japanese too. Let's throw in urbanized chinese middle class too. But in developing countries they don't have the privilege to believe they are in that competition. They are always a province of the empire and living in scarcity.

This says nothing about the enormous changes that went on pretty much everywhere in the rural parts of every country with very few, isolated exceptions.

I think the only real instance of a widespread collapse of civilization was the Late Bronze Age collapse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

This entailed most urban centers in the Eastern mediterranean (besides Egypt and Mesopotamia) being violently destroyed, and writing completely disappearing in large regions. And all this happening over the course of maybe 50-100 years.

Arguments can be made for the declining Western Roman Empire, and collapse of some of the Chinese dynastic states. But as you point out, one can rather easily counter argue that this wasn't collapse of civilization but rather the collapse of a specific hegemonic state and its replacement by several smaller competing powers. Civilization still remained: urban center and writing didn't disappear. These were collapses of states not of civilization.

What about the sudden abandonment of cities in Mesoamerica at different periods?

That states fell is not disputed. States and civilizations fell all the time in the Ancient world. This is distinct from the narrative that humanity as a whole would collapse simultaneously. As the parent comment says, the Late Bronze Age collapse is the closest we have to a simultaneous civilization ending event as we know in modern history, and it is very much under active research.

Detroit? It’s still here; just a bit dusty.

Agreed. I didn't talk about the Late Bronze Age collapse because it's still very much an ongoing topic of research, but I definitely agree. You can also draw similar parallels to the transition between the Heian court period in Japan to the Sengoku Warring States eras as well, as far as the collapse/change dichotomy is concerned.

Decline of the Western Roman Empire was, in fact, at least regional collapse of civilization. Cities almost disappeared or at least shrunk considerably, including Rome, which peaked at 1 million people under Augustus, but had only 20-30 thousand people in the Early Middle Ages; other cities of the WRE fared even worse.

Literate secular class, including Roman state bureaucracy, disappeared as well, and with it large scale planning, monetary economy, large construction projects or most of long distance trade. Only the Church still maintained reading and writing, but that was a very small group of people.

All of this may not fulfill your definition of collapse of civilization, but I believe that a Roman citizen of 2nd century AD, suddenly transported to the 8th century, would be aghast seeing what became of his former home. Even cattle shrunk to half its former size and crop yields diminished, as agricultural best practices were forgotten.

> Even the historic concept of "collapse" is ill-defined. It's widely accepted today that the Western Roman Empire (probably the most written-about "collapse" event) didn't really collapse at once as much as it slowly changed from within and without. Is this "linear collapse"? I mean maybe, but it may just be the process of change itself.

I love to point out how the symbolism of many modern governments is the result of a sort of cargo cult of Roman Republican culture. Government buildings to this day copy the dull gray ruins of Roman buildings, just as many 18th/19th century governments declared popular authority from a Latin-imitating "Senate", filled to the brim with Roman symbolism.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that many today believe the 18th/19th century's "fall of Rome" and "barbarian invasion" myths as a sort of predictive weak-spot of modernity. If you view civilization as a linear path, a story of how the intrinsically superior empires of the Greek/Macedonians and Romans successively lifted the world out of its natural, primitive barbarian state, and the shifting power centers of the 3rd-8th century as a "turning back of time to the Dark Ages" or linear regression along the same path, then the "collapse" narrative is as plain as day. This view on history is pure fantasy, of course, which is why the collapse narratives set in modern days seem so fantastic as well.

This may be true if you restrict yourself to English-speaking communities, but there's no shortage of survivalist talk in other countries. E.g. Russia has plenty.

I think that you're lumping together two kinds of collapse "believers" together - one for which "collapse" means the collapse of civilization, and the other for which that word means the collapse of their country/state. The latter is much more likely, and I think that fretters of that kind are more prevalent than you think - I probably have six friends who are of the latter kind, and only one of the former.

> The West _is_ going through a lot of change/political soul searching right now

I believe that you're understating the situation a bit - at least, here in the United States, we're beginning to see markers of the kind of "cultural revolution" that happened in Russia in the 1910's and China in the 1960's - and while neither of those states have collapsed, exactly, tens of millions of innocent people were killed and rather unpleasant governments installed as a result.

While categorically different from total civilization collapse, I don't blame my fellow Americans for starting to get nervous and start prepping like a high-school senior.

Yes. This is a "Very Online taxonomy".

While I think it's useful to think about mechanisms of collapse, the author seems to have a clear bias towards the belief that collapse will happen which feels very non-objective.

In my experience, the vast majority of people I interact with (maybe 90%+) fall into the author's categorization of "radical denier" or "partial denier".

I don't think there's anything "radical" about the belief that while things will change, society will go on. But calling the belief radical and suggesting that this is a belief only shared by Very Evil People (e.g. Koch Brothers) is a disingenuous straw man.

For the record, if I had to put myself into this unscientific taxonomy, I might be somewhere between a technological and economic optimist.

I suppose it's largely a problem of naming. "Denier" has negative connotations, but it's also the most obvious name to use. What would be a better, non-pejorative name? Life-will-go-on-ists?

The article later refers to an ideology of "eco-fascism" which is even more problematic. That seems like a name that detractors would apply to a group, not a label that someone would self-apply. I don't know what a neutral name would be, though.

It's a taxonomy of political discourse regarding collapse. It's not surprising that it has little to say about people who have no political investment in ideas related to collapse.

> The biggest challenge in climate change (for example) is that it's simply happening on too long a timescale for the average person to pay much attention to it.

I disagree. This may be a problem, but I think the bigger problem is one that was described in a post on HN a few weeks back. Namely, that most of the folks advocating for action and sacrifice on climate change are themselves unwilling to lead by example, e.g. stop using air travel, give up or very sharply reduce automobile usage, etc.

This leads a lot of people to either 1) Write the whole thing off as some BS cooked up by elites or; 2) conclude that no one, including those who claim to care most about the issue is actually going to do anything about the problem.

You can't have Congressmen and Senators calling climate change an "existential threat" while they're hopping on a commercial airliner every week to fly back home from DC. While these folks may be correct in their assessment of climate change, their own behavior completely destroys any credibility they may have had on the issue.

I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-believers will start believing. There's just no evidence that's an effective way to have societal impact. Not an exact parallel but just because people talk about wanting higher overall taxes and at the same time don't want to pay more than what is required doesn't mean they are hypocritical and it doesn't mean that if they did pay more others would follow.

> I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-believers will start believing.

Maybe it would convince folks, maybe it wouldn't, but you'd have a chance. By contrast, any effort that involves "Do as I say, not as I do", is pretty much guaranteed to fail, and rightfully so. Trying to force others to do something that you yourself are unwilling to do voluntarily is the exact opposite of leadership.

> I don't buy into the argument that if those people limited their travel and consumption then all of the sudden the non-believers will start believing.

"All of a sudden" was not claimed.

> There's just no evidence that's an effective way to have societal impact.

No evidence, or none that you are aware of? Also, evidence is not required for something to be true.

> and it doesn't mean that if they did pay more others would follow.

It could be achieved via legislation, which is to some degree influenced by public sentiment, which is to some degree influenced by the manner in which we discuss and conceptualize reality.

Anyone even vaguely familiar with the science understands that we need to cut emissions on a wide scale, and that air travel by a few hundred politicians is a meaninglessly small fraction of the actual problem. This is essentially a bad faith attack on the few people in congress trying to do something about climate change. Where is your ire for the dozens of Republican congressmen who don't believe climate change is real or believe the Christian end times will happen first? Please, be serious and don't engage in contrarian purity tests that only serve to set back our attempts at mitigation.

How about your and mine air travel? Meaninglessly small fraction of the actual problem?

Indeed, commercial aviation is only something like 3% of overall carbon dioxide emissions globally. If you want to make a personal difference you would be an order of magnitude more effective if you stop commuting in a non-electric car or gave up consuming meat when dining in restaurants. Expecting individual action to fix this (or worse, blaming individual actions for it) isn't going to work though. Individual consumption is not the majority source of emissions, and it's a bit of a classic prisoners dilemma problem anyway, and we know how much Americans trust each other these days.

Are you taking the human/mass psychology apect (which underlies human actions) of the problem into consideration?

> Anyone even vaguely familiar with the science understands that we need to cut emissions on a wide scale, and that air travel by a few hundred politicians is a meaninglessly small fraction of the actual problem. This is essentially a bad faith attack on the few people in congress trying to do something about climate change.

The post you replied to isn't talking about the science, but rather the politics. Humans tend to respond badly to authority figures saying but not doing, and this is a real problem that we need to fix (by electing/creating better leaders) in order to meet the requirements of the moment.

So yeah, the total Congress emissions are tiny scientifically, but they're rather large politically.

Also, someone I once read highlighted that political polarisation increased when Reps could fly back home every weekend. Maybe one should require that Senators maintain their primary residence in D.C.?

> Where is your ire for the dozens of Republican congressmen who don't believe climate change is real or believe the Christian end times will happen first?

Oh, it's there, believe me. Just wasn't part of that particular post.

Many would say our political economy is built on insatiable consumption, and is therefore incapable of cutting emissions to such a scale to materially impact climate change. It makes no sense to blame 'Republicans' and/or 'Christians' for not trusting every proposed solution to these massively complex problems.

It's not that they "don't trust every proposed solution". It's that they do not believe the problem is real, and therefore do not trust any solution.

It could be that when someone doesn't trust your solution, you call them out for not believing in the problem. Logical fallacy.

Or it could be that they say "climate change isn't real" in exactly those words.

Another problem is when so many people take a politician's words at face value. It simply doesn't work like that.

First, this isn't limited to politicians. Second, calling it a logical fallacy to believe what others say about themselves is utterly ridiculous and doesn't move goal posts so much as it pretends there are invisible goal posts swooping around the field at will and only you can know if the ball goes in.

Actually it is a logical fallacy to interpret one's rejection of a proposed solution to be a rejection of the problem. I'm not arguing any specific case for it, but it does seem to be quite common and problematic in civil discourse.

And the "another problem" is to misunderstand the way that money influences PR statements from powerful entities (politicians or otherwise). This part isn't illogical but just ignorant/mis-educated about wealth and power.

"Do as I say, not as I do" is terrible politics. Politics is about leading other humans, in this case leading them to make less comfortable choices.

I don't know about you, but most of the things in the article shape my real world: XR blocks my street, Exxon pollutes my air, cyberpunk shapes the aesthetic of art around me, corporate advertisements determine what is consumed by people I meet with. How is it online? And even if it were online, why do you treat as less real? Now most of the societal interactions happen online

Do you have sources supporting your statements? They may sound common sense to you, but there is considerable ongoing scientific inquiry into people’s attitudes today, their sense of responsibility, and their sense of agency. Maybe you’re right, but I would go to the effort of reviewing the research and giving links before making assertions.

This is a casual discussion website, comments often relate personal opinions.

True, but is the distinction between fact and opinion plausibly important, even if the conversation is casual?

Honestly, if the position of the original author is that this is representative of everybody, not just Internet People, I think it'd be on them to justify that view. They don't quite make that claim, though, and so I am not trying to formally refute it - I am just making what seems to be a logical note given the content as it stands.

Yeaahhh, as interesting (and mildly funny) as it is, this a very online taxonomy.

Don't really care much for it.

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