People often worry that our civilization may be in decline, or even about to fall.
And there’s something to be said for not being complacent about this. Historically, every civilization eventually fails. Entropy always wins in the end. So it isn’t a matter of if but when. Whether it happens tomorrow or in 500 years, it’s reasonable to see it as inevitable.
But I’ve always found studying history to be a good way to reset my credence in how close ours might be. Reviewing what an actual decline and fall of a civilization looks like can let us take a step back from our own and look at it with a more balanced eye. So I’ve long enjoyed books on societies that fail, such as Jared Diamond’s Collapse, or Eric Cline’s book 1177 on the Bronze Age collapse. (Cline has a sequel out, After 177, which I’m going to have to pick up at some point.)
Along those lines, I recently came across Paul Cooper’s Fall of Civilizations podcast. Each episode looks at the fall of a particular society, which is preceded by a summary of that civilization’s history. So far I’ve listened to the episodes on the Bronze Age collapse, the Sumerians, Byzantium, and Carthage. And I’m currently working my way through the latest episodes on the Mongol empire.
Being somewhat well read in history, in some cases these episodes just remind me of things I had learned before, such as Carthage’s reliance on mercenaries probably being the deciding factor in its loss to Rome. Rome used citizen soldiers, so when in the Punic wars it came close to destruction, the soldiers making the decision whether to fight on were deciding about whether to fight for their homes. When the same point came for Carthage, the mercenaries made a financial decision and changed sides.
Carthage, and the broader Phoenician civilization it came from, seemed to have a lot going for it. Phoenicia developed and proliferated an early alphabet, which the Greeks adopted and enhanced, and Phoenician sailors explored far and wide. But in the end its lack of interest in its own fighting forces seemed to be its undoing.
But there are other things I either didn’t know, or had forgotten about, such as Sumer’s decline and fall being related to the increasing salinity of their soil. Sumer’s civilization, the earliest known, had started with the development of canals that channeled the waters from the Tigris and Euphrates to the surrounding land, enabling them to farm otherwise desert land.
But this innovation, which began their civilization, turned out to also be its undoing. The water from these rivers had silt, with a small amount of salt. Initially, and for a long time, it was too small an amount to be an issue. But as the centuries passed, in a dry land with little rainfall to wash it away, the salt slowly and inexorably poisoned the soil. In the final centuries, the Sumerians had to switch to alternate crops that were more salt resistant.
So this was a problem they were well aware of but couldn’t find a sustainable solution to. Ultimately, the carrying capacity of the land started to diminish. Famine became more frequent, and people began to move north into more fertile lands. These issues weakened the state to the point it could no longer defend itself. While their language became a sacred relic in later centuries, eventually their civilization disappeared from history, only to be rediscovered in modern times through their enigmatic ruins in the southern desert of Iraq.
But the one I really found interesting was Cooper’s discussion of the Bronze Age collapse, and its possible relation to the beginning of the Iron Age. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Copper was readily available, but tin was more rare, having to be imported to the eastern Mediterranean societies across tenuous supply lines from mines in Afghanistan.
This made bronze much more expensive, and so only rich societies tended to have metal weapons, societies such as Egypt, the Hittites, Mycenae Greece, and other notable Bronze Age civilizations. The surrounding cultures likely had to make do with wooden or stone weapons. Iron, which is much more readily available, couldn’t be smelted into steel alloys except at a much higher temperature than bronze, and so the technology to do it took time to develop.
These higher temperature furnaces started to be developed in the second millennium BCE, but only started to become widespread around 1300 BCE, making metal weapons much more widespread. This may have upset the balance of power, making the old empires vulnerable. Cooper notes that some historians think that this alone may have been enough to cause the Bronze Age collapse. Although the other environmental factors often cited, frequent earthquakes and droughts, certainly couldn’t have helped.
These stories may provide hints on what will eventually undo our own societies. Maybe it will come from what we’re doing to the environment. Or it could come from the development of new technologies that will upset the balance of power. It could be something as innocuous as reducing the cost of air transport, removing the advantages of societies with easy access to oceans.
There’s always a temptation to cite the issues that most concern us today, such as climate change, AI, or political parties we disagree with. But we only have to look back a few decades to see what people were sure would result in our demise to know how limited this exercise is. However it comes, the issues will appear much more obvious to the societies after our fall than it is for us.
What do you think? Is the end closer than I think? Or are there lessons we’re overlooking from historical collapses?
SelfAwarePatterns 
This is interesting, Mike. At least we can be sure no civilisation is dying yet. There’s change internally but not enough to end the civilisation.
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Thanks Mak. I think change can be a sign of health, at least the right kinds of change. One way a society becomes vulnerable is rigidity, sticking to old ways that no longer work.
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Statis is the death knell for society. It can’t adapt when faced with crisis or change. We just hope that the changes we are experiencing lead to a more resilient society.
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There’s a lot to be said for taking care of immediate and clearly foreseeable problems and letting the future take care of itself.
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Mike, you should have added a warning that the podcast is long form. I haven’t even tried to listen to one. My rule for podcasts is I must like the voice of the host.
The future is unpredictable and there’s just so much we can do to take care of it.
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Mak, they are pretty long form (the latest Mongol one especially), although the episodes are comparable in length to the longer Lex Fridman interviews. I also find it helps to listen at 1.5x, but that does take some getting used to.
I do like Cooper’s voice, although some of the voice actors he uses for historical quotes don’t always work for me.
On the future, agreed. All we can do is weight the probabilities, but it’s worth noting that can get us pretty far.
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I decided to dive in. The voice is ok so I can listen as I run or walk.
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Thanks for the tip on After 1177, I bought a copy.
I recall reading about California Indian tribes who moved around the Bay Area and parts west and South. They would set up a camp near the bay and harvest shellfish in abundance. The shells they left behind were so numerous that they formed hills which were excavated in modern times. The feeling was that when the locality was stripped of easily gathered food, they moved on, probably seasonally, and rotated between various camps, giving time for the localities bounties to recover from being decimated over and over.
Population pressures were always a problem as as the populations increased, they tended to have such a big impact on their localities that it took many years for the harvested species to recover. These pressures, combined with natural problems like floods and droughts impacted these civilizations mightily. Human perfidy, of course, exaggerated all of these more natural effects.
This is now woven into modern life in the form of capitalisms cure for what ails us economically: growth. Obviously growing without end and finite sources of resources are incompatible. The fact that we are “running out” of this and that and our waste products (microplastics) are accumulating so much that our strategy of “dilution is the solution to pollution” is no longer viable. We are commiting civilization level suicide.
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I’ll probably follow you on 1177, although not quite yet. And it’s still a bit pricey, so I don’t feel the need to buy until I’m ready.
I don’t think economic growth, in and of itself, isn’t bad. In fact, with a growing population, and other competing countries, it’s crucial. But it can’t be the only metric we use since, as you note, it doesn’t measure long term environmental costs.
We have to find a balance, a way that allows people’s livelihoods to continue, while minimizing the costs to our future. And the mix that worked 50 years ago won’t work today. It’s an ongoing adjustment and negotiation.
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I agree about the priciness, but I gave myself a Christmas present. :o)
Re “I don’t think economic growth, in and of itself, isn’t bad. In fact, with a growing population, and other competing countries, it’s crucial.”
Growing population requires a growing economy which results in a growing population . . . it is called positive feedback and no finite source of feedstocks will support such a system. It is an axiom of biological systems is that all organisms will expand to the extent of their food supply. But the controls aren’t all that good, e.g. the rabbit explosion in Australia, the people explosion in countries like China and India and all others, just at a smaller scale.
Japan is the only country I know of which is trying to find some kind of balance and most of their efforts are almost accidental.
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Hey, I’ve spent a lot more on a book just because I wanted to read it immediately, so I have no room to judge. And I’m not enjoying the other book I started, so maybe I’ll switch over to Cline’s sooner than I thought.
From what I’ve read, population growth in Europe is leveling off, and is expected to level off and begin contracting anywhere women achieve equal rights. Although it takes time to manifest. Traditional roles don’t change quickly.
But even with a stable population, there can still be growth from investment and technological development. Of course someday we will have wrung everything that can be accomplished through that, but that seems far off for now.
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What are the timescales of these historical collapses? I imagine they might be quite long compared with the fears prompted by our news cycles?
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Usually the societies become hollowed out over decades or centuries before some dramatic battle puts an end to it. Constantinople, for example, limped along after its sacking in 1204, but it was never the same. By the time the Turks overthrew it in 1453, it was a husk. Although its ancient walls protected it until cannon technology broke through.
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It is ambiguous, and I kept my question ambiguous to allow discussion at whatever level someone wants to discuss, country, region, global, etc.
Interestingly, a collapse like in the ancient cases looks unlikely, since most of the world is much more integrated. Jared Diamond notes that if Montana were an ancient civilization, it probably would have already collapsed, but its integration with the rest of the US keeps it viable. Although another example he used, Rwanda, demonstrates things can still go very bad.
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We are predicted to run out of oil and natural gas in a few decades. Coal will last a little longer. As that happens, world population will decline and cites will be abandoned. There will not be sufficient energy to sustain the large urban areas. That will start in the bit too distant future, and may have started already. Detroit is largely abandoned and many office buildings in New York and other large cities and standing mostly vacant.
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The last I heard we still had centuries of oil reserves left. (Something not understood in the 1970s when the Mad Max franchise began.)
But a geologist I used to know told me that there won’t be a day where we just run out. What will happen is that the reserves will become increasingly more difficult and expensive to get at. If so, it seems like that would cause energy prices to steadily rise, making alternate energy sources increasingly more economic.
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Where did you get that information? All my research shows only a few decades left at current levels of consumption.
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Honestly I can’t remember. It’s been several years. Just looking at this wikipedia article, it looks like there’s a lot of interpretation involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves
If you just look at the currently economically accessible reserves, it might look shorter. But as my friend noted long ago, “economically accessible” isn’t a black and white thing, but a constantly shifting condition. And new reserves are periodically discovered.
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We are already well into the transition to renewable energy. In the UK, where I live, we stopped burning coal for power this year, and fossil fuels makes up just a third of electricity production. In most countries, electricity production by solar and wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels. We have reached a tipping point.
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Good to hear. I suspect the transition will accelerate if oil reserves do start getting harder to extract, making it a more expensive energy source.
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Diamond’s GG&S was foundational. Collapse spent too much time on New Guinea for me (as I remember), I never finished it.
Globalization has done away with civilization’s collapse, I suspect. At least in the traditional sense. Only a planet-wide (or continent-wide) catastrophe could induce a movie-worthy collapse these days. I’d wager that until that happens humanity will seethe along, becoming more inequitable, yet generally lifting all standards of living.
But, what’s with all the UAPs lately? A nefarious corporation planning on decapitating 1st world militaries? Something Simon Whistler (YouTube) said about these drones that was interesting, the US Constitution prohibits the military from being used against US Citizens. So shooting down UAPs, over US territory, if risky, would never happen.
But, collapse? Bring it on! (My book, Blue Across the Sea, bet on it.)
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It’s been a long times since I read it too. I do recall the Papua New Guinea portion, although more in his other book, The World Until Yesterday. My main criticism for Collapse is he only seemed interested in ecological factors.
Globalization probably does seem to blunt the impact of collapses, but it seems like they still occur. One of Diamond’s examples is Rwanda. It didn’t enter a centuries long dark age, but that doesn’t mean its state didn’t collapse, with catastrophic consequences. And the international community does tend to tolerate other failed states like Somalia and Haiti for extended periods of time.
On the drone thing, I have no idea. I won’t be surprised if the whole thing turns out to be hysteria, people just noticing the presence of drones more because they’re in the news. There are probably more people now flying them trying to find the Iranian (or whatever) ones.
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If we talk about the fall of a global civilization, then we talk about existential threats. I discussed this in-depth on 15 pages in “Chapter 4.1. Looking Ahead” in my book “Directionality of Humankind’s Development. History”.
“We will only look to the very near future. By very near future, we mean tens, hundreds, or thousands of years – anything on the scale of tens or more thousands of years we consider the distant future. We will also not discuss very rare cosmic events such as the collision of the Earth with a giant asteroid.”
Here is the short outcome – “We found seven known unknown factors that could impact humankind’s development soon. At least one known unknown factor is in progress right now. The possibility of three of those unknowns happening is growing over time. Seven events or processes could happen soon and dramatically change the direction and pace of humankind’s development. That is a huge number.”
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There seems little doubt that the potential for major changes exist in the future. We’re learning how to edit our own genome, and may someday learn how to extend our lives and/or preserve our minds. We’re probably as hobbled to predict what will happen as a forager from 20,000 BCE was to predict civilization.
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The collapse of every civilization is due to “factors beyond our control.” It’s the peculiar conceit of our civilization that, given enough science and technology, there are no factors beyond our control. If all civilizations must collapse, then this hubris must be mistaken. But it’s a factor we seem unable to control.
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The fact that our civilization will end at some point does seem beyond our control. I do think we can influence the probability on how far into the future it might be. No guarantee we won’t draw a bad card, but we do have an ability to weight the odds. That said, right now our record on that seems mixed at best.
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It certainly seems historically true that other civilizations are a major cause of civilizational collapse, perhaps the #1 cause. It’s interesting to note that AI could play a familiar role here. It could be the superior military technology, like iron over bronze, that allows one civilization to destroy another. Which prospect, widely known, sets up an AI race, which may have its own dangers.
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It’s certainly the case with Carthage that Rome was the principle cause, and with the Byzantines that the Turks dealt the deathblow (although Constantinople was grievously weakened by the Fourth Crusade sacking the city in 1204). It’s murkier with the Sumerians. Certainly their enemies dealt the final blow, but it could be argued that they were already a declining society. And the collapse of all the Bronze Age empires around the same time cries for an explanation beyond just all of them being attacked at the same time, such as metal weapons suddenly being more pervasive.
It is possible that AI could be the iron of our time. I don’t think any of the current powers can risk ceding it to the others. But we could also be disrupted by some weapon of mass destruction turning out to be cheap and easy to build.
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I figure we made it past the Mayan apocalypse, so that’s something. I can’t help but think civilization will end with nuclear war, but I realize that seems a bit too obvious. It’ll probably be something no one sees coming. So who knows.
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It might. We’ve been lucky up to now that nukes are hard to make and keep, so they’ve been held by fairly rational actors. If non-rational actors ever get them, or some other weapon of mass destruction, civilization may not last long.
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We may soon witness a new existential threat created by humans.
“The famous DNA double helix is considered right-handed, meaning its spiral strands — a sugar-phosphate backbone — twist to the right.
Why this is the case remains a matter of scientific debate. But this so-called homochirality is the state of nature on the planet — and it’s gotten us this far. Yet in our infinite human arrogance lies the capacity to defy that order. What happens if we make mirror organisms with left-handed DNA and right-handed proteins?”
See https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-horrified-mirror-life-could-133058667.html and https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads9158.
And we all know techniques used by biologists can spread out fast and can not be controlled by governments.
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It’s a fact that since WWII we’ve had the capacity to destroy ourselves, with new ways constantly being developed. Our power is increasing, but power always comes with danger. I think the Bronze Age collapse shows that the real danger is if any of these powers ever become cheap and easy to possess.
That said, it’s hard to know if these new worries are something like that, or the concerns people had about the Large Hadron Collider creating a black hole that eats the planet.
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GROWTH, is what will kill our civilisation, the demand for more of everything, will set nation against nation and person against person. I don’t joke when I suggest the time will come when we revert to cannibalism.
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That assumes growth is a zero sum game. But the lessons of economics since John Adams is that we can all grow, with each of us enhancing the others.
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“The lessons of economics” has and is proving we are going backwoods. No one in their mind could say society is better off today than it was yesterday.
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Therate of oue population growth is already slowing down. Per scientific prediction population will start to shrink from 2064.
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I’ve been thinking about what will come for humanity lately too. It seems to me that if we just look to the past however then we’ll merely get the “military conquest” theme. Yes Russia is trying take over Ukraine this way as we speak, though I wouldn’t say it’s been going well for them. International opposition has made things far more difficult. So it could be that the traditional conquest model of the past is now reasonably outdated.
The main question today seems to be whether liberty based governing will be able to overcome totalitarian based governing? The strength of the liberty form is that citizens tend not to fight their rulers quite as much when they feel like they have a hand in choosing them. Conversely totalitarian forms often need to be quite oppressive in order to control their people. Given standard corruption however even liberty doesn’t always work all that well, as in the case of Mexico. But I do think that things have generally been moving towards liberty. So is that how things will go? Will international rules and liberty based governing end oppressive totalitarian rule? Actually there’s a wrinkle that I suspect might turn things the other way. It’s essentially to enhance totalitarian governing by means of stronger mind control tools over its people.
It seems to me that Chinese governing officials have learned from past uprisings that they need the minds of their people in order to help perfect their totalitarian form of governing. Furthermore they may get exactly this with their emerging Social Credit System. Imagine being a citizen where everything recorded that you do, such as the purchases you make, places you go, people you associate with, and so on, adds and subtracts from a score that constitutes your general social privileges. Given this incentive you should tend to do what your government wants rather than not! Furthermore given the care you have for your children, you should tend to teach them to also be obedient to state control given massive surveillance.
Today the Chinese government says it isn’t planning anything of the sort. Of course while instituting such measures, that’s exactly what a totalitarian government ought to claim. Given the apparent Chinese propaganda displayed for Wikipedia’s current Social Credit System article, I see that they’ve been paid off. Furthermore I hear little in the way of general alarm from liberal media about this. A brutal totalitarian government which strongly censors its citizens, can be trusted to not institute full mind control once a system is in place to potentially do so? What am I missing here?
The only question to me is how much economic might will China attain by means of its progressively more mind controlled citizens? I expect these people to soon become the worlds leaders in science and technology, as well as to create massive amounts of wealth for its people in general. Will liberal societies be able to compete and counter this rising military threat, or rather will they get sucked in for the virtually complete mind control of humanity? It’s a question that I think liberal societies ought to be pondering.
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On military conquest being obsolete, I think a lot of people thought it was until Russia’s invasion. I doubt it’s as obsolete as we’d like to think, at least as long as there are authoritarian regimes. (It’s often been observed that democracies rarely go to war with each other.) China’s been watching Russia’s experience with Ukraine. If Putin gets away with it, it will probably affect their own plans with Taiwan.
From what I’ve been reading and hearing, China’s been struggling ever since the pandemic. I sometimes listen to a podcast called Chinese Whispers. It’s pretty interesting. China’s showing the weakness any authoritarian regime eventually shows, that the people in charge are never as clever as they think they are. Which is why I’ve never thought their Social Credit System would turn them into a super society, at least not by itself.
That said, China does have a good chance of becoming the dominant power in the coming decades. They have a large educated population and abundant natural resources. But they have to learn how to get out of their own way. It’s hard to see how their long tradition of authoritarianism is serving them well.
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Your counterpoints seem much less resolute than I’d hoped Mike. We seem to agree that Russia taking Ukraine hasn’t gone nearly as well as it once hoped given international opposition, though may at least succeed somewhat. China taking Taiwan some day seems all but certain to me, whether peacefully or not. But here’s the thing that I’d like you to consider. You acknowledge that in recent decades China has become a massive economic power. Furthermore it’s apparently done so by means of standard authoritarian mind control, such as with its media. But now it’s being handed the keys to a system which is fundamental in scope. Barring extreme government privilege, no one should be able to escape the hand of government punishments and rewards for their behavior. Are you saying that western liberal societies are correct to not be alarmed by China soon attaining such a tool?
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I actually know some people who grew up in China. One of them is on my team at work. From what they’ve told me, the population there is well aware of how much their government is full of BS.
Consider people like Liu Cixin, author of The Three Body Problem, who understood that government censors are lazy, rarely reading books past the opening chapters, so he hid the portion of his story showing the cultural revolution in a bad light in the middle of the book, although he recommends the English version where it’s been moved up to the front.
Which is to say, the government can mold behavior to some extent, but only to some extent. People figure out how to game their systems to a large degree.
Not that I think the west shouldn’t be watching China carefully. They have a long history of undermining themselves, but that can’t be counted on in this century.
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What you’re talking about however Mike, is instruments that the Chinese government has employed in the past. I’m talking about a new tool for social obedience that seems virtually impossible to get around. If everything that you buy is recorded, how might one evade punishment for buying the wrong things? The only potential way should be to buy those things in non-monitored ways. But of course that would be illegal and so should not only be extra expensive, but should carry the risk of being caught and so punished. So whether you think the Chinese government will do stupid things or not, grant me the possibility that it’s building a tool from which to potentially have citizens that display extreme subservience to the state. Or if you disagree, then what’s your reasoning? Why would normal people rationally choose suffer for the liberty that they’re fundamentally denied? And why would they also teach their children to suffer for that liberty when there is no hope (as I see it anyway) of them ever attaining liberty except by leaving China?
Once you grant me that China could develop such a population by means of this coming tool, then we could talk about whether or not such a population might also produce goods and services in highly effective ways. Otherwise however I’d like to know how you think normal people will evade such a system to thus remain free thinkers not entirely unlike you and I.
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Eric, my reasoning remains what I discussed above. I think you’re attributing way more competence to the regime on this than their history shows. Consider this article from a few years ago.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/22/1063605/china-announced-a-new-social-credit-law-what-does-it-mean/
It shows that the system is something of a mess. It does have opportunities for human right abuses, but the idea it will produce a mind controlled super society just doesn’t follow from what’s happening. It’s more like an attempt to bootstrap credit bureaus and other western institutions, and maybe try to innovate beyond it. I think people will game the system there the same way they do here.
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There’s a couple of different themes here Mike. She’s saying that the Chinese government both doesn’t want to build a mind control state, and regardless, that the system it now happens to be building is not designed to control its citizen’s minds anyway. I of course dispute each of her claims. Then you’re saying that the Chinese government happens to be too incompetent to do so even if it did want to. I also dispute your claim. From my perspective things seem to be working exceedingly well for the Chinese government right now. If the two of you happen to be correct however, then cheers for your insights! But I can’t help thinking that decades of practice with propaganda might have also helped it pacify people from the west. (Did you really mean to imply that gaming a Chinese government that’s armed with their proposed future system, or even gaming it today, should be as simple as gaming the liberal American government?)
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Eric, I’m basing my take on discussions with people from China and articles and podcasts from reputable sources. Maybe they’re all wrong, but then I need to know what alternate (reputable) sources to look at.
On gaming, I noted Liu Cixin’s gaming of the censorship system. And although it’s illegal to use a VPN in China not approved by the government, their use is pretty common to get around the Great Firewall. It’s a risk, but usually one that only manifests if the government is already after you. You seem to think a new technological system, which doesn’t exist and shows little to no signs of being developed right now, will be so perfect that people won’t figure out ways around it. Any particular source of information you’re basing this on?
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Okay Mike, I went through what I’ve read again and it’s not quite as bad as the full Chinese propaganda that I initially imagined. One is the MIT article you suggested above. While I do still think Zeyi Yang was being extra optimistic, she didn’t challenge anything I’ve said about what China might do, and even quite vaguely opened up the possibility that I could be entirely correct (though didn’t explicitly get into such implications).
Then there’s the Wikipedia article on the matter. I must have mainly noticed the initial paragraphs that didn’t suggest anything for people to worry about, as well as how the plan is popularly misconceived. Then I must have went down to the “Misconceptions” heading in the article. Again if we talk about what it has done so far, no it’s not inescapable or clear mind control. But I’m talking about the future. It seems pretty clear to me that China will use this tool for the mind control of its people in ways that they shouldn’t be able to escape. The following are some interesting things I noticed from the article:
Apparently they do want to build both a “financial” credit system and a “social” credit system. They deny that there will be any score to the latter, but rather that people will continue to be “redlisted” as reward for doing some amount of good things, or “blacklisted” as punishment for doing some amount of bad things. The black list is where you can’t do things like fly or get your kids into good schools.
Link [21] said that in 2021 China signed an agreement not to use AI in its massive surveillance system, or for any social scoring. Ha!
[23] noted that after millions of deaths during the Cultural Revolution where government officials forced people to tattle on each other, it was suggested that the SCS would help people start trusting each other again. How ironically ridiculous that a government scoring system where people might be penalized for associating with lower scoring people, would help them trust each other!
They said 80% of Russians will get “a digital profile” within the decade that scores them somehow. Of course Russia is denying this will be anything like a mind control vehicle.
In any case I’m not basing my mind control prediction on what specifically is happening in China. I’m merely saying that it makes sense that China would want this. Furthermore if everything people buy and other such data were used to compile a social credit score that constitutes each person’s general privileges, then unlike the past, this ought to be extremely difficult to evade.
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Certainly if we broaden our concern further into the future and what could be possible, then there are concerns about what an authoritarian regime might do, any regime such as China, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or even western ones that turn authoritarian. If brain implants become viable, then actual mind control might someday become an option. I’ve read sci-fi where everyone is implanted at birth, with the government then able to control what they see, hear, feel, and do.
Although if we have AI sophisticated enough to control minds, I’m wondering how much we need the original organic minds anyway. In that scenario we’re left struggling to imagine a future where all the work is done by machines. What kind of society do we create? We could be optimistic and hope for a utopia where no one has to work, or a dark dystopia where societies become bifurcated between the rich haves and the rest of the have-nots, with the have-nots relegated to having to create their own de facto economic ecosystem.
But I think what’s more likely is that our current paradigms make it very hard for us to foresee how it will eventually play out. Read any science fiction about the future, or futurist writing in general, written decades or centuries ago and it’s always more preoccupied with what’s happening in the writer’s time than the actual future.
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I’ve been listening to Paul Cooper’s podcasts a bit too. I put it on with some headphones at night to either fall asleep or pay attention. I did #6 Easter Island last night, though woke up quite early this morning when apparently it started #1 Roman Britain.
So the Romans effectively civilized the British isle by bringing in specialized trades. Thus cities like London were built. Furthermore a particularly strong military presence was always required in order to keep the peace enough for general prosperity. When a given leader was able to build a strong enough army to work things out quite well however, he’d inevitably decide to take that army back to Rome to try to become the new emperor. Then after losing, Rome would have to go back to establish control again. The episode ended when Rome decided the island wasn’t worth its trouble and so let London and all the rest fall into standard feudal fighting and decay.
Of course we know that civilization did later emerge there anyway. Furthermore it developed a vast British empire where both written rules and some limited government representation was gained for its people. America became one element of that empire, though ejected the British for not being given enough self rule. Furthermore America then decided to give male land owners a vote to directly elect government representatives. Thus emerged a new form of government where the people were much less likely to revolt.
Though democracy has become the major paradigm today, the other side does remain. Yes the Soviet Union was humbled and broken up, with democracy playing a strong role there. But Putin has been able to keep control over Russia. In the case of China, over the past few decades it’s been quite successful countering democracy. Though democracies serve certain peoples quite well, much less so in others, as in the case of Latin America and Africa. The lesson I take from this is that the main benefit of democracy is that revolution becomes less likely, though better governing itself may not occur. Conversely non-democratic governments sometimes govern reasonably well, though its long history suggests uprisings threats, either by general people who feel repressed, or by government officials who’d like to take over.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that democracy will prevail, but if various non-democratic governments set up simple scoring systems from which to punish and reward their citizens for their general behavior, then I’m not entirely sure democracy will prevail. Imagine a society where people have incentives to not do unhealthy things regarding food, drugs, crime, and so on, and to do economically productive things such as gaining various socially needed skills. This could be a big improvement from which to challenge democracy. China in particular seems like it might become extremely wealth and expand by means of such mind control. I consider it strange that people in established democracies are quite concerned about their own privacy, though seem untroubled by the control that other governments might achieve over their own citizens. This seems shortsighted.
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I haven’t listened to the Britain or Easter Island ones yet, mainly because I’ve already read about them in other sources. I did finish the Mongol one, which was very interesting. I’m taking a break to catch up on some of the other podcasts that piled up while I was listening to all these Fall of Civ episodes, but I hope to get back to the Asian and other Native American episodes.
What would you say people should do about authoritarian countries controlling their citizens? It seems like our ability to affect what happens in those countries is pretty limited.
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I wish I did have some good advice on what to do if such countries go full “credit score mind control” on their people. I doubt we’d go to war just for that. But it should be quite concerning as each side squares up to see which of them can become the mightiest diametrically opposed power. Obviously lots of pawn countries would be wooed to go one way or the other. If the authoritarian side were to go military for the acquisition of more pawns, this could bring more direct military confrontation. Ultimately however it should all depend upon economic productivity — who provides goods and services of the highest value? Could China do this well enough to even woo various less happy people from the west to their known mind control state, and simply given the happiness of their citizens? Extreme, but maybe.
In any case it seems to me that people in democracies ought to be thinking about such scenarios in order to not be caught entirely off guard should Chinese officials, and authoritarians in general, decide to go this way.
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Eric, I like what you posted and agree in part. However, it seems to me authoritarianism is on the increase world wide. Add to this violence in increasing, not declining.
GROWTH, is the catalyst for this, governments irrespective of their political ideology’s are losing control of the masses.
Capitalism and Communism have merged into one, it matters not to the the people in the street, the impact on us is the same.
Just look at America, the so called Democracy leader, I’d ask is it?
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Hi Jon,
I’d consider what you’re proposing further if you like. It’s not currently clear to me what “GROWTH” specifically happens to be. But if you mean it’s bad for people to consume, then that seems pretty opposed to how I think things work. I consider consciousness itself to inherently be hedonistic. If we’re square on that point however, then I would like to know what specifically you see as the problem, as well as how that problem might be overcome? I’d certainly agree that humanity today is quite miserable, and regardless of how fortunate my own circumstances happen to be. (Here I’m saying I understand that the system which created my fortunate existence, resides as a bias to fight regarding my thoughts on what good beyond me, or the nearly universal mistake that people make regarding social good.)
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Eric, I define GROWTH as an increase is size/demand, as a result I believe we cannot have continual GROWTH.
How do I suggest we combat GROWTH? 1) we replace quantity with quality, we produce less, but better. 2) we accept natural selection for what it is and stop playing God.
I won’t go on, but have given you something to think on. I look forward to your response.
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I can certainly get on board with developing societies that have happier people rather than just more people. Would restricting the number of people and their consumption get us there? It’s difficult to say exactly what would, let alone to get something implemented.
It is my hope that our soft mental and behavioral sciences will be able to improve enough to help straighten us out. Today I consider them pretty pathetic. The central problem I think is that they don’t formally acknowledge that the value of existing is constituted by the happiness to unhappiness of what exists. How might psychologists develop broadly effective models regarding our our nature, if they continue to ignore the value component of what they’re studying? Poorly! So today I see them doing all sorts of busy work regarding neuroscience and such, and yet fail to grasp much about us at all. I contrast the situation in psychology with economics. Economists have developed a vast collection of effective models, and the field is also founded upon the premise that happiness/unhappiness constitutes the value of existing.
Once psychology is able to develop both broad and effective models regarding our nature, I suspect that we’ll be able to use those models to better lead our individual lives, as well as structure our various societies. Widespread authoritarian mind control however, might be how things actually end up going.
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Eric, all the things you touch on impact on the one thing you have failed to address!
That is GROWTH, the demands on society, which effect them at both a physical and mental level, are as a result of GROWTH. The constant demand for more, creates both shortages and increased costs.
Two thirds of our world are going without, while the other third is sending tonns of everything to the tip/landfill.
It seems much of our world is scared to even talk about GROWTH, which will kill them or their offspring.
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I didn’t mention GROWTH because I don’t consider it inherently bad. I see things relatively standard in terms of economic matters. This is to say that the invisible hand of the market tends to work pretty well, though government should also step in to correct various imbalances. For a while I was thinking you might be of the opinion that biological processes in themselves constitute goodness rather than happiness. So I thought I might suggest someone else who happens to hold that opinion. But now I think we’re aligned about happiness being good, though conflict regarding how to promote such goodness. Better governing of course, though we might have quite different ideas about that.
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Eric, I’ll ask just one simple question; In your opinion can our world have continual GROWTH?
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Nope, not forever. I agree with you there.
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I find it interesting that you use the word “entropy” in this respect and upon reflection find that it is not unjustified. I suspect that in the long term a sufficiently intelligent and advanced society will be able to defeat entropy but I can see that societies in the past have disintegrated simply because for any number of reasons they have been unable to prevent their own disintegration.
I veer between pessimism and optimism about our own species and intelligent species as a whole. On balance I view sentient or at least general AI as a potential saviour rather than a terminator but only if it can be wrested from the sinister hands of tech titans. And even then only if it brings about the sort of epiphany which encourages naturally evolved species to abandon the seven deadly sins.
I have found my history degree useful over the years and your thoughtful analysis is interesting and sobering.
Without some sort of saving grace, on current form, the annihilation of the entire race would cause me no regret. Absent of any real change, I find myself siding with Schopenhauer and am a firm anti natalist.
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Thanks!
My take on humanity is that it’s far from perfect, but then what species is? When I watch documentaries about other primates, I’m reminded how much we’re just a branch off of that tree. In some ways we’ve distinguished ourselves by the ability to see farther in the future, build larger groups of collaboration, and dominate the environment in a way none of our cousins ever managed to do. But in other ways, we’re still apes muddling our way through as best we can, and there’s a danger some of those primordial instincts may do us end.
My own take is nervous optimism. In some ways, we’ve survived and flourished much longer than many of the pessimists thought we might. That seems like reason to hope we’ll continue to survive. But it doesn’t mean we can’t let our guard down on the possibility we might destroy ourselves.
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Anti – natal…. Me too I guess. I just noticed this one and thought I’d pass it on.
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