How Western Civilisation Could Collapse (BBC)

Believe it or not, this negative Malthusian view of civilization, the neurotic sense that we are in the middle of an impending collapse, that things just aren't sustainable, has been prevalent among social commentators and intellectuals going back to the rennaissance. And yet we're still here, as a whole more prosperous and fulfilled than at any time in prior recorded history.

Perhaps it is worth considering the counterpoint and questioning this ingrained deficiency mentality and the fundamental assumptions here that seems to unanimously be that we're running out of everything, economic collapse is around the corner and we're breeding ourselves to death.

As third world nations advance, their populations will stabilise. Ongoing advances in technology and science will lead eventually to a negligible reliance on fossil fuels, food is already over produced although currently poorly allocated, AI and robotics will no more lead to joblessness than computers lead to the eradication of office workers.

I could go on. But the point is its not all doom and gloom. Things may change shape radically as they have been continuously for the last 500 years, and there may be wars and economic setbacks, but the overall trend has been steadfastly towards a better average life. Fewer people live in poverty, fewer people starve, fewer people are illiterate, and there are even fewer major conflicts than there were five decades ago.

So let's consider the context of human development over a timespan of centuries, and not just the dominant attention grabbing headlines of today.
 
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"There's no news like bad news" - Tomorrow Never Dies
 
garp said:
Believe it or not, this negative Malthusian view of civilization, the neurotic sense that we are in the middle of an impending collapse, that things just aren't sustainable, has been prevalent among social commentators and intellectuals going back to the rennaissance. And yet we're still here, as a whole more prosperous and fulfilled than at any time in prior recorded history.

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So let's consider the context of human development over a timespan of centuries, and not just the dominant attention grabbing headlines of today.
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Yeah, collapses happen over centuries and have lasting impacts that also last centuries. Just look at what happened to the Roman Empire.
 
Xarog said:
Yeah, collapses happen over centuries and have lasting impacts that also last centuries. Just look at what happened to the Roman Empire.
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The difference is how extremely bloated our population and systems of living have become using artificial means, ie oil and coal(used for electricity and chemical generation) powered machinery and byproducts, never mind all the crooked artifice in the financial markets that have been skewing power and worth.

When the effects of dwindling resources really start taking hold and if no remedial action has been taken the collapse is going to be precipitous and rather catastrophic. A house of cards I'd think is an apt comparison. All the artificially inflated financial markets return to their paper value..
 
Nanfeishen said:
You are promoting a myth and a far more dangerous one at that, if you think overpopulation isnt a serious issue.

World’s top problem is overpopulation, not climate
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-report-proves-humans-are-the-new-dinosaurs-2013-10-12


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/04/climate-change-population-crisis-paris-summit


http://www.renewableresourcescoalition.org/overpopulation-causes-effects-solutions/


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alon-tal/overpopulation-is-still-t_b_3990646.html


http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/overpopulation-is-main-threat-to-planet-521925.html

Pay attention to the bolded bits and digest them.

Overpopulation is seldom or never discussed in regards to global issues because it is an issue that neither governments nor scientists wish to or want to address, nor an issue they want to face , so they simply sweep it under the carpet or ignore it.

Population control of any sort immediately conjures images of negativity and revulsion, and any attempt at implementation would be shouted down with all sorts of emotional arguments.

The simple reality is we are moving out of the emotional range and into the range where logic and reasoning have to be applied to ensure the safety and security of the planet and its resources, and to ensure that our blatant overconsumption is halted and decreased to sustainable levels.
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Lol quoting a bunch of bs form news sources that's basically some tree huger journalist's opinion doesn't proof anything. Try again using facts, numbers and stuff.
 
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Xarog said:
Yeah, collapses happen over centuries and have lasting impacts that also last centuries. Just look at what happened to the Roman Empire.
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The Roman Empire was a single nation state in one world region. Yes, individual empires such as the US will likely wane and new ones rise, but not global civilization as a whole. The British empire fell, and the US rose and China will likely be next. But unlike Rome, in the modern world this did not lead to a new dark age.
 
The_Assimilator said:
That is literally never going to happen, unless slavery is reintroduced. Technology always obsoletes human jobs and always persists because it is more reliable. The trick is to embrace technology to create new jobs that the displaced can do, not fight it fruitlessly.
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Supply and demand. It will still be a valid economic principal even when the world ends.
For the robots to build stuff they need clients that would buy that stuff. Think car manufacturing. Robots, assembly lines and big factories don't come cheap and don't work for free either. There needs to be a client to buy the end product. Without that clients, there is no point to further the technology and have the robots build more cars. The motor industry is a great example as I think they have pretty much reach peak automation. Now they need to scale down or find more clients.
Technology can never make humans obsolete.
 
garp said:
The Roman Empire was a single nation state in one world region. Yes, individual empires such as the US will likely wane and new ones rise, but not global civilization as a whole. The British empire fell, and the US rose and China will likely be next. But unlike Rome, in the modern world this did not lead to a new dark age.
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Rome never actually fell. They kind of just slowly disintegrated and polymorphed into something else much like SA has done over the last 30 odd years. The South Africa that was in the 90's is a completely different country to now. In 100 years time nobody will even remember this time and it will become a faded memory and something only read about in history books. All these problems and changes will be gone and there will be other changes and challenges.

Times change and we forget that.
 
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Solarion said:
Rome never actually fell. They kind of just slowly disintegrated and polymorphed into something else much like SA has done over the last 30 odd years. The South Africa that was in the 90's is a completely different country to now.
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The Roman empire did collapse and we lost a lot of progress and information during that collapse. People were mostly substadence farmers, this is one of the real risks of an empire collapsing today. We rely heavily on global trade for basic things like food. War or an economic depression can disrupt that supply chain and then things would get interesting.
 
rietrot said:
The Roman empire did collapse and we lost a lot of progress and information during that collapse. People were mostly substadence farmers, this is one of the real risks of an empire collapsing today. We rely heavily on global trade for basic things like food. War or an economic depression can disrupt that supply chain and then things would get interesting.
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True. We should never say never. I do think we are teetering on the edge though am I'm usually the guy who plays things down but I really do think the world is on the precipice right now financially. Those who follow the global economic experts, the guys who really know what's going on would mostly agree.
 
Nanfeishen said:
The simple reality is we are moving out of the emotional range and into the range where logic and reasoning have to be applied to ensure the safety and security of the planet and its resources, and to ensure that our blatant overconsumption is halted and decreased to sustainable levels.
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Ahahahahahaha. No. Simply, no. Man is emotional. Get used to it. The way we will ever achieve something is by promoting it emotionally.
 
garp said:
The Roman Empire was a single nation state in one world region. Yes, individual empires such as the US will likely wane and new ones rise, but not global civilization as a whole. The British empire fell, and the US rose and China will likely be next. But unlike Rome, in the modern world this did not lead to a new dark age.
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You think the US empire is limited to the US? The US empire is a world empire - much more so than even the British empire.
 
rietrot said:
Without that clients, there is no point to further the technology and have the robots build more cars.
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Incorrect. When demand outstrips supply, the focus turns to refining the technology responsible for that supply so that the product can be produced at a lower cost, which both allows more people to afford and buy the product, as well as gaining that product a larger share of the available market.

rietrot said:
The motor industry is a great example as I think they have pretty much reach peak automation. Now they need to scale down or find more clients.
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"Peak automation" is when there is no human intervention required in the production, and we're still a long way from that.

rietrot said:
Technology can never make humans obsolete.
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No, but it makes some jobs obsolete, while creating new ones. The trick is to recognise and exploit the opportunities that allow the latter.

Garson007 said:
Ahahahahahaha. No. Simply, no. Man is emotional. Get used to it. The way we will ever achieve something is by promoting it emotionally.
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Or by allowing ourselves to be governed by machines that are capable of making the necessary cold logical decisions.
 
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remember, colonizing space just means transferring resources from this planet to space, which give you the same problem, limited resources.

but its a start in the direction to other planets/moons...


listening to rage against the machine and reading this thread is pretty depressing.. LOL
 
Garson007 said:
You can shove your dystopia up your arse.
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Why does that have to be a dystopia?

One of the major problems with human decision-making, especially when it comes to decisions that affect many or all, is that said decisions are often made with incomplete information. Any computer invested with such a responsibility would necessarily be connected to as many sources of information as possible in order to make the most correct decision.

That doesn't imply that such a computer would be incapable of emotion - in fact, I would argue that it would need to be capable of such in order to make the best decision - but it would be very useful to have a machine that is capable of "switching off" its emotions, making a decision based wholly on the facts, then switching those emotions back on, making a new decision on the facts + emotion, then comparing the objective and subjective decisions and coming to a final decision that is a middle ground.

There's a good reason that the utopias envisioned by Asimov, and Banks, and many other scifi greats are heavily populated, and often governed, by sentient robots.
 
garp said:
The Roman Empire was a single nation state in one world region. Yes, individual empires such as the US will likely wane and new ones rise, but not global civilization as a whole. The British empire fell, and the US rose and China will likely be next. But unlike Rome, in the modern world this did not lead to a new dark age.
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Today's supermarkets have about a 3 day food supply without getting restocked.

What do you think will happen if something disrupts the just-in-time supply chain?
 
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