It's also just like any 4x strategy game. You can harvest resources and build and build but once those resources are depleted they deplete very fast because you have grown capacity for intake.
I'm glad we aren't worried about peak oil anymore but the climate and food scarity is going to be the next pitfall to avoid.
I am hoping that the modern world is not one single system that can crash all at once, but is rather many systems, such that a crash leaves room for new things to grow bigger
It's both. That's the nature of systems. You can loose a lot of muscle mass and survive, but very little brain tissue. Civilization could survive large chunks collapsing but would likely hit a wall if key cities and people were to be eliminated at once.
There is a model of nested dynamic systems called 'panarchy'.
> Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring [which sometimes is a collapse], and renewal. These transformational cycles take place at scales ranging from a drop of water to the biosphere, over periods from days to geologic epochs.
I thought this was talked about in high school biology...
S-curves for populations that settle. Sometimes a population goes above the carrying capacity and it crashed and oscillates until it stabilizes. Humans are in an exponential J-curve that seems to keep going, but it's just because our culture and technology continually raise the carrying capacity on an S-curve.
But if we "break" either culture or tech, then the carrying capacity immediately becomes lower. And then it crashes more and becomes even lower. Etc until society rescues itself from crash in carrying capacity. So the crash is potentially harrrrrd. I recall it being referred to a J-curve crash.
But maybe my high school teacher was just riffing a bit, and this isn't established understanding... When I search, I don't find this talked about online in the ways I recall from 2002 biology class haha :)
This sounds a lot like something I read not that long ago (it was on acoup, of course[1]) about post-Roman population density, how the carrying capacity of the Roman Empire was high because of the increased efficiency allowed by having a good transportation - classic economic specialization. But once the Empire collapsed, the specializations it enabled couldn't come back, and it took a thousand years or more for former Roman provinces to return to their Imperial population levels.
Thanks, hadn't come across this one before, and I feel there is some truth to this - that when the inner processes slow down or atrophy, collapse begins.
However, I think the rapid collapse probably refers to what is observable on the outside
The Seneca Effect is really just a cascade fault. Not every system collapses due to a cascade fault. Death by a thousand cuts is likely just as common a fate.
parts of this seems like rehashed Taleb black swan.
The collapse of the Dow Jones industrial index during the 2008 financial crisis. A
Seneca Collapse if ever there was one (data from Dow Jones)
from pg 68.
This was not the case in 2000-2003 or 2021 -2022 in which the stock market fell in a gradual/orderly pattern. People who made tail-hedged volatility bets lost money due to the failure of volatility to spike. The gradual nature of the selling meant that the out-of-money puts did not profit as many assumed or hoped. Many bought into the Talab hype and lost money with this.
Does this shed any more light on whether it's valid for the author to name 2008 as a flash crisis?
The taleb comparison survives on the idea that talebs thesis (long tail events are underestimated) is the same as negative long tail events happen quickly. So I don't think that sheds much light.
On the financial side, those look like two arbitrarily long term periods where you couldn't 100x in O(weeks) by a long tail bet on the negative side - but alas, arbitrary. ex. stonks traded sideways in 2021 but I made an absolute fantastic amount of money in about 3 weeks in Feb/March 2020, as an accident, buying puts to poke fun at this new silly mistaken trend of thinking options were for retail investors (ah, I was so young and innocent)
First, they were not predictions, they were comparative scenario runs. Second, empirical data has tracked the business-as-usual scenarios for decades and has been independently verified multiple times by peer review. Third, they study a dynamic system that includes population and are not trying to "predict" population growth in any way. Before you call someone's work "silly", you might want to make sure you understand it at a basic level. Otherwise, it's clear who looks silly here.
[+] [-] deathhand|2 years ago|reply
I'm glad we aren't worried about peak oil anymore but the climate and food scarity is going to be the next pitfall to avoid.
[+] [-] davidw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonporridge|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Loughla|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jes5199|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] namaria|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehjoker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cobber2005|2 years ago|reply
> Panarchy is the structure in which systems, including those of nature (e.g., forests) and of humans (e.g., capitalism), as well as combined human-natural systems (e.g., institutions that govern natural resource use such as the Forest Service), are interlinked in continual adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring [which sometimes is a collapse], and renewal. These transformational cycles take place at scales ranging from a drop of water to the biosphere, over periods from days to geologic epochs.
https://islandpress.org/books/panarchy
[+] [-] patcon|2 years ago|reply
S-curves for populations that settle. Sometimes a population goes above the carrying capacity and it crashed and oscillates until it stabilizes. Humans are in an exponential J-curve that seems to keep going, but it's just because our culture and technology continually raise the carrying capacity on an S-curve.
But if we "break" either culture or tech, then the carrying capacity immediately becomes lower. And then it crashes more and becomes even lower. Etc until society rescues itself from crash in carrying capacity. So the crash is potentially harrrrrd. I recall it being referred to a J-curve crash.
But maybe my high school teacher was just riffing a bit, and this isn't established understanding... When I search, I don't find this talked about online in the ways I recall from 2002 biology class haha :)
[+] [-] GolfPopper|2 years ago|reply
1.https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...
[+] [-] roenxi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesakirk|2 years ago|reply
Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays —
'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —
Ruin is formal — Devil's work
Consecutive and slow —
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping — is Crashe's law —
[+] [-] sifar|2 years ago|reply
However, I think the rapid collapse probably refers to what is observable on the outside
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|2 years ago|reply
This is a rather nice "dedica". Of course we all hope he's wrong.
[+] [-] Beijinger|2 years ago|reply
Ugo Bardi is a very cool person. This is his blog:
https://senecaeffect.substack.com/
[+] [-] Qem|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glitchc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oogweii|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|2 years ago|reply
The collapse of the Dow Jones industrial index during the 2008 financial crisis. A Seneca Collapse if ever there was one (data from Dow Jones)
from pg 68.
This was not the case in 2000-2003 or 2021 -2022 in which the stock market fell in a gradual/orderly pattern. People who made tail-hedged volatility bets lost money due to the failure of volatility to spike. The gradual nature of the selling meant that the out-of-money puts did not profit as many assumed or hoped. Many bought into the Talab hype and lost money with this.
[+] [-] refulgentis|2 years ago|reply
The taleb comparison survives on the idea that talebs thesis (long tail events are underestimated) is the same as negative long tail events happen quickly. So I don't think that sheds much light.
On the financial side, those look like two arbitrarily long term periods where you couldn't 100x in O(weeks) by a long tail bet on the negative side - but alas, arbitrary. ex. stonks traded sideways in 2021 but I made an absolute fantastic amount of money in about 3 weeks in Feb/March 2020, as an accident, buying puts to poke fun at this new silly mistaken trend of thinking options were for retail investors (ah, I was so young and innocent)
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] essemharris|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perrygeo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphage|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glitchc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpribish|2 years ago|reply