Collapse of Complex Societies by Dr. Joseph Tainter

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seltzered_ · 2020-05 · Strong recommendation

The best way to think about this is the classic Buckminster Fuller quote "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Spend some time watching Tainter's speech on complexity and collapse: [VIDEO] . Particularly the adult conversations we need to have at the end of the talk. Also try Kate Raworth's explanation of the 'three horizons' framework: [LINK]

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myshpa · 2023-07 · Recommendation

> Burn it all down and start over We won't be the ones doing that. > We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though It may be already late. I wish it wasn't so. I think we could have chance at repairing it ... if only we would do what's necessary. But we're not doing what's necessary, we never started even discussing it, and I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever do. We're talking only about climate change, but that's only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. Even people @ hacker news mostly don't have a clue. > we can't just ignore the problems We've been ignoring them for 50-70 years. The limits to growth / club of Rome was in 1972? So far ... we did nothing but ignored the problems. We may cross the 1.5C threshold in 5 years. Not in 2050 as previously expected, but in 5 years. And we're still pursuing economic growth. Have you noticed any evidence to the contrary lately? > it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly I recommend few videos for you. I must warn you ... it may hamper your ability to enjoy parties. Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario - Arthur Keller [LINK] How to Enjoy the End of the World - Dr. B. Sidney Smith [LINK] Arithmetic, Population and Energy - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett [LINK] Why Societies Collapse And What it Means for Us - Joseph A. Tainter [VIDEO] Revealing the Naked Emperor – Paris, 2° & Carbon Budgets - Kevin Anderson [LINK]

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monday_ · 2017-11 · Recommendation

The author's position seems to be that the very notion of civilizational collapse is flawed because people often come up with reductionist, poorly supported ways of explaining it. The unspoken implication here is that whoever brings up a threat of collapse in a political argument hasn't got a clue what he's talking about. Stephen Bannon referencing Gibbons work comes to mind, and, come think of it, that's probably what prompted the author to write this piece. Denying a historical phenomenon for political gain is as bad as selectively citing a two century old book to justify xenophobia. It is revealing that the author mentions Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies", and then dismisses it's meticulous definition of collapse as "jargon". Before coming up with this definition Tainter spent a whole chapter describing many, many examples of social collapse including the ones mentioned in the article. The definition arises from these examples and absolutely covers the collapse of Rome, Bronze Age and others. As for how we define and study the social collapse without arbitrarily designating some cultures as superior to others - a good example would be collapse of ecosystems. In this case you can have a sensible definition of complexity and energy intake and the collapse would be a sharp decline in both. There is a whole framework for similar studies in social collapse - see this talk. [VIDEO]

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