Is Societal Collapse Inevitable? | Hacker News Reader

Is Societal Collapse Inevitable?

theguardian.com

14 pointspseudolus6 comments

From what I remember of anthropology, population increases to the carrying capacity of the environment, then it crashes to about 10 percent of its peak.

BUT, human civilization is unique in the history of the earth. We just can't predict what will happen.

My own take is that if collapse becomes unmistakably close, some humans will aggresively reduce the population of other humans.

Pretty good points on a topic of vital importance today. More points and data at;

Societal Collapse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse

Review of "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter mentioned in the article - https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-06-07/the-collapse-o...

Why societies grow more fragile and vulnerable to collapse as time passes - https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240424-do-societies-civ...

Why Complex Systems Collapse Faster - https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/why-comp...

How Complex Systems Fail by Richard Cook. This is a good one and lists 18 points to think about - https://how.complexsystems.fail/

Finally, Nassim Taleb's writings on Black Swan events, Power Laws/Fat Tails, Mediocristan vs. Extremistan and Robustness vs. Anti-Fragile are also relevant here. Here is a good overview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8

I think you'd enjoy this. https://nickbostrom.com/papers/vulnerable.pdf

"Abstract: Scientific and technological progress might change people’s capabilities or incentives in ways that would destabilize civilization. For example, advances in DIY biohacking tools might make it easy for anybody with basic training in biology to kill millions; novel military technologies could trigger arms races in which whoever strikes first has a decisive advantage; or some economically advantageous process may be invented that produces disastrous...."

Thanks; that is a good paper. I had heard of the author from his Superintelligence book but never really read any of his works. I had come to my own conclusions that Science/Technology, the Complexity they entail and the uses they will be put to will ultimately be our undoing. This paper on their stark misuse (IMO it is a question of "when" and not "if") is indeed a timely reminder.

His other work "information hazards" is brilliant. Definitely a must-read if you are someone interested in talking about topics like the OSS/CIA + communications technology with people who have more lived trauma or exist in sensitive public spaces.

My PoV is that we have lived in that very system for 30-40 years. I blame a poor interpretation of "limits to growth" for most of the worlds problem (no fault of the other of course). https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

insane link but i don't want to wrap it in a shortener. Check Don's website for more content.

If you really want to hop into some scary stuff check this out: https://www.nano.gov/timeline and https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/series/aiei/new-war-te...

On the less spooky more preventative side of things def watch some videos from stafford beer on cybernetics and see if any of his written works interest you.

It certainly looks that way.

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