Thesis #26: Collapse is inevitable.
by Jason GodeskyAgricultural societies have the unique ability to arbitrarily raise their food supply, simply by intensifying their cultivation. By bringing more land under cultivation, or by cultivating what land they have more intensively, or by the occasional technological innovation, agriculturalists can increase their output. By raising the food supply, agriculturalists can arbitrarily raise their population (see thesis #4). Thus increasing the energy throughput of their society, agriculturalists can arbitrarily raise their level of complexity. This draws all individuals in that society, and all neighboring societies, into a catastrophic game of prisoner’s dilemna (see thesis #12). Because complexity is subject to diminishing returns (see thesis #14), the effort required to further increase complexity rises, while the value of such an investment drops. Competition, however, keeps driving the assemblage forward, even after further investment in complexity has long ceased to be an economical decision. If any party does decide to make that investment–however large it may be–then they will enjoy an edge–however slight–over everyone else, forcing all parties to move to the next level of complexity to remain competitive. Thus, competition drives civilization headlong towards collapse.
The diminishing returns of complexity represent an escalating probability of disaster. As that probability approaches one, disasters continue at their normal pace. Sometimes, as we can see in our own world, our own complexity may accelerate that pace, as with our environmental problems (see thesis #17), or it may even create those problems, as with Peak Oil (see thesis #18). Even were these not the case, there is a regular, background pace of problems any society faces. Answering all of them with increased complexity–whether by pursuing technical solutions to systemic problems, inventing new technologies, or creating governmental bureaucracies in response–only aggrevates the greater, underlying crisis of complexity’s diminishing returns. Following this strategy, a routine crisis will eventually arise, but the response of greater complexity will be impossible due to its prohibitive cost.
Thus, a society faces catabolic collapse.
In dealing with some of the problematic details of Tainter’s model, John Michael Greer offered a refinement with, “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse.” [PDF] Greer noted that, contrary to Tainter’s definition, many of the collapses he considered took place over significant periods of time–centuries or more–while others collapsed catastrophically. This led Greer to develop a model that distinguishes between a “maintenance crisis” and a catabolic collapse.
A society that uses resources beyond replenishment rate … when production of new capital falls short of maintenance needs, risks a depletion crisis in which key features of a maintenance crisis are amplified by the impact of
depletion on production. As M(p) exceeds C(p) and capital can no longer be maintained, it is converted to waste and unavailable for use. Since depletion requires progressively greater investments of capital in production, the loss of capital affects production more seriously than in an equivalent maintenance crisis. Meanwhile further production, even at a diminished rate, requires further use of depleted resources, exacerbating the impact of depletion and the need for increased capital to maintain production. With demand for capital rising as the supply of capital falls, C(p) tends to decrease faster than M(p) and perpetuate the crisis. The result is a catabolic cycle, a self-reinforcing process in which C(p) stays below M(p) while both decline. Catabolic cycles may occur in maintenance crises if the gap between C(p) and M(p) is large enough, but tend to be self-limiting in such cases. In
depletion crises, by contrast, catabolic cycles can proceed to catabolic collapse, in which C(p) approaches zero and most of a society’s capital is converted to waste. …Any society that displays broad increases in most measures of capital production coupled with signs of serious depletion of key resources, in particular, may be considered a potential candidate for catabolic collapse.
Once begun, the process of catabolic collapse creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop: the same kind of unbreakable, self-reinforcing process that propels civilization’s anabolic growth, as we discussed in thesis #12. That process only ends when that society reaches the next lower sustainable level of complexity.
The question, then, is not whether or not these processes wll hold for our own civilization, but the timeframe to expect of them. As we have seen, we have already passed the point of diminishing returns (see thesis #15), leaving us open to the possibility of collapse. Peak Oil (see thesis #18) and environmental problems (see thesis #17) are already poised as potentially unsolvable problems that could lead to collapse in the near future, but ultimately, predicting the proximate cause of collapse is much more difficult than predicting its timeline. The best answer to that question is almost certainly, “soon.”
The U.N. expects human population growth to “level off” at 9 billion in the next century, but humans already take up 40% of the earth’s photosynthetic capacity to feed the 6.5 billion we already have. That is the ultimate cause behind the Holocene Extinction–already the worst mass extinction ever seen on the planet, and driven entirely by human agriculture. Global warming is radically altering the fragile interglacial climate that agriculture requires, and the fossil fuel subsidy that is so fundamental to our civilization’s current mode of existence is running out. As Tainter wrote in his 1996 paper, “Complexity, Problem Solving and Sustainable Societies“:
With subsidies of inexpensive fossil fuels, for a long time many consequences of industrialism effectively did not matter. Industrial societies could afford them. When energy costs are met easily and painlessly, benefit/cost ratio to social investments can be substantially ignored (as it has been in contemporary industrial agriculture). Fossil fuels made industrialism, and all that flowed from it (such as science, transportation, medicine, employment, consumerism, high-technology war, and contemporary political organization), a system of problem solving that was sustainable for several generations.
Of course, any course of action is “sustainable” over a sufficiently short time frame. Burning your house down for heat is sustainable for several minutes. The use of fossil fuels was sustainable for almost two centuries, but now we are facing the end of that subsidy–meaning that all those costs that we ignored in the past must now be paid.
Nothing can grow forever in a finite world. That basic truism is the ultimate doom for civilization. Its very nature will not permit it to exist in a steady state; it must grow. If it is not growing, it is dying. If the economy is not growing, and most investments will have negative returns, who is willing to invest? Without investment, how can we build the infrastructure to continue the civilized life–the roads, telephony, satellites or buildings we need now, much less the investments in future technology and complexity we will need to continue such a pace? That makes investment in complexity even less compelling, since there is no one else investing in it, either, and its total cost must be divided among fewer investors. Being the last one “holding the door,” so to speak, is the worst possible strategy. The snowball may take some time to build up, but ultimately, if investment in complexity were a traded stock, collapse works in much the same way as a “run.”
Thus, the “point of no return” in the collapse of any society is when an increasing percentage of the population begins to believe that further complexity is no longer worth it. That fringe always exists, in small numbers; collapse comes when that fringe begins to grow. As such, we can see the first signs of collapse in the growth of primitivism itself. The spread of ideas like slow food, voluntary simplicity, Ethan Watters’ Urban Tribes, or “The Hunter-Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy“–even less obvious attacks on complexty, like open source and blogging–show a general discontent with the current level of complexity, and a growing antipathy for further investment in it.
Much of the world has already collapsed, but are propped up now only by the peer polity system they are enmeshed in. The following map shows those countries in red, showing how far along in the process of collapse we already are.
In collapse, all the rules reverse themselves. Sustainabilty becomes not only feasible, but advantageous. Small, egalitarian groups out-compete large, hierarchical ones. Human nature becomes adaptive, rather than something we must suppress. That process is the inevitable end of any civilization, because nothing can grow forever and without limit in a finite universe. Moreover, that process will begin sooner, rather than later. It has already begun, and in all likelihood, most of us alive today will live to see its completion.
Hi,
How come Australia is shown as having collapsed already? Are you referring to environmental degradation that makes agriculture unsustainable (topsoil loss, increased salinity, etc.)?
Also, I thought the Permian was the worst mass extinction ever, with 95% of species dying out. If the Holocene extinction is anywhere near that bad, I don’t see how humans will survive at all, hunter-gatherers post-collapse or otherwise.
Comment by Eric — 12 January 2006 @ 1:32 PM
Yes, I’m a bit confused by the map as well. What constitutes collapse? Do you mean that those countries are incapable of supporting their populations from their landbases without importing food? Or that their economies have stopped growing? Or that their populations/governments have stopped investing in increased complexity?
Comment by Raku — 12 January 2006 @ 2:30 PM
Yup. The recent riots are a bad sign, too. Same reason I highlighted Montana. It hasn’t collapsed yet only because it’s enmeshed in a network of complexity that it’s feeding off of. If it weren’t for imports, Australia would collapse.
The Permian was the previous record holder. Over a few million years, 95% of all life died out. But the Holocene Extinction’s just a few centuries (at most, millennia) old, and we’re already looking at the very real possibility of 50%. So, if we’re looking at percentage of life wiped out per unit time, the Holocene is kicking the Permian’s ass.
Our survival hinges on the fact that we’ll destroy our own civilization long before we reach 95% or anything close to it. We might get to 50%, but that’s mostly in the tropics. Since there’s nothing pushing this along except our civilization, the end of that civilization should end that trend pretty much immediately. This isn’t the kind of thing where intertia is a concern.
I mean these regions would not have complex societies there, if there weren’t complex societies elsewhere spending a good deal of effort propping them up.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 2:57 PM
Okay, I get Australia. If it weren’t for an import of resources by the colonists, then complex society could never have been established there in the first place. I don’t get why Montana’s particularly special. And are you talking current population numbers, or the original, pre-civ landbase’s ability to support a complex society? Because if you’re talking current numbers, then places like Japan and Korea are definitely unable to support their populations. Their entire economies are based on the import of materials.
Comment by Raku — 12 January 2006 @ 4:43 PM
Thinking about this whole issue of collapse makes it obvious there are two very different alternatives we as a species can take and still survive: one is to reduce complexity as all of your theses have discussed, the other is to make a serious global push into space to find the necessary resources.
The two, in fact, could easily coexist: space colonies, mining & travel that give evolution greater options to work on, while a reduced population here lives a fairly simple (by modern standards) lifestyle that treats Earth as a genetic reservoir. We NEED to do things that protect Earth that way.
Now, I’m all in favor of making sure human impact doesn’t adversely effect other species & the biosphere in general as much as possible… and going into space will actually HELP that effort. We will certainly find other life out there eventually and should then treat it as our equal, but it’s highly unlikely in our solar system. For the abiotic regions of space, maybe our exploration/colonization is what we SHOULD do, because it expands the envelope of living things.
Colonization in this sense is VERY different from colonization in Earth’s historical sense, since it doesn’t mean subjugating other peoples’ cultures to our own. In fact, it will probably result in humans creating MORE varieties of culture (many of them probably tribal in nature) over time, just as happened with the migrations of those who survived the genetic bottlenecks long before civilization was born. In an even longer timeframe, it may enable the evolution of several species of human descendents where staying on Earth is likely to restrict evolution and will eventually result in our extinction by asteroid, comet, or solar activity.
Yes, all species die. Even if we’re successful spacefarers, we’ll eventually cease to be Homo sapiens as we know it, and our descendent species will eventually go extinct. But there’s no reason for that to happen sooner because we chose to limit our horizons despite having the intelligence to open them. Intelligent adaptability is our ecological niche, and there’s no reason why using it can’t keep us alive as long as the horseshoe crab’s niche has kept it alive (a billion years or so).
Comment by Jay Denari — 12 January 2006 @ 4:49 PM
No, no, no … it has nothing to do with settlers or colonization or anything like that. I’m talking about their political and economic position right now, this minute. Australia and Montana are in red for the reasons Diamond discusses in Collapse. See “The collapse of the wide, brown land” by Paul Sheehan. On Montana, here’s a quote from Collapse itself:
That’s my criteria for all those red regions. The parts in red are the ones that cannot support complex societies, but are complex now only because they are part of a peer polity system. And frankly, I think I’ve vastly underestimated it. I think more of Africa and the Middle East should be in red … most of eastern Europe, probably, too … and most of the “red states” in the U.S. (which are so dependent on the complex systems of taxation and dispersion for the support of the coasts). You’d probably see the same pattern in Canada, with only Toronto and Quebec in white.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 4:55 PM
And the reason that possibility is not realistically on the table was the subject of thesis #16. We’ve passed the point of diminishing returns for complexity, including technology. That plan requires a lot of new technology to spring up, well, yesterday, really. Being past the point of diminishing returns, though, our technological progress is becoming more modest–and it’s costing us more. In short, it would be a big, almost impossible push even in a world where innovation held steady–but add on top of that, that we actually live in a world where innovation is falling, and, well … it ceases to be a realistic possibility.
Besides … it’s not a matter of people living “badly,” it’s just the ramifications of a complex society made out of primates with no evolutionary adaptation for it. We didn’t destroy this world out of malice, after all. We move on to the next, we’ll only destroy that one, too. On and on, hopping from world to world, until we’ve consumed all life in the universe. That’s the progressivist’s best case scenario: we become the aliens from Independence Day.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 5:01 PM
But please note, I’m one of the people who’ve said that a post-civilized, tribal space program is conceivable, and I have no problem with doing everything we can to keep our species alive as long as possible–at least not in principle. I’m a big fan of our species.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 5:04 PM
Then I still don’t understand why countries like Japan aren’t included. They’re so overpopulated, they couldn’t feed themselves without importing tons of food, and their industry couldn’t survive without importing tons of raw materials.
Comment by Raku — 12 January 2006 @ 5:56 PM
True. As I said, I’m probably underestimating here….
Japan had a complex society before Commodore Perry that seemed to be chugging along just fine. Has that balance significantly shifted since then?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 6:07 PM
Hey –
Your map might be more effective — or at least more intuitive — if it were in gradiated shades. Realistically, ALL countries are at least somewhat dependant on the total network… so the tipping point should be where the intersupports are no longer effective at propping the whole thing up, no?
‘Course, that’d be a LOT more work for you, Jason
Janene
Comment by Janene — 12 January 2006 @ 6:18 PM
Hmmmm … well, it’s difficult to tease all these out in a peer polity system. Do we count in trade? I’m mostly looking here at what they sometimes called “failed states” and really damning ecological disasters. In short, everything where someone’s suggested that it’s collapsed, and had a half-decent argument to back it up.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 12 January 2006 @ 6:21 PM
Diamond mentions in Collapse that Japan relied on the northern island of Hokkaido (which wasn’t part of Japan until sometime in the 19th century) for raw materials and deforested most of the island. Who knows what would have happenned if they didn’t open up to the rest of the world.
Another issue with the map is that while Australia couldn’t survive without the world, the rest of the world wouldn’t do so well without Australia either. They are a major exporter of minerals.
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 12 January 2006 @ 6:37 PM
If you are looking for failed states then most of Africa, especially the West Coast should be in deep red.
See here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2005/fsindex/majormap.html
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 12 January 2006 @ 6:38 PM
Hey, Jason! We’re more alike than I realized.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 12 January 2006 @ 10:29 PM
“Japan had a complex society before Commodore Perry that seemed to be chugging along just fine. Has that balance significantly shifted since then”
Oh ya. The most fertile and agriculturally productive lands are also the most heavily developed. The island is fairly mountainous, and agricultural land is scarce, yet almost all of the good land now has dense urban populations. The rich plains between Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto are now home to a continuous megacity that makes the East Coast of the US seem sparsely populated in comparison.
Comment by limukala — 13 January 2006 @ 2:06 AM
It’s probably going to take long before total collapse comes, isn’t it? Because there’s nuclear energy?
By the way, are we that sure that there’s not more oil then we think there is? From who did we get the numbers about oil in the first place?
I read a number of articles stating that oil is not a fossil fuel but it’s being created quite fast in the middle of the earth. But if that’s the case we probably still demand far to much oil, and that demand probably keeps rising until it totally collapses.
When do you think Belgium is going to collapse? It’s boring here and I want something to happen
Comment by Gunnix — 13 January 2006 @ 5:30 AM
Nuclear power requires uranium, but it’s extremely efficient with that uranium. But then, uranium is a fairly rare resource. We have enough uranium on earth to power our current usage for 50 years. But, civilization must always grow, so usage can’t remain steady–it has to go up. So, less than 50 years.
But, uranium don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that reactor. We needed to start building those a few decades ago for it to have an impact. We’d need to start pouring all of our resources into it right now for nuclear energy to save us now.
Oh, the numbers are total frauds. Don’t trust them, they all, all lie. But they lie about how much more they have, typically. We used to estimate another decade till Peak Oil. Then we found out how much Shell and Saudi Arabia were lying to us. So, in fact, there’s probably less oil than we think there is. See thesis #18.
That’s called “abiotic oil.” It’s right up there with aquatic ape theory, UFOs, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail. That is, it’s a fairly popular, oft-repeated piece of complete, unsubstantiated foolishness.
Collapse is an all-or-nothing affair. So, Belgium will collapse at the same time as everyone else. My best guess is that it should be fairly obviously underway by 2012-2015.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 8:22 AM
the type of farming we have at the moment is actually the most inefficient system ever in terms of energy input to food output.
Comment by michael the tubthumper — 13 January 2006 @ 1:02 PM
It is indeed, as I’ve often said. The most efficient, in terms of energy input to energy output, is horticulture. All agriculture is beyond the point of diminishing returns, and even the simple, agrarian life has a negative overall efficiency.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 1:35 PM
About uranium, the problem is more than mere creation of electricity. One of the major uses for oil is the creation of nitrogen fertilizer. It’s this fertilizer, made using oil by a method called the Haber-Bosch process, that’s the foundation off the Green Revolution. When peak oil peaks, the first place it will be felt will be the fields, not the cities. Electricity will be a very minor concern when 50% of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer dissappears.
Not to mention any problems arising from any sort of “Peak Uranium.”
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 13 January 2006 @ 3:53 PM
Collapse is not inevitable.
This rediculous cataclysmic, catastrohic inesscapable end, which is being pushed in certain circles with as much religiosity and zealous ferver as to make Falwell, Robertson, Free Market Capitilist preachers, Authoritarian Marxists/Socialists, Neo-Nazis and Fred Phelps jealous, is creating a schism in anarchism in general and leading to a form of intellectual and physical poverty of thought and action and a push towards authoritarianism through elitism, misanthrope and futalism.
It’s paralyzing our movement as much as the influx of leftists is.
End times fear mongering and appocalyptic scenarios….whats the difference between the second coming of Christ used to keep people complacent here and now rather than improving their imeadiate conditions through popular uprisings and inssurections because they are going to inherit the coming kingdom of God and the unquestionable coming end of civilization and the adherents practicing deetatchment from civilization, rewilding with a firm belief that they will be the sole people inheriting this post appocalyptic egalitarian utopia?
Whats the difference between Reconstructionist Christians who were and are promoting the destruction of the planet through greater use of resources and the encouraging of wars as a way to usher in the end times and thus the second coming of Christ and those within our circles who speak of ushering in the collapse of civilization through insurrectionary actions such as destroying power grids an dams thus killing millions of poor in the process?
Think folks.
This kinda propaganda makes me sick the same way christian or white supremist propaganda does. Same message as the impetus to gather adherents. The use of psuedoscience is the same also.
I want that egalitarian society filled with a void of automobiles and an abundence of trees and flowers too but we got cut out this nonsense and cut out the psuedoscience.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 January 2006 @ 4:07 PM
But we’re not talking about the end of oil–just its peak. Per volume, most oil is used for transportation. If we can get some other fuel, then we should have enough oil to continue using it in petrochemicals. As I heard one person opine, “Oil is to important to just burn.”
The quality of the evidence. We’ve had this discussion before, and your refutation is illogical. If you would like to point out where I’ve used “pseudoscience,” I’d appreciate some constructive criticism, but I don’t care much whether or not it serves anarchy–I care whether or not its true.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 4:14 PM
Oh, and if collapse isn’t inevitable, then that means that something can grow forever in a finite universe. Those two statements are logical inverses of each other, so it has to be either P or not P–and not P is patently absurd.
So, if your objection has any merit at all, it has to be the time scale, rather than its eventual occurence.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 4:19 PM
You havent used psuedoscience directly but the premis is based directly in a psuedoscientific mythology going way back.
My refutation is not illogical and your poor grasp of formal language systems such as model logic is glaring.
I don’t care much if it serves anarchism either becuase it obviously doesn’t although being promoted as tenent within but the heading of this site does pay lip service to it.
This is logically fallacious. You cannot with scientific certainty say the universe is finite. Your “logical” end is thusly negated and even more so there are always more than two choices (you’ve commited another logical fallacy -care to name it?), one musn’t choose between collapse or progression. Things aren’t “black and white”, “either/or”. I refer to this as the Bush fallacy …”youre either with us or against us”.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 January 2006 @ 4:34 PM
oh, and whats more, what you and this site are promoting is a faith based system of putting ones hopes and desires in an abstraction - the future. The future is not yet and the past is gone -all we have is now; a series of “nows”. The revolution is ever present. The revolution is in the struggle and the struggle must be in every moment that we interact with one another and our enviroment.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 January 2006 @ 4:37 PM
The reasoning used to justify the notion that civilizations must grow, must increase in complexity, only applies if there are multiple civilizations in competition with each other. If there is only one civilization spanning the entire globe then there is no one to compete against and the prisoner’s dillema doesn’t apply. The same would be true if all civilizations cooperated together, instead of competing, and agree not to pursue infinite growth.
In addition, a civilization could simply stop growing when it reaches the point where the returns from increasing complexity equal the costs. At that point growth brings no competitive advantage, because the benefits equal or exceed the costs. That civilization need not collapse, it could simply stop growing - remaining the same size for eons, neither growing nor declining. So collapse isn’t inevitable.
Comment by Joe Licentia — 13 January 2006 @ 5:43 PM
Well I gotta say I kind of agree with “Anonymous” above.
But also with the rest…
Sure collapse might be inevitable. But when where and how can probably not be predicted. It’s interesting to read these articles but in the end it’s not of such great importance. When it actually happens most of us probably won’t be prepared, there will be situations which we didn’t think of. But that’s what keeps the world a fun place: surprises. And I’m sure we can improvise when needed.
I’m curious how you can be so sure about abiotic oil being a myth.
And so many other things which are presented as facts. Do you and scientists really understand so much of how everything works? I’m quite sceptical about scientific proof, and common known facts. I think human knowledge is so imperfect that we’ll never really understand. If you read Masanobu Fukuoka’s books “One straw revolution” and “Road to nature” you might understand what I try to say.
I think this site and the work done like on http://www.inthewake.org is cool though. I do hope civilization is going to crash down, and get industry out of this world so we can live more naturally again like hunter gatherers. But I’m not going to put my believe in collapse, prepare for it or wait for it. It might just as well come in a 100 years.
There always turn up things that are not planned that surprise you.
And on a side note, who knows, maybe it will not be so cool after collapse as we think…
I don’t want to show any disrespect to anyone of this website, because it might well be that I’m completely wrong in what I say
Comment by gunnix — 13 January 2006 @ 5:49 PM
Had you read the article linked to, you would know that I’ve already refuted your argument, where I wrote:
Your bald assertion (logical fallacy) that my “poor grasp of formal language systems such as model logic is glaring” is undermined by your inability to separate soundness and validness in your second comment. Whether or not the universe is infinite does not undermine the validity of the statement. At most, if the universe is in fact infinite, you would show the logic to unsound, but not invalid. Logic is the domain of validity; empirical evidence is the domain of soundness. You’ve made a claim about soundness, and confused it with validity by referring to it as “illogical.”
I’ll agree that there is indeed a glaringly poor grasp of formal language systems, but I don’t think it’s coming from me.
But, answering the charge you made against my evidence while mistaking evidence for logic, while the universe may have a constantly increasing volume, that is still finite. Constantly increasing is not the same as infinite. Also, the arguments of cosmologists as to whether the univere is constantly expanding are arguments of volume–mass is not. Even under your the terms of your inability to understand the notion of infinity, the mass–and thus, the available resources–in the universe are still finite.
The logical fallacy you’re looking for is the false dilemna, but this isn’t one of them. Once again, your inability to handle simple logic is glaring. There are not always more than two choices–just most of the time. You’ve invoked the same fallacious argument as above, by claiming that my argument resembles some other argument, that argument is wrong, therefore mine must be wrong, as well.
Logic very often divides the world into two choices, most commonly “P or not P.” Those two may be very lopsided: P may be very narrow, and not P very broad, but everything can always be divided into P and not P. Take, for instance, this statement: “Everything is either blue, or not blue.” That is true, no matter how you divide it–anything that isn’t blue is, well, not blue.
So, likewise, in any finite universe (please note, “universe” does not necessarily mean “the cosmos”–it can refer to any set, and no, I shouldn’t have to explain this), any system dependent on constant growth must, inevitably, collapse. That is a valid statement. Feel free to try to prove that it is unsound, but it can never be illogical.
My hope is for a world where government has become obsolete, thus, “anarchy.” Whether or not that holds true to the body of philosophy called by that name is irrelevant to me. There are myriad definitions of anarchy and anarchists. Some include me; others do not. My arguments fit within the larger body of anarchist literature, because whatever other anarchists may think of me (or I of them), we share the same, defining trait of backing a system that has no government.
Joe,
The level of “the civilization” is rather arbitrary, no? If political units contained within it are competing against one another, won’t the civilization continue to grow? If corporations compete against each other? If individuals compete? If such competition is pursued at any level, it must ultimately result in increasing complexty.
The point of diminishing returns is not the point at which the benefits exceed the costs. This is the very crux of the problem. It is the point at which the benefits begin to dwindle–when the curve turns downward, on a trajectory towards the point where the benefits exeed the costs. That is the point of collapse.
This changes things for your proposal of ending competition by mutual agreement. Once again, we’re at the prisoner’s dilemna discussed in thesis #13. We can observe that all players would benefit from that agreement. However, the combination of fear of betrayal and personal motivation always leads someone to betray the pact and continue the escalation. You are essentially proposing a cartel, wherein all parties agree not to increase their complexity. Cartels always fail, because in the end, the temptation to cheat–and thus out-compete everyone else in the cartel–is too much to resist.
See game theory for a full mathematical explanation of why this is the case.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 6:11 PM
Anonymous:
I agree with you that collapse is not inevitable, although I think there is enough evidence on this site and elsewhere to believe it is very likely. As an anarchist, I have some of your concerns, because although anarchy in name is advocated here, cooperation is to be limited to those persons in your tribe. It is stated that humans can’t consider or treat more than 150 people as persons, the rest of us are things. This mindset makes an egalitarian society impossible.
I think your statement about a “schism in anarchism� is an oxymoron. Anarchy cannot have dogma so a schism is impossible. An egalitarian society would welcome hunter-gathers. I agree with you that some of the concepts advocated here are detrimental to creating an egalitarian society. Also some are based on questionable science and beliefs.
You say: “The revolution is in the struggle and the struggle must be in every moment that we interact with one another and our environment.� I think you’re correct here, however the struggle at this time is a struggle of ideas. My impression is that the people contributing to this site are sincere. They have analyzed our present civilization and agree with us that it is disgusting because it is oppressive and is destroying (or has destroyed) our environment. There is no intention here to bring on collapse, just a feeling that it is inevitable and a lack of responsibility for this. If you intend to contribute to “the struggle� then try to use the constructive criticism Jason has requested.
Jason:
Your P or not P argument was probably not understood because Anonymous doesn’t know your definition of civilization. This civilization must collapse because it’s defined as needing to expand. Anonymous probably thinks that you can call an egalitarian non-capitalist society a civilization.
On the subject of finite worlds, a tribe has to deal with the same problem in a finite world. Without a global society that has a methodology for preventing the tragedy of the commons, unless population is controlled by environmental stress, collapse will be repeated.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 13 January 2006 @ 6:12 PM
Where is easy–everywhere, or nowhere at all. And since nowhere isn’t an option, it’ll be everywhere. As for how and when, as I said above, when is a lot easier than how. With so many proximate causes converging in the near future, I would set the probability of collapse now, rather than later, extremely high.
Particularly since we’re evincing all the same signs as, well, every other civilization right before it collapsed. I would even venture that it’s no longer a hypothetical possibility, but a process that has already begun.
I’m always open to change my point of view based on new evidence. Hell, I was once a lector in the Catholic Church, so, I’ve come some ways already. But the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. You can’t say abiotic oil is real because all the evidence against it has some margin of error. All evidence has some margin of error, and ultimately, there’s always Humean skepticism. But I don’t find that useful, so I assume that we CAN know things on the same premise as Pascal believed in G-d.
The abiotic oil people have no evidence for their claim, and there’s an enormous amount of evidence against them. So, I reject it totally. And then I laugh at them, because while it’s respectable to disbelieve something that’s actually true for want of evidence, it’s really stupid to believe something when there’s no evidence–whether it’s true or not.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 6:29 PM
Anonymous - keep in mind that Jason, et al, aren’t saying “the collapse is coming, so let’s sit on our asses and watch some shit burn — since we are virtuous and right, we will inherit the earth!” (muahaha)
If anything, it’s more of a reminder that the shit is going down soon(ish), so you’d better get ready, whatever that means for you.
Chuck - woah… For some reason I wasn’t aware that Haber-Bosch is used to make fertilizers. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was developed during WWI (II?) because Germany had run out of materials to make bombs. Interesting.
Stepping out again…
-Mike
Comment by WackyMorningDJ — 13 January 2006 @ 6:33 PM
Were my views on this not ennumerated in such detail, or if I had not written on that subject at such length and so publically, that might be an excuse for his logically bankrupt rantings. But, since that is not the case, I will persist in taking as hostile an attitude towards our anonymous little troll as she deigned to take up against me, unless and until she sees fit to attempt a civil dialogue. If she should decide that, I would gladly reciprocate. If not, then I’ll deal with her as I would with any other troll who likes to throw around the phraseology of logic without the faintest grasp of it.
Such controls need not be conscious or global. Every other animal operates within that dynamic equilibrium quite easily without any such thing–as did our forager ancestors.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 6:36 PM
First, all appologies for the hostile tone.
Second, regardless of how many articles you’ve written or how well known you are in certain circles it doesn’t mean you’re well read…it’s a big world out there Mr. Ego ;)(passive aggresive j/k)
All right, please hold off on me untill I read a bit more because truthfully I didn’t know you had a technical language with specialized definitions. P or not P would have made sense in that context as spoken to by the other poster.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 January 2006 @ 7:02 PM
While I would love to see civilization collapse in my lifetime, and the evidence certainly seems to suggest that it will, we must always take into account the unexpected. Everyone always seems to pick the future they most desire or most fear (depending on their disposition) and then find great evidence to back it up.
Did I mention that I think your probably right? I still think there are other possibilities, and this article may give you an inkling of one of them (which, if you follow its implications is actually pretty scary)
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/01/space-cadets.html#comments
Oh, btw, anonymous, while its great that you think that this line of thinking is bad for ideological reasons, you haven’t given a shred of evidence to support your claims, other than, “it hurts the anarchy movement” which is to say “I don’t like it.”
Sorry to say, it just sounds like whining to me.
Your best argument is that all this is based on future conjecture and only the present has any tangible reality. I certainly agree, but living in the present as I do (or try to), I notice certain signs-in the present-that seem to indicate what might be coming, and therefore indicate intelligent action to be taken-in the present. Living in the present doesn’t mean you have to be shortsighted. You have to prepare for the future in the present.
Also, by all this talk of fighting and revolution, you are just playing into the hands of the people you are trying to fight. Resistance will only make the oppressors stronger (how do you build muscle?). It gives them a pretense for further oppression and domination (see those evil anarchists destroying Seattle, we need more and stronger police, etc). Also, if by some miracle you succeed, you have simply left civilization, but all of the tools to create it are intact. If we simply make predictions, watch it collapse and try to help as many people as possible in the interim, it will be much harder for civilization to recreate itself. Ya, it sucks that a whole lot of people will die, but first of all, is death really as horrible as a life of slavery, stress, domination and toil? Second, the earth can’t support 6.5 billion people without destroying most every other kind of life (let alone 9 billion), so are you saying you would sacrifice over 50% of the population of the Earth so that one cancerous species can continue to live unhappy, stressful lives?
No matter what there is bound to be a whole lot of suffering. The goal is then to reduce the amount of suffering as much as possible, not keep as many humans alive as possible.
Comment by limukala — 13 January 2006 @ 7:04 PM
“Such controls need not be conscious or global. Every other animal operates within that dynamic equilibrium quite easily without any such thing–as did our forager ancestors.â€?
All animals including humans reproduce at such a rate as to increase their population exponentially. Other animals have their populations controlled by environmental stress. This is usually by predators or lack of food. Humans are capable of conscious birth control.
I understand that Neolithic populations remained quite stable. So did chimpanzees in that period. The chimp’s population was controlled by availability of food or predators. I know you have stated elsewhere that humans were able to avoid this trauma. Please explain how and provide a reference.
Comment by Bob Harrison — 13 January 2006 @ 7:06 PM
oops, now I see how the link works.
Comment by limukala — 13 January 2006 @ 7:06 PM
please please hold off on me for now cause I’d like to learn a little more, reply to some specifics and as I won’t be able to post again until tomorrow I’d hate to be buried up to my eyeballs. Not only would it be very difficult to not lose site of some things and get lost on sidetracks (interesting though they may be) but I’m gonna have to type for a very long time as it is! There are so many things I want to speak to at this point.
Comment by Anonymous — 13 January 2006 @ 7:16 PM
[QUOTE]The earth can’t support 6.5 billion people without destroying most every other kind of life (let alone 9 billion), so are you saying you would sacrifice over 50% of the population of the Earth so that one cancerous species can continue to live unhappy, stressful lives?[/QUOTE]
Right, I think the earth can support 6.5 billion just perfectly. There’s enough land and space for all of us, including other animals and plants.
Masanobu Fukuoka, a natural farmer, (and not only him) says you need about 300 square metre for one human to live on sustainably. If I make the calculation there’s even plenty of space left here in Belgium (which is very densely populated). Of course, this is only possible with a primitive and natural lifestyle.
Comment by gunnix — 13 January 2006 @ 7:21 PM
Gunnix,
Being a Fukuoka fan, I do have to point out that we’ve f***-ed up so much arable land, it’s doubtful we have enough left to fulfill a vision of feeding everyone.
But to use his techniques to help ease our transition our way out of civilization and back into a healthy world… now that’s something to contemplate, no matter how many or how few people it supports.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 13 January 2006 @ 9:02 PM
I’m also a big Fukuoka fan. His calculations are based on life in Japanese rice growing land, which is fairly limited, and most temperate climates have been so thoroughly exploited that it would take years of intensive rehabilitation to bring them anywhere close to the productivity of his land without chemicals. Remember that he has been developing his techniques for over 50 years. That is a long time to build up the health of your land, and means it probably never saw the devastating effects of chemical agriculture to a significant degree since the green revolution didn’t get going full swing until the sixties.
Also, it would still require us to use a pretty substantial portion of the sunlight income, and that is assuming we somehow develop perfect population control. Even if the whole world was a “natural farm” we would still be selecting mostly species we like, at the expense of those we don’t like or notice.
Assuming we overcome that diffuculty and somehow manage to use our horticultural techniques to increase diversity and bring local ecologies to a climax state, the real issue is, do you really think there is any way in hell you can convince the majority of westerners that they would be better off without their cars and big screen HDTV’s? In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he does case studies of civilizations that have collapsed, and found that in every case, the people chose to maintain the cultural practices that were destroying their environment, even when the signs of collapse were obvious. In other words, people would rather die than live differently or change their worldview.
Comment by limukala — 13 January 2006 @ 9:21 PM
Bob,
It’s your basic understanding of how populations are controlled where you go awry. Starvation and predation are only the most extreme forms of population control. More often, these are simply handled by modifying the birth rate. If lynxes eat too many snowshoe hares, it becomes harder to find the snowshoe hares that are left. The lynxes spend more time hunting, and so, less time copulating. The birth rate drops, and the death rate remains constant, so the lynx population drops. With less predation, the snowshoe hare population comes back up, and the process repeats. The lynxes were never starving to death–it was just a bit of a more difficult spell.
Ever notice that fertility is pretty much the first thing to go? So much as a head cold, and you can’t concieve? There’s a reason for that. Populations of all animals except civilized humans maintain a dynamic equilibrium, because they don’t control their food supply. Any animal that can arbitrarily raise its own food supply will do so–over and over and over again. It will never choose not to, and that leads us to the current predicament.
But, as I’ll explain in thesis #29, this is the last time this cycle is going to be repeated, for at least a geological epoch.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 January 2006 @ 11:20 PM
Why are the states of misisipi and Louisiana not colured in red. They still seem to be mostly abandoned after huricane Katrina.
Comment by Stephen — 14 January 2006 @ 2:00 AM
The strip of red along the Gulf Coast is a little hard to see at this resolution, but my understanding was that it was just the coast, not the whole states, that were in collapse. Was I wrong about this?
The map obviously needs some work, but I think it accomplishes its goal of driving home just how far down the road of collapse we already are. You’ll notice that, consistently, my error is that I didn’t make enough of it red. Take a look at that map–most of it is in red. I’ll polish the details for the book, but I think the point is neatly illustrated now: collapse is no longer a hypothetical future, but a present reality.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 14 January 2006 @ 11:33 AM
First I wanted to appologize. I am usually not abbrasive in this manner nor do I usually spout off half cocked.
Although I usually do not do this as a matter of course I also didn’t realize I was coming into someones house so to speak - I wrongly ASSumed that this was an anonymous web forum not a quasi-personal blog site. I understand the reaction given my rudeness.
Alot of what I was talking about has come from some direct conversations with self described primitivists. Some assertions I made were based from past encounters with folks from “Feral Visions”, some individual travelers and number of anarchist gatherings around the US.
The day before my spouting off I had spoken with some travelers who were primitivists and a lot of anger and rebuttles were then repeated wrongly here as though the author of this piece and all primitivists have a sort of group think -which unfortunately has been the case thus far in my personal interactions but I see this isn’t rule but the exception and also appologize for painting with a broad brush.
I find it very interesting that you have have a whole new direction for primitivist thought complete with a specialized language.
I wasn’t asserting that based on prior error of groups with similarities that the group or tradition in question was neccessarily incorrect. That wasn’t my argument at all.
If you scroll back up I asserted:
And I would further argue (although a moot point here as I’m now aware) that there isn’t any substantial difference. I was speaking to notions given to me in person by primitivists I’ve met and again appologize for ascribing this to you. They were asserting that active engagement in the struggle for emancipation from oppressive systems was not only futile but that one should concern most of their time learning skills useful to survival in the eminent post appocalyptic world and dropping out of civilization.
I have witnessed this same defeatist position in certain versions of Christianity as well as Marxist circles (waiting for the inevitable collapse of capitalism and preparing to take the machinery for themselves).
Unfortunately a lot of folks have wasted energy and lives concerned with an abstraction and a promise of a better world in the future.
I’ve been seeing this in quite a few groups lately and frankly I find it dangerous. I’ve seen it result in a number of anarchists eschewing real tangible change in favor of dropping out, traveling, “re-wilding” (I’m coming to see that this term has slightly different connotations and denotations depending on who you’re talking to) and preparing for the inevitable and emminent cataclysmic destruction of civilization.
Again I get the jist that you as the author are only pointing to a possible outcome and suggesting folks at least be prepared. This is quite different and I appologize for the ascription of dogma.
This is the crux of what I was getting at.
Alot of where the argument went (my fault for waltzing in spouting off) was way off of where I intended (Modal Logic, formal language systems and such). I’d like to speak to these asides anyway but would like to let them lie outside of what I really wanted to address if you’ll entertain this.
I’m sorry for jumping. You obviously have some background with philosophy in general and symbolic logic in particular. However I wasn’t speaking about the notion of infinity and the finite when I claimed logical fallacy.
I was speaking about your either collapse or infinite growth within a finite system assertion. By “grow” (taken in what I believe to be proper context)I extrapolated expasion and you seemed to allude to constant expansion. But we have meny empirical evidences showing that a collapse or expand model is not always the case. We see things expand, slow and then stagnate. We see systems evolve or change in some manner rather than collapse. We see capitalism do this in ways we never imagined possible 30 years ago when it was widely asserted that capitalism had a natural end and then collapse because of its expansionary nature. Once it found the natural end of which it tended, namely monopoly and use of available resources, it would collapse with no further place to go.
I do follow what you were saying above.
Not only did I not do that above but I didn’t here either.
The problem with this fallacy is not formal, but is found in its disjunctive—”either-or”—premiss: an argument of this type is fallacious when its disjunctive premiss is fallaciously supported.
The Black-or-White Fallacy, like Begging the Question, is a validating form of argument. For example, some instances have the validating form:
Simple Constructive Dilemma:
Either p or q.
If p then r.
If q then r.
Therefore, r.
For this reason, this fallacy is sometimes called “false” or “bogus” dilemma. However, these names are misleading, since not all instances have the form of a dilemma; some instead take the following, also validating form:
Disjunctive Syllogism:
Either p or q.
Not-p.
Therefore, q.
Usually, the truth-value of premisses is not a question for logic, but for other sciences, or common sense. So, while an argument with a false premiss is unsound, it is usually not considered fallacious. However, when a disjunctive premiss is false for specifically logical reasons, or when the support for it is based upon a fallacy, then the argument commits the Black-or-White Fallacy.
One such logical error is confusing contrary with contradictory propositions: of two contradictory propositions, exactly one will be true; but of two contrary propositions, at most one will be true, but both may be false.
You can surely see where I was coming from.
I not only hope for that world but spend my time actively seeking to subvert hierarchy and authoritarianism in every instance. I was wrongly ascribing to you things I am not able to take up with others due to their absence.
Bob Harrison,
I agree and find much of primitivism and green anarchism as usefull theoretically and on a practical, tangible level.
That would certainly be true.
I was using “schism” very loosely. Anarchy is not anarchism. Very different things. I think with this in mind what I said makes sense. If not I’ll clarify.
Yes it would.
Word
Thanks, this helpful.
This was helpful also.
WackyMorningDJ,
Thank you, this was helful also and very contrary to what I’ve encountered elswhere thus far. Keeping this in mind helps make better sense of the article in question which I found on another site as a link to here.
Limukala,
Agreed. Not much is for certain. As Hume stated, “we assume the future will resemble the past”.
The link doesn’t work.
Not only idealogical but in the real world as far as active work towards liberation is concerned.
I would agree. We must always have an eye towards the future. As is now probably evident I was speaking more to a notion not really esspoused here in this forum.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here as I haven’t made any statements to such effect.
While I agree one must carefully choose tactics based on desired outcome this notion is poor one. The state needs no pretense for this as is evidenced by history through the present. They act as they would aside from outside resistence.
I suppose that depends on you’re definition of civilization. All of the tools to create anything within our means is always present and intact.
How much harder still will it be if we have been actively seeking to subvert hierarchy and authoritarianism in the interm while facilitating others self discovery as anarchists? I’m finding a bit of what I was orgionaly speaking against in your tone here. correct me if I’m wrong.
Thats not for me to decide for someone else. But a die off is a die off regardless of how horrible it is or isn’t. It seems your advocating something more than standing back and watching while helping people cope with the coming transition
No, and this is logically fallacious reasoning. Not only that but it’s not up to me and I wouldn’t entertain the idea of any one being in a position like this. I would have a huge problem with one desriing the ability to make these descisions for others regardless of how destructive their continued existence seems or is. Again it seems this wouldn’t be question if one were not actively working to bring this about in some manner. This is of no concern if it’s something to happen of it’s own accord -it’s outta my hands regardless of what i think or feel about it. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Niether of these are my goals. The subjective nature of the concepts discussed and utilitarian arguments presented have a number of problems. The biggest one for me is
Thnaks for laying off of me for a bit.
Comment by Anonymous — 14 January 2006 @ 4:58 PM
Well, sorry if I was an ass. I guess when it comes down to it our thinking isn’t as different as I thought. A couple points though, I never pretended to desire or have the ability to make any sort of decisions as to who is going to live or die, except in the case of those close to me, in which case I intend to do everything in my power to help them survive (if that ever becomes necessary). I was just pointing out that if humans continue on their current course, at least half of all other species will go extinct. This process is already underway. While I love humans, I just don’t think they are worth sacrificing half of the rest of Earth’s life. I’m not saying I wan’t to pick who will die. I’m not even saying I want anyone to die at all, I would just rather have a lot of people die than most of the planet. There just isn’t any way to make that sound nice. Probably comes down to my spiritual outlook too. I just don’t see death as the ultimate worst possibility that it is seen to be by our ignorant culture.
I’m just a little curious as to sort of specific action you want to take to “actively seeking to subvert hierarchy and authoritarianism.” Specifically ones that wouldn’t land me in an internment camp. Call me a coward, but I just think I can be a better father if I stay under the radar. I also think that moving off the grid and separating yourself from the system does actively weaken the power of the authoritarian power structure, and anyone you can convince to do likewise is one less brainwashed monkey upholding the power structure.
Also, I just clicked on the link you said doesn’t work, and it worked for me. Anyone know what’s going on? In any event, it is the rigorous institution post called “Space cadets” (rigorousinstitution.blogspot.com)
I also am a little skeptical of trying to use abstract logic in place of concrete observation. For example, it may be logically fallacious to assert that the continued existence of 6.5 billion humans will cause the destruction of 50% of Earth’s species, that fits quite well with observation. Logic is great to a point, but it is a fairly limited tool when it comes down to it. Perception and awareness are more fundamental and imho can bring a much deeper understanding of the world.
Thanks for the good dialogue though, and feel free to correct my misperceptions.
Comment by limukala — 14 January 2006 @ 7:21 PM
It is easy to determine the outcome of the changing weather and dimishing resources. Whether one believes in primitive living or not, doesn’t give one a ticket to survival should a total collapse be forthcoming.
I sense anonymous would refute these claims solely on not wanting to consider the possibility.
Comment by Rick Larson — 14 January 2006 @ 10:18 PM
Managing to feed people ala another form of rice-based agriculture will be disastrous. We already know exactly what that looks like - pre-modern China and feudal Japan. Does anyone really think it would be good for humanity to survive until Doomsday with that sort of endless hierarchichal crud played out over and over and over, without the illusion of progress and the temporary prosperity brought by fossil fuels …?
Agriculture was the worst mistake ever made. Either we get away from it (good), or we stay with it (very bad), or we go extinct (certainly much preferable to the second option, in my view).
Comment by Eric — 15 January 2006 @ 11:54 AM
Eric,
If you’re referring to Fukuoka’s technique, it’s a horticultural technique, not an agricultural one. He uses rice because he’s familiar with it. The technique though is based on diversity being the primary good. It can work without rice.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 15 January 2006 @ 12:38 PM
Actually there have been agricultural societies that were very egalitarian. The ancient Hawaiians before the invasion of Pa’ao and his samoan warriors was totally egalitarian, peaceful and loving. There was no recorded warfare in the entire 1000 years they were there before the Tahitian chief Pa’ao came and saw that they “had no chiefs” and subjugated them. They would definitely be considered agricultural too, since their primary crop, taro, is fairly labor intensive. They loved their labor though, so was it really work? They also had plenty of time to surf, rock sled, have orgies and generally have one of the most fun and loving cultures imaginable. The arawaks are another example of peaceful sustainable agriculture. If you look at island cultures, you will find this a lot. They were forced by circumstances to be sustainable. It often takes a while for newcomers to a locale to find the proper balance, which is why hunter-gatherers have also caused the extinction of so many large mammals (in australia, north america, and every island in the world). It happens faster on an island, because the limitations become apparent much faster. On a global scale it takes a while.
Rice culture inevitably leads to fuedalism no more than inter-glacial periods inevitably lead to agriculture. Look how fast we became farmers when the world became warm enough.
The fact is art and religion and many other cultural artifacts were absent or very undeveloped until about 50,000 years ago. Does that mean we should abandon all that too? What sort of antiquity does a practice need before it can be concieved of as sustainable.
I’m not saying that I want to toil my whole life on a farm or that agriculture is in any way superior to hunting. I’d much rather be a hunter, but those kind of absolute judgements of right and wrong, or even abtract notions of what is and isn’t sustainable, seem very conceited and doesn’t really mesh with all of reality.
There are definitely areas where agriculture won’t work, and many of them are currently employing agriculture to the destruction of all else. That doesn’t mean that that’s true everywhere, and unless you are god I don’t see how you can make such absolute statements as “Agriculture was the worst mistake ever made. Either we get away from it (good), or we stay with it (very bad), or we go extinct”
Is there such thing as a mistake in the grand scheme of things? Maybe this is a necessary experiment and learning experience for us and the planet as a whole. Maybe not. We can learn from the experience and grow, or we can blindly react with anger and confusion, which are exactly what brought the current situation about. In other words, like everything in life, this is only what we make of it.
btw, have you read any fukuoka? His style of farming would DEFINITELY be considered horticulture, not agriculture, how ever arbitrary the actual dividing line between the two is. He works way less than even the average hunter-gatherer and yet produces way more food than he personally needs to survive. What we really need is good population control, and guess what, even hunter-gatherers needed and practiced that.
With good population control, horticulture could potenially put less pressure on the native environment than foraging. Rather than just not harming the balance of life, we could actively contribute to bringing local ecosystems to climax and encouraging diversity. Remember the studies about the parts of the “wild” amazon where 80% of the plants were placed by humans.
Comment by limukala — 15 January 2006 @ 5:05 PM
Hope you are right limukala… However, if Jason is correct, this will only lead to another civilization and the consequences of such.
Comment by Rick Larson — 15 January 2006 @ 10:37 PM
I have a suspicion that they are both right and things will be certainly interesting in the future.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 15 January 2006 @ 11:47 PM
Thanks all for the clarification. The point I wanted to underline was simply that agriculture of any form will screw us all up the way it already has, all over again. Actually, if we were to be technical about it, I suppose I should say ‘delayed return societies’ (against ‘immediate return societies’), but because agriculture is always delayed return (and there are only some rare instances of delayed return hunter-gatherer societies), then I’m prepared to be sloppy on the run.
Without food storage, there is no possibility of the sort of class-based social control that now defines our societies and makes them thoroughly unliveable - indeed, unhuman, given that people evolved to live in egalitarian bands and haven’t gotten away from that yet. HG bands were acephelous. No one had any power base (control of food or wealth) from which to lord it over others, and if you tried pushing people about, you’d get laughed at, or people would just go live elsewhere, or if really pissed they’d murder you (deservedly, in the circumstances).
Well, sounds good to me…
Comment by Eric — 16 January 2006 @ 1:00 AM
limukala
Comment by C — 16 January 2006 @ 1:47 AM
(sorry - I prematurely pressed something)
limukala:
I’ve only read “One Straw Revolution” so far - where did you get the info on Fukuoka’s labour input?
Comment by Clive — 16 January 2006 @ 1:50 AM
Here is a quote from an interview with him:
“Food, clothing and shelter are very easy. If you sow seed balls for just one hour in your life, you can have enough wood to build a few houses in your lifetime. You can make clothes from your plants. You can get food. One day of sowing for trees, one day for vegetables and fruit, one day for grains. If you sow seed balls of rice and barley in an area of one thousand square meters, you can get six hundred kilograms of each grain, which is enough for one family of five people for one year. If you work three or four days a year, you can have a good life.”
the rest of the interview is at
http://www.seedballs.com/gmmfpa.html
He mentions elsewhere that it takes a lot more work in the beginning, but once the soil ecology is climaxed and the land is basically in a state of nature it mostly takes care of itself. It also requires deep knowledge and intuitive understanding of local ecology. Can’t really say since I don’t have land of my own to learn with yet, but a chain letter I just recieved promised my wish would be granted provided I sent it on quickly, so I should be set.
There is a Fukuoka farming forum with some helpful people too.
http://larryhaftl.com/ffo/
Comment by limukala — 16 January 2006 @ 3:09 AM
Hmmm, interesting.
It sounds like he is talking about permaculture to me. Essentially, it is a practice in which the area in question is seeded with verious plants the grow well together, i.e. they support each other by their natural tendency. An example of this would be one plant using a nutrient another fixes or otherwise introduces into the area. Seedballs are a way of doing this.
This cannot support 6.5 billion people or any scale of civilization, naturally. The reasons are manifold, but they include the inability to monocrop, the inefficency involved in the harvest, and the nessesary inclusion of other animals into the system. It’s a wonderful way to turn old farmland into forest again. And that forest would be an endless supply of wealth for a tribe. But it would never support a civilization of any size.
Note, I’ve never read his books. So there is a finite possibility of me “talking out of my ass.” If I have, please excuse the interruption.
Anon,
Glad that was all straightened out. If you’d like, feel free to take up a handle of some kind and talk with us a awhile. Grab a cup of organically grown green tea and relax. Always is a very long time to be fighting heirarchy in all it’s forms.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 16 January 2006 @ 3:51 AM
The German word for “to fertilize (crops)” is “dungen”. And indeed, that’s what Bavarian farmers do - spread what came out of the dairy barns. It smells pretty funky in the early spring and a bit again at harvest time, but they’re so overproductive that the German government encourages them to use some of their grain field space to grow oil seeds for biodiesel. About 10% of the gas stations in this region sell biodiesel out of regular gas pumps for a bit less than petrodiesel, so I’m sure that if Bavarians had to fall back to their old rural lifestyles (pre-German Empire) and only used diesel for food and fuel production, they’d be ok (or better off than most other First Worlders)
Comment by Texan in Bavaria — 16 January 2006 @ 10:34 AM
S’all right, apology accepted.
I fail to see the distinction. In the Christian outline, the predictions of Christ’s return have consistently disappointed, based on the interpretations of ancient manuscripts. These interpretations of Roman literature are used to paint an apocalyptic scenario meant to make people complacent, and to beleive they alone are chosen.
I do not believe your comparison of our scenario to that is at all fair, however. First, as I discussed in the article linked above, there is the question of evidence. The Second Coming is based on Roman literature–our evidence is pulled from scientific evidence. Secondly, Christian apocalypticism is used to breed complacency; ours is targeted to encourage preparation. Christian apocalypticism rests on elitism. Ours says that there will be many “chosen,” and if we prepare now, we can be in that group.
Of course, the preparations necessary are precisely the things we should be doing anyway, ecologically. In terms of revolt, I do not believe it is possible. Practically, of course, but also in this: to revolt against something is to tacitly confirm that it is the legitimate form of rule. If you do overthrow the legitimate form of rule, what can you replace it with, except with something much resembling it, since you have conditioned everyone to accept that as legitimate by the very act of revolt?
Very true, but consider this. While open revolt may merely underline the legitimacy of hierarchy, abandonment is another thng entirely. Primitivist abandonment of civilization is not merely a hope of some better world; it is also something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wide-scale abandonment of civilization is collapse, because ultimately hierarchy rests on legitimacy. Leaders only have as much power as we allow them to have. While revolution confirms hierarchy, abandonment causes it to implode.
I see it as something that’s already happening. I see it as the unavoidable consequence of our actions over the past 10,000 years. “Free will” may or may not be a factor–I don’t know–but a moment before you splatter on the ground is too late to contemplate your free will, after you jumped out of the plane without a chute.
How so? Even during depressions and recessions, the economy grows–just more slowly. We’ve never seen our economy’s growth halt, or even significantly slow down. Given what happens from a slight slow-down, a steady state should be apocalyptic. After all, in a steady state, any investment’s ROI approaches zero, and that means no more investment–and that means no more infrastructure.
True–but they also have shown an inability to comprehend rhizome. Armed resistance they’ve crushed many times. Revolt is familiar to them, because revolt still operates within their paradigm. Thus, revolt further strengthens their worldview and legitimacy. Abandonment is something they do not understand, and cannot develop any adequate response to. Their blindness to rhizome and their inability to understand or respond to abandonment makes that its Achilles’ heel.
Actively subverting the ideas of hierarchy in one’s daily life is a very powerful thing. It creates a new memetic variety–one that will be ideally suited for survival in a collapse context. In the published version, “Memetics & Materialism” will be expanded into a full thesis discussing this, and the project that lies ahead for us, given the inevitability of collapse.
We need to write a lot more praxis articles, but Ben’s gotten a good start with his “Methods of Freedom” series: “Interaction without Hierarchy” and “Non-Hierarchical Thought” are up now, but I think we can look forward to more to come.
As I’ll get to later this week with thesis #29, besides being awful, that scenario is also–thankfully–impossible.
All the other taro cultivators in the Pacific (and there are quite a few) are classified as horticulturalists.
Which suggests the amounts of liesure time consistent with horticulturalists, not agriculturalists.
Because it became possible–initiating the self-reinforcing feedback loop fed by competition. If it becomes possible, someone will do it. And if it gives them a competitive edge, then everyone has to do it to stay competitive. Horticulturalists remain below the point of diminishing returns not because they’re some kind of noble savage, but because they have no alternative.
Divinity is hardly required to make that statement, just a simple review of the facts.
Most of the world is arable now only thanks to fossil fuels. Petrochemical fertilizers and industrial techniques are required to keep the Great Plains from becoming a desert, because monoculture kills the soil. Without that, very little arable land will be left. Agriculture may survive in small pockets, but it will never again be anything other than an abberation–a quaint little pocket with strange customs and a hard life.
Ah, well, if you define “mistake” as “a deviation from the Divine Destiny set down for us,” then your statement makes more sense. I think Eric meant it in the same manner that Jared Diamond and I meant it: “an act that, unknown to us when we committed it, ended in greater harm than good.”
Most permacultural techniques are also geographically confined. Where possible, I’m concerned only by their potential for escalation (if it can be done, someone will–and if it grants a competitive edge, everyone will have to do the same), but the fact that they’re geographically constrained makes me less worried.
Not if they don’t have metals or resources. And, permaculture tends to be geographically constrained, so they can’t just plop down anywhere like a wheat field can.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 January 2006 @ 12:57 PM
My grandparents homesteaded in central ND around 1900. They were able to live and raise families on 160 acres using horses for farm work and transportation. We were farming 800 acres when I was in high school in 1950, using two tractors and a team of horses for some work and still milking around 12 cows twice a day. We raised most of our own food with a large garden, potato patch and sweet corn field.
Some Mennonite farm families near our farm were still living on 160 acres using horses through WW II.
It was very labor intensive, particularly storing food for ourselves and livestock for the winter. We worked from sun-up to sun-down those long summer days. We did not use any fertilizer other than manure, and no pesticides. Several hours a day were required in the garden and potato patch, mostly by my mother and sisters. We pitched hay by hand into the hayrack pulled by the horses, and hauled it to the barn loft. In the winter we were still kept very busy because now the cattle and horses and chickens and pigs all had to be taken care of, the barn manure had to be removed on a daily basis. Winter was also a time for butchering and putting up sausage, sugar cured hams and bacon, and canning beef.
We cut the grain with a binder and shocked the grain to wait until the threshing rig came. We shoveled the grain that we did not haul to the local elevator right away by hand into grain bins.
We got REA about 1950 in our area. Before that we had a 32 volt wind charger with 16 large batteries for storage. We had only two electric motors, one for the well and one for a grindstone. We only had a couple of light bulbs in the barn and very few in the house.
This was, and is the Olive Garden of my memory. Lots of work, but still a good healthy life. It has been replaced by a Lexus economy.
A boyhood friend that stayed on there to farm now has a son that is farming about 15,000 acres, about 23 square miles. Still lots of work, but much more modern technology oriented and specialized. The price of wheat is still essentially the same as it was in 1950. There are no more small farms, the local community has shrunk, the few school children are bused over 25 miles to school.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 1:09 PM
And the land in North Dakota today has been bled dry by that. As it died, we were able to keep it alive with petrochemical fertilizers. Once those are gone, North Dakota, like the rest of the Great Plains, will be a desert.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 January 2006 @ 1:11 PM
Yes. And when I go back there I no longer see the wild life. The sloughs used to be teeming with coots, blackbirds, ducks, and muskrats. Jack rabbits, gophers, quails and pheasants were common. There was still virgin prairie used as pasture. Now many sloughs have been drained, the wildlife is gone except for deer, and the prairie and entire homesteads have been turned into grain fields.
I wonder if the wildlife, both flora and fauna, will return when the tractors and combines stop.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 2:18 PM
I also think that a community of people could survive there like my grandparents a century ago.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 2:33 PM
Wheat doesn’t just come out of any old ground. Plants, like any other organism, takes in nutrients, and excretes wastes. For plants, those are nutrients they take out of the soil, and waste they put into the soil. Now, in nature, what one plant excretes as waste, another takes in as nutrients. They balance each other, and all of them thrive.
But monoculture sets fields of the same plant–all bleeding out the same nutrients, all dumping back in the same wastes. After enough of that, the soil becomes incapable of supporting that plant anymore. In this case, those plants are wheat and corn.
As that happened, we also invented ever more powerful petrochemical fertilizers to offset the death of the soil, giving the illusion that all was well. The Dust Bowl, though, arose because our innovation was outpaced by the devastation. We quickly got back on top of it, though, leading us to the current situation.
I respect what your grandparents were trying to do–they sound like my own ancestors, ever on the hinterland of civilization, trying to stay ahead of it. But it was people like our ancestors who bled the land dry. Without those fertilizers, the Great Plains is a desert. The communities that will survive there will be like the communities that survived in the Mojave. Wildlife will thrive there when civilization ends, but it won’t be the wildlife of a prairie–it will be the wildlife of a desert.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 January 2006 @ 3:21 PM
I will agree that wheat production will be greatly reduced, or perhaps not viable as a cash crop. But I believe that there is enough rainfall in central ND to provide for local subsistence farming, and livestock raising. The biggest problem is the winter IMO. We heated our place with a central lignite coal stove. There was plenty of lignite available, delivered by railroad. The railroad tracks are all gone now.
Our barn was dug into the side of a hill, and with the animals inside we could do our chores without our winter coats. Maybe people could live more with their animals in the future.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 7:27 PM
It’s not a question of rainfall, but of soil. It doesn’t matter how much rain falls on dead sand and dirt, if there’s no nutrients in it, nothing is going to grow.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 January 2006 @ 7:32 PM
Much could depend on how fast collapse occurred. Skills and tools for working without industrial energy inputs would have to be redeveloped. Security could also be a big problem, even 100 miles from Bismarck.
If I saw collapse coming rapidly to my area in TX near Austin, and I wanted to survive, I would rather go back to central ND than try to fight it out here.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 7:48 PM
There has been a government program called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Since it is voluntary, only marginal land (mostly eroded by wind) has gone into that program since the farmers can make more on land that they can still farm. This CRP land still will grow grass and clover and alfalfa that can be used for pasture and hay cropping, at least in central ND, IMO.
Barnyard manure could be used for vegetable gardening.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 8:02 PM
I have been forecasting collapse for about 40 years. I appreciate your thesis and all the comments here. Most people don’t want to face the truth and make some kind of contingency plans in the event things start to unravel quickly. There may not be much anybody can do to insure survival. Everybody cannot suddenly descend on a rural place expecting to make it there. I believe a few hardy people will survive, however, and be living rather well in local supporting communities in central ND in the future.
Comment by Johnny — 16 January 2006 @ 9:14 PM
Doesn’t matter what agricultural techniques you learn. Dead sand is dead sand. Rocks don’t bleed, and dead soil will not grow wheat.
It’ll have to … and farmers have always turned their used up land into pasture. But that’s a higher trophic level–so it can feed fewer people.
Fortunately, most people won’t even try.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 January 2006 @ 10:57 PM
Although that’s a big part of it, a huge part is the coming loss of petrochemicals, which currently account for 50% of the world’s nitrogen fixing fertilizers. Every farmer in the world could just grow green beans to fix nitrogen, but that would lead to the inefficiency of the harvest you talked about.
You ain’t lyin’! I recently spent 8 months within rock-throwing distance of the Tigris river. The soil was so bad that there were drifts of powder everywhere that made perfect hand/foot prints, complete with fingerprints. It rained just about every other day. The soil just couldn’t drink it up.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 17 January 2006 @ 10:02 AM
US highway 83 runs essentially straight North, all the way from the Mexican border near Brownsville TX to the Canadian border near Antler ND. It goes through or by dozens of cities and towns that are the major center for their area including Laredo and Abilene TX, Garden City KN, North Platte NB, Pierre SD, and Bismarck ND.
Every year for the past 6 years I have driven US 83 one or more times round trip for about 1200 miles one way. It takes me 500 miles just to get out of TX. There is usually very little traffic on the road except for around the larger cities mentioned above, cattle and grain trucks. Farming is generally only done on irrigated land all the way from TX through NB. The rest of the land is ranch land, but I see very few cattle, the pasture land is too dry to support many cattle either. Many of the smaller towns along the highway are the only major town in the whole county, yet they are obviously just a fraction of what they once were in terms of population and business. (Many have more empty buildings than occupied ones even though they may indeed be the county seat.)
It looks like much of the area would become more like a desert without irrigation. Also scrub juniper/cedar is encroaching and completely covering areas where it is not controlled, particularly in TX, but also all the way to the Dakotas. I see virtually no wildlife or road kill except for some prairie dog towns in NB and SD.
But central ND has been enjoying unprecedented rainfall and an increased growing season that has made it possible to raise crops like corn and beans that could never be raised before. It appears like climate change is indeed a reality. Land which a few years ago was not worth more than $300 an acre is now selling for as much as $800 an acre. My farmer friend recently told me that they have shifted almost all their crop to corn and beans. They averaged a yield of 125 bu/acre for their corn.
Here in East central TX where cotton was king a century ago, farming is very tenuous without irrigation. A large town near us that used to be a cotton mercantile center now has nothing but a few antique stores. I can not imagine how cotton could be raised in this area again. In the last 6 years that I have been here the summers have been very hot and dry. We essentially have had no measurable rain since last spring.
All in all, my wife and I enjoy the trip. It is also a trip back through memory lane in many ways.
Comment by Johnny — 17 January 2006 @ 3:56 PM
Collapse is only inevitable for human civilisation. A super intelligent AI, with a complete understanding of nanotechnology could easily supply mankind with unlimited, perfectly nutritious food and fix all the ills of heirarchy and civilisation (including population growth) - or exterminate us.
Currently AI is all smoke and mirrors. But thats because we know next to nothing about intelligence and how it works. But we wont necissarily need to.
1. Computer power is increasing exponentially. If moores law continues (and developing quantum computing, nanotechnology etc suggests it will), by 2020 £1000 PCs will have the computing power to funtionally simulate the human brain.
2. Developing nanotech/brain scanning shows every indication that it will be able to completely map the human brain in enough detail to create a funtional model on a shorter timescale than 1.
3. Once such a model exists, scientists will play with it using trial and error. They will quickly find out how to make it smarter/change its motivations.
4. There will then be a smarter than human AI (which we never need to fully understand). Someone will give it the motivation to recursively self improve, and its intelligence will grow exponentially.
5. The actions of such a hugely smarter than human AI would be impossible to predict - but if it wanted to it could develop technology at a ridiculous pace.
But, if there is a collapse in the next 20-30 years, obviously it wont be built.
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 4:07 PM
So could fairies. I’ve written AI before. I work for Vivisimo, a company founded by the protege of Herbert Simon, the man who basically invented AI. We use AI to analyze search results. I’ve been up to my eyeballs with AI for going on half a decade now.
There is no threat of developing any kind of significant AI in the foreseeable future.
Moore’s Law is already starting to fail.
Nanotech remains, for the most part, a pipe dream.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 March 2006 @ 4:19 PM
Maybe, depends what you mean by nanotech. Little robots in the bloodstream yes.
However, the ability to manipulate matter on the nanoscale already exists. Its just a case of making it economically viable. Its like how the first steam engine was rubbish compared to a horse.
Current computer developments are slowing because wever reached the limits of microtech. when limited nanotech becomes feasable (5-10 years) computer power will most likely increase much faster than it would under moores law.
Steadily improving brain scanning is not a pipe dream.
The thing about my argument for AI - borrowed from proffesionals, is that it will be made using a method not currently possible. Currently AI is rubbish as people need to understand what they are doing, and true intelligence is incredibly complex. But when its possible to copy the human brain (assuming no collapse) and improve it by trial and error, the current problems no longer apply.
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 4:33 PM
Also, super-human intelligence could possibly be achieved by genetic engineering before a collapse.
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 4:47 PM
The thing about arguments regarding making something “economical” is that it’s a problem of scale–and those are the most difficult problems that are routinely discounted. Very often, problems of scale simply cannot be overcome.
In the meantime, we’ve now peaked, and our ability to innovate–and our energy to do so–is in decline. This falls under the heading of a “techno-fix,” and suffers from all the problems inherent to that category: it requires more of precisely the things now in short supply, and it alleviates a proximate cause of collapse only be accelerating its ultimate cause.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 March 2006 @ 5:09 PM
I dunno, id say if we could trully get recursively self improving intelligence, it would be the one exception to that technofix rule. Microtech (which was originally ridiculously expensive) became economical because the market wanted more powerful computers produced on a large scale. The market still wants more powerful computers produced on a large scale, and low level nanotech could provide them. Is there any major difference im not aware of? Transhumanists do tend to quickly skip past this bit.
Whether the problems of scale are insurmountable or not, i dont know.
Bear in mind these predictions of collapse occured before the temporary technofix of the harber process, which most deemed impossible beforehand. I cant say AI is inevitable, but is it really impossible?
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 5:39 PM
It might be, but that’s a huge “if.” It’s that “if” itself that’s subject to “the techno-fix rule.”
That is the question, isn’t it? That’s why we’re working on making it economical, and why it isn’t economical yet–we’re still working it out. The problem with research is, you never know where it ends until you get there. There may be a major difference that neither of us is aware of that makes the whole thing just a big pipe dream.
Market pressure can move innovation down any possible avenue, but not quite everything is possible, so if market pressure drives towards one of those things that’s genuinely impossible, well … tough noogies.
No, it’s not. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s not impossible. But I do think it’s extremely unlikely to surface in the next five years or so, which is about what we’d need for it to prevent collapse.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 March 2006 @ 5:46 PM
You reckon the collapse will come that soon? Surely wed be more aware if it were to happen in 5 years. What do you reckon will trigger it?
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 6:43 PM
See, “Timeline of Collapse.” The ultimate cause of this collapse will be the same as any other: the diminishing returns on complexity.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 March 2006 @ 6:48 PM
Maybe I’m a little stupid. How on Earth does AI stop the collapse?
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 2 March 2006 @ 6:49 PM
Well, if it kills us all, then that obviously works.
The AI will get cleverer at an exponential rate - cleverer AI better at making itself cleverer. As well as thinking smarter, an AI will think faster with electronic signals moving at the speed of light rather than the 150ms human nerve impulses. For an AI with the same complexity as the human brain, the subjective time from socrates to now would pass in 22 hours. Such an AI would be able to develop technology ridiculously fast.
Exactly what it would come up with is beyond human prediction.
Some shortsighed guesses:
If it wanted to help humans: self sustaining GM/nano agriculture at 1000s of times the current level (possibly farming the ocean), Clean energy etc would be a given. It would develop new means of production -(likely nanotechnology) far more effective than those currently employed. There would be no need for human labour as AIs (designed to love it) would be able to do all production better than humans - and produce enough for all humans distributing according to need. Capitalism & exploitation would become an anachronism. It would make artificial birth control available to everyone, thus halting population growth.
Maybe it would create GM organisms which would allow all the worlds current population to live primitive and have enough to eat, providing people with super advanced medicine when necissary?
Comment by Slothboy — 2 March 2006 @ 8:01 PM
A cleverer AI is a more complex AI, right?
The more it improves itself the more complex it becomes, yes?
This seems like a problem. The more complex a brain the more likely a malfunction. Make it a little smarter than genius and it goes mad. Programming anything as complex as a human brain is always fraught with imperfections. So far, the best brainwashing techniques still have a sizable failure rate and they don’t hold beyond a few generations certainly not where the supergoals are concerned. (I am talking about human brains here)
Brainwashing will have to do for human-level AI, because we have no idea how to program complex intelligences, anything one can fully describe with
mathematics is not as complex as human brain. A superbrain will need super-ethics if you expect it to take care of our needs and we have no super-ethics and cannot ask AI to make it for us, especially if we have to brain-wash it into recursive improvement and not some other pursuit.
Meanwhile, the hardware for this thing is not yet ready. A fab for next generation chip is going to cost 10 billion to build. The chip companies cannibalized each other until only two are left standing. Looks like the end of the line for the harware business, because once an entity as big and powerful as Intel no longer makes improvements, no one else is able to make them. Unless the silicon is about to give way to new paradigm, we will reach a dead end by the end of the decade. But, no new paradigm is emerging yet. Our ability to manipulate matter on nano-scale is still inferior to biological systems, and there is very few exciting developments especially outside of biological field.
Copying a human brain is certainly far from possible with what we know now. We are still struggling to build artificial neurons that would faithfully replicate the brain neuron functions. Scientists are forced to simplify and create incomplete reduced models.
Meanwhile, R&D funding growth is slowing down, governments spend less and less money on research outside military needs, scientists become more specialized and less likely to understand each other.
I think that AI is no solution to collapse, but if it is, it is going to introduce new problems, exponentially harder problems, problems that this civilization will not survive.
Comment by Anonymous — 3 March 2006 @ 2:02 AM
‘anything one can fully describe with
mathematics is not as complex as human brain.’
The human brain is made of atoms and molecules. These can be described by mathematics once brain scanning is advanced enough to show us how they are all arranged (we just need a lot of computing power).
‘Brainwashing will have to do for human-level AI, because we have no idea how to program complex intelligences’
The idea is, once we have a mathematical model, we can learn how it works by trial and error.
‘A superbrain will need super-ethics’
Human ‘ethics’ are the product of psycological evolution. Once this is understood by the above method it will be alterable. Part of the recursive self improvement could be to improve the ‘brain washing’.
‘But, no new paradigm is emerging yet’
My guess is that paradigm will be circuits built from nanotubes. Individual nanotubes have already been placed on experimental circuit boards. Individual transistors have been built from them. Will the collapse remove the infrastructure required for this to become mass scale before it happens? Maybe, but i dont think its certain.
‘Copying a human brain is certainly far from possible with what we know now’
damn straight. but once we have good enough brain scanning, we wont need to ‘know’.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 7:28 AM
I can’t believe we’re taking this seriously.
Moore’s law is ridiculous and always has been. The number of transistors you can put on a chip cannot grow exponentially forever. And the performance boost from increasing the number of transistors on a chip is, itself, subject to diminishing returns.
If the AI is modelled on the human brain then it is going to be subject to certain limitations based on that model. While it may be able to ‘fix’ itself of any gross inefficiencies (after 2 million years how many of those are left) that will not make it necessarily an order of magnitude more intelligent.
The technological advances created by the posited AI are just as subject to diminishing returns as any other level of complexity. While the AI may be able to come up with technological innovation at an immense rate that doesn’t make those innovations worthwhile. Take a look at old newsreels about the newest inventions from the 40’s or so. Technological innovation is limited not just by the reasoning speed of the brain but also by experiential interaction with the world. So the AI needs not just a brain but a mobile army of sensors.
If the AI is allowed to modify itself then you cannot give it motivations because it can change them.
Even allowing your entire scenario the world ends up as a crowded wasteland with every carbon atom in the solar system tied into the production of humankind whose sole endeavor is to keep the AI running so that they don’t all die on the arid rock that used to be earth.
The entire scenario is based on the idea that diminishing returns doesn’t apply to non-human entities.
JimFive
Comment by JimFive — 3 March 2006 @ 11:04 AM
Just to add on to that:
What intelligence? I don’t see no stinking intelligence. Whose brain? Also, one of few correlations with intelligence we have found is emotions. What if the AI gets mad? (I know, I know, it sucked. But it’s still a good question.) Besides, I assume you mean cells, not molecules and atoms. Because if not my response can be summed up in one word: Heisenburg.
I don’t see an AI growing food for us. Or breaking the laws of thermodynamics.
And, I’m afraid I’ve seen too many first-year CS students eager to get out of school because they already know everything and their unique perspective will give us the breakthrough we’re waiting for to really thing that this is coming soon.
Also, electrical impulses do not move at the speed of light. Ironically enough, only photons move at the speed of light, and even they have a tendency to slow down around curves.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 3 March 2006 @ 11:46 AM
No, the number of transistors cant grow forever. However, using transistors already produced in experiments - enough would fit on a chip to easily produce more than enough computing power to perform the simulation described. We just need the infrastructure to produce enough.
AI, modelled on human brain would be the first step of development done by humans. By trial and error experiments we figure out how to make it smarter. If this werent possible we wouldnt have evolution. As the AI will then be smarter than us, it would be better than us at improving itself.
Using similar methods we figure out how to modify motivation/emotions. IF we do this right it wont get mad. IF we give it the right motivations, it wont want to change them. Obviously it could go wrong.
My argument was that the AI would break the capitalist system, as with such intelligence it would realise everything you have done. It would stop population growth (provide birth control/encourage lifestlye change etc) and develop enough technology to provide for everyone. I dont see how an AI providing for a limited population would be any different than the natural world providing.
I meant large molecules (protiens etc) of which the cells are made. These can be modelled perfectly accurately without quantum mechanics.
I dont do CS.
Im talking about the signals (which are not physical objects), not electrons in a wire. They do move at roughly the speed of light.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 2:46 PM
Slothboy, you need to read this: http://www.geniebusters.org/00_contents.htm
Comment by DigitalDjigit — 3 March 2006 @ 3:00 PM
No mate, this guy misses the point.
If you create a complete mathematical model of the human brain it is to all intents and purposes a human. Such a model could be easily altered to interface directly with the rest of the ‘team’, rather than using cumbersome screens/keyboards etc. Why would you ever have a human in your ‘team’, when you could have such a model - the human would only slow it down due to slow interfacing.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 6:00 PM
Also:
The reason an AI at human level could be improved, but not a human at human level is because the AI is software, which can be rewritten at will. A human is all hardware.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 6:27 PM
A human brain has ~10 billion working neurons each connected at least with 20 others. And the whole mess is constantly in flux, growing and severing connections, with few neurons dying, few springing up, always connecting and disconnecting. How are you going to model this mess? And this does not take into account the connections with sensory inputs and other parts of the body which will at the least square the complexity. And I didn’t even mention yet just how much about the brain operation is currently unknown and therefore impossible to accurately model in principle.
Current molecular dynamics simulations are capable of processing millions of atoms for tens of nanoseconds in a matter of hours. Assuming computer power quadruples in the next 3 years, it will still take an hour to process a hundred nanoseconds in the life of ten million atoms. Atoms are not brain cells. We are way short of the mess. Even these primitive simulations are not easy to alter as researchers spend weeks modifying a few parameters.
Before we model human brain, perhaps some simpler brains can be modeled. What is the most advanced brain that has been fully modeled so far? Is it a cock-roach? Is it a single neuron?
Comment by _Gi — 3 March 2006 @ 7:11 PM
1. You dont need to undestand it, you just need to copy it - use brainscaning which is in development.
2. I dunno whats been done so far. We dont have the brain scanners to see what to model. We dont have the hardware to run the model - you are right that to model the mess HUGE computing power will be required.
But, IF no collapse we will be very likely have this in 20 years.
The thing is, computing power inceases exponentially. suppose in 5 years we get LIMITED nanotech going and computing power doubles every year from then on (slower than your example) - similar to how microtech has worked thus far. There are no known physical principles that would keep computing power below that neede to model the brain.
year power
6 2*
7 4*
8 6*
9 8*
10 16*
11 32*
12 64*
13 128*
14 256*
15 512*
16 1024*
17 2048*
18 4096*
19 8192*
20 16384*
Such growth leaves plenty of leeway for setbacks short of catabolic collapse. To expect anything to be achievable at 1* computer power is unrealistic.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 9:12 PM
Sry bout the formatting
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 9:13 PM
Also, there are likely ways to funtionally simulate a neuron much more easily than modeling all the molecules. Possibly, but not certainly, and not nescessarily to the development AI, neuroscientists will find these in the next 20 years.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 9:21 PM
and my maths was wrong - but were it right, the final number would be bigger.
Comment by Slothboy — 3 March 2006 @ 9:23 PM
“How on Earth does AI stop the collapse?”
Ran Prieur had a lot of thought-provoking things to say about this in one of his recent essays, “The Age of Batshit Crazy Machines.”
My own personal thoughts on this idea run along the same line as his: What happens when the AI is given control of the world and decides that the best way to make the world efficient, safe and prosperous is to end cvilization? Collapse is an economizing process; brilliant AIs who love efficiency would instantly realize that. And if they’re in positions of power to end civilization, they very well might.
(In fact, I designed an entire fantasy role-playing world around this idea when I was about 12, far before I entered any mindset approximating an anti-civ outlook of the world. On the planet of Tiafant, a powerful and technologically advanced civilization gave all their power over to a computer system called Core, which was designed to make the world safe and prosperous. Once in power, it immediately set out to create conditions for a slow, safe, stable crash of civilization, versus a catabolic collapse of civilization. Of course, once the people in charge found out what Core’s plan was, they moved to stop Core by utilizing an energy burst weapon that ravaged the entire world, brought magic into existence, and ended civilization anyway. 2,500 years later, a medieval/magical civ has returned, and PCs get swept up in a grand scheme to jump-start Core’s program and end civ once and for all.)
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 4 March 2006 @ 6:00 PM
Anarchy will never work because anarcists are too busy thinking they know more than everyone else. You can’t have a cooperative society when you think you’re smarter than everyone else.
Comment by tiffany — 7 August 2006 @ 5:31 PM
That’s true, and that’s why those anarchists won’t survive. It’s natural selection. You may well be right that that’s one of the criteria, but that’s not a mark that anarchy will never work. Anarchy worked for two million years; it’s everything but anarchy that’s unproven and untried. If you’re right, that doesn’t mean anarchy won’t work, it simply suggests that anarchists won’t get to survive to enjoy their anarchy.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 August 2006 @ 5:37 PM
tiffany, Not all anarchists are out there thinking they’re smarter than everyone else. Mostly that’s the loudmouthed ones. Some of us are quietly living our lives trying our darndest to avoid dealing with hierarchy any more than necessary. That does not mean that we cannot or will no work cooperatively with our neighbors either.
Comment by ChandraShakti — 7 August 2006 @ 5:50 PM
Actually, I know “anarchy” can work, first hand because I live it everyday. Believe it or not, I work at a bar with 10 other people and a “boss” who lets us run the show. He shows up if we call him to deal with a problem but otherwise we make the place run with no one telling us how to do it. We make our own schedules, write our own paychecks, take draws when we need to, trade days when we need to…etc etc. yes, we still have to work within the “system” of our employment, but the amount of cooperation it takes to make a go of it with out someone “in charge” is staggering and the ability to handle conflicts without being confrontational is absolutely essential (and something most loudmouth “anarchists” have no grasp on). It certainly wouldn’t work with one dumbshit talking down to everyone else. I believe in anarchy as a way of life, just not as the intellectual nonsense most of the loudmouths preach. That’s why I said “it” would never work.
Comment by tiffany — 7 August 2006 @ 6:59 PM
One interesting symptom of collapse is the willingness of gullible people to believe in salvationist urban legends such as NESARA, or the “National Economic Security and Reformation Act”. Read up on this strange Internet phenomenon and see firsthad the social results of the early stages of collapse.
Comment by Thomas Rondy — 30 August 2006 @ 3:00 AM
What I tried to drive at with the map above and only hit the vicinity of, the Fund for Peace achieved with far more precision in their failed states index.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 16 April 2007 @ 10:28 AM
A provocative, intriguing and cogent thesis. I find the reasoning that there are tendencies to decline and that it may not necessarily be a bad thing similar to a line my own thinking.
Where I find myself with a slightly different view is that I doubt that man will revert to a “stone age� mode of civilisation, if I understood correctly, but I personally think that after a mass die off man will probably revert to a decentralized form, in any cases pre-industrial, but not necessarily stone age.
I also think it will remain to the survivors to re-learn many basic skills such a local farming and hunting and basic home making and survival techniques that have largely been forgotten. I think that if there is a collapse it won’t be a simple implosion like the Roman empire or even the Austria Hungarian. Present day world problems do seem much more profound. The issues of population growth, climatic change and depleted resources were never problems faced in such a magnitude simultaneously by another other epoch.
For that reason alone, the actual turbulence will probably resemble a mass clean up, natures way as it were of correcting imbalances in the global system of life. I also think that civilization will “progress�, in the sense of a continued order will exist out of the disorder, the scientist Ilya Prigogine won the noble prize for his demonstration the order comes from chaotic events, and personally I believe we’ll see some kind of dissipative breakdown leading to a new order, probably a highly dispersed, more adjusted and radically decentralized civilization.
I also wonder at the idea that the increasing complexity is the problem; I would reframe that in terms of entropy and disorder. If anything, evolution moves in the direction of increasing complexity, not the reverse. If true, a collapse would mark a phase of movement, from where we are now, to a newer form. That implies that all civilizations form one continues whole. It also opens the possibility that “after the collapse� a synthesis will have the chance to form, taking remnant of this civilization and building a new one, hopefully, if man learns from the past, more humane and small. This argument arrives at the same thesis using a different view point, if the underlying issue is mainly a collapse of fixed resources that our civilisation burns off through because of its excessive materialism and way of life, then the fundamental limit is the second lay of thermo-dynamics. Our industrial engine relies on abundant energy and technology will probably not reduce the use of that energy enough to avoid literally burning itself out as oil, gas and coal deplete – even with alternatives the population load and their infinite wants preclude that as a probable remedy. This thermodynamic decay, I speculate is mirrored in most other aspects
More importantly is that, some kind of remnant civilisation be left to transfer key artificats.
Comment by llourenc@hotmail.com — 25 June 2007 @ 7:14 AM
What would a “highly dispersed, more adjusted and radically decentralized civilization” look like? Those are all traits antithetical to civilization. If you have a society that meets those criteria, it sounds very much like you have a tribal society, rather than a civilization. Concentration (especially into cities) defines civilization; if it’s radically decentralized, then it can’t be civilization. And tribal societies can be fairly complex things themselves.
But social complexity is a function of energy, and we’re at the end of the agricultural age. In the short term, soil exhaustion makes agriculture impossible over most of the globe without fossil fuel subsidies or inputs of some kind; in the long term, global climate change is ending the Holocene interglacial and the general climate that made agriculture feasible. If we’re going to exist at some level above that of the stone age, where is the food going to come from, since we can’t farm? Where will the metals come from, since they’ve all been mined? Our civilization hasn’t left the resources behind to allow for the rise of a next civilization. Perhaps a rare pocket here or there might have the right constellation of factors, but even then, they’ll be geographically limited, without anywhere to expand into, so they’ll collapse rather quickly.
And why should any of this be at all surprising? Civilization is an aberration; why should we expect it to be aything other than a flash in the pan?
Evolution does not favor complexity; it favors diversity, and complexity follows. See Stephen Gould’s Full House; we’ve been through this argument several times on this site, including in previous theses.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 June 2007 @ 10:22 AM