I like the point that human values seem to be changing faster lately, so it doesn’t look like they’re approaching equilibrium. But the post seems to be making huge leaps of logic.
The Roman Empire was not an empire; it was a forest fire. It burned its way out from Italy and across the continent, using up each new land that it came to, stripping it of resources and funneling them to Rome. When it burned its way out until pillaging the new area on its perimeter (increasing as R) could no longer support the area in its interior (increasing as R squared), it burned out and died.
That sounds different from the standard story about Rome. Why do you believe that?
It’s one of many theories that I heard, and I thought it was the most plausible at the time, for reasons I no longer remember. Possibly because, unlike many theories about Rome, it wasn’t designed to teach a moral lesson. Take it with a grain of salt. It is at best an oversimplification.
This theory has obvious intended moral lessons; I’d actually be very curious as to why you perceive it as morally-neutral. Is is that you see the primary lesson as so obvious (“pillaging isn’t a sustainable economy”) that it doesn’t appear to be didactic? I wouldn’t be surprised if the lessons were the whole point of the theory; I’ve heard it used before as an analogy to criticize the Soviet Union’s political structure and the United States’ economic structure (by two different people, naturally).
Now that I think about it, since entire schools of morality can be roughly summarized as “morals are the codes of conduct that make your civilization work well”, I doubt it’s even possible to come up with a theory explaining a civilization’s collapse without that theory inherently expressing a moral lesson. Even “external factors destroyed it” could be interpreted as “you should be more paranoid than they were about dangerous external factors”.
I expect that’s an honest answer. I read it and thought: wow: it is so weird to hear an honest-sounding answer in response to the question of “Why do you believe that?”—rather than a story that serves as a defense of the original belief.
This sounds like one of the narratives Tainter presents in Collapse of Complex Societies, FWIW, since it fits his overall theme: complex societies (like Rome) develop (militaristically expand) until the marginal return hits zero or goes negative (O(n^2) territory finally beats O(n) new area), and then they collapse (burned out and died).
I like the point that human values seem to be changing faster lately, so it doesn’t look like they’re approaching equilibrium.
Hmm. Human terminal values—warmth, freedom from pain, orgasms, sweet tastes, etc—are evolving along with the human genome—very slowly.
Morality is a bit different. That is partly cultural—and evolves much faster (and is indeed getting better over time).
It might look as though human terminal values change with culture too—but usually that is because culture produces environmental changes. The sterile catholic priest hasn’t had their terminal values changed—rather their beliefs about the state of the world have been changed.
Of course memes would love to be able to mess with human terminal values—but they are pretty wired in and seem rather challenging to mess with. Drugs may be the nearest thing.
I like the point that human values seem to be changing faster lately, so it doesn’t look like they’re approaching equilibrium. But the post seems to be making huge leaps of logic.
That sounds different from the standard story about Rome. Why do you believe that?
It’s one of many theories that I heard, and I thought it was the most plausible at the time, for reasons I no longer remember. Possibly because, unlike many theories about Rome, it wasn’t designed to teach a moral lesson. Take it with a grain of salt. It is at best an oversimplification.
This theory has obvious intended moral lessons; I’d actually be very curious as to why you perceive it as morally-neutral. Is is that you see the primary lesson as so obvious (“pillaging isn’t a sustainable economy”) that it doesn’t appear to be didactic? I wouldn’t be surprised if the lessons were the whole point of the theory; I’ve heard it used before as an analogy to criticize the Soviet Union’s political structure and the United States’ economic structure (by two different people, naturally).
Now that I think about it, since entire schools of morality can be roughly summarized as “morals are the codes of conduct that make your civilization work well”, I doubt it’s even possible to come up with a theory explaining a civilization’s collapse without that theory inherently expressing a moral lesson. Even “external factors destroyed it” could be interpreted as “you should be more paranoid than they were about dangerous external factors”.
Re: Why is the roman empire like a forest fire?
I expect that’s an honest answer. I read it and thought: wow: it is so weird to hear an honest-sounding answer in response to the question of “Why do you believe that?”—rather than a story that serves as a defense of the original belief.
This sounds like one of the narratives Tainter presents in Collapse of Complex Societies, FWIW, since it fits his overall theme: complex societies (like Rome) develop (militaristically expand) until the marginal return hits zero or goes negative (O(n^2) territory finally beats O(n) new area), and then they collapse (burned out and died).
Hmm. Human terminal values—warmth, freedom from pain, orgasms, sweet tastes, etc—are evolving along with the human genome—very slowly.
Morality is a bit different. That is partly cultural—and evolves much faster (and is indeed getting better over time).
It might look as though human terminal values change with culture too—but usually that is because culture produces environmental changes. The sterile catholic priest hasn’t had their terminal values changed—rather their beliefs about the state of the world have been changed.
Of course memes would love to be able to mess with human terminal values—but they are pretty wired in and seem rather challenging to mess with. Drugs may be the nearest thing.