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On The Collapse of Complex Societies

Posted by Hemos on from the this-the-way-the-world-ends dept.

One of the mailing lists that I'm on had a great short essay about the disastrous decision that societies can make - and their consequences. The author is Jared Diamond, who also wrote Guns, Germs and Steel (First Slashdot book review was that book), and is still one of the most interesting books I've read in a while.

9 of 446 comments (clear)

  1. Chaos theory of human societies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One butterfly flapping its wings cannot lead to the destruction of the sun. Nature has built in redundancy. So do human societies. Diamond's book (Guns Germ and Steel) is a hodgepodge of deterministic gibberish.

    1. Re:Chaos theory of human societies? by Dyolf+Knip · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The probability that a butterfly's actions could cause critical damage to a star is so low as to be totally impossible (i.e., a trllion stars could last a trillion years without it ever happnening once), but that probability is still non-zero. You familiar with the notion that the air in a room might evacuate itself under no force other than a freak concerted motion of the constituent molecules? Same principle. I find it just _slightly_ unlikely that butterfly wings could precipitate a storm that would blow half the atmosphere towards the sun at relativistic speeds, but there's no reason why it couldn't happen.

      --
      Dyolf Knip
    2. Re:Chaos theory of human societies? by cyril3 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Diamond's supposedly "most surprising" revelation is the most obvious one: tragedy of commons. This is old hat.

      Diamond does say it is the most surprising reason why groups fail in decision making but he does not finf it surprising because it's a new reason to him. The other three reasons for failure are roughly 1) they didn't anticipate a problem that hadn't yet occurred, 2)they didn't recognize a problem as a problem when it arrived, and 3)they failed to fix the problem after they recognized it.

      Diamond says that surprisingly the commonest failure is to not actually do anything to fix a problem after it has been recognized. He uses the tragedy of the commons as an example.

      he gives only passing mention to perhaps the biggest problem of all: uncertainty

      How can you say this. That's the whole point of his first factor. The first item on my road map is that groups may do disastrous things because they didn't anticipate a problem before it arrived.

      Based on the following lie

      reconsider Diamond's arguments: it is assumed implicitly that "we" have identified the problems and the main barrier to fixing them is bending individual will to society's best interest

      I assume that you aren't at all a McCarthyist but a Randite, which is immeasurably worse. Two of the problem identified by the author explicitly deal with failure to identify the problem and one with failure to solve a problem because of technical shortcomings. And the discussion on the failure to actually do something about identified problems is not actually friendly to the concept of rationality. The tragedy of the commons arises from purely rational actions of individuals. That's one of the problems of rationalism. But you can't attack rationalism can you so you bring the term 'collective rationality' into the discussion as merely a pretext to escalate the rhetoric to "communism". Diamond uses no such term or anything like it in the article which is about failure of group decision making at a societal level.

      You know there is nothing in that article that is new. It is all application of standard judgement and decision making theory to problems at a societal level. He could have just as easily spoken about the Bay of Pigs.

      Only someone who believes that problems are only allowed to be solved at an individual level because problem solving at a collective level is coercion, could read that article the way you have. For you there is no tragedy of the commons because there would be no commons, someone would own it and be allowed to do with it what they will.

  2. Jared Diamond by killerfocus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I go to UCLA and had the unique opportunity to study Guns, Germs, and Steel among other books with Jeffery Miller, pre-eminent microbiologist. A highlight was a guest discussion with Jared. The depth and breadth of his knowledge is amazing, and he is, in my professors words "a national treasure."

  3. Collapses by gnarly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jared Diamond was the speaker at my graduation & I've heard a few of his talks at UCLA. He pointed out that the factor that caused the collapse of both the Easter Island civilization and (probably) the Mayan civilization is now thought to be the same: Logging. Both civilizations overlogged the surrounding forest ecosystems which sustained them, resulting ultimately in a collapse of agriculture. Diamond wondered what might have been going through the mind of the Easter Islander who felled the last tree on the island. He guessed that it might just have been thoughts that would resonate today: "Hey, keeping my job is more important than preserving the environment".

    --
    :-( is a registered trademark of Despair.com
    1. Re:Collapses by aron_wallaker · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ever seen the "tree farms" that result when "modern loggin(g) companies" clear cut and replant ? They don't look anything like a natural forest. The clear cut not only kills the large profitable trees, it also kills many smaller flora that are part of the forest ecosystem. Replant small trees and they quickly take over, resulting a new forest with very little diversity but very fast tree growth.

      Forest companies at first thought this looked great - the faster tree growth, the sooner we can come back to that piece of land. Unfortunately, and this is supported by studies done by the BC dept. of forestry (which they tried to cover up), the rapid growth of the replanted trees results in much lower density wood than that found in "old-growth" (ie natural) forests. As a result the wood is worth very little to the foresters who planted it and they don't want to log it. Forestry companies continue to push for more "old-growth" forests to be opened up to logging because that's where the best quality wood is, all the replanting that's been done has yet to produce a lumber supply that adequately replaces what has been lost. We may not be as bad as Easter Island, but we're nowhere near sustainability.

  4. Re:Stupid decisions? by JoeBuck · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wrong: the National Museum drew scholars from all around the world, and in a free society, would be a major tourist attraction. All that money coming in feeds people.

    Studies have shown, for example, that New York's art museums contribute far more to New York's economy than all its sports teams combined.

  5. Re:Fisheries. by pumpkinescobarsof2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i am adding this because you made specific reference to the Maritime Provinces of Canada.

    to be factual, the resident inshore fishery had identified the problem and made moves to restrict THEIR fishing patterns.

    however, our federal gov't. did not see fit (or maybe they simply couldn't) to impose the same restrictions on foreign factory vessels, sitting just outside canadian waters, but still on the Grand Banks.

    the effect of this was to make any efforts by the residents to manage their resource of no consequence.

    the way this ties into the parent topic is to illustrate that often there is a hierarchy of groups (resident fishers, federal govt's, international institutions) making decisions, often with distinctly different powers and objectives.

    so it is entirely possible that the group most affected by a decision will choose the correct course of action and be submarined (pun intended) or over-ruled by a group further up the chain.

  6. It's a flame, but important anyway by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting
    First, the article is basically a flame. A well-written flame, but a flame. That's not unusual in what passes for the literary community.

    The author complains that history isn't treated as a science, but offers nothing more than anecdotes. What he's groping for is a theory of economic externalities. But he doesn't have one.

    Externalities involve unloading some of your costs onto someone else. Pollution is the classic example, as is spam. Windows bugs are another; the costs are borne by users, not Microsoft. A major social question is the extent to which externalities should be accounted for and billed back to the source. Most of the political arguments over "litigation reform" and "deregulation" involve this issue.

    Classically, the problem with externalities was that accounting for them was technically difficult and expensive, more expensive than the value of tracking them. In the computer era, this is less of an issue than it used to be. Measuring and tracking things is now a cheap operation. We're seeing some of this, in the form of "road-usage fees". It's still possible for tracking to cost more than the value of the thing being tracked; long-distance phone billing costs more than long-distance call transmission, for example. There's a legitimate economic tradeoff argument.

    But mostly, externality issues are resolved by power, not accounting. Understanding this gives one insight into how societies function.