How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse | Hacker News Reader

How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse

xs4all.nl

28 pointsaarontait23 comments

One of Tainter's more interesting arguments is that collapse, when it occurs, is a sensible, reasonable response to negative returns on societal complexity. He notes, somewhat famously, that the average nutrition and health of Romans actually improved after the collapse of the Roman empire, presumably because the wealth they generated was no longer being siphoned off to maintain the empire's overhead.

I'm not sure if I buy this theory, since the collapse of the Roman empire was presaged by the collapse of the taxation system by several generations, especially in Hispania. Regardless, the nutrition and health of Rome in particular was ravaged by the Justinian invasion of Italy and the subsequent Lombard war, which reset the agricultural production of Italy to a significantly lower level for the next 800 years or so until the 1400s and the rise of the Italian city-states.

Well, they call it the dark ages for a reason...

Statistics might show improvement because wealth is redistributed, but the total wealth is also a lot less, which isn't always a good thing.

It's an example where greater welfare may be derived from less overall wealth, if a) the marginal benefit of more wealth per member diminishes with each additional unit, generally, and b) the distribution between members improves, such that more members are in the steep part of the slope.

Proponents of capitalism usually point to (a) not always being true. That is, at some point, and under the right social conditions, the marginal benefit per unit picks up again, when instances of per-member wealth is great enough to finance capital-intensive production.

He makes a solid argument which really comes down to the problem facing any component of an ecology... either keep expanding until you can't... and then die back "involuntarily" (pretty much the universal pattern) or get your act together and make a better plan!

And that's an option only available to "rational" components of an ecology...

So he's really making just a rational argument for the need to either recognize limits or expand the frontier.

Regarding his thoughts on the role of complexity and a society's need to simplify... there's some truth in it but to achieve that solution without the chaos of collapse may actually require an "increase in complexity.

"[The author] is active in the contemporary nature spirituality movement"

While the concept seems interesting, this line made me seriously doubt the credibility of the author. I will wait for a few more comments before attempting to read again.

Isaac Newton was an alchemist.

Any more examples?

It's easy to discount that when we have the benefit of 400 years of his work being verifiably true. Without that, the fact that he was an alchemist WOULD put a dent in his credibility, and you would be RIGHT in doubting the quality of his work. That doesn't mean you're excused from checking if it's correct, but having doubts about it's quality is perfectly reasonable.

Having beliefs that are out there doesn't prove that you're a crackpot, but it does slide the probability in that direction.

That said, a quick skim of the article doesn't reveal any glaring errors - it seems to be a good analysis.

Yes, Isaac Newton was an alchemist... in the mid-17th century. He died decades before Antoine Lavoisier founded "modern chemistry".

If Isaac Newton was an alchemist today, I think we would not spend much time listening to him.

Alchemy was a mix of practice and mystery back then. It's not the same as a modern alchemist, who is left only with the mystery, because modern chemistry claimed all the practice centuries ago.

(Correction: Late 17th through early 18th. He died in 1727, Lavoisier was born 1743.)

There's no "woo" in this article, if that's what you're getting at.

I had the same sceptism, but found the article to be a good and a sound read without any hocus pokus. His theory is also interesting and worth a read.

i don't see the contradiction between spirituality and science. spirituality is very different than organized faith. to think that humans can be 100% rational beings simply ignores potential bias.

(if you meant that nature spirituality conflicts with the articles thesis then eit.)

Isn't that the definition of ad hominem abusive?

I don't think anyone got what I meant (which means I should express myself more clearly). If a person who deifies nature is putting forward a theory on how our 'mistreating nature' may lead to the collapse of our civilisation, then I get suspicious, merely because 'he would say that, wouldn't he?'.

Ah, in that case, it's not a fallacious argument. I would suggest reading it; while I've only gone through parts of it thus far, it's proving to be quite riveting. Also, he's not the only one who argues that the collapse of civilizations is a function of ecological sustainability practices. Jared Diamond immediately comes to mind (and he's much easier to digest because he doesn't have a theoretical ulterior motive.)

I'm surprised that the author doesn't mention Diamond even once, given the extensive bibliography at the end and that Collapse was published before he wrote this paper.

Cliff Notes version:

-Tainter's model of collapse - that of society reducing itself in complexity when it reaches some level that is too complex to sustain - is flawed. Evidence given in the form of several civilizations for which the decay took place over centuries rather than decades as the argument would suggest.

-The critical aspects of a civilization are modelled by Resources (R), Capital (C), Waste (W). These are simplifications because there are many forms of each category. All of these are combined for the sake of simplicity of the model. Additionally, there is a process of production that generates capital from resources and other capital that produces waste as a byproduct. Waste is also generated over time and is some function of the Capital. The sum of all waste generated by the civilization is called Maintenance (M). Additionally, resources are consumed but regenerate at some rate dR

-A civilization is in equilibrium when its production of capital matches its maintenance cost. When its production exceeds maintenance, it is in a state of expansion. Some examples are provided.

-At some point the production of capital may fall below its maintenance costs. There are two cases:

Case 1: Consumption of resources is below the rate of regeneration, dR. Capital is lost, but production can be maintained because of the availability of resources - the civilization stabilizes around some lower level of capital.

Case 2: Consumption of resources exceeds the rate of regeneration. Capital falls - and as capital falls, production falls as well. This case is different from 1 in that resources are not available to support production in the absence of capital. (Though the article uses dR, perhaps this is also an issue of R reaching 0). As a result, with the loss of capital, both M and production decrease, so that stability is not reached. This is catabolic collapse.

-The article gives examples of civilizations that match these cases.

-The model is compared to the idea of succession, "the process by which an area not yet occupied by living things is colonized by a variety of biotic assemblages, called seres, each replacing a prior sere and then being replaced by a later, until the process concludes with a stable, self-perpetuating climax community"

Could there be the seed of a video game here?

A great read on exactly this issue is A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting. Noticed it is cited in the page linked but wanted to call it out specifically since I have read it and really enjoyed it as a history of human civilization from the perspective of resource availability and utilization.

Thanks for the recommend. I'll reciprocate with a rec of Arnold Toynbee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee), who wrote about the cyclical nature of civilizations and societies with a blend of perspectives from various fields, rather than the basic 'flow of history.'

Jared Diamond has some good stuff too. Check out 'Collapse'.

I swear it's Aubrey De Grey :) http://www.singularitysummit.com/bios/grey

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