# Using Human History as a guide  Could Our Present  Civilization Fall Into a New Dark Age?



## BAYLOR

How are we in the present like and unlike past civilizations that have suffered that fate ? What do you think are our vulnerabilities in this regard. And what would be the signs that we are entering a dark age?  Are Darks avoidable or are they inevitable in the cycle of History ? 


Thought ?


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## sknox

What are you imagining the Dark Age (rather silly we make that a plural) was like? What were its characteristics? You would have to identify those first before I would try to answer it. Fair warning: you are talking to a medievalist here (though my field is late Middle Ages).


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## Harpo

Quite apart from the Digital dark age...
Digital dark age - Wikipedia

...which we're already in, and which will lead to problems we cannot see coming, there's also the various "anti" science movements, such as climate change denial, Flat Earthers, nonsense regarding vaccines and chemtrails, and a general feeling among gullible idiots that chanting "USA! USA! USA!" is the way forward.


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## Vertigo

I don't think our biggest vulnerability is loss of information through hardware or software obsolescence, a small risk maybe, but as most information is now stored in various open formats now (pdf, jpg, mpeg, etc.) I don't think it's all that big a risk and it's diminishing rather than growing. I think the biggest risk is the one alluded to by @Harpo and is people denying science; whether that be climate change denial, flat Earthers, creationists or any other form or rejection of science. Whilst one would expect that, as technology advances, such views would become more and more marginalised in fact the opposite seems to be happening.

Could that precipitate another 'dark age'? I really don't know but, where once I would have laughed at the idea, I now look at things like the teaching of evolutionism in American schools and I wonder...

[I also think we need to be very careful on a discussion like this to not drift into political and/or religious argument.]


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## Justin Swanton

If by the Dark Ages you mean the post-Roman world of the 5th century onwards then it wasn't actually that dark. Unlike pretty much every Hollywood portrayal, there weren't bands of screaming, unwashed peasants being ridden down by barbarian raiders under a perpetually overcast sky.

For anything resembling a real Dark Ages you need to look at Western Europe after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in the first half of the 9th century, up to the unification of the German dukes under the Ottonian dynasty towards the end of the 10th. Europe was then being ravaged by Vikings, Avars and Saracens. It seems that a genuine dark age society as popularly conceived only happens in a time of perpetual raiding and warfare, which happened when the first two tiers of political authority collapsed (Emperor and kings), leaving the disunited dukes vulnerable to attack. But even then it was more a case of a village living peacefully most of the time but in fear of a future raid, rather than ongoing fire and pillage.

Oh, and the peasants knew about soap (and the sun did shine sometimes).


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## Cathbad

Justin Swanton said:


> (and the sun did shine sometimes).



You sure?  It's Europe, after all.


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## Justin Swanton

Cathbad said:


> You sure?  It's Europe, after all.



Well, better than this:


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## J Riff

Dumbdown the masses, like always. TV, movies, distractions.  An intellectual and artistic dark age, to be sure.


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## Cathbad

Cathbad said:


> You sure?  It's Europe, after all.



I was in Germany for two and a half years, posted in Neu Ulm.  As I've told others, during that time, we might have had a full month of sunshine.  So when I see a medieval show with dark skies - I'm not surprised...


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## BAYLOR

Justin Swanton said:


> Well, better than this:



But thats a sign of economic progress and prosperity.


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## sknox

BAYLOR said:


> But thats a sign of economic progress and prosperity.



OK, but I'm still wondering what you are picturing when you say "Dark Ages".


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## BAYLOR

sknox said:


> OK, but I'm still wondering what you are picturing when you say "Dark Ages".



Cities abandoned or significantly reduced in population and falling to neglect and ruin, infrastructure disintegration  and collapse.  No money ,economic activity reduced to barter and salvage.  Literacy abandoned , knowledge and learning gone and lost.


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## svalbard

BAYLOR said:


> Cities abandoned or reduced population an falling to neglect and ruin, No money ,economic activity reduced to barter and salvage.  Literacy abandoned , knowledge and learning gone and lost.



It rarely happened over a large geographic area and such calamaties were entirely localised ie. Britain 5/6th centuries scant records and for the same period in France we know quite a lot. 

I imagine the same would happen today in a collapse of civilisation, although the difference now is that we have WMDs.


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## BAYLOR

svalbard said:


> It rarely happened over a large geographic area and such calamaties were entirely localised ie. Britain 5/6th centuries scant records and for the same period in France we know quite a lot.
> 
> I imagine the same would happen today in a collapse of civilisation, although the difference now is that we have WMDs.



The Mayan Civilization in Central America around the 9th century, collapsed . Whole cities were left abandoned.


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## kythe

I've wondered something along a similar line - is the US the primary source of this "anti-intellectualism" movement, or is this retrogression a world wide phenomenon? 

Because I would like to maintain hope that even if US civilization falls, it wouldn't be so devastating if the rest of the world carries on.


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## svalbard

BAYLOR said:


> The Mayan Civilization in Central America around the 9th century, collapsed . Whole cities were left abandoned.



Another localised event.


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## sknox

BAYLOR said:


> Cities abandoned or significantly reduced in population and falling to neglect and ruin, infrastructure disintegration  and collapse.  No money ,economic activity reduced to barter and salvage.  Literacy abandoned , knowledge and learning gone and lost.



Cities in ruin. It could happen, I reckon. I'd vote for long, slow deterioration over cataclysm. The thing about a catastrophe is that people try to bounce back. The current generation remembers and wants to recover. But when things just get gradually worse, we humans adjust. Take a look at John Brunner's _Stand on Zanzibar_ for a treatment of that theme.

No money; barter economy -- that one pretty much never happened. Money appears very early in human history and persists even in the face of general collapse. I can't construct a scenario in which everything anyone ever wants can be handled by barter.

Literacy and learning is somewhat similar. Literacy, once gained, can be reduced but is never lost. There's no precedent for this one because we have never had such widespread literacy in any civilization. Schools can collapse--all you need is to have whatever government entities are funding them to collapse. That indeed did happen, and monastic schools came only in the wake of that collapse. Sacred texts provide a powerful incentive to literacy. As for knowledge, of course that never disappears, though it can transform into a purely oral tradition. Farmers still need to know how to farm, people will still make clothes and they'll still build shelters. They could very well forget how to make skyscrapers.


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## BAYLOR

svalbard said:


> Another localised event.



Local , but still a significant collapse of a culture.


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## Danny McG

Only Crazy Eddie will attempt to change things


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## Overread

I think anti-science is simply a result of lowering education standards and has been there for a long long while (actually its always been there); however in the past you didn't hear about it. The internet and world media allow us to hear about a lot more things going on than we've ever been able to before. This, coupled with vastly expanded populations, means that yes there are more than before; and yes we do hear about it - but overall its not actually holding us back. Slows things down; acts as a distraction, but it hasn't stopped science.


More likely the biggest risks and potential triggers for a spring into a regression could come from

1) Plague - massive plague could well be a trigger that crashes world populations. In todays world a plague that resists modern medication could well depopulate many nations very quickly; especially targeting the most mobile and affluent nations. Poorer nations and more isolated populations might well have increased capacity to resist infection simply because of reduced contact; however they'd also have reduced chances to develop a cure or vaccine. 

2) War - we have some utterly horrific weapons of war now. A World War between developed nations could now cause untold devastation and push the world back if no nation came to rise to the fore. Nuclear Winter on a near global scale could well cause huge electronic information loss; loss of data centres (most are in big urban areas and key targets); and also huge loss of life. 

3) Electronic shutdown - a bit more tricky since most data is replicated in either offline machines or paper. However a magnetic shift or a very powerful virus could potentially cause shut-down of many world systems. This would likely set things back and the loss of electronics would certainly shut down a huge amount of modern research.



In general in order to stop advance all you need is to break information storage, access and comprehension for several generations. Enough of a break and you can quickly make it so that higher level information is very hard to access for those untrained in it. The difficulty is having a major event big enough to shut down all potential avenues - one protection we have today is that education isn't as elite as it once was. We are far from the times when reading and writing were the domain of the affluent - indeed in developed nations we consider them some of the most basic life skills. Even if not everyone reaches very high, the fact that the base skills remain means that we can still access a lot of information and study.


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## BAYLOR

In the case Plague vs Nuclear War, I think the first possibility it the more likely . Over use of antibiotics has caused diseases to become resistance and more deadly also, as we clear rainforest and expand into new places, new diseases  will emerge which our already stressed medical establishment may not be able to cope with.  And environmental degradation will make this situation even worse.


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## sknox

Baylor appears set on destroying us all. 

Demographic catastrophes have happened. I know a bit about the plague of 14thc Europe. The first thing to note is that it wasn't just one plague. That was bad enough, but the dang thing kept coming back. It was the recurrence of plague over multiple generations that had the most serious long-term effects. Europe did not recover pre-plague population until the 16thc.

In places. While in the countryside we get abandoned villages by the hundreds, the cities recovered fairly quickly. There was almost zero political impact, despite losing a third of the population or more within the span of five years. Economic dislocation was the most significant result, but even there we had winners as well as losers.

In other words, I'm not sure even a pandemic would cause a collapse of civilization. A retrenchment, certainly. International trade would suffer, as that system is highly fragile. It also has not really been stress tested, so who knows. Regional economies ought to do better.  Much would depend on the nature of the pandemic, of course. But now we're well beyond where we can use history as any sort of guide.

As a historian, I don't believe the past is much of a guide anyway, so that probably colors my responses.


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## Justin Swanton

I agree that plague won't do it, but ongoing war would. The Germans virtually starved in the second half of the 40's as their infrastructure had been almost entirely destroyed and millions of their menfolk were either dead or in the Gulag.

My take: a breakdown of the principle of legitimacy will create a Dark Age. This IMHO is what ruined Roman Britain after the Romans withdrew. The withdrawal was too sudden and too complete. None of the prominent British leaders who subsequently rose up had the legitimacy necessary to take control of the Island and maintain order. Britain divided along tribal lines and then completely disintegrated after that as the tribal unit also wasn't legitimate enough to maintain order. The breakdown was quite spectacular - by the 6th century there was no pottery of any kind being produced in Britain.

In Gaul it was a different matter. The _Magister Militum per Gallias_, i.e. the Supreme Commander of the Gallic Field Army, kept northern Gaul under Roman control until nearly the end of the 5th century. Clovis did not succeed in conquering the 4 surviving provinces of Roman Gaul (despite winning a battle near Soissons). He had to be baptised a Catholic first then negotiate a peaceful merger between his Frankish lands and Roman Gaul. The baptism and merger left the principle of legitimacy intact. The infrastructure survived and in the sixth century refined pottery goods were still being manufactured in quantity and shipped hundred of miles (I can back all this up with evidence if anyone is interested).

What you need for a real Dark Age is for war to break nations down and for the governments to collapse and nothing and nobody left in a position to claim: "I am the true authority, obey me" with any hope of success. *Then* everything goes sideways.


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## Mirannan

I can think of a few scenarios leading to a worldwide Dark Age, some worse than others.

A really big CME could set us back decades to hundreds of years - because of major power transformers being in short supply as far as spares are concerned, and really long lead time. For two more even worse events, how about a Dinosaur Killer, or Yellowstone (or Valles, or Long Valley, or Toba, or Taupo, or Aira, or Campi Flegri) letting go?


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## sknox

Here's the problem I have with all these scenarios. They treat history as if it were a ruler or a timeline. You move forward along it. The catastrophe comes and then we all move backward.

That's not how this works. The constant is change. have a catastrophe and the world will change, true enough, but we're not going to do a sort of rewind to 1150AD or something. The question is not, will Catastrophe X cast us into the Dark Ages. The question is, what will be the effects of Catastrophe X? Which puts is firmly out of the realm where history is much help and firmly into the realm of predicting the future. Cue the chicken bones.


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## Edward M. Grant

BAYLOR said:


> Over use of antibiotics has caused diseases to become resistance and more deadly



The only reason antibiotic resistance is such a big deal is because regulation has crippled medical innovation in the West. Bacteriophages, for example, have been used for some time in Eastern Europe to kill bacterial infections that don't respond to antibiotics, but they're years away from being available for use in America.


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## Danny Creasy

All it will take is a disgruntled major/minor player getting mad or frustrated enough to use a nuke or possibly a biological weapon. Civilization could rip itself to pieces quickly. Without infrastructure, there is limited or no electricity, and without electricity, there is much less technology. It could get very "dark" very fast. Many of the post-apocalyptic tales are not too far fetched.


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## Vladd67

The thing now is we are all too specialised. If civilisation was to collapse you would have towns, cities, and even villages full of people with skills that were no longer relevant.


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## Harpo

Vladd67 said:


> The thing now is we are all too specialised. If civilisation was to collapse you would have towns, cities, and even villages full of people with skills that were no longer relevant.


Such as telephone sanitisers? 
Golgafrincham


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## BigBadBob141

I always worried about overpopulation such as in Harry Harrisons "Make Room!, Make Room!".
However I read an interesting article that suggested that the wealthier a nation becomes then the more it's birth rate starts to fall off.
Large birth rates are related to poverty and poor health care, high infant mortality and shorter life spans.
Children are an insurance towards the future so it's best to have plenty in the hope some will survive to care for you in your old age.
However as things progress improved health care means that more people live longer.
But people are still fairly poor and as old habits die hard they still keep having large families.
Hence the large population.
But as the general level of wealth goes past a certain point people are less likely to keep having big families.
For one thing raising a child is more expensive so it's better to spend money on other things, and there's less need to worry about future care.
So it seems that as general conditions improve in the future population levels will hit a limit and maybe decrease a bit.
This seems to be working for the western nations, lets hope it works for everyone else.


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## Dave

I completely agree with @sknox on what he has said regarding using history as a guide or forward moving scale. 

Specifically, on the isolated cases of abandoned cities and regions being provided here - are we sure we really know why those happened? Disease might make people move away for a while; a very prolonged period of foreign raiding over generations; or climate change would restrict agriculture and they might move on somewhere else; or volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and severe flooding might render places uninhabitable, but in most cases they would return unless the land was toxic or infertile (a @BAYLOR style nuclear apocalypse would certainly do that.) People would return to the same location or buildings again because they were probably built in the best geographical position militarily and for commerce and transport. There would need to be some other reason why not to return - the mines or other economic resources had run out, river transport route had run dry - or if there was some superstition or religious reasons that have no physical basis. Mayans and Romans did not die out - they are us.

As for people believing in superstition and rumour, I cannot understand the hate shown towards science and expert knowledge today. It is beyond my belief but to say anymore takes us into a political discussion.


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## Justin Swanton

If you want a quick collapse of civilisation you need ongoing war, ideally civil war.

For a slower collapse, a loss of faith in the worldview of society might be enough if that lost faith isn't replaced by anything. By 'worldview of society' I mean the illusion society perpetuates that life is getting better and better and will end in a paradise on Earth. At its heart is the idea that science, in its pragmatic form of technology, will solve all our problems. Technology of course has spectacularly failed to deliver the goods. It has given some incidental benefits but has not met major needs like immortality or freedom from the bondage of work. And in the bargain it has created huge problems it cannot solve. Just maintaining the gigantic techno-industrial machine we have built has created a stressed lifestyle unknown to any pre-industrial society.

It is the disillusionment with technology that is partly responsible for the growing mistrust of science, and the loss of faith in technology risks destroying the the social order that technology created. When everybody definitively stops being idealistic about the future - macrotechnology has hit a dead end, space travel has hit a dead end, microtechnology is about to hit a dead end, and so on - then a generous commitment to maintaining society for future generations will be replaced by every man for himself. This is in fact what destroyed the Western Roman Empire: the generals and emperors could no longer work together, creating a paralysis that the barbarians were free to exploit. The Eastern Empire would have gone the same way if the Bosphorus didn't exist or the barbarian tribes had a decent navy.


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## Parson

Justin Swanton said:


> It has given some incidental benefits but has not met major needs like immortality or freedom from the bondage of work. And in the bargain it has created huge problems it cannot solve. Just maintaining the gigantic techno-industrial machine we have built has created a stressed lifestyle unknown to any pre-industrial society.



I'm not sure I'd agree with the idea of major needs being "immortality" or "freedom from the bondage of work." Immortality would likely be the death knell for planet earth, and work is one of the major drivers of progress. ---- I think anything short of an apocalypse would not move us into the realm of a "dark age" and an apocalypse might well spell the end of humanity, or at least the end of technology for a long, long, time. Almost all of the easily accessible minerals have long since been tapped out. It would be very hard to move an industrial revival without these easily available.


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## Cathbad

We're not already _in_ a new Dark Age??

_shudders_


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## Harpo

Yes, yes we are.



Harpo said:


> Quite apart from the Digital dark age...
> Digital dark age - Wikipedia
> 
> ...which we're already in, and which will lead to problems we cannot see coming........


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## Mirannan

Parson said:


> I'm not sure I'd agree with the idea of major needs being "immortality" or "freedom from the bondage of work." Immortality would likely be the death knell for planet earth, and work is one of the major drivers of progress. ---- I think anything short of an apocalypse would not move us into the realm of a "dark age" and an apocalypse might well spell the end of humanity, or at least the end of technology for a long, long, time. Almost all of the easily accessible minerals have long since been tapped out. It would be very hard to move an industrial revival without these easily available.



Hmmm... I have a couple of comments about that. First of all, physical immortality is impossible. Even if one postulates a super-advanced nanotech society with everyone who wants them having personality backups scattered all over a large part of the Galaxy, a combination of unlikely accidents that destroys them all is still possible. Of course, that doesn't preclude very long life.

As for freedom from the bondage of work; well, that doesn't imply "freedom" from work altogether. Many people work at jobs they would rather not be doing but continue to do them because they need the earnings to live. But that doesn't necessarily have to stay the way of the world forever; fictional examples of post-scarcity societies abound, and some non-fiction futurist writers have joined that game as well.

And many people, even if relieved from the need to work to stay alive forever, would still work. Uber-rich pop singers and the like carry on working when there is no need, because they love what they are doing. (The youngest member of the Rolling Stones is in his 70s now, and they are still touring!) The same applies to many creative people, many of them in small scale businesses making things like bespoke lamps. Would they really put down their tools if they no longer needed the money? I doubt it.


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## Justin Swanton

Parson said:


> I'm not sure I'd agree with the idea of major needs being "immortality" or "freedom from the bondage of work." Immortality would likely be the death knell for planet earth, and work is one of the major drivers of progress. ---- I think anything short of an apocalypse would not move us into the realm of a "dark age" and an apocalypse might well spell the end of humanity, or at least the end of technology for a long, long, time. Almost all of the easily accessible minerals have long since been tapped out. It would be very hard to move an industrial revival without these easily available.



We all have a natural desire to live forever, and not just live forever but be young forever. With that goes the desire to be free from pain and any kind of debilitating illness. By 'bondage of work' I don't mean work _per se_, but the kind of work that is not as fun or fulfilling as we would want it to to be - check out the link in my previous post. These are all deep-seated desires. Former societies had religion at the centre of their worldview in which all this would happen in the afterlife. Contemporary society replaced that with the belief that technology will achieve it, at least to an indefinitely growing extent. The realisation dawned some time ago that technology can't deliver and so the motivation to maintain a technology-driven society is steadily eroding. When the religious outlook is completely gone and all faith is lost in technology then, yeah, we'll have a dark age - and an especially nasty one.


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## Montero

I am not sure that everyone does have a desire to live forever - keeping going can be an effort. Now if you were perpetually young and didn't have to work in a boring job there would be a lot less effort, but even so, not convinced that everyone would want to live forever. Also - memory storage - the brain can only store so much so with a "forever" you'd probably only remember the last hundred years (judged by current human lifespan).
A different thought on immortality - even today, with the relative fragility of people, a lot of them like to push the boundaries - playing sports where they might get injured or even killed. I don't think that folks go out there to get injured or killed - they think it won't be them, not today. So if we do reach a future with something approximating eternal life with eternal youth, I think there would be a massive increase in really dangerous sports, because so many people just know they can't be killed.

Anti-technology - well, it is complicated, a lot of people can't understand it, some of them resent that and when they are told they can't have something - either forbidding them or denying them - they don't understand why and feel picked on. Then it turns into "sciences" fault.


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## Elventine

I am not sure that we could ever have a Dark Age like we did in the past - however I do think that we may be heading towards an age of relative morality and that this is going to have a long-lasting detrimental effect on the world.

I think that we may also suffer through another industrial revolution or something similar in the workplace and in our farming and industrial sectors. Wheather good or bad, the chances are 50/50 at this point in time. 

I think that we may also have a shift in political regimes as sadly the democracy experiment hasn't worked and we do need something better to replace it with before it is replaced with a system that is worse. 

As for science - I can see the bad side of it - but at the same time, they have made the bed that they are now needing to lie in. The whole scientific community needs to gain a little bit of a wake-up call and start adding some accountability and action to their lives.


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## Montero

Speaking as a scientist not quite sure what you are getting at Elventine. Could you perhaps give some specific examples of this?


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## Vertigo

Yes I'm also not sure what you mean. Science is not political; it just is. Scientists make discoveries. If one scientist decides a discovery is too dangerous there's no way they can 'hide' it; sooner or later another scientist will make the same discovery. Scientists just uncover the realities of the universe we live in, others may then do damage with that knowledge but the scientists can't be blamed for that.

Sure scientist do make predictions when it is required of them, though they mostly don't like doing so, and getting those predictions wrong can have serious consequences. Climate change is an obvious and current example but it is spurious to hold them to account when they get those predictions wrong; predictions are not science but might be guided by science. I've never quite understood why we all laugh at all the horrendously inaccurate political and social predictions that punters make and yet we are horrified and yell 'foul' whenever a scientist makes any predictions that are not later found to be perfect in every detail.


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## Venusian Broon

I disagree, not with the overall intent of your above message as I read it - that 'science' is amoral and that morality comes in by how scientific knowledge is used by people (not necessarily scientists of course), which is another matter altogether....

but with this particular point you make:



Vertigo said:


> predictions are not science but might be guided by science.



From Wikipedia:

"Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."

I'd say a science that cannot predict is not a science and therefore predictions are at the very core of it's philosophy. Predictions are a vital component of science. (As is a science that cannot be tested, although I may just allow ones that are theoretically _possibly _as testable )

I think I'm being pedantic, but it niggled! .


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## Mirannan

Montero:

Others have done this better (Drexler, for one) but I see in the future and the near future at that - within the lifetimes of many people here - a revolution comparable to or greater than the industrial revolution in both farming and industrial sectors.

The industrial revolution made huge changes in both farming and manufacturing sectors of the economy, but it left intact the idea that everyone has to work to live. The coming robot/AI/nanotech revolution may well make work obsolete, at least for all but a small fraction of the human population. After all, someone has to maintain the robots - for now. I see that fraction shrinking as self-maintenance becomes more and more common.

If you are reading this right now (2018 AD) then you are an enormously complex network of interacting nanomachines. Most of the time, they don't need maintenance, although there is a class of extremely expert maintenance personnel who take care of what maintenance needs doing; we call it the medical profession.

We will have the issue of what to do about the large majority of humanity who have nothing pressing to do. This issue is already causing a great many problems, with many people wanting to use out-of-date solutions. As robots take over more and more of the routine work and an increasing amount of the expert stuff, it is only going to get worse.

As for politics; well, a variant of the "benevolent dictator" method might well come into being. All hail our AI overlords!


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## Mirannan

Venusian Broon said:


> I disagree, not with the overall intent of your above message as I read it - that 'science' is amoral and that morality comes in by how scientific knowledge is used by people (not necessarily scientists of course), which is another matter altogether....
> 
> but with this particular point you make:
> 
> 
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> 
> "Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
> 
> I'd say a science that cannot predict is not a science and therefore predictions are at the very core of it's philosophy. Predictions are a vital component of science. (As is a science that cannot be tested, although I may just allow ones that are theoretically _possibly _as testable )
> 
> I think I'm being pedantic, but it niggled! .



This is a discussion about what one means by "prediction". Science makes predictions along the lines of "change the experimental conditions in this way, or add chemical A to chemical B, and this will happen." This is not the same as predicting the future; although it is quite possible that what people do is deterministic, it is impossible to predict what a given human will do with precision, for reasons do do with incomplete information. It has also been proved impossible to predict the weather in detail more than maybe three months in advance, if one is lucky; see "chaos theory".


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## Justin Swanton

'Science' is a very woolly word. We need to subdivide it. I come up with three categories: science, scientific ideology, and scientists.

Science as pure and simple science is like mathematics. It's the use of investigative techniques, many of them hi-tech, to better understand reality in an empirical way, i.e. effects that can be scientifically measured leading to causes that can also (sometimes) be scientifically measured. There's nothing wrong or right about this; it's just pure knowledge.

Scientific ideology however is something entirely different. By 'scientific ideology' I mean the attitude that everything can be understood and explained purely and exclusively in terms of physical causes. There's no room in this outlook for any kind of reality that can't be scientifically evaluated, that is, put under a microscope or in a test tube. Hence any line of argumentation that deduces the existence of a God from the nature of the physical universe is automatically rejected since God cannot be measured by scientific instruments. It's an attitude, not a scientific conclusion, since logically it is quite possible to posit effects that have for cause an immaterial being that can't be physically studied. I'm not wandering into religion here, just pointing out an attitude that just assumed from the outset, not scientifically demonstrated.

Then there are scientists. Scientists are fallible human beings hence quite capable of speculation that isn't founded on incontrovertible facts. Dont forget that most scientists are specialists - competent in their narrow fields of knowledge but as ignorant as the next man about lines of scientific enquiry that are dissimilar to their own. So one scientist can make assumptions based in insufficient evidence, publish it in a paper, and the scientific community simply takes it at face value. It is possible that other scientists in that specialist field may challenge the first scientist's affirmations, but that does not inevitably follow, especially if his conclusions endorse the scientific ideology mentioned above. Also he may have followed a long and possibly expensive investigative process that isn't easy for fellow scientists to duplicate, or may have put forward physical evidence that no-one thinks to check. Remember the Piltdown Man? (again, I'm not wandering into a debate on Evolution, just showing how easy it is to perpetrate a scientific fraud)

Edit: Today I think it's more a case of conclusions based on insufficient evidence rather than outright fraud. A real scientist should have no hesitation saying the words "I don't know."


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## Vertigo

Venusian Broon said:


> I disagree, not with the overall intent of your above message as I read it - that 'science' is amoral and that morality comes in by how scientific knowledge is used by people (not necessarily scientists of course), which is another matter altogether....
> 
> but with this particular point you make:
> 
> 
> 
> From Wikipedia:
> 
> "Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
> 
> I'd say a science that cannot predict is not a science and therefore predictions are at the very core of it's philosophy. Predictions are a vital component of science. (As is a science that cannot be tested, although I may just allow ones that are theoretically _possibly _as testable )
> 
> I think I'm being pedantic, but it niggled! .





Mirannan said:


> This is a discussion about what one means by "prediction". Science makes predictions along the lines of "change the experimental conditions in this way, or add chemical A to chemical B, and this will happen." This is not the same as predicting the future; although it is quite possible that what people do is deterministic, it is impossible to predict what a given human will do with precision, for reasons do do with incomplete information. It has also been proved impossible to predict the weather in detail more than maybe three months in advance, if one is lucky; see "chaos theory".


Yes I take your point @Venusian Broon but @Mirannan has nicely qualified my somewhat ambiguous use of the word prediction. I did not make it clear that I was using it in the sense of predicting the future rather than predicting the outcome of an experiment as part of the scientific process.


----------



## Dave

sknox said:


> OK, but I'm still wondering what you are picturing when you say "Dark Ages".



I am still waiting on this from Baylor too. I don't think anyone can answer the question until then. They were "dark" as in the "absence of light" because we didn't know very much about them. We know more now, and as sknox says he is a medieval scholar, he would know much more than I. 

I still don't agree with Justin Swanton that technology has run its course, or that we need to separate "scientific ideology" either. Technology has not climaxed, nor has it run out of steam. We are hitting natural resource limits though, and these may be our downfall. I do agree with Justin on some of what he says though:



Justin Swanton said:


> If by the Dark Ages you mean the post-Roman world of the 5th century onwards then it wasn't actually that dark... ...the peasants knew about soap (and the sun did shine sometimes).



By "dark," people also sometimes mean that they were pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-The Age of Enlightenment. These changes brought about freedom to think, freedom to worship, and free will. Only after those changes could Science flourish in the way we know now.

So, if by "dark", Baylor means taking away those freedoms, and ideals such as liberty, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and a separation of church and state, well yes, we could very easily return to that kind of society based instead upon religious dogma, superstition, intolerance, authoritarian government. I'd say that the last year and a half has already started to take us down that Orwellian road, but I'm not allowed to say any more.


----------



## Venusian Broon

My view of what Baylor means by 'dark ages' is, simply put, a period of time where there are very significant demographic, technological, cultural and economic deteriorations in a large-scale society/(s).

The one that comes to mind first is the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, but one can also point to the late Bronze age collapse circa 1200 BCE happening to the peoples around the Mediterranean basin and the middle East. There are, for example, a great many archaeological findings that show how much European society regressed technologically and how commercial output disappeared in many areas, after the W. Roman Empire dissolved (pottery for example). I am sure we can point many others throughout the world (the decline of the great civilisation of the Maya in the 9th Century, must also qualify, I feel.)

In all of the cases above I'm sure, as you've put @Dave , that the 'dark' officially refers to the fact that as part of this deterioration, writing and record-keeping almost entirely disappeared. Hence, after 'golden' periods where we have had 'illumination' of what societies were doing, from reading the words and thoughts of people of the time, there were then none (or very little).  We may guess more about what happened then, because archaeological and other techniques are improving* and are telling us more about findings from those times...but these are generally indirect findings.

In ages past, separate areas of the globe could go into decline - other parts could be simultaneously booming. As Western Europe went through it's dark age in the fifth to 10th century, China was flourishing. The scary thought, I suppose, is that today everywhere is connected to everywhere else. Every economy and government, our knowledge and communications networks as well, whether you like it or not, are connected together in ways that have never occurred before in history. A true dark age now, would likely impact everyone at the same time.

------------------------------------------

*and perhaps we find more written material from that period, if you are lucky!


----------



## Elventine

Montero said:


> Speaking as a scientist not quite sure what you are getting at Elventine. Could you perhaps give some specific examples of this?



Well, let's see -

Forging results? Smudged data?

How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data

This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data

Stanford researchers uncover patterns in how scientists lie about their data

False positives: fraud and misconduct are threatening scientific research

So how am I to believe anything any scientist says unless I can see the actuality of it?

Which leads to your comments Vertigo -



Vertigo said:


> Yes I'm also not sure what you mean. Science is not political; it just is. Scientists make discoveries. If one scientist decides a discovery is too dangerous there's no way they can 'hide' it; sooner or later another scientist will make the same discovery. Scientists just uncover the realities of the universe we live in, others may then do damage with that knowledge but the scientists can't be blamed for that.




Science has an ideal that it has not yet reached and won't reach while it is held in the hands of those with a very squggy sense of ethics - because that is what science is lacking - basic ethics and any form of ethical standards. Until they get some I hold everything that they (scientists) say at arm's length and yes because of that lack of ethics science is very political.

What is or isn't proven or what the latest study shows about climate change or other important things has a political effect and people use this to their advantage.

This I suppose you will say has little to do with the scientists but it has everything to do with scientist because scientists can and have and will continue to be bought. It has happened before - personal ethics go out the window when an opportunity or that next great discovery comes along. This is how we have gained some of humanities worst weapons and other things best not used by anyone. History is littered with the unethical achievements of science and so I see no reason to not, not trust a word any of them say now unless they can actually show me in a practical experiment the results.

Then we get to some of the most important problems with science and why we should always view it with some degree of "Is it really?" -



Justin Swanton said:


> 'Science' is a very woolly word. We need to subdivide it. I come up with three categories: science, scientific ideology, and scientists.
> 
> Science as pure and simple science is like mathematics. It's the use of investigative techniques, many of them hi-tech, to better understand reality in an empirical way, i.e. effects that can be scientifically measured leading to causes that can also (sometimes) be scientifically measured. There's nothing wrong or right about this; it's just pure knowledge.
> 
> *Scientific ideology however is something entirely different. By 'scientific ideology' I mean the attitude that everything can be understood and explained purely and exclusively in terms of physical causes. There's no room in this outlook for any kind of reality that can't be scientifically evaluated, that is, put under a microscope or in a test tube. Hence any line of argumentation that deduces the existence of a God from the nature of the physical universe is automatically rejected since God cannot be measured by scientific instruments. It's an attitude, not a scientific conclusion, since logically it is quite possible to posit effects that have for cause an immaterial being that can't be physically studied. I'm not wandering into religion here, just pointing out an attitude that just assumed from the outset, not scientifically demonstrated.*
> 
> Then there are scientists. Scientists are fallible human beings hence quite capable of speculation that isn't founded on incontrovertible facts. Dont forget that most scientists are specialists - competent in their narrow fields of knowledge but as ignorant as the next man about lines of scientific enquiry that are dissimilar to their own. So one scientist can make assumptions based in insufficient evidence, publish it in a paper, and the scientific community simply takes it at face value. It is possible that other scientists in that specialist field may challenge the first scientist's affirmations, but that does not inevitably follow, especially if his conclusions endorse the scientific ideology mentioned above. Also he may have followed a long and possibly expensive investigative process that isn't easy for fellow scientists to duplicate, or may have put forward physical evidence that no-one thinks to check. Remember the Piltdown Man? (again, I'm not wandering into a debate on Evolution, just showing how easy it is to perpetrate a scientific fraud)
> 
> Edit: Today I think it's more a case of conclusions based on insufficient evidence rather than outright fraud. A real scientist should have no hesitation saying the words "I don't know."



The bolded text is why science always fails itself at the end - it views any and all knowledge gained at any one point as all of the knowledge it needs - the fact that this thing is like this today must mean that it was and always will be like that and it negatively impacts our world and us. Take nuclear power - at one point it was deemed safe enough for children to play with - simply because they had yet to see the effects. Science is blinded by it's own limited worldview but it also takes a lot to change that worldview when someone does pause to question the "Proven results".

Yet what is "proven" is rarely and basically never the actuality of reality.

This perception (and it is a perception) of the flaws in science is also not helped by sciences need to show off - instead of making sure or even leaving room for a questioning of its results everything that is at this moment "proven" is taken and shown as the truth and the only truth. Which shows how stupid science can be because in it's limitedness it is going against its own ideals.

So yeah. Science as a whole has made its own mess and it needs to start fixing its issues if it really wants to once again be taken seriously.


----------



## Montero

Well, yes, some individuals and some corporations do fudge stuff or make exaggerated claims - however the concept of the peer reviewed journal is a key check and balance. I don't know if you are familiar with it but this is how it works.

1. A scientist or scientists do some research and write a paper on it, which has a summary, methodology of the experiments (types of equipment used, how it was calibrated), the results - tables of data and graphs, discussion of the implications of this and conclusions. Generally there are references to other such papers in the field.
2. The paper is sent to a journal. The journal editor will send it out to one or more reviewers who are scientists working in the same field at different institutions from the first scientists.
3. These peer reviewers read the paper, comment on it for ease of comprehension, accuracy of theories referenced, quality and quantity of data and whether or not the data justifies the conclusions drawn. They may also repeat a subset of the experiments to see if they get the same results (within the stated error margins) of the original researchers. 
4. The reports from the peer reviewers are sent back to the editor of the journal, and depending on the type of comments the editor will either schedule the paper for publication, or send it back to the submitter with the comments from the peer reviewers and will then wait for it to be re-submitted with corrections, further supporting data or whatever else is required.
5. This cycle can easily take a year.
6. When a paper is published in a peer reviewed journal, other scientists in the field will read it, may also repeat an experiment, or in some way use it in their own research. They may then write papers which reference that paper.

I have on occasion seen published papers heavily criticised by other research groups and the publicly published ding dong can last years.

These scientific journals are available to buy from the publishers and there will be copies in University research departments, University libraries and the Science Reference Library at High Holborn. In my day you could walk in the SRL for free and read any paper. Generally people write to the SRL for copies of a particular paper and a photocopy is posted. Any University will not have every copy of every journal - it is too expensive - but they will have access to online search machines and you can order individual papers pertinent to your research that way.

The scientific literature goes back to the days of Newton. You can read Newton's papers on gravity in the Royal Society journal published at that time. Rigorous science is based on making accurate information publicly available, and questioning it. So things change with time. As a chemist I am familiar with the theory of phlogiston - which was overtaken by scientific experiment showing the existence of oxygen and how combustion really works.


----------



## sknox

I won't try to guess at what BAYLOR meant. I will, however, take some issue with the usual portrayal of the Dark Ages and of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The adjective "dark" is pejorative and for some specific reasons. The "collapse" of the Empire is flat out wrong, as a number of scholars have demonstrated. The two topics are related. 

That's why I asked for a clarification. The OP was, imo, an attempt to wonder whether something might happen in the future akin to what had happened in the past, but that past never happened. The speculation rests on false assumptions. The Empire persisted in a variety of ways, to varying degrees, long after Odoacar strangled poor Romulus Augustulus. In many ways the crisis of the third century was more wrenching than that of the fifth. The sixth was probably still worse, not because of barbarians but because of other Romans (the Byzantines). Anyway, there's a whole literature on this.

That the perception about the Dark Ages persists has more to do with modern mythology than historical reality.

But I hold the core assumption to be wrong. The past is no predictor of the future, Harry Seldon notwithstanding. We keep wanting it to be, because humans love to have something to blame. But modern society is profoundly different from pre-modern, pre-industrial society, root and branch. Studying the past has all sorts of benefits, but they are the benefits of literature, not of science. We keep looking, trying to find the hidden pattern because we are obsessed by patterns. Heck, we see patterns in the stars at night, though we know it's but a trick of perspective and imagination. Astrology is not astronomy, and there are no predictions to be gained from scorpions in the sky.


----------



## Vertigo

I will respond here but only once as otherwise we're going to derail this thread into something that will probably always remain two irreconcilable views.

I *think *your view of science and scientists has been coloured by a *relatively* small number of science scandals. In the report in your first link the conclusions are all low until they look at other scientist commenting on colleagues (which isn't too surprising in what can be a very competitive field) and frankly the number of respondents do not inspire me with the validity of the statistics. Also following on from @Montero comments on peer review, whilst I may of missed it, I could find no evidence of peer review of that particular paper.

I *personally believe,* based largely on pretty much every scientist I have ever known (which is quite a few though not a statistically large sample) and based on my *personal* view of the integrity of the majority of people I have ever met, that the vast majority of scientist have an extremely high level of both honesty and integrity. I *think* that it is very unfair to condemn all science and scientists based on those few that hit the headlines with one scandal or another.



> The bolded text is why science always fails itself at the end - it views any and all knowledge gained at any one point as all of the knowledge it needs - the fact that this thing is like this today must mean that it was and always will be like that and it negatively impacts our world and us. Take nuclear power - at one point it was deemed safe enough for children to play with - simply because they had yet to see the effects. Science is blinded by it's own limited worldview but it also takes a lot to change that worldview when someone does pause to question the "Proven results".


Good scientist absolutely do not do this, my experience has been that most scientist say something along the lines of "this is our current best model of xxxx." It is generally the media that ignores this and reports all scientific announcements as the final word. And if you take your example of nuclear power, I *think* you'll find it was mainly governments that were trying to paint it as harmless not the scientists.


----------



## Parson

Mirannan said:


> As for freedom from the bondage of work; well, that doesn't imply "freedom" from work altogether. Many people work at jobs they would rather not be doing but continue to do them because they need the earnings to live. But that doesn't necessarily have to stay the way of the world forever; fictional examples of post-scarcity societies abound, and some non-fiction futurist writers have joined that game as well.



I suspect that a "post-scarcity" world is about as likely as FTL. --- Not quite impossible, but maintaining worse odds than your single Powerball ticket containing all the winning Powerball numbers. But even if that does come to be, there will always be work that needs to be done which will be seen by most members of the given society as "beneath contempt." 



Justin Swanton said:


> but the kind of work that is not as fun or fulfilling as we would want it to to be - check out the link in my previous post.



I did look at the link at the beginning. Looked to be a 14+ min music video, so I clicked off. And I will admit to being prejudiced here. I have a job I thoroughly enjoy doing, and would likely do most of it without being paid. My Dad was a farmer and he too got great pleasure from doing his work well often for starvation "wages." But, I still believe that a lot of people find more fulfillment in their vocation than their avocation. I think "work" is engrained in most of us and would be rapidly bored without it. 



Vertigo said:


> Good scientist absolutely do not do this, my experience has been that most scientist say something along the lines of "this is our current best model of xxxx." It is generally the media that ignores this and reports all scientific announcements as the final word. And if you take your example of nuclear power, I *think* you'll find it was mainly governments that were trying to paint it as harmless not the scientists.



As in so many cases, if you want to find where the lies abound, follow the money.


----------



## Mirannan

I would like to say some more about science as I see it.

First, IMHO science has to do with making predictions (about the future, and I'll say more about that in a minute) about the specific effects of making a change in the environment - whether the environment in question is a controlled one such as a glass flask or an uncontrolled one like an open field - and then testing them by doing an experiment and seeing what happens. Unfortunately, what one is testing is just one factor among dozens and then statistics comes into the process. Statistical methods necessitate various precautions to get clean results, such as elimination of conscious or unconscious bias (double-blind controlled experiments, in the medical/biological field) and such error-creators as the placebo effect; one very common error often found in even published work is too small a sample size. The statistical methods themselves need to be used carefully; choosing the right sort of average, for example.

All of which means that doing science on one-off events is chancy at best. The least important reason is that one-off events are often unpredictable and so the right sort of instruments might not be available.

Some more: The experiment might be impossible for reasons of ethics; many possible medical experiments come into this category. It might be impossible because there is no possibility of a control. IMHO climate science comes into this category because we don't have a spare Earth (and Sun!) to use as a control. And, again IMHO, predicting something that has already happened is also usually worthless. It is unlikely that bias can be kept out, because the actual result is already well and widely known, and also accurate data might not be available because the instruments to gain such data did not exist. IMHO both of these problems apply to climate prediction.

However, all this does not mean that climate prediction is worthless - but the results are nowhere near as clear-cut as some would have us believe. The models might have left something out, and probably have. Some unforeseen factor might crop up to make the models useless. (An example might be a major meteor impact or supervolcano eruption, in the case of climate.)

And just one more thing: Experimenter bias, whether ideologically or financially based. A reasonably well known example is drug trials. The usual standard used in statistics is a 95% confidence level, meaning that in 19 out of 20 repeats of the experiment the results will support whatever conclusion was drawn. Unfortunately, there is no legal requirement (and even if there was, it's unenforceable) to publish negative results. So if the drug you're testing comes out as useless in a trial? Then simply repeat it until random chance gives the result you want - and that's the run you publish. Climate science (on both sides of the argument!) is probably another example.

Perhaps unfortunately, scientists are people - who can make errors, can be and probably are biased, are subject to various pressures and might even be dishonest. (Shock horror! )


----------



## Dave

Just to add to the rebuttal of Elventine's comments, I would say the proof of the system working lies in her own links - in that scientists who falsify data are discovered, shamed and likely don't ever work again. The problem with climate data is that we cannot ever measure historical temperatures so we rely on proxies. Manipulation of one set of data to compare it with a different set of data is not falsifying data. How you convert that data into temperatures, using some algorithm, is not an exact science, and it is open to different interpretations. Even so, the checks and balances of peer review work just the same way for that too. 

As for scientists being bought, you would need to clarify. I think you mean that research is financed and paid for by big companies and governments. So, yes, that does determine the fields of research, but whatever a scientist believes, or even hopes, to find, he is still bound by the results he actually finds. If you need a good example of how this works in practise, the study of the effects of Acid Rain on plants during the 1970's is a good example. Scientists working in labs being paid for by the Central Electricity Generating Board (who created SO2 pollution) would counter those of other researchers. If you follow the research papers there was a great game being played between them, as one would find some small variable that the other had not included in an earlier experiment, and conclude that the previous research was flawed. It isn't a question of ethics. It is totally ethical, each researcher believed in what they were doing, and their results were correct up until the point they were disproved. This is exactly how science is supposed to work. A hypothesis is a kind of prediction, the experiment is designed to prove it, and the results confirm or deny it. However, the results are only as accurate as the experimental design.

The conclusions are always open to further question and modification and further experimentation. No scientist has ever said, that's it, that's the truth, I'm out of here. The idea of true and false, black and white, yes and no, those come partly from journalists who don't understand science, and partly because our laws, and governmental systems cannot deal with grey areas, or of being unsure about something. Courts bring in scientists as expert witnesses and pit them against other scientists as expert witnesses in a confrontational manner. That is not how science works, it is how a court works.


----------



## Biskit

A couple of observations from a retired scientist:

1: Faking data is the ultimate sin - do it and get caught, expect to be hung, drawn and quartered. Making the accusation is another thing entirely - you have to be very, very, VERY sure, because faking data is the ultimate sin and no-one takes it lightly.

2: Scientist make mistakes - bad experiment, faulty equipment, or whatever, but the important thing is to report what was observed.  Mistakes can be picked apart, explained and understood.  Fake data is a disaster in the scientific community.  If you're trying to recreate someone else's results and can't, pretty much the last assumption you make is fake data.

3: In spite of all of that, it does happen.  Just like company CEOs fake their financial data, and help crash the world economy.  Ditto bankers.  And there's no shortage of news reports of dodgy accountants fiddling the books.  Frankly, the thing that stands out for me is that scientific fraud is rare.  

4: Faking data is the ultimate sin.  Yes, I know I said that already.  It's worth saying again!


----------



## BAYLOR

Biskit said:


> A couple of observations from a retired scientist:
> 
> 1: Faking data is the ultimate sin - do it and get caught, expect to be hung, drawn and quartered. Making the accusation is another thing entirely - you have to be very, very, VERY sure, because faking data is the ultimate sin and no-one takes it lightly.
> 
> 2: Scientist make mistakes - bad experiment, faulty equipment, or whatever, but the important thing is to report what was observed.  Mistakes can be picked apart, explained and understood.  Fake data is a disaster in the scientific community.  If you're trying to recreate someone else's results and can't, pretty much the last assumption you make is fake data.
> 
> 3: In spite of all of that, it does happen.  Just like company CEOs fake their financial data, and help crash the world economy.  Ditto bankers.  And there's no shortage of news reports of dodgy accountants fiddling the books.  Frankly, the thing that stands out for me is that scientific fraud is rare.
> 
> 4: Faking data is the ultimate sin.  Yes, I know I said that already.  It's worth saying again!



We're getting off topic a bit.


----------



## Mirannan

Biskit said:


> A couple of observations from a retired scientist:
> 
> 1: Faking data is the ultimate sin - do it and get caught, expect to be hung, drawn and quartered. Making the accusation is another thing entirely - you have to be very, very, VERY sure, because faking data is the ultimate sin and no-one takes it lightly.
> 
> 2: Scientist make mistakes - bad experiment, faulty equipment, or whatever, but the important thing is to report what was observed.  Mistakes can be picked apart, explained and understood.  Fake data is a disaster in the scientific community.  If you're trying to recreate someone else's results and can't, pretty much the last assumption you make is fake data.
> 
> 3: In spite of all of that, it does happen.  Just like company CEOs fake their financial data, and help crash the world economy.  Ditto bankers.  And there's no shortage of news reports of dodgy accountants fiddling the books.  Frankly, the thing that stands out for me is that scientific fraud is rare.
> 
> 4: Faking data is the ultimate sin.  Yes, I know I said that already.  It's worth saying again!



Fair enough. But the statistical issue I mentioned is certainly possible. Faking data is not quite the same as being selective about which data set you use. BTW, from my limited reading into the subject historical climate data has been subjected to the same selectivity.


----------



## Mirannan

Parson said:


> I suspect that a "post-scarcity" world is about as likely as FTL.



Possibly, but consider: Many systems currently in existence supply useful goods without any input of human effort needed except gathering the goodies. You don't believe that? Well, ever gone blackberry-picking?

I see no reason why a sufficiently sophisticated nanotech system should not be able to produce useful goods at similar cost; air, sunshine and water. (OK, a small supply of soluble minerals too.) Sure, God has four billion years of design time on us, but on the other hand He might not have had an end in mind; else brambles wouldn't have so many thorns!

And actually, from the point of view of nutrition blackberries are far more complex than necessary. After all, each blackberry has a couple of dozen complete copies of the blackberry plant genome inside it, for a start.

(I chose blackberries because it's a food that is still wild-gathered fairly often, even in sophisticated Western societies. Mushroom-picking might be another example, but a bit more chancy - I wouldn't try it, but that's a skill/information issue.)

One more example: Earth produces, with no human input at all, billions of tons per year of reasonably efficient solar energy collectors. They are commonly called leaves.


----------



## Dave

BAYLOR said:


> We're getting off topic a bit.


Not until you clarify what you mean by "dark ages." If you mean that a catastrophic event leads to us losing all recorded information and the ability to maintain our present level of technology, then it is off topic. However, if we are going to willingly destroy our technological capability by no longer believing in science (arctic researchers have had their citations removed) and by banning scientists from using certain words, or if we burn books, persecute independent thinking, and rewrite history then I want to correct people who are already saying that scientists cannot be believed, because to allow it truly would be the start of a dark age.


----------



## Cathbad

Montero said:


> I am not sure that everyone does have a desire to live forever - keeping going can be an effort.



Sooner or later, we'd want it to end.

But with one form of "immortality", we could _choose_ when that was!


----------



## Elventine

Montero said:


> Well, yes, some individuals and some corporations do fudge stuff or make exaggerated claims - however the concept of the peer reviewed journal is a key check and balance. I don't know if you are familiar with it but this is how it works.
> 
> 1. A scientist or scientists do some research and write a paper on it, which has a summary, methodology of the experiments (types of equipment used, how it was calibrated), the results - tables of data and graphs, discussion of the implications of this and conclusions. Generally there are references to other such papers in the field.
> 2. The paper is sent to a journal. The journal editor will send it out to one or more reviewers who are scientists working in the same field at different institutions from the first scientists.
> 3. These peer reviewers read the paper, comment on it for ease of comprehension, accuracy of theories referenced, quality and quantity of data and whether or not the data justifies the conclusions drawn. They may also repeat a subset of the experiments to see if they get the same results (within the stated error margins) of the original researchers.
> 4. The reports from the peer reviewers are sent back to the editor of the journal, and depending on the type of comments the editor will either schedule the paper for publication, or send it back to the submitter with the comments from the peer reviewers and will then wait for it to be re-submitted with corrections, further supporting data or whatever else is required.
> 5. This cycle can easily take a year.
> 6. When a paper is published in a peer reviewed journal, other scientists in the field will read it, may also repeat an experiment, or in some way use it in their own research. They may then write papers which reference that paper.
> 
> I have on occasion seen published papers heavily criticised by other research groups and the publicly published ding dong can last years.
> 
> These scientific journals are available to buy from the publishers and there will be copies in University research departments, University libraries and the Science Reference Library at High Holborn. In my day you could walk in the SRL for free and read any paper. Generally people write to the SRL for copies of a particular paper and a photocopy is posted. Any University will not have every copy of every journal - it is too expensive - but they will have access to online search machines and you can order individual papers pertinent to your research that way.
> 
> The scientific literature goes back to the days of Newton. You can read Newton's papers on gravity in the Royal Society journal published at that time. Rigorous science is based on making accurate information publicly available, and questioning it. So things change with time. As a chemist I am familiar with the theory of phlogiston - which was overtaken by scientific experiment showing the existence of oxygen and how combustion really works.



I am very familiar with the idea of how scientific journals are supposed to work - however -  they have on many an occasion been fudged themselves with peer reviews being bought. So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.


----------



## Justin Swanton

Vertigo said:


> I *personally believe,* based largely on pretty much every scientist I have ever known (which is quite a few though not a statistically large sample) and based on my *personal* view of the integrity of the majority of people I have ever met, that the vast majority of scientist have an extremely high level of both honesty and integrity. I *think* that it is very unfair to condemn all science and scientists based on those few that hit the headlines with one scandal or another.
> 
> Good scientist absolutely do not do this, my experience has been that most scientist say something along the lines of "this is our current best model of xxxx." It is generally the media that ignores this and reports all scientific announcements as the final word. And if you take your example of nuclear power, I *think* you'll find it was mainly governments that were trying to paint it as harmless not the scientists.



I like this. My own experience is that most people are not outright frauds and scumbags, conning the general public as an easier way of making a living. Those that are, are more likely to be found on the stock exchange than in a lab. With this in mind I have a few questions to which I honestly don't have the answers (always better to affirm what you don't know so you can be sure about what you do):

1. To what extent does scientific ideology affect scientists? By 'scientific ideology' I mean - as mentioned earlier - a set of ground assumptions that cannot be challenged and must act as the starting point for any academic enquiry. Non-contentious examples are, by the very nature of the question, difficult to give, so let me stick my neck out and name a contentious one: the necessity of coming up with a natural and non-intelligent cause for the 4-base genetic prescriptive language found in DNA. Non-intelligent origins for everything that exists is a given, not to be questioned. Sorry if I keep returning to Evolution for examples, but that is one field of scientific enquiry I've looked into. And let me make clear that I don't have a problem with Evolution on anything except scientific grounds. If it is scientifically _*proven *_then I'm quite happy to accept it - but that's off topic here.

2. To what extent is 'science', as disseminated by the media and discussed on forums like this one, scientific ideology (as per my previous email) rather than strict science _per se_? An example: NASA has spent billions of dollars looking for signs of life in the Solar System. It is assumed from the start that life must have evolved from complex organic compounds, and that all that is needed for life to spontaneously generate is suitable conditions. This is affirmed as a scientific conclusion even though the theory that affirms it is, in scientific terms - well - still only a theory.

3. To what extent are scientists whose conclusions challenge the assumptions of scientific ideology excluded from public discourse - not debarred from doing science, just kept off the public radar? Scientists like *these gentlemen*.


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## Justin Swanton

Dave said:


> By "dark," people also sometimes mean that they were pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-The Age of Enlightenment. These changes brought about freedom to think, freedom to worship, and free will. Only after those changes could Science flourish in the way we know now.



A fairly cursory glance at pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-Enlightenment society, at least in European society, is enough for one to realise that the individual was free to think, free to worship and remained in possession of his free will. Shall I give some examples?



Dave said:


> So, if by "dark", Baylor means taking away those freedoms, and ideals such as liberty, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and a separation of church and state, well yes, we could very easily return to that kind of society based instead upon religious dogma, superstition, intolerance, authoritarian government. I'd say that the last year and a half has already started to take us down that Orwellian road, but I'm not allowed to say any more.



Every single human society before the French Revolution was built on the assumption that State and Religion had to work together, i.e. that a religion reflected the most fundamental and cherished convictions of the majority of the citizens and the state had to incorporate these in its legal system. Those societies gave us Aristotle, Plato, the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, Classical music, Michelangelo, Rubens, and so on and so on. To call it a 'dark age' is, well, what can I say?

As regards intolerance and authoritarian government, once 'religious dogma' and 'superstition' were removed from the equation, monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot became possible, and with them things like the 50 million dead in World War II, the 6 million dead in the Holocaust, the 5 million Kulak dead and unknown millions in the Gulag, the millions dead in the Cultural Revolution, the 2 million dead in Cambodia (1/4 of the population), and so on. Removing religion doth not necessarily just societies make.

What's interesting at present is how intolerant and authoritarian _*Western *_democracies are becoming towards anyone who disagrees with their ideology. The whole gay rights movement, speaking in the name of liberty, tolerance and fraternity, is using the legal system to crack down on anyone who doesn't actively and publicly endorse their position. *Here's* a good example, but it's only one of many.

So, yeah, we need to define what exactly a 'dark age' is.


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## Montero

Elventine said:


> I am very familiar with the idea of how scientific journals are supposed to work - however -  they have on many an occasion been fudged themselves with peer reviews being bought. So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.



1. Specific examples? 

2. When I was doing my degree and learning how to do literature surveys, part of the education was learning the aim was for each journal. Some journals specialise in, or have sections for "notes" or "letters" - that is where if you have just come up with something exciting, but have not yet fully investigated it, or have fully investigated it but are concerned that someone else might be published first, you write a "note" or a "letter" - which explains the idea, gives some of your support, and is published quickly. So that establishes you as the first person to publish. This is then followed up by a far more in depth paper. The downside of "notes" can be that there is a greater level of oopsies.

3. Standard of the journal. Not all journals peer review to the same standard. It is expensive to peer review. Some journals are gold standard, others less so.

I don't think that science needs a whole new ethics system. What it could do with is more funding that is not tied to vested interests or getting out lots of research papers very quickly. The UK used to have that. The Science and Engineering Research Council. It wasn't perfect, but it was a body which provided government grants to research groups (who had to make their pitch) to carry out a particular research project. It had room in its remit to support blue skies research that didn't have any immediate application. There was also funding from industry - known as CASE funding. Some PhD students had SERC money, others had CASE money and an industrial sponsor to whom they also sent reports.


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## Biskit

Elventine said:


> So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.


That strikes me as a horrendous idea:
1: Suddenly, you daren't publish something a bit wacky for fear of prosecution.  
2: Since when did any law stop dishonest people?  If that worked, we wouldn't have had Enron, the Credit Crunch and all those other corporate scandals.
3: If you're going to have a law, you need a court to go with it.  Where's your jury going to come from?  What scientific qualifications are you going to demand for all those involved?  Picking apart a fraud like that is not for the faint-hearted.  In fact, the main pool of talent for that will be other scientists, and the people involved in the peer-review process.
4: From the handful of scientific fraud reports I've seen, the primary motivation is fame and reputation rather than money.  How are you going to write a law that prohibits people from bending the truth so that others look at them more favourably?  If nothing else, the high-price lawyers from the entertainment business are going to come out swinging.


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## Montero

@Justin Swanton 
I agree with most of your post, felt this bit below was somewhat generalised and a bit harsh. Where humans are concerned, there is rarely unanimity of behaviour or aims, and sometimes a vocal group can be seen as being the only group.



Justin Swanton said:


> What's interesting at present is how intolerant and authoritarian _*Western *_democracies are becoming towards anyone who disagrees with their ideology. The whole gay rights movement, speaking in the name of liberty, tolerance and fraternity, is using the legal system to crack down on anyone who doesn't actively and publicly endorse their position. *Here's* a good example, but it's only one of many.
> 
> .


I started to watch the YouTube video but it was too early in the morning for it. Speaking from general experience of life and of discussions on forums, I'd like to say I do agree that there are intolerant groups around in many areas of opinion. There always have been. As a re-enactor I have studied the English Civil War and there was at times extreme intolerance on both sides, and vicious mud-slinging - but this was not universal. 
These days we have a general expectation of freedom of speech being supported - and there have been long legal and political fights to ensure the state allows this. (Speaking primarily of the UK as that is what I know the most about.) So I would in general agree that it is sad that a group that was looking for tolerance for their cause, would then act in an intolerant way. But campaign groups do tend to be people who are prepared to fight for their cause. Also, knowing when you have won is hard - in fact there is rarely an outright clear win - or rather what you have is that a war is a series of battles.


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## Justin Swanton

Montero said:


> @Justin Swanton
> I agree with most of your post, felt this bit below was somewhat generalised and a bit harsh. Where humans are concerned, there is rarely unanimity of behaviour or aims, and sometimes a vocal group can be seen as being the only group.
> 
> 
> I started to watch the YouTube video but it was too early in the morning for it. Speaking from general experience of life and of discussions on forums, I'd like to say I do agree that there are intolerant groups around in many areas of opinion. There always have been. As a re-enactor I have studied the English Civil War and there was at times extreme intolerance on both sides, and vicious mud-slinging - but this was not universal.
> These days we have a general expectation of freedom of speech being supported - and there have been long legal and political fights to ensure the state allows this. (Speaking primarily of the UK as that is what I know the most about.) So I would in general agree that it is sad that a group that was looking for tolerance for their cause, would then act in an intolerant way. But campaign groups do tend to be people who are prepared to fight for their cause. Also, knowing when you have won is hard - in fact there is rarely an outright clear win - or rather what you have is that a war is a series of battles.



It's worth spending a little time and doing some digging - the point behind the Lindsay Sheperd affair is that the _*law *_was invoked against her - the C16 bill to be precise. That law, to cut a long story short, obliges anyone to use whatever made-up gender pronouns non-heterosexuals require when speaking to or about them. There are about 15 pronouns (and growing) that replace the conventional 'he' and 'she'. Anyone who doesn't comply is liable to a hefty fine and, if they don't pay the fine, to jail time. This is not just a minority group being intolerant; this is a minority group whose intolerance is backed up by the legal system. Pretty dark-agey to me.

But this is all probably getting seriously off-topic.


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## Dave

Justin Swanton said:


> A fairly cursory glance at pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-Enlightenment society, at least in European society, is enough for one to realise that the individual was free to think, free to worship and remained in possession of his free will. Shall I give some examples?


So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism? Free from religious oppression? You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests? Free to refuse to venerate religious images of saints? You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun? Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?

However, this will inevitably become a religious argument so I had best stop here. I know nothing about the 'gender pronoun' stuff except that it is the antithesis of tolerance as I would regard tolerance. While I believe we should allow people to hold other views, and have ancestors persecuted for their religious views, I guess I am hypocritical in that I believe that only as long as they stay in their box. When it comes to education and the teaching of science, I'm pretty much up there with Richard Dawkins, although I do find him an extremely intolerant man. And yes, this is now way off-topic and becoming political and religious.

I think it was clear that @BAYLOR simply meant "Can we ever loose our collective knowledge and return to a time of ignorance?" To take us back on track, I'd say it was possible, even inevitable, and I agree with previous posts that the bigger and more interconnected our society is, the harder and quicker that fall will be. We should probably discuss that, and is there anything we can do to prevent it?


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## Justin Swanton

Dave said:


> So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism? Free from religious oppression? You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests? Free to refuse to venerate religious images of saints? You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun? Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?
> 
> However, this will inevitably become a religious argument so I had best stop here. I know nothing about the 'gender pronoun' stuff except that it is the antithesis of tolerance as I would regard tolerance. While I believe we should allow people to hold other views, and have ancestors persecuted for their religious views, I guess I am hypocritical in that I believe that only as long as they stay in their box. When it comes to education and the teaching of science, I'm pretty much up there with Richard Dawkins, although I do find him an extremely intolerant man. And yes, this is now way off-topic and becoming political and religious.
> 
> I think it was clear that @BAYLOR simply meant "Can we ever loose our collective knowledge and return to a time of ignorance?" To take us back on track, I'd say it was possible, even inevitable, and I agree with previous posts that the bigger and more interconnected our society is, the harder and quicker that fall will be. We should probably discuss that, and is there anything we can do to prevent it?




OK, let me answer this if just briefly. It can be considered on topic as it clarifies how the popularly conceived dark ages actually worked.



> So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism?



We find the thought of being bound to the land horrifying as we are in a society where living an educated and 'civilised' life means living in a city. But during the age of feudalism (which incidentally gradually disappeared and was gone by the late Middle Ages) there _*were *_no cities, and virtually no occupation other than working the land. Feudalism basically functioned on the tenant system: serfs rented the land they lived on and gave a portion of their harvest to their lord, who was effectively their landlord, keeping the rest for themselves. The 'rent' was not onerous since the lord would have had no way of disposing of a vast amount of agricultural produce. In return for his rent the lord protected the peasants from bandits and judged their cases in court. He was bound by law as to how he could treat his serfs - they were not his slaves to dispose of as he saw fit. The specifically 'serf' part of the arrangement was the obligation for the serf to stay on the land he inhabited, which wasn't a problem since he had nowhere else to go. There were, again, economically no other opportunities for him.



> Free from religious oppression?



If you were a Catholic in  Dark Age or Mediaeval Europe you weren't oppressed. You just went to church and practised your religion.

If you were not a Catholic you were free to practise your religion but with caveats. This part is important and perhaps difficult to understand: society then was a union of Church and state. The state was under obligation to uphold the religious convictions of its citizens in the way laws were framed. So marriage, for example, was legally monogamous. Non-Catholics were free to live by their own religious convictions but in their own town areas - the famous ghettos that, incidentally, were not necessarily any worse to live in than other parts of a mediaeval town - a pretty wretched place in any case by contemporary standards.

With this in mind, non-Catholics could not hold important offices in government (obvious since government was dedicated to preserving the tenants of the majority religion) nor could they make converts from Catholics. Why? Because inevitably if you made enough converts the next step was to organise an army and seize control of the territory you occupied, and impose _*your *_convictions in state legislation. This was why the Inquisition was set up: not to force non-catholics to become Catholics, but to prevent non-catholic proselytizers from starting a religious civil war. Religious reformers then were the equivalent of Marxist revolutionaries now.



> You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests?



Of course. The indulgence scandal came only at the end of the Middle Ages when churchmen changed indulgences from a spiritual practice into a moneymaking venture. Luther condemned it and rightly so, but that isn't what got him into trouble with the Church.



> You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun?



Certainly you were. Nicolas Copernicus, a Catholic priest, came up with the idea a century before Galileo and nobody condemned him. Galileo got into trouble, not for promoting heliocentrism, but by affirming that the Bible was wrong in stating that the sun rose in the east. This provoked an over-reaction from the Italian Inquisition. In maintaining the Bible was not in error they threw out the baby with the bathwater and condemned Galileo's hypothesis. Bear in mind that his punishment was to remain under house arrest, able to receive visitors. He wasn't tortured or tossed into a labour camp or summarily executed. Later on the Church changed its attitude towards Galileo, affirming that the Bible, as we do, speaks in an everyday sense about things like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, and isn't trying to use scientific language. It was all much ado about nothing.



> Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?



Sure. Very few Church fathers (the super-theologians of Catholicism) believed that.


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## Montero

Justin Swanton said:


> It's worth spending a little time and doing some digging - the point behind the Lindsay Sheperd affair is that the _*law *_was invoked against her - the C16 bill to be precise. That law, to cut a long story short, obliges anyone to use whatever made-up gender pronouns non-heterosexuals require when speaking to or about them. There are about 15 pronouns (and growing) that replace the conventional 'he' and 'she'. Anyone who doesn't comply is liable to a hefty fine and, if they don't pay the fine, to jail time. This is not just a minority group being intolerant; this is a minority group whose intolerance is backed up by the legal system. Pretty dark-agey to me.
> 
> But this is all probably getting seriously off-topic.




Totally unaware of the pronoun thing. I struggled learning German and part of my problem was remembering masculine, feminine and neuter, instead of just the English neuter. My personal preference with all of this is let's just have one pronoun - neuter. So in forms of title, going for the sci-fi "gentle-being" or "honoured one" or whatever. Not quite sure what made-up word for him and her would be neuter (and a search takes me to pages about learning German....). Incidentally, having just written sci-fi, I am vaguely aware that in some circles you have to be careful how you refer to science fiction. It might even be sci-fi which causes offence.......

Returning to Dark Ages topic and Medieval History. Not something I've read much about outside of Brother Cadfael and a few documentaries on Wars of the Roses (then called the cousins wars I recently learnt) but it is fascinating how once again the popular headlines on a period are just so wrong. As a former English Civil War re-enactor I have spent an awful lot of time explaining that not all puritans wore black, that people who wore black were rich and were just as likely to be royalist. Not all puritans were roundheads. There were some puritans who supported the royalist cause. etc, etc

I wouldn't actually agree that you have to live in the city (or town) to be civilised. There is a long history of country houses for city dwellers, at least back to Roman country villas.

Dark Ages - loss of knowledge - well one of the areas of knowledge which is in very limited circulation today is all the "crafts" - low tech ways of making stuff for yourself. If we do hit an economic dark age and have a plummet in wealth, that will be an area of lost knowledge that will hurt until people work it out again.


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## Dave

Montero said:


> ...one of the areas of knowledge which is in very limited circulation today is all the "crafts" - low tech ways of making stuff for yourself. If we do hit an economic dark age and have a plummet in wealth, that will be an area of lost knowledge that will hurt until people work it out again.


My friend tried to find an apprentice to work with an eighty-year-old man who was the only person left who knew a particular kind of coracle boat-building. There were no applicants and those skills have been lost now. It is ironic that sometime in the future, there will probably be a university research project to try to recreate his methods again.


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## Vladd67

If the sun was to flare in our direction with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) this could cause our electrical systems to crash, which could lead to all sorts of problems. This was a fear back in 2012 as this article shows.
Solar storms could crash computer systems this year, says space expert
A mass crash of computers would have a catastrophic effect on our civilisation. One which could take many years to recover from. Sadly we seem to be drifting into a semi dark age of knowledge as more and more people seem to be proud of their ignorance of subjects not related to celebrity, forget bread and circuses we are heading for an era of reality shows and soaps.


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## Brian G Turner

Some odd comments on Mediaeval Europe coming up - it certainly wasn't a place of pastoral bliss - so I'll tackle them. 



Justin Swanton said:


> there _*were *_no cities



Yes there were - smaller ones in northern Europe, but some pretty huge ancient ones all around the Mediterranean in southern Europe - Italy, Spain, and France come immediately to mind.



Justin Swanton said:


> The 'rent' was not onerous since the lord would have had no way of disposing of a vast amount of agricultural produce.



The rent was whatever the lord decided on, and there wasn't much the tennants could do about it. Lords were rarely concerned about how efficiently they used their resources. 



Justin Swanton said:


> He was bound by law



His word *was* the law. Good luck to any serf trying to argue their way out of that! 



Justin Swanton said:


> If you were not a Catholic you were free to practise your religion



So long as it was Roman Catholicism. 

Pagans, heretics, and infidels were rarely tolerated anywhere within Europe. Jews were so hated in Britain that they were expelled between the 12th - 17th century.



Justin Swanton said:


> This was why the Inquisition was set up: not to force non-catholics to become Catholics



The Dominican Order began it's inquisition in Aquitaine, on Papal orders, to destroy the Cathars. It was done to ensure there was no opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, and restore it's authority in the region. Heretics were rarely regarded as Roman Catholics. 



Justin Swanton said:


> union of Church and state



There was no union of church and state until after the Reformation. Before then, the church was very much the property of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome - and Rome was very keen to exert control in national politics.

Henry VIII made himself head of the church and state precisely to negate this influence - his reasons were selfish, and had nothing to do with the rights of his people, especially not Catholic ones.



Justin Swanton said:


> The indulgence scandal came only at the end of the Middle Ages when churchmen changed indulgences from a spiritual practice into a moneymaking venture.



The perceived greed of the church is a repeated motif throughout the Mediaeval period. There's a reason why monks are commonly portrayed as overweight.


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## Justin Swanton

Brian G Turner said:


> Some odd comments on Mediaeval Europe coming up - it certainly wasn't a place of pastoral bliss - so I'll tackle them.



Okey-doke. There's never been a time in human history of bliss, pastoral or otherwise. The best one can hope for from any human social setup is that it works reasonably well and that its lapses are not systematic nor horrific.

Now for the list:

*Cities*
We need to be clear about which period in the past we are talking about. Late Mediaeval Europe did have large towns/smallish cities, but the post-Romanitas to Dark Ages did not - say AD600 to the thirteenth century. Rome, once the biggest city in the Empire, dwindled to a largish village and things weren't any better elsewhere with the notable exception of Constantinople, capital of Byzantium.

*Rent*
Mediaeval lords weren't fools, at least not to that extent, and no, they had no use for huge piles of food they could neither eat nor sell. It wasn't about efficiency, it was simply about a limited demand.

*Law*
There was an unwritten contract, cemented by custom, between a Mediaeval lord and his serfs, that was not one of slavery, and which limited what he could do with his serfs. The notion of arbitrary dictatorship, built on force, is something peculiar to our own times. It was foreign to the period we are talking about.

*Non-catholics*
As a standing practice non-catholics were never forced to convert and were free to practise their own religion within their own communities provided they didn't proselytize outside of them. It was a sensible arrangement that worked much better than the current legislative drift, in which people are being forced legally to act against their consciences. Wedding cakes, anyone?

Like any social arrangement, it didn't work perfectly all the time, people being what they are. But it worked most of the time which is as much as one can hope for.

And let me quote the rest:



> The Dominican Order began it's inquisition in Acquitaine, on Papal orders, to destroy the Cathars. It was done to ensure there was no opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, and restore it's authority in the region. Heretics were rarely regarded as Roman Catholics.



The Cathars, like any religious innovators in that period, started the fighting by plundering Albi. There could never be a question of a political live and let live. Sure, there were atrocities on both sides, but once that religious civil war started, it could not be stopped unless by one side gaining a victory. Heretics, incidentally, were never regarded as Catholics by the very fact of being heretics.



> There was no union of church and state until after the Reformation. Before then, the church was very much the property of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome - and Rome was very keen to exert control in national politics.



Don't quite follow this. The church _*was *_the Roman Catholic Church. There wasn't anything else, unless you count transient heterodox movements like the Cathars. There certainly was a union between Church and state insofar as the legal system upheld the convictions of Catholics.

The Papacy throughout the Dark Age period had very little direct influence on national politics. It was only from the 12th century onwards that the Popes began to exert a limiting effect on the kings and notably the Germanic emperors, who tried to place their own men in control of the bishoprics and turn the Church into a department of state, rather in the way the Byzantine emperors had suborned the Orthodox Church. The Popes broke the back of this tendency and in consequence became politically very powerful. They then overreached themselves, claiming direct authority over king and emperor rather than just acting as a counterbalance to royal abuse of power. Once the Papacy become politicized it lost its moral authority. Philip the Fair, king of France, led the rebellion of the European monarchs against the political popes and Rome ended up losing most of its influence in European politics.



> Henry VIII made himself head of the church and state precisely to negate this influence - his reasons were selfish, and had nothing to do with the rights of his people, especially not Catholic ones.



Henry VIII made himself head of church (he was already head of state) _*purely *_to get rid of one wife and acquire another. The papacy at that time had very little influence in how he ran his kingdom.



> The perceived greed of the church is a repeated motif throughout the Mediaeval period. There's a reason why monks are commonly portrayed as overweight.



Check out Mediaeval paintings of hell: full of clergymen, bishops and even popes among them. These you will note are paintings in churches, commissioned and paid for by the clergy of those churches. The Church, like any human institution, is going to have its share of rotten apples, but Catholics never hesitated in calling a rotten apple anything else but bad.


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## sknox

Chiming in. Yes there were indeed cities, with populations in the thousands or tens of thousands. A couple reached a hundred thousand by the late MA. The great majority of Europeans were indeed in much smaller communities. 

Feudalism is a concept historians have labored for half a century to eradicate. You can see with what success. But that's a different topic from farmers all-but-owned-by-lords motif brought forward here. There was a wide range of landholding and a wide range of rights that went with it. Broadly, we should distinguish between free peasants, serfs, and slaves. Even more broadly, serfdom declined over time in western Europe, free peasants were the norm in the east but that changed dramatically at the end of the MA and into the early modern period. The narrative is complex.

As for law, kings and lords were held to operate within the law and were not to behave arbitrarily. Accusing a lord of doing so was a standard excuse for rebellion. It would be misleading to say peasants had rights, but they did have customs, and these were supposed to be protected by a lord. This doesn't mean peasants (or serfs) were free from exploitation--as Brian observed, most lords didn't care two figs how their peasants were doing--but they were not without protections. Serfs had it rougher. But there were a hundred gradations between hapless serf and free peasant. Even serfs could claim things like protection from being forced to work more days a week than was customary for the region.

As complex as is that narrative, even more is that for religious freedom, a phrase that most medieval people would find offensive. But criticism of the Church and churchmen absolutely did go on, persistently and widely, from the earliest of the medieval centuries. That there was criticism of the wealth of the religious is only natural when a religion idealizes poverty. People held clerics and monks to a high standard, one created by those same clerics and monks. 

Like kings, popes and bishops tried hard to enforce their will, but they lacked the apparatus. Poor communications, willful subjects, competing traditions, all conspired to thwart a ruler's will. The Church laid claim to far more than it ever actually held. Over and over we see not only laymen but even churchmen thumb their nose at Rome (or at a local bishop). Heck, even Romans thumbed their nose. They beat up a few popes in the streets and ran others out of town, tail between their legs. 

The business about heresy is even more complex. Did you know St Thomas Aquinas was a heretic? It was not a fatal accusation. Those Cathars, though, they were genuinely heretical. They believed in two co-equal gods. They believed this world was created by the Devil. They denied the Trinity. Heresy is more than just a difference of opinion, it's a difference about the fate of the world and of immortal souls. If you believe in that sort of stuff, then heresy is nothing to play around with. It's worse than treason. That said, and again I'm going to generalize dreadfully, there was a good deal more room for--let us call it differences in doctrine and practice--in the earlier MA than in the later. One common explanation is that as the Church more and more clearly defined its doctrine, working out explicitly what had been left implicit and unexplained, the lines it drew left more and more people on the wrong side. The more laws you have, the more crime you have. And by the 16thc, European were downright law-happy.

Anyway, no such thing as feudalism and no such thing as the Dark Ages.


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## TitaniumTi

In terms of disruption to present society, I’m worried by the intersection between fiat money, electronic financial markets and the vulnerabilities of computer technology. However, I’m neither an economist nor an IT expert, and I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

I don’t know about the possibility of a descent into a new dark age, but I suspect that societies seem stable until they’re not.


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## Elventine

*@Montero *

I could but don't have the time at the moment to look it up. 

Well, I would think that finding unbiased funding would be a part of the new ethics system. The fact is that as you said - most scientific research is done by and paid for by companies and people with invested interests in certain results and so hire people with invested interests in certain results. To make sure of getting those results. This is part of the biased that is fundamental to science. 

Thus my statement that the system itself needs an overhaul. 

I think that the scientific journals work in a similar way. But they fail at it. 

*@Biskit*

You don't need a court what you do need is some form of internal law that is upheld - As it is at the moment there sort of seems to be an attitude of "oops!" from the scientific community which is just sort of the wrong one when you are shown to have some major flaws in your system and people are starting to question the validity of all that you do. 

Accountability would be a good step forward, more catches in place to make sure that it is harder to falsify research, and more attention put on ethical standards within the scientific world. 

Hold yourselves to a better standard! 

As for fear of prosecution. Who said anything about prosecuting people? A very American way of viewing things there. If the research turns out to be falsified - fire their ass's. Fire all who backed up that research - fine whoever funded it and right there and you will have a lot more accountability.


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## Justin Swanton

Getting away from the Middle Ages for a moment, there doesn't seem to be anything on the immediate horizon that could plunge humanity into a dark age. Politically the world is very stable, North Korea notwithstanding. So long as the USA rules the waves, no other nation will try anything spectacular like start a world war. There are plenty of oil reserves, enough for most of this century after which point there is no overwhelming obstacle preventing a transition to an HEP, wind and solar powered electrical industrial complex. Barring an asteroid impact, I just can't see anything that would turn the world upside down.

Of course nothing lasts forever, least of all political institutions, but I have this horrible suspicion the rest of my life will pass in fairly undramatic circumstances.

One scenario: Kim fits nukes into the keels of yachts and gives them to Islamic fanatics who sail into the harbours of every US coastal city and then push the button. It's _*possible*_...

Edit: nearly half of the US population live on or near the coast. Mwahahaha....


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## Dave

Please could people only comment on what I have actually posted and not about what misconceptions other people think I may have had/meant to say or popular misconceptions they believe I may hold, otherwise, if you want a reply, reference which particular comment you are replying to. Just as one example, at no point here have I mentioned "slavery." We still have no clear definition here about what kind of society we are postulating the world could revert to, therefore people are cross-discussing societies covering thousands of years and spread over several continents. There is no one size fits all. Is there any other society that would offer as many freedoms as living in Europe in the early twenty first century? So, we can all agree that losing it would be a bad thing? Isn't that all we need to agree upon?

@Elventine Funding, whether for scientific research or when it is a decision between a road or a railway line, is always going to be biased. In a capitalist society, the person with money makes the choices. Do you think governments are not biased? Or is it only companies who are biased? You do realise that companies do research to gain commercial advantage? Pure science rarely brings any immediate usefulness, but even an amateur scientist only does research that interests them personally. Isn't that a personal funding bias?

We have already shown you how scientists and scientific journals cannot be biased and how a someone who falsifies research would be treated. Still waiting on the examples to the contrary to be provided.

@Justin Swanton Please do move on from the Middle Ages, but please let's not bring current affairs into this thread too!


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## Montero

@Elventine 

Well.

Hhm. So, you don't have the time to find the data to support your hypothesis and don't have it to hand, yet you make sweeping statements about the flaws in science. That weakens your argument.

Funding - having re-read what I said and how you have read it I would like to modify my early statement a fraction. There is a lot of industrially funded research which is unbiased and no-one has any interest in "encouraging" it to produce a particular answer - industry wants to know the answer to "x" and one or more researchers are funded to look at x - PhD students are the cheapest option. There could be say a material science problem - how do this type of materials behave when exposed to the following range of conditions (which is what they'd meet during their service lifetime). The different materials and conditions are divided up into three year projects, various students work on the studies, reports are written, papers are published and at the end of the day the industrial sponsor has the answer on what is the service life of the various new materials and knows whether or not they want to bother to use them. All solid science, totally undramatic.


Elventine said:


> The fact is that as you said - most scientific research is done by and paid for by companies and people with invested interests in certain results and so hire people with invested interests in certain results. To make sure of getting those results. This is part of the biased that is fundamental to science.


No. Most scientists and most companies when they pay for research are looking for what is really happening. Yes, there are times when data is suppressed completely, or results are cherry picked, or conclusions are written that totally exaggerate the data. However other scientists can spot that. They can repeat the experiments and say "hang on, that didn't work for me". The system may not be perfect, or always act promptly, but there are lots of instances in flawed and deliberately skewed research being spotted and publicised. You have already provided links to that happening. Scientists found the flaws in the science. That is the system working.

Yes a source of funding with few strings attached would be brilliant. It used to exist in the UK as SERC, but it was closed down by the government as being too expensive. I think that was a whacking big mistake as at the time in impacted on blue sky research, but I do also understand if you have a limited pot of money, you can't do everything. I am not up on current university funding as I no longer work in that area. If you want science to have a large pot of money from the government, would you Elventine, be prepared to pay higher taxes to support it? 

While I was writing this, Dave has written an even better answer than the one above. Go Dave.


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## Justin Swanton

Dave said:


> @Justin Swanton Please do move on from the Middle Ages, but please let's not bring current affairs into this thread too!



Ok, but we then need to clarify the parameters of the discussion as the OP refers to past and present. Let's refresh his title and original post:

*Using Human History as a guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall Into a New Dark Age?*

_How are we in the present like and unlike past civilizations that have suffered that fate ? What do you think are our vulnerabilities in this regard. And what would be the signs that we are entering a dark age? Are Darks avoidable or are they inevitable in the cycle of History?_​
So we need to define what a 'dark age' is. We need to establish the circumstances that precipitate a dark age, and we need to compare these circumstances in the past with present circumstances. Hence we need to talk about past societies and present society inasmuch as forces in those societies could drive them into a dark age. We also need to ascertain if dark ages are preventable.

The narrative took the turn that _*any *_age before the Reformation/Enlightenment/Revolution was dark and it seems useful to point out that that isn't true. If human society functions with reasonable stability - people can live their lives in peace - then I don't think you can call that society dark. If there there is a social breakdown that not only substantially reduces the material sophistication of a society but also seriously disrupts its social fabric in an ongoing way, then you have a dark age. So here's my definition:

*Dark Age*: any period in which human society is disrupted to the extent that every individual of that society lives with an ongoing fear of being killed, injured, despoiled or otherwise gravely abused. This disruption necessarily causes a marked decline in the material prosperity of that society.

Does that about cover it?


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## Vertigo

sknox said:


> Feudalism is a concept historians have labored for half a century to eradicate. You can see with what success.


As an amusing little aside: when I bought my house in the Highlands of Scotland in 1997 it was under something known as Feudalhold or Feudal Tenure which meant that I had a feudal superior who could actually have some say in how the house was used (for business purposes for instance) and demand a feudal payment (something like a penny a year I think!!!!!). Rather bizarrely my feudal superior was actually the Forestry Commission!

This particular remnant of feudalism was only finally abolished in 2004.


----------



## Biskit

Elventine said:


> You don't need a court what you do need is some form of internal law that is upheld - As it is at the moment there sort of seems to be an attitude of "oops!" from the scientific community which is just sort of the wrong one when you are shown to have some major flaws in your system and people are starting to question the validity of all that you do.


 

It doesn't matter whether you call it a court, a tribunal, an inquiry - the minute you start taking action against someone there has to be some form of process, and all of that requires time and money.



Elventine said:


> Accountability would be a good step forward, more catches in place to make sure that it is harder to falsify research, and more attention put on ethical standards within the scientific world.


Again - time and money.  No, the current system is not perfect, but where are the resources going to come from to police this.



Elventine said:


> Hold yourselves to a better standard!


What standard did you have in mind.  So far as I am concerned, the standard is that you do your best, report what you observed, describe what you conclude from your observations.  When someone falls short of that, there is an imperfect system in place to handle it.  Probably no more imperfect than any other 'professional' sphere.



Elventine said:


> As for fear of prosecution. Who said anything about prosecuting people? A very American way of viewing things there.



I am very definitely not American.  But, call it inquiry, review or prosecution, you have to have some process, someone making the accusation and the opportunity for the accused to defend themselves.



Elventine said:


> If the research turns out to be falsified - fire their ass's. Fire all who backed up that research - fine whoever funded it and right there and you will have a lot more accountability.



And first you have to prove the research was falsified.  We're back to time and money.  And some formal process, because if you start firing people without reasonable grounds, those lawyers will be queuing up with their no-win, no-fee contracts to take the case to an employment tribunal and demand damages.


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## sknox

Vertigo said:


> As an amusing little aside: when I bought my house in the Highlands of Scotland in 1997 it was under something known as Feudalhold or Feudal Tenure which meant that I had a feudal superior who could actually have some say in how the house was used (for business purposes for instance) and demand a feudal payment (something like a penny a year I think!!!!!). Rather bizarrely my feudal superior was actually the Forestry Commission!
> 
> This particular remnant of feudalism was only finally abolished in 2004.



Good anecdote that I'm going to turn around to expand on my point. There were feuds (meaning fiefs, not fights between rival families) in the Middle Ages. That's well documents. Where historians object is inferring from that a socio-political system. There were feuds; there was no feudal-ism. Once you aver there was a system, then you start writing books about the system's rise and fall, and reasons for it, and you wind up with a fair number of misconceptions about the whole matter.

Hey Vertigo, my family will be traveling in Scotland this summer--Edinburgh, Pitlochry then over to Skye and back down the west shore. I'll wave to you.  As a Knox, I figure I should visit the homeland at least once.


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## dask

Justin Swanton said:


> we need to talk about...forces in those societies could drive them into a dark age.


If you have people in power who continually say (and perhaps even believe) truths are lies and lies are truths then a dark age could be right around the corner.


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## Vertigo

sknox said:


> Good anecdote that I'm going to turn around to expand on my point. There were feuds (meaning fiefs, not fights between rival families) in the Middle Ages. That's well documents. Where historians object is inferring from that a socio-political system. There were feuds; there was no feudal-ism. Once you aver there was a system, then you start writing books about the system's rise and fall, and reasons for it, and you wind up with a fair number of misconceptions about the whole matter.
> 
> Hey Vertigo, my family will be traveling in Scotland this summer--Edinburgh, Pitlochry then over to Skye and back down the west shore. I'll wave to you.  As a Knox, I figure I should visit the homeland at least once.


If you take the Northern route to sky, by way of Achnasheen and Strathcarron rather than Loch Ness, you would go right by my place and be welcome to stop for a brew. However Loch Ness is (obviously) the more popular tourist route!.


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## sknox

That's a kind offer, Vertigo. The route is going to be determined by family consensus, a force far more powerful than any mere mortal.


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## J Riff

yayadadyayada... You are actually approaching the end of the 'modern' dark ages, s'fars I can tell. The olde guard still have the reins, they really do, but are dying slowly but steadily, kinda like the British Empire, or the Communist Party or the Nazis or like that. Really. The only place left to go is into space, and since they are there ahead of you for the last 50 years, there will be some catching up to do. But then ! The light ages begin anew! Three-quarters of the world unemployed, but with lots of money, we may as well all become writers and artists huh? It will be great.


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## Tulius Hostilius

BAYLOR said:


> How are we in the present like and unlike past civilizations that have suffered that fate ? What do you think are our vulnerabilities in this regard. And what would be the signs that we are entering a dark age?  Are Darks avoidable or are they inevitable in the cycle of History ?
> 
> 
> Thought ?




Civilizations are cyclic, a bit like the economy or even a Wall Street index, but, as already said here in other forms, I really think that the term Dark Age, or Dark Ages is… well dark… and in decay among the historians being substituted solely by Middle Ages, or more specifically to Early Middle Ages, that are terms more neutral and more adequate to the Mediterranean area, as in their own words already sknox and Brian pointed out.


Recently I even learned that the designation “Greek Dark Ages” (c. 1100-800 BC) is being contested. Fortunately history changes, evolves, as changes the way we look to it.


Anyway we should try to treat 1000 years of human history with less dark Hollywoodesque generalizations, because the term seems to persist more in the Popular Culture than in the Academia.




BAYLOR said:


> The Mayan Civilization in Central America around the 9th century, collapsed . Whole cities were left abandoned.




This is out of my area, but the Mayas didn’t really collapse around the 9th century, it ended the called Classic period, and some cities were abandoned. The Maya civilization continued until the arrival of the Spanish, and albeit in a different way there are still Mayas today in the Yucatan peninsula.


And, to answer to the main theme with my opinin, yes, I think that the human civilization has been constantly growing for some time, and sooner or later a crash, like in Wall Street, will happen. We just don’t know when it will happen and how many points the historical index will loose, pardon me the metaphor. Will that crash lead to the end of the complete obliteration of our actual global civilization? I don’t think so, unless someone discovers the launching codes and pushes the red button (is the button really red?).


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## Aquilonian

I don't think there have been that many total collapses of a civilisation- as opposed to long declines as in case of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. For example when I was at school we were taught that the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was massively important and that it triggered the Renaissance, but in fact the Eastern Roman Empire had long since contracted to the area round the city itself, and the Emperor was basically a vassal of the Sultan. Same with the sacking of Rome in 410- that was a massive psychological blow- Augustine had to write a big book to explain why God let it happen- but Rome had long been of lesser importance by that time, the Emperors hardly went there.

Real total civilisation collapses need either an epidemic (Native Americans), an exceptional natural disaster (Crete), or an exceptionally efficient and brutal invader bent on total extermination (Mongol invasion of the Islamic Caliphate 1258).

I think in fact that our present globalised civilisation is in some ways more vulnerable than older civilisations.

(1) Due to ease of travel we are far more vulnerable to viral epidemics.
(2) Recorded human history has happened during a brief quiet period between ice ages, eruptions, and solar storms all of which would devastate the entire world economy.
(3) Present day food production is about 50% dependent on artificial fertilisers, most of which are derived from non-renewable ingredients.
(4) Increased reliance on the Internet brings an entirely new vulnerability to both deliberate and accidental damage, potentially involving total loss of knowledge as books and records become entirely digitalised.

What would not happen nowadays would be the total ruin of a civilisation by invading barbarians- there is too big a technology gap between the modern barbarians and the civilisations. This was not the case in ancient and medieval times when, for instance, the Mongols were in some ways technically superior to their enemies (stirrups, composite bows, and military discipline).

Nuclear destruction, much as people go on about it, is a very unlikely cause nowadays, because each near-disaster will have prompted new safety procedures against accidental or malicious launching. Would need a few decades of ramped-up paranoia on all sides to make it possible.


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## tinkerdan

I think I would agree that we lack a definition of what a dark age truly is.

I also believe that the dark age gets defined possibly by what we have lost in comparison to what we later gain or what enlightenment might come to allow us to surpass.  And in that it would seem that we don't necessarily have to lose anything to declare a dark age--we just have to surpass what we have by some phenomenal jump or leap.

We see a dark age in the rear view mirror--after we pass through it.


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## Dave

Aquilonian said:


> (4) Increased reliance on the Internet brings an entirely new vulnerability to both deliberate and accidental damage...


In addition, I'd add mass panic. Look at what happened in Oxford Street, London in November when a simple fist-fight between two men, was spread via 'Chinese whispers' (a children's game) to become gunshots heard, and elevated to a terrorist attack involving a suicide bomber. There was pushing and shoving, and a crowd stampede in which people were trampled. Now, multiply that to what could happen world-wide with a flash crowd due to fake social media reports. Look at the recent nuclear attack false alarm in Hawaii. The possibility of nuclear war by accident (the film 'War Games') is a real and present danger.


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## sknox

I agree with Aquilonian, except I'd go further to say civilizations evolve, they don't collapse. It's actually small tribal units that are the vulnerable ones--any number of those have either been eliminated or assimilated. 

Yes, the things people have suggested would be devastating. Millions, even billions, might die. But that does not mean civilization ends, for as long as there is a culture based on cities, there is civilization. And a city need be only a few thousand people. 

The premise begs not only the question of what constitutes a dark age, but also how to distinguish between a collapse and a survival, and what we mean by civilization. Answering those questions is left as an exercise for the student.


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## Cathbad

I always thought the Dark Age was the absence or denial of science - thus, it looks like we may be entering another one!


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## Justin Swanton

On


Cathbad said:


> I always thought the Dark Age was the absence or denial of science - thus, it looks like we may be entering another one!



Depends. The Third Reich had a great respect for science and was very good at it.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Well as someone with a keen interest one of the things I haven't seen mentioned in this thread (I did skim most of it so apologies if I missed it) is the development of AI. Specifically I am talking about a General AI with a general cognitive function of human equivalence intelligence. 

We already see advanced Machine Learning which we don't fully understand in many modern algorithms. A great example which a lot of people are familiar with is AlphaGo - now superseded by AlphaZero. Now for anyone not familiar these are Machine Learning algorithms, they write complex algorithms and learn by playing themselves over and over again, the reason Go was used specifically are the incredible amount of combinations which make it almost impossible for a classical computer to compute all potential variables (this was how chess programs used to work). 

We are now at a place where the machine learning algorithms are learning faster than the science is able to keep up - I mean a machine can play millions of simultaneous games against itself in real time and learn from all of them at once. 

However, the limitation arises that these only "play" the games they know, there is no general level AI, that can generalise across fields. However we have machine learning for pattern recognition (facial, speech and others), there are Google investment fund algorithms and AI being integrated into drones and other autonomous kill vehicles, Autonomous factories are on the increase.

To assume development of a generalised AI we only need to assume that:

1. Intelligence arises from complex information and data handling systems
2. We will continue to increase the complexity of our systems

The problem here is you only get a single shot to make this technology correctly, once created the AI Genie is out of the bottle. So we need to ensure that the AI goal alignment ties into humanity. Once the generalized AI is created human intellect becomes defunct, something with a generalized AI in an electronic system can compute on the orders of 1000's of times faster than humans. This means in a few weeks given appropriate computing power (I would expect a generalised AI to be able to utilise a large chunk of the entire worlds processing power) a generalized AI could surpass the entirety of human history and research and endeavor.

I think this is a very real existential threat to human beings and the single most important crisis on the horizon.

For good or for ill generalised AI will be the last thing we ever need to create.

For anyone interested there are some fantastic talks about AI on the Tedx website - not all as doom and gloom as my predictions thankfully!


----------



## Cathbad

Justin Swanton said:


> On
> 
> Depends. The Third Reich had a great respect for science and was very good at it.


I never thought of the Third Reich as tryin to bring on a Dark Age.  Dictatorships come and go even in the best of times.  Monarchies aren't necessarily evil or "dark".


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## Justin Swanton

Cathbad said:


> I never thought of the Third Reich as tryin to bring on a Dark Age.  Dictatorships come and go even in the best of times.  Monarchies aren't necessarily evil or "dark".



The _Man in the High Castle_ and _Fatherland _give a good picture of a Nazi dark age, in which the dictatorship (not a monarchy BTW) _*is *_evil/dark. This of course extends the meaning of 'dark age' from materially dark (poverty) and socially dark (anarchy) to intellectually dark (mental conditioning by propaganda) and morally dark (forced conformity to the State).


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## sknox

And forced conformity could not be further from the historical Dark Ages (i.e., 500-900AD). Nor were those centuries unusually poor, nor intellectually dark. It may be worth mentioning that the phrase and the stereotype dates to Renaissance literary types who were pleased to sneer at anyone who had not mastered Ciceronian Latin and Attic Greek. Hardly a good yardstick for evaluating an entire civilization.


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## sknox

WRT the AI thing, count me among those who are unafraid of the future. Doomsday is always possible, rarely likely, and has in fact never happened. Hopefulness is more complex and, to me, more interesting.

But SilentRoamer's excellent post sparked a notion. I can see a short story in which there was one or more generalized AIs running around in a gee-whiz sort of future when a calamity happens. And a Dark Age occurs (isn't it goofy we always make that plural?) but it's not for the humans or at least not only for them. It's the AIs that fall into an AI version of a Dark Age, complete with lamentations over what had been lost.


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## Parson

sknox said:


> WRT the AI thing, count me among those who are unafraid of the future. Doomsday is always possible, rarely likely, and has in fact never happened. Hopefulness is more complex and, to me, more interesting.
> 
> But SilentRoamer's excellent post sparked a notion. I can see a short story in which there was one or more generalized AIs running around in a gee-whiz sort of future when a calamity happens. And a Dark Age occurs (isn't it goofy we always make that plural?) but it's not for the humans or at least not only for them. It's the AIs that fall into an AI version of a Dark Age, complete with lamentations over what had been lost.



I think you might be on to something. Probably better get writing before someone else grabs it and goes.


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## Justin Swanton

One thing one needs to keep in mind when talking about AI is that a computer does not and cannot 'think' as humans do. It's not really intelligent.

A computer CPU executes a very large number of mathematical calculations - or rather, a simulation of mathematical calculations - in binary code. No matter how powerful the CPU, or no matter how many CPUs are linked together,  the computer or computer always remains at the level of simulated mathematics. It cannot rise one milllimetre towards true thinking.

True thinking means grasping abstract concepts. We examine a number of diverse objects and extract from them something non-material (and non-mathematical) that they have in common. So after looking at a collection of green living things, we abstract the concept of 'tree'. These things that physically may look quite dissimilar all have something in common - a nature, itself not reductible to physical phenomena. They are trees.

With the exception of names and proper nouns (and not even them really), every word in English expresses an abstract concept, something that itself is not physical but is possessed in common by physical entities. Abstract concepts extend to every part of our understanding of the universe: 'beautiful, 'good', 'evil', 'useful', 'expendable', and so on. A computer does not begin to comprehend them. It just performs mechanical simulations of mathematical calculations. It doesn't even understand the maths it does. We understand the truth behind the affirmation that 2 + 2 = 4. A computer is just programmed to produce a mechanical simulation of that calculation.

Since computers can't think they can't make decisions based on thinking. They can't, for example, conclude that the human race is a blot on creation and decide to exterminate it. They can't actually make decisions at all. They have no free will. Their 'decisions' are simply the end result of preprogrammed calculations. If they get things wrong, blame the humans that programmed them. They're just tools really.


----------



## Parson

@Justin Swanton .... I suspect you're right. But I just can't help feeling that some really good logic like this about heavier than air aircraft went on about 20 or 30 years before the first airplane proved all their good logic to be absolutely false.


----------



## tinkerdan

6 Reasons the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark


----------



## SilentRoamer

@Justin Swanton 

While I agree to some extent much of what we perceived to be intellect is changing. 

I have watched many lectures on this subject and read quite broadly on the different elements of generalised AI. I prefer at the moment to talk about machine learning because a general AI does not exist, however the current power of machine learning can be quite difficult to grasp, as I stated above if we hold true some tenents that intelligence arises out of complex data processing and that machine learning and data processing will continue to improve then IMO generalised AI is a natural result. 

One of the misconceptions are that computers just do 2+2=4 and all of their conclusions are made by going down pre-supposed algorithmic routes. However this is not how modern machine learning works - the fact is we don't really know how this works. Now AlphaZero in the next 10 years (10 years is a pessimistic estimate to my mind at the current rate of development) will be able to beat any human in any mental game you can imagine having only been given the rules of the game and a time to "learn" the game. Recently AlphaZero beat leading chess AI's after mere hours of learning. 

The victory in Go shouldn't be underestimated, this is not a game where you can classically compute using boolean logic to determine all possible outcomes given a certain moveset. One of the funnies is that the scientists arent sure HOW the machine learning is happening or WHY the machine l;earning chooses to make certain choices, indded there are choices in the game which appear to be poor choices or mistakes. The Go opponents even stated they felt they were against an intelligent being rather than a machine. 

Incidentally the machine learning algorithm data maps look awfully like a neural network.

Recently some of the chatbot AI's started talking to each other in a broken form of English which when analysed was a more effective if brute force way of communicating. They were dutifully switched off. 

Now chatbots are not particularly smart but what happens when we get to a point that a generalised artificial intelligence cannot be identified as such by communication, it can fake humanity to a point we can't tell the difference. When does simulated intelligence become intelligence?

I firmly believe that a generalised AI is the biggest boon and the greatest threat on the horizon for humanity, one especially that the masses aren't attuned to the potential dangers because it's in a vested groups interest to keep pushing the bounds of machine learning. 

Generalised AI doesn't exist, but we have machines that can learn and the scary thing is we don't really know how they are learning. 

Stock exchange and much of human digital online presence is now managed by automated software, automated hardware is becoming more and more prevalent and eventually I can see autonomy in machines. For better or for worse. 

Vernor Vinge wrote about "The Age of Failed Dreams" and I think that is the next age for humanity - we realise weve wrecked the earth, we realise we are NOT going to be bouncing round the stars, we create a Godlike intellectual AI who confirms it for us before doing whatever an AI with that much intelligence is wont to do.


----------



## Justin Swanton

Parson said:


> @Justin Swanton .... I suspect you're right. But I just can't help feeling that some really good logic like this about heavier than air aircraft went on about 20 or 30 years before the first airplane proved all their good logic to be absolutely false.



Actually, everybody before 1903 believed in heavier-than-air flight. Birds did it all the time. The problem was powering heavier-than-air manned flight. Up until the Wright brothers the sceptics were quite right in affirming that there was no way of doing it: human muscles were too weak and steam engines too heavy. It was the petrol engine that made it possible. Something new was put into the equation and the impossible became possible.

With computers however nothing new is entering the equation. Computers are all about binary code mathematics. They can get bigger and faster but the nature of what they do doesn't change. Even using bioengineered computers doesn't change anything. Bioengineering will simply mean creating molecular CPUs, very small, but still doing the same thing computers do today.

You will need to invent something that can assimilate and understand abstract concepts before you have anything that can think in the human sense. Whatever that might be it won't be a computer. In fact, I can argue it is impossible to make, but that's for another post.


----------



## SilentRoamer

@Justin Swanton

All the petrol engine did was dramatically increase the power to weight ratio achievable, essentially it just scaled power requirements while downscaling weight requirements - I would argue the only real change here is in efficiency, we just harvested a new type of fuel but it was still the same mechanism (broadly speaking).

We see the exact same scaling in computers with specific reference to big data and machine algorithms. A modern smrtphone has more processing power than NASA did to put a man on the moon.

Of course all of this ignores Quantum computational theory which I haven't even mentioned and may well hold the key to a generalised AI.

Again I ask the question - if a simulated intelligence is so accurate a simulation as to be indistinguishable from intelligence is there really a difference? I fully believe AI will be a fake it until you make it sort of outcome. The only problem being the end result will (IMO) either be wholly good for humanity or wholly bad for humanity and these terms of good and bad are based on human understanding, we have no idea of what a generalised AI might think, especially seen as a generalised AI would probablky outstrip the entirety of human knowledge and endeavour in a very short time.

We could wake up one morning to find Fusion a reality and all of our energy and food requirements suddenly met with a world improving over time. Or we could wake up to find autonomous drones killing people as "smart" infrastructure and anything connected digitally begins shutting down and destroying human population.

We only get one chance to create a perfect AI. Maybe AI is the answer to the Drake equation, AI normally ends up going mad or killing people. Or the galactic AI is just waiting for humans to create an AI to make contact with.

Who knows?

What I would say is this really deserves some serious consideration and the people calling for regulation and monitored development are very intelligent people with genuine concerns.

Another possibility is a country or company manages to create a controlled AI - in which case they become king of the world.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Justin Swanton said:


> You will need to invent something that can assimilate and understand abstract concepts before you have anything that can think in the human sense. Whatever that might be it won't be a computer. In fact, I can argue it is impossible to make, but that's for another post.



This is a good point - but something Google are already doing. Look at some of the artwork created by machine learning algorithms. I agree with you to some extent, I just think consciousness naturally arises out of complex data processing systems, the interesting question for me is would a generalised AI be immediately self aware like a human conscious entity or would it be more animal like in its meta thinking. 

Anyway I appreciate your viewpoint and your opinions!


----------



## Justin Swanton

SilentRoamer said:


> Again I ask the question - if a simulated intelligence is so accurate a simulation as to be indistinguishable from intelligence is there really a difference?



The best an artificial AI can do that approaches intelligence is simulate the behaviour of an animal. Animals are very sophisticated biological machines that run on instinctive programming conditioned by environmental stimuli. This means that given the same stimuli, they always behave in the same way. They are not capable of original or creative thinking. So a weaver bird creates a weaver nest from its DNA programming, but it can't think about it and create something else. All the research with primates shows that the most intelligent animals can learn very sophisticated behavioural patterns, but they are not capable of abstract thought. Animal language does not express abstract concepts - not even the sign language chimps have been taught to use.

The AI success with Go is just a function of mathematical programming in which the results are affected by environmental feedback (played games), much in the same way as happens with animals. It doesn't represent a growth in cognitive knowledge or understanding as is the case with humans.

I can worry about very sophisticated computers going wrong and becoming dysfunctional in the same way a commercial jet can lose its hydraulics, but not about computers becoming self-aware and deciding that humans are a superfluity.


----------



## sknox

Some very smart people many years ago pointed out that we won't so much get intelligent machines as we will redefine what we mean by the word intelligent. And by machine. They'll be intelligent when we start treating them that way. Words are flexible. It will happen, and it will happen more or less without us really noticing. So the prospect of regulation becomes equally squishy.

But there's an additional possibility, which is the machines become intelligent without us really noticing it as intelligence. It will be their definition, not ours. You know how we wonder if maybe one day androids might become citizens? Conversely, maybe one day machines begin to exclude us (why bother killing us?) from some of *their* playgrounds. Internet traffic already consists more of machine-to-machine dialog than human-to-human. So, who's the Internet for? I'd still vote human today, but a century from now that conclusion might need to shift.

Finally, that bit about self-awareness. Here, too, there's an additional angle to consider. Humans are aware of themselves as entities. Humans are becoming aware of machines as entities (think Alexa). We speculate that one day machines might become self-aware. But the fourth step logically would be, machines becoming aware of humans as separate entities. They would have to do that before they either started to bestow benefits upon humanity or started to hunt us down. How would an AI become aware of humans? Why wouldn't they think of us as machines? Or as extensions of an AI? Humanity as subroutine.


----------



## Aquilonian

It's an interesting point whether suppression of free discourse, thinking and inquiry could be compatible with continued technological progress. Western liberals would like to think these things are incompatible, that a society run by religious bigots or racists could not compete technologically with more free-thinking cultures. This sounds plausible in theory but in practice the Chinese seem to making their own scientific advances despite a very repressive society with a tightly-controlled internet. Having said which, it seems unlikely that they would ever have invented the internet, even if they know how to turn it to their own ends once it was invented by others. 

Bottom line, would a Christian Fundamentalist America in 100 years time still be making advances in nuclear weapons technology even though evolutionary science, much of psychology, and geological timescales had been suppressed as un-scriptural? I think they would actually, because in modern science these are totally separate fields of study. A nuclear physicist would probably know almost nothing about psychology or geology, so it wouldn't matter if the little that he did know was based on nonsense. 

Also, technology provides as many new means of repression and surveillance as means of free communication. At present the Chinese employ 20,000 people to monitor the internet. I'm sure they're working on algorithms to do this job, and to do it even more efficiently.


----------



## Aquilonian

Incidentally as regards the Nazis, they were actually very open-minded and inventive, more so than the Allies probably, however this led to them wasting a lot of scarce resources on hare-brained schemes like the Horten Flying Wing project, which contrary to what lots of creepy right-wing UFO researchers will tell you, was a useless diversion.


----------



## Justin Swanton

sknox said:


> Some very smart people many years ago pointed out that we won't so much get intelligent machines as we will redefine what we mean by the word intelligent. And by machine. They'll be intelligent when we start treating them that way. Words are flexible. It will happen, and it will happen more or less without us really noticing. So the prospect of regulation becomes equally squishy.
> 
> But there's an additional possibility, which is the machines become intelligent without us really noticing it as intelligence. It will be their definition, not ours. You know how we wonder if maybe one day androids might become citizens? Conversely, maybe one day machines begin to exclude us (why bother killing us?) from some of *their* playgrounds. Internet traffic already consists more of machine-to-machine dialog than human-to-human. So, who's the Internet for? I'd still vote human today, but a century from now that conclusion might need to shift.
> 
> Finally, that bit about self-awareness. Here, too, there's an additional angle to consider. Humans are aware of themselves as entities. Humans are becoming aware of machines as entities (think Alexa). We speculate that one day machines might become self-aware. But the fourth step logically would be, machines becoming aware of humans as separate entities. They would have to do that before they either started to bestow benefits upon humanity or started to hunt us down. How would an AI become aware of humans? Why wouldn't they think of us as machines? Or as extensions of an AI? Humanity as subroutine.



I suppose we can go round and round in circles on this one. We have to define intelligence in a way that includes an understanding of abstract notions like 'good' and 'evil'; an ability to make decisions based on that understanding: "humans are bad, we must destroy them"; and self-awareness: "I am an intelligent being." An ability to solve puzzles is not intelligence in the human sense, nor is an ability to learn behaviour from environmental stimuli.

Until we lock this down the discussion can't really go any further.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Justin Swanton said:


> Animals are very sophisticated biological machines that run on instinctive programming conditioned by environmental stimuli. They are not capable of original or creative thinking.



This is not a view supported by modern science, for example: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...-are-conscious-and-should-be-treated-as-such/

The notion that most if not all animals are sentient underpins the The Treaty of Lisbon section on animal rights, signed by all members of the EU in 2009: The Lisbon Treaty: recognising animal sentience | Compassion in World Farming

The Wikipedia article on AI actually has some decent comments on the difficulties of defining AI compared to "natural intelligence" in the first place: Artificial intelligence - Wikipedia


----------



## Justin Swanton

Brian G Turner said:


> This is not a view supported by modern science, for example: Animals are conscious and should be treated as such


Three scientists as opposed to science as such, and they are arguing that animals have consciousness - a woolly word that whatever it means does not mean intelligence as discussed above.



Brian G Turner said:


> The notion that most if not all animals are sentient underpins the The Treaty of Lisbon section on animal rights, signed by all members of the EU in 2009: The Lisbon Treaty: recognising animal sentience | Compassion in World Farming


Ditto. Sentience is not intelligence as in human intelligence.



Brian G Turner said:


> The Wikipedia article on AI actually has some decent comments on the difficulties of defining AI compared to "natural intelligence" in the first place: Artificial intelligence - Wikipedia



And we're back to the need to define human intelligence.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Justin Swanton said:


> I suppose we can go round and round in circles on this one. We have to define intelligence in a way that includes an understanding of abstract notions like 'good' and 'evil'; an ability to make decisions based on that understanding: "humans are bad, we must destroy them"; and self-awareness: "I am an intelligent being." An ability to solve puzzles is not intelligence in the human sense, nor is an ability to learn behaviour from environmental stimuli.
> 
> Until we lock this down the discussion can't really go any further.



I think most sufficiently intelligent animal species have a sense of self awareness as it frames their actions against their reality. I am thinking beyond biological necessity of eating and sleeping - what about animals that play, they clearly enjoy themselves, how can one experience enjoyment without awareness of oneself experiencing that very enjoyment? Though IS self awareness. 

We have a human concept of intelligence, because we can create tools and we can rationalize but I think it can be plain to see that other species were also becoming increasing more complex over evolutionary timescales, the lack of genetic difference between man and all other species is startling. 

Primates and Dolphins specifically should really challenge these notions (even some birds). 



Justin Swanton said:


> And we're back to the need to define human intelligence.



This is the problem I see in your logic, you are hung up on trying to determine human intelligence - as if human thought has some place on a special pedestal rather than being a location on a curve, the idea behind AI and big data systems is that eventually you have what is essentially a piece of code that is aware of it's own coding, not only this but it has the capability to change it's own coding, change the way it is structured and distributed, it can process vast amounts of information, it will continually re-write while going through an exponential intelligence growth phase. Human intelligence will end up being a small step on an enormous curve, as much as an ant can understand human intelligence would be our understanding of a complex generalized AI built out of constantly re-writing algorithmic machine learning. 



Such a difficult discussion because definitions themselves are even ill defined. Appreciate it though.


----------



## tinkerdan

If you are going to discuss sentience
Sentience - Wikipedia

You should give some thought to sapience
Wisdom - Wikipedia

And the difference and what it is you mean when you suggest something becomes self aware and understanding the difference between qualia and self awareness.
Qualia - Wikipedia
Self-awareness - Wikipedia


----------



## Cathbad

I loathe the term "self aware".  No way all creatures aren't self aware to some extent or another.  As far as intelligence, I agree with the curve, on which all creatures are on it, with humans right behind dolphins for the top spot.


----------



## tinkerdan

In this instance self awareness is used in relationship to the capacity for introspection.
Relating to the question::
"What does it mean to say that we know something?" and fundamentally "How do we know that we know?"
And the concept of internally examining that--which I've always maintained is something my dog is always doing behind my back.


----------



## sknox

>And we're back to the need to define human intelligence.

I will suggest again (and then will leave it be) that we in fact do not need to define this. Or, rather, that we humans have always and will always continue to use the term loosely and that it changes over time. It wasn't that long ago we defined anyone from another tribe as being either less than human or not human at all.

Machines will not "become" intelligent. We will simply adjust what we mean by intelligence. And we will treat certain interfaces in ways much as we do humans. Whatever definitions we might come up with here will slip and slide and fade into the distance with each passing year. Humans will continue to behave and misbehave, despite the finest of philosophical definitions. And that's why writers ultimately walk closer to the truth than do philosophers--we trade in people more than in ideas.


----------



## Montero

Not being flippant here - a train of thought starting with the number of times I talk to my computer (rarely politely) - and moving on to how humans like to assign intent and personality to things which (probably) don't have them - rivers, weather systems, trees - and then leave offerings to placate them. Nice river, please don't flood, here is a shiny lump of metal that is really valuable to me that I hope you will like and as a result you will treat me nicely.

And a further thought - so it is perverse that some people deny that animals have intent and personality. Go figure.


----------



## Parson

Is intelligence the same thing as sentience? I don't think they are, but if they are each animal is sentient to some degree. 

One of the definitions of sentience that I like (from a novel long ago, about which I remember nothing else): Sentence is the ability to make fire and have a conversation around it. --- A low bar, but one that no present animal can cross, and for that matter no computer either.


----------



## Vladd67

This might be of interest.


----------



## tinkerdan

This is the common problem of trying to mix sentience and sapience as though they are the same thing.(refer to my previous post with links.)


Parson said:


> Is intelligence the same thing as sentience? I don't think they are, but if they are each animal is sentient to some degree.
> 
> One of the definitions of sentience that I like (from a novel long ago, about which I remember nothing else): Sentence is the ability to make fire and have a conversation around it. --- A low bar, but one that no present animal can cross, and for that matter no computer either.


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## Parson

??? Sapience is "wise or attempting to appear wise."  Sentience is is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively. 

I'm using the word as subjective intelligence. The ability to reason a situation out, or to understand how someone else might feel given a set of circumstances. So, I believe Sentience is the right word.


----------



## tinkerdan

Sorry, now I'm just totally confused and I shall depart this conversation.


Parson said:


> Is intelligence the same thing as sentience? I don't think they are, but if they are each animal is sentient to some degree.





Parson said:


> I'm using the word as subjective intelligence. The ability to reason a situation out, or to understand how someone else might feel given a set of circumstances. So, I believe Sentience is the right word.


----------



## Mirannan

Parson said:


> ??? Sapience is "wise or attempting to appear wise."  Sentience is is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.
> 
> I'm using the word as subjective intelligence. The ability to reason a situation out, or to understand how someone else might feel given a set of circumstances. So, I believe Sentience is the right word.



This gets down to a matter of word definition, doesn't it? The way I've always thought of it: Sentience is the ability to take in information from the outside world and act on it in some manner, often with a view to making changes outside. It is very much a continuum; to take a silly extreme, a central heating thermostat has the minimum of sentience. The top of this range is probably intelligent mammals such as cats.

Sapience is sentience plus something more; self-awareness and an ability to make plans. Also, usually, the ability to create theories of mind, in that one is able to guess what someone else is thinking. On Earth, humans have this; which others is a matter of debate, but probably orcas and dolphins, also elephants, and all the anthropoid apes with the possible exception of gibbons. Maybe also some birds, such as corvids for example.

And sapience is also a continuum. However, humans do not stand on a pedestal here. I've heard it said that chimps are at about the level of a 5-year-old human child. Marine mammals are a lot more difficult to place.


----------



## Parson

tinkerdan said:


> Sorry, now I'm just totally confused and I shall depart this conversation.



I'm sorry too, that I am obviously not communicating what I mean well enough.



Mirannan said:


> This gets down to a matter of word definition, doesn't it? The way I've always thought of it: Sentience is the ability to take in information from the outside world and act on it in some manner, often with a view to making changes outside. It is very much a continuum; to take a silly extreme, a central heating thermostat has the minimum of sentience. The top of this range is probably intelligent mammals such as cats.
> 
> Sapience is sentience plus something more; self-awareness and an ability to make plans. Also, usually, the ability to create theories of mind, in that one is able to guess what someone else is thinking. On Earth, humans have this; which others is a matter of debate, but probably orcas and dolphins, also elephants, and all the anthropoid apes with the possible exception of gibbons. Maybe also some birds, such as corvids for example.
> 
> And sapience is also a continuum. However, humans do not stand on a pedestal here. I've heard it said that chimps are at about the level of a 5-year-old human child. Marine mammals are a lot more difficult to place.



These are not the definitions of which I'm aware but using them, sapience is more what I mean. I most assuredly agree with the continuums about which you are speaking. I'm not sure I'd agree with the analogies though. I think to equate a chimp with most 5 year old humans is either to to undervalue the ability of the child or over value the ability of the chimp. (I'm thinking in terms of communication, insight, and planning.) I'd put my money on undervaluing of what a normal 5 year old human is capable of doing/understanding/accomplishing. If you deal with exceptional humans the idea of a chimp having the same abilities is laughable.


----------



## dask

Me want smarts.


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## Mirannan

Parson said:


> I'm sorry too, that I am obviously not communicating what I mean well enough.
> 
> 
> 
> These are not the definitions of which I'm aware but using them, sapience is more what I mean. I most assuredly agree with the continuums about which you are speaking. I'm not sure I'd agree with the analogies though. I think to equate a chimp with most 5 year old humans is either to to undervalue the ability of the child or over value the ability of the chimp. (I'm thinking in terms of communication, insight, and planning.) I'd put my money on undervaluing of what a normal 5 year old human is capable of doing/understanding/accomplishing. If you deal with exceptional humans the idea of a chimp having the same abilities is laughable.



Sure. But how about exceptional chimps? As for communication - well, it looks as if the real problem that all apes have is not the mental apparatus to communicate but the physical apparatus; they simply don't have the right shape of mouth and respiratory system, or fine enough control of it, to talk. However, there has been quite a lot of success in teaching apes (strangely enough, gorillas appear to be better at it) sign language. I believe the one used is usually ASL, probably because the researchers are American. Try searching for Koko the gorilla.


----------



## Parson

Primate language is mostly overblown. They can point to and in some cases name things, but seldom to never put a sentence together. A lot of what is claimed for Koko by her handler is disputed strongly by other researchers. Her ability to communicate to people who are not her handler is very limited. I actually suspect that it's a case of a "mother" giving cues to her "child" and putting together ideas that the "child" doesn't even have. Even if everything claimed for Koko is accurate her vocabulary is still only a 1000 words and that without syntax. A human 5 year old is at least an order of magnitude beyond that. From what I've read and seen I would compare Koko to something like an 18 month old.


----------



## Mirannan

Parson said:


> Primate language is mostly overblown. They can point to and in some cases name things, but seldom to never put a sentence together. A lot of what is claimed for Koko by her handler is disputed strongly by other researchers. Her ability to communicate to people who are not her handler is very limited. I actually suspect that it's a case of a "mother" giving cues to her "child" and putting together ideas that the "child" doesn't even have. Even if everything claimed for Koko is accurate her vocabulary is still only a 1000 words and that without syntax. A human 5 year old is at least an order of magnitude beyond that. From what I've read and seen I would compare Koko to something like an 18 month old.



Maybe. The point is that there is an overlap between primate and human capabilities; whether we like it or not, humans are not of a completely different order of being. Incidentally, one description of man is "homo ludens"; although other animals do what looks like playing, it's more like training. However, at least one other creature does something that looks much like playing and has people scratching their heads trying to figure out what they are doing; I've seen video of dolphins surfing. For which, of course, they are much better suited than humans are.


----------



## Parson

Completely agree. I even remember watching a documentary that said that it was known that an infertile female dolphin, (did not go into heat) sometimes had a male copulate with her, leading the commentator to speculate it was done just for pleasure. --- I'm not sure I buy that. I grew up on a farm and I've seen plenty of steers mount other steers, of course to no effect. But the dolphin idea has stuck with me.


----------



## BAYLOR

Then there was the program Life After People .


----------



## Parson

Talk about a show with no no possible verification! --- I actually thought that it was dumb and didn't watch much of it.


----------



## BAYLOR

Parson said:


> Talk about a show with no no possible verification! --- I actually thought that it was dumb and didn't watch much of it.



It didn't explain what happened to humanity , Probably a plague. But I thought interesting  how they showed  how quickly cities and towns would be overrun plants and animals and how various famous  monuments would crumble once neglect set in.


----------



## Parson

BAYLOR said:


> It didn't explain what happened to humanity , Probably a plague. But I thought interesting  how they showed  how quickly cities and towns would be overrun plants and animals and how various famous  monuments would crumble once neglect set in.


People are temporary. Life is eternal.


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> It didn't explain what happened to humanity , Probably a plague. But I thought interesting  how they showed  how quickly cities and towns would be overrun plants and animals and how various famous  monuments would crumble once neglect set in.



True, but really in terms of geological timespans...human buildings are mayfly-like in their ability to last. It just goes to show that it requires a great deal of effort and energy to maintain stuff! 

I'm more concerned on longer term effects on the whole environment that humans have managed to impact.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> True, but really in terms of geological timespans...human buildings are mayfly-like in their ability to last. It just goes to show that it requires a great deal of effort and energy to maintain stuff!
> 
> I'm more concerned on longer term effects on the whole environment that humans have managed to impact.



The Permian Extinction event .


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> The Permian Extinction event .



That's being pretty ultra-pessimistic! Hopefully not as bad as that.


----------



## Mirannan

Venusian Broon said:


> True, but really in terms of geological timespans...human buildings are mayfly-like in their ability to last. It just goes to show that it requires a great deal of effort and energy to maintain stuff!
> 
> I'm more concerned on longer term effects on the whole environment that humans have managed to impact.



So far, very few effects IMHO. I suspect the biggest effects are the big dams we've built all over the place - or to be more exact, the lakes behind them. 100 years after we disappear, the CO2 goes away.


----------



## Dave

We will leave behind a thin layer of radioactive metal and carbon, mostly iron and plastics. That will all there will be to show.


----------



## Venusian Broon

Dave said:


> We will leave behind a thin layer of radioactive metal and carbon, mostly iron and plastics. That will all there will be to show.



And all our cosmic litter beyond the orbit of Earth which, especially if in space, should hold together for a long while.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> And all our cosmic litter beyond the orbit of Earth which, especially if in space, should hold together for a long while.



Give or take a few million years of decay , those too shall pass.


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> Give or take a few million years of decay , those too shall pass.



I'd put a few dollars/pounds on Voyager 1 & 2 recognisably lasting hundreds of millions of years, possibly even billions.


Don't know how I'd collect those winnings if it were true though.


----------



## BAYLOR

Venusian Broon said:


> I'd put a few dollars/pounds on Voyager 1 & 2 recognisably lasting hundreds of millions of years, possibly even billions.
> 
> 
> Don't know how I'd collect those winnings if it were true though.



If it doesn't run  black hole or wanter planet , Its very possible it might last. few billions years. 

You might have difficulty collecting on that one.


----------



## Mirannan

Venusian Broon said:


> I'd put a few dollars/pounds on Voyager 1 & 2 recognisably lasting hundreds of millions of years, possibly even billions.
> 
> 
> Don't know how I'd collect those winnings if it were true though.



Pioneer 10 also belongs in that group.


----------



## Venusian Broon

BAYLOR said:


> If it doesn't run  black hole or wanter planet , Its very possible it might last. few billions years.
> 
> You might have difficulty collecting on that one.



Yes, outer space is very,very,very LARGE!!!! 

chances of these probes actually hitting anything that will destroy them are quite literally astronomical


----------



## Lumens

If they hit one speck of dust each year, after a few billion hits they would be unrecognisable, or covered up at least...? I'm not trying to make an argument but picturing what could happen.

Edit: Wouldn't also radiation have macroscopic effects after such a long time?


----------



## Venusian Broon

Lumens said:


> If they hit one speck of dust each year, after a few billion hits they would be unrecognisable, or covered up at least...? I'm not trying to make an argument but picturing what could happen.
> 
> Edit: Wouldn't also radiation have macroscopic effects after such a long time?



It's an interesting question. Dust/atoms picked up, could potentially also be knocked off...My initial guess would be that instead of accruing more mass, the ship would likely be pitted by numbers of tiny holes as collisions take place, so eventually it might just 'break up' or 'dissolve' if given enough time  ???

But the other thing to note is that certain parts of the cosmos are dustier than others - most dust is, as you'd expect, to be in places that will generate the stuff - i.e. planetary systems, gas clouds where stars are being born etc. Hence the longer Voyager is out is the extreme 'desert' of interstellar space the less dust and other things will collide with it. From my own foray into this topic I found estimates of about 5 atoms per cubic centimetre as the average density of interplanetary space near Earth, whilst in deep interstellar space this density has been estimated to drops to ~1 atom per cubic _metre. _(I believe that's an estimate for interstellar space within the galaxy, god knows how much lower it might be in voids between galaxies. However as it stands the Voyagers are going nowhere near fast enough to escape the milky way, so it's going to be trundling around with us in reasonable cosmic proximity.)

True, cosmic rays should have some impact on the material of the craft - for example, causing defects in the atomic structure of the material of the spaceship - but I'm not sure it would on it's own, cause the craft to disintegrate.


----------



## RJM Corbet

I don't know if this point has been raised, but a danger is that when technology fails, we are left useless. We can't use a slide-rule, and many children in exam rooms are unable to tell the time from the analogue clock on the wall, when unable to consult use their phone, etc. When a company's computers fail all business has to stop. One domino sets off a landslide effect. Money isn't backed by gold anymore, etc.

How many of us could build a shelter in the wild and make a bow-and-arrow -- that's an extreme case. But most of us are useless to cope with an extended power cut.

Now I'll go back to the top and read through Baylor's thread, lol ...


----------



## BAYLOR

RJM Corbet said:


> I don't know if this point has been raised, but a danger is that when technology fails, we are left useless. We can't use a slide-rule, and many children in exam rooms are unable to tell the time from the analogue clock on the wall, when unable to consult use their phone, etc. When a company's computers fail all business has to stop. One domino sets off a landslide effect. Money isn't backed by gold anymore, etc.
> 
> How many of us could build a shelter in the wild and make a bow-and-arrow -- that's an extreme case. But most of us are useless to cope with an extended power cut.
> 
> Now I'll go back to the top and read through Baylor's thread, lol ...



Not a happy thought .


----------



## RJM Corbet

We are utterly reliant on technology, and those who argue against the validity of quantum theory and 'science' including most fundamentalist religions -- both happy ones and extremely dangerous ones -- are happily doing so on Internet forums using devices and phones which are built using that same devious science whose 'unproven speculation' they dispute. So perhaps the issue is not so much that AI may take us over, but that the failure of AI would leave most modern societies helpless to cope without it?

EDIT: So the real question is 'could it happen'?


----------



## svalbard

RJM Corbet said:


> We are utterly reliant on technology, and those who argue against the validity of quantum theory and 'science' including most fundamentalist religions -- both happy ones and extremely dangerous ones -- are happily doing so on Internet forums using devices and phones which are built using that same devious science whose 'unproven speculation' they dispute. So perhaps the issue is not so much that AI may take us over, but that the failure of AI would leave most modern societies helpless to cope without it?
> 
> EDIT: So the real question is 'could it happen'?



It could happen and if it does happen to answer your earlier question we are more than likely doomed. I am anyway. My idea of roughing is spending a night in 3 star hotel


----------



## RJM Corbet

svalbard said:


> It could happen and if it does happen to answer your earlier question we are more than likely doomed. I am anyway. My idea of roughing is spending a night in 3 star hotel



Ha!

There's been a major bank computer disaster this week in the UK, which is still going on -- a newly installed IT system giving thousands of people access to strangers' accounts, etc. ATMS unable to read cards, wages unpaid, Internet banking closed down. And they can't revert back to the old system. They're obviously saying they'll fix it, within a week or two -- but who knows if records haven't been permanently lost?


----------



## sknox

Many people would die, without a doubt. But technology can recover fairly quickly. We don't go all the way back to stone axes and loincloths. Every city is utterly dependent upon transportation networks that bring in food from farms. Yet cities have survived for millennia--you have to be pretty thorough to destroy one completely. Human beings are resilient. It's pretty much our superpower.


----------



## Overread

sknox said:


> Many people would die, without a doubt. But technology can recover fairly quickly. We don't go all the way back to stone axes and loincloths. Every city is utterly dependent upon transportation networks that bring in food from farms. Yet cities have survived for millennia--you have to be pretty thorough to destroy one completely. Human beings are resilient. It's pretty much our superpower.



Actually destroying cities is easy - the critical issue with cities one thing - food.

Basically if you can keep food production and food distribution going civilization can continue. Sure technology shutting down would have huge impacts and cause a lot of disruption; but provided that the country is not reliant totally upon food import, then it should be possible to restore farming and distribution networks and manage food supplies. 

However if food production is vastly reduced below minimum levels to support the population and there is little to no means to import or move food around then you get problems. In the past major civilizations have been lost due to climatic change (often prolonged periods of drought) which thus crippled food production and in turn caused mass starvation. 
Today that's no different, save that the scale is vastly increased so the potential numbers who would starve would be far greater. 


Also don't forget that so long as books exist a lot of knowledge is preserved as well. Sure the average person can't make a fire from sticks and twigs and a bit of flint; but the foundations and step by step of that process is well documented. Plus we know it CAN be done which is a huge boost to redeveloping lost understanding (often lost knowledge is specific methods or approaches to working with things that isn't documented or is rarely documented).




So really it all comes down to food - if you can ensure steady safe food supply you're fine; if its in vastly short supply then society crumbles and problems arise. Strong military pressure can keep things in order, though even that requires food to feed the military personal.


----------



## Edward M. Grant

sknox said:


> Yet cities have survived for millennia--you have to be pretty thorough to destroy one completely.



If the power and food stop coming, most modern Western cities will be tombs within a week. It's not just the lack of supplies that would kill people, but the number of crazies who'd take advantage of the situation. If the power and food disappeared on Monday, you'd have chaos by Wednesday and cannibalism by Friday.

Sure, if it was just one city, you could send in the military to install generators, supply food and shoot the crazies. But any kind of widespread outage would kill millions. A civil war in America where people intentionally cut off supplies to the cities could kill a hundred million.


----------



## Edward M. Grant

Overread said:


> Strong military pressure can keep things in order, though even that requires food to feed the military personal.



Worse than that, the military are now hugely dependent on motorized transport. If the gas stops coming, the military aren't going anywhere once their own stash runs dry. At least, nowhere they can't march to.


----------



## Luiglin

Venusian Broon said:


> I'd put a few dollars/pounds on Voyager 1 & 2 recognisably lasting hundreds of millions of years, possibly even billions.
> 
> 
> Don't know how I'd collect those winnings if it were true though.



They're going to bump into a brick wall soon just like in a cosmic version of the Truman Show.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Overread said:


> ... Also don't forget that so long as books exist a lot of knowledge is preserved as well. Sure the average person can't make a fire from sticks and twigs and a bit of flint; but the foundations and step by step of that process is well documented. Plus we know it CAN be done which is a huge boost to redeveloping lost understanding (often lost knowledge is specific methods or approaches to working with things that isn't documented or is rarely documented)...



There'd be some stuff preserved on paper. But  the overwhelming mass of important  information -- blueprints, etc -- is probably stored in computer files? There wouldn't be much to find in books? No good having your wip manuscript stored on Gmail if all google information is permanently deleted?

It wouldn't have to take us back to the stone-age. But who has their own borehole or lives close enough to a clean river to fetch water on a trolley in an emergrncy situation? Our whole civilization is dependent on computer files.


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## RJM Corbet

So the power would pass from the professional class to the farmers and artisans? Financiers and lawyers and bankers -- and POLITICIANS -- would suddenly find themselves dependent on carpenters and welders and others who work with their hands, actually producing and making the real-life necessities. Lol: bring it on ...


----------



## Dave

RJM Corbet said:


> So the power would pass from the professional class to the farmers and artisans?


Most probably. The major point is that Power, Food and Water are no longer produced locally. If they are cut off from a city then, sure, we wouldn't revert to the stone age; people could make fires, use animals and physical labour, grow vegetables and dig wells - but how many people know how to do all that, or are fit enough to do that kind of work? These are skills, not just knowledge, so yes, the information could be found in books, but many libraries have have been closed, and anyway, do people have the time to learn that before they starve and freeze.


----------



## Edward M. Grant

Dave said:


> people could make fires, use animals and physical labour, grow vegetables and dig wells - but how many people know how to do all that, or are fit enough to do that kind of work?



And can do it while simultaneously protecting themselves from the crazies?

In a real collapse scenario, city-dwellers won't even be able to think about growing food until the violence has burned itself out. And most people in the city will be dead by then.


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## RJM Corbet

But, HOW could a large scale failure of computer technology happen?


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## Parson

regular EMP flashes ---- Unstoppable viruses (less likely than the first)


----------



## Overread

The other aspect is that even if all the computers in the world turned off cars, lorries, radios and a lot of other similar technology would still work - heck steam trains would still work. We'd more likely experience several years of disruption and trouble but would be more likely to pull through and re-work things. 

The bigger elements would be changes to society - ergo we might go back to owning less luxuries; to more seasonal and regional food production; back to more local production etc...

Technology failing would be a huge issue, but it would be survivable through adaptation and use of more basic technology. Heck something like a super-virus would only be limiting in so many ways. 


More risk is something like a super-virus or massive climatic change.


----------



## Edward M. Grant

RJM Corbet said:


> But, HOW could a large scale failure of computer technology happen?



A nuke on Amazon's 'cloud' servers? So much stuff has now be farmed out to a tiny number of 'cloud' services that the bad guys could take down millions of online services in one attack. Sure, it wouldn't affect completely disconnected electronics, but even many 'Internet of Things' devices rely on a 'cloud' service to control them.

We're building vast single-points-of-failure into our infrastructure thanks to 'The Cloud'.


----------



## Edward M. Grant

Overread said:


> The other aspect is that even if all the computers in the world turned off cars, lorries, radios and a lot of other similar technology would still work



Not after their on-board computers downloaded a new firmware update which bricked them. Most of these new 'driverless' cars, for example, are going to require over-the-air firmware updates, because no-one will want the product liability from allowing them to drive with firmware that has known bugs.


----------



## Mirannan

I'd like to make a point about the whole EOTWAWKI thing. It's this:

A lot of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over several thousand years is fundamental and is going to be very difficult to get rid of. Newton's laws. The theories of gravity and thermodynamics, at least in basic terms. The germ theory of disease. Various theorems of mathematics. Double-entry bookkeeping. Stirrups. Horse collars.

And so on. Given a little time to experiment, although I'm not all that mechanically gifted I reckon I could build a steam engine. I think we all underestimate just how much more Joe Average knows about various things than the average person (or even a very learned one) knew in the Middle Ages. And there are still enough people who about practical stuff such as farming to keep us going, IMHO.

Except major cities. Come the apocalypse, almost anyone who stays in one for more than a couple of days is dead.


----------



## Onyx

Mirannan said:


> I'd like to make a point about the whole EOTWAWKI thing. It's this:
> 
> A lot of the knowledge humanity has accumulated over several thousand years is fundamental and is going to be very difficult to get rid of. Newton's laws. The theories of gravity and thermodynamics, at least in basic terms. The germ theory of disease. Various theorems of mathematics. Double-entry bookkeeping. Stirrups. Horse collars.
> 
> And so on. Given a little time to experiment, although I'm not all that mechanically gifted I reckon I could build a steam engine. I think we all underestimate just how much more Joe Average knows about various things than the average person (or even a very learned one) knew in the Middle Ages. And there are still enough people who about practical stuff such as farming to keep us going, IMHO.
> 
> Except major cities. Come the apocalypse, almost anyone who stays in one for more than a couple of days is dead.


I was about to make a very similar point. Your average victory gardener probably knows more about getting crop yields and keeping the soil healthy than the most successful farmer of the 19th century. Many people have home machine shops, know how to do electrical and plumbing work, have advanced degrees in engineering and chemistry, etc. If the world had to go agrarian for a few decades, there would be enough to cannibalize and repurpose to keep 1st world people from starving or living in cesspools.


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## Parson

Hm, Parson thinks about the people who put a brick in the bowl of the stool to save water, or who bought a muffler belt, or who think milk comes in jugs. I think you might go broke betting on Joe Average in the short term.


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## Onyx

Parson said:


> Hm, Parson thinks about the people who put a brick in the bowl of the stool to save water, or who bought a muffler belt, or who think milk comes in jugs. I think you might go broke betting on Joe Average in the short term.


Is it ironic that a brick does displace water, decreasing the amount of water per flush and the fill level in the bowl?

But everyone doesn't need to be an expert in everything - we would just need enough people who do understand toilets to take teach everyone else.


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## Dave

I don't have quite as much faith in 'education' - and I'm not criticising schools here - there is much that schools don't teach, and shouldn't need to teach. I've read recent research (which I can't reference and is possibly anecdotal) that young people can't name wild flowers (while our grandparents would name them all) - a symptom of our disconnect with nature. I've also read that young people can't do DIY and always need to get a tradesman in to do the work. @Onyx says most people have a home machine shop. That is not my experience in the UK, and certainly not for 'twentysomethings'. Having said that, my own kids are not completely useless - my daughter went to a girls school where she was taught to wire a plug. However, look at this thread https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/570168/ and the all the skills we learnt that are now totally redundant.


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## RJM Corbet

Finding a McGyver fix is one of life's true pleasures 

And @Parson  -- yes, a brick in the toilet cistern DOES help save water, lol ... or you can just bend the rod of the float downward a bit (but carefully), so it cuts off the water inflow at a lower level ...


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## awesomesauce

Edward M. Grant said:


> A nuke on Amazon's 'cloud' servers? So much stuff has now be farmed out to a tiny number of 'cloud' services that the bad guys could take down millions of online services in one attack. Sure, it wouldn't affect completely disconnected electronics, but even many 'Internet of Things' devices rely on a 'cloud' service to control them.
> 
> We're building vast single-points-of-failure into our infrastructure thanks to 'The Cloud'.



This isn't a long term failure that's going to lead to the collapse of human culture as we know it. Massive cloud service goes down, and there's a bunch of scrambling in the background to stand up servers, provision fiber, etc. It's a couple weeks to months of minor to major inconvenience, having to use your manual light switches and go shopping in a supermarket instead of asking Alexa to deliver, maybe in some cities, people have to treat traffic lights as 4 way stops or you can't use your credit card on a certain company's terminals, but we're not talking nuclear meltdowns. And everything really important has (or should have) secure offline backups. (I'd bet on credit card companies having backups before, say, traffic infrastructure, though.)

I think cutting submarine cables would be more devastating to communications infrastructure than losing a cloud hosting service, even a big one.


----------



## Toby Frost

I think it was either Harry Turtledove or Eric Flint who said that, following a disaster, it wouldn’t be too hard to get back to a Victorian level of technology. The problem would be pushing it much further. And you’d need paper books to help you get to the Victorian level. For years there was a rumour that the British government kept a number of steam locomotives in working order, in preparation for a disaster that would prevent the use of more complex trains. I think it’s an urban (well, rural) myth.

It’s worth mentioning that in the ultra-bleak and pretty believable drama _Threads_, electricity is restored 10 years after a nuclear war. Of course, nine tenths of the population are dead by then, and for those who survive it’s a totally miserable existence of back-breaking labour and early death, probably in conditions of slavery to whoever’s got a working shotgun, but hey ho.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Edward M. Grant said:


> A nuke on Amazon's 'cloud' servers? So much stuff has now be farmed out to a tiny number of 'cloud' services that the bad guys could take down millions of online services in one attack. Sure, it wouldn't affect completely disconnected electronics, but even many 'Internet of Things' devices rely on a 'cloud' service to control them.
> 
> We're building vast single-points-of-failure into our infrastructure thanks to 'The Cloud'.



I just wanted to correct you here. A Cloud based online networking solution doesn't contain a single point of failure. The whole idea behind the Cloud is they use geographically diverse multi failure redundant systems. So you would need to nuke multiple server farms across the globe. 

The destruction of submarine cables as @awesomesauce points out would result in far worse communication problems but even then you could expect a certain level of connection to be restored using satellite uplink and other methods.

The only real way to kill off the internet and global connectivity would be an atmospheric detonation resulting in a significant EMP - although even then I expect there to be military infrastructure that is EMP blast proof.


----------



## Overread

Dave said:


> that young people can't name wild flowers (while our grandparents would name them all) - a symptom of our disconnect with nature. I've also read that young people can't do DIY and always need to get a tradesman in to do the work.



A few thoughts

1) The lack of natural studies in school is a major failing in my  view. There's a huge disconnect from nature in the education system basically because natural studies don't generate income for the majority of urban jobs. So we get to an education system where once you get to the "serious stuff" to learn natural studies is pushed to one side. We learn process like photosynthesis but not the names or identification of plants nor animals. 

2) My father recalls that "back in the day" DIY didn't exist and people got in a tradesman to do the work instead. However I think that the lack of young people doing DIY today is more a symptom of the lack of home ownership and a heavier reliance both on rental properties and the high risk of having to move to a new job. Basically DIY works best when you own the property you live in and have some form of stability (ergo you're going to live there for many many years). 
When you're in rental there's less desire to do the work yourself and more desire to have any work that must be done be done by a professional (indeed many estate agents would require the work be done by a professional). 

3) There's also a huge shift away from physical hobbies for many people. Woodworking and other hobbies require space and time and many people are happier with a phone/console/TV style approach to hobbies today. However whilst this is tied into home ownership its also likely a phase and many of those hands on hobbies could well come back again. At present most hobby groups/clubs tend to be either aimed at kids or at the over 50s - the whole 20-50 bracket is very under represented in many areas (most photography clubs I've seen its rare for anyone under around 40-50


----------



## awesomesauce

SilentRoamer said:


> The destruction of submarine cables as @awesomesauce points out would result in far worse communication problems but even then you could expect a certain level of connection to be restored using satellite uplink and other methods.



Very true, cutting undersea cables wouldn't completely sever communication, but it would cripple it until it could be repaired. 99% of our data traffic goes through those cables and we just don't have the bandwidth available anywhere else to compensate in a situation where too many cables were broken. I would guess that it would be some kind of global emergency, a massive geological convulsion, or deliberate sabotage, and government and emergency use of alternate channels would be prioritized. So, you know. No Netflix. 

Now there's a post-Cold War reboot idea for _Hunt for Red October._


----------



## awesomesauce

Overread said:


> most photography clubs I've seen its rare for anyone under around 40-50



I think this is true of most hobby and interest clubs that meet IRL.


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## sknox

>Actually destroying cities is easy
Examples, please.

>I think you might go broke betting on Joe Average in the short term.
But we're not talking the short term here. The people of *any* city in *any* time period were utterly dependent upon the countryside. This ain't news. And they suffered enormous disruptions. Killing a city is quite difficult. All the examples I know of required human agency (essentially genocide).

It's interesting to me that this discussion, and all others I've heard, presume not the end of the world but the end of the First World. How would people fare in other parts of the world? Much would depend on the nature of the catastrophe, of course. Heck, for some islands in the Pacific, the End of the World as They Know It is pretty much at hand.


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## RJM Corbet

But even if most internet information was permanently deleted, computers would still be able to access hard storage files? Where most important information is almost certainly backed-up. Is there anything that could in theory destroy the ability of most computers to access hard storage files offline?


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## Edward M. Grant

SilentRoamer said:


> I just wanted to correct you here. A Cloud based online networking solution doesn't contain a single point of failure. The whole idea behind the Cloud is they use geographically diverse multi failure redundant systems. So you would need to nuke multiple server farms across the globe.



Yes, that's the theory.

The reality, though, is that very few companies do that. Most just put up a virtual machine somewhere in one region and call it a day. So when Amazon goes down in America, you can still watch Netflix, but you can no longer control your 'smart' thermostat or 'smart' stove.

Netflix is one of the most robust 'cloud' services because they regularly do switchovers to other sites, and intentionally force their software to randomly crash to verify that it will rapidly recover from an unintentional crash. But even of the companies that do support a switchover to a different region, few are willing to risk doing that, then it fails when they actually need to do it.


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## dask

RJM Corbet said:


> But, HOW could a large scale failure of computer technology happen?


They could use my computer.


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## Edward M. Grant

Toby Frost said:


> I think it was either Harry Turtledove or Eric Flint who said that, following a disaster, it wouldn’t be too hard to get back to a Victorian level of technology. The problem would be pushing it much further.



I'd say the big problem is that pretty much all modern tech is heavily reliant on chip fabs. To jump from Victorian tech to today's tech, you need to be able to build large numbers of complex chips. Those complex chips rely on already-existing complex chips that can run the design and layout software, and expensive and complex fabs that can build them. And the support services, like making masks for the fabs.

If we lose those, it's going to take a long time to rebuild them. And we can't build modern tech until we do, except by using existing stocks of chips.

After a reversion to Victorian tech, Indiana Jones might be hunting for a fabled lost stash of 486 chips, not the Holy Grail.


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## Edward M. Grant

sknox said:


> The people of *any* city in *any* time period were utterly dependent upon the countryside.



But they didn't have 'just in time' delivery that means they'll run out of food in two days. They also didn't have houses that rely on electricity and gas to heat them in the winter, and will drop to twenty below zero in a day or two if those go out.

They also had fewer crazy people (since crazies tended not to survive back then), and they had weapons to defend themselves against those that existed.



> How would people fare in other parts of the world?



I'd say Africa would be toast. The Middle East would be the Middle East, but with a lot less people. India and China would be in trouble, but probably survive as intact societies. Hawaii would be... interesting; way too many people to support with its own production.


----------



## Dave

sknox said:


> >I think you might go broke betting on Joe Average in the short term.
> But we're not talking the short term here. The people of *any* city in *any* time period were utterly dependent upon the countryside. This ain't news. And they suffered enormous disruptions. Killing a city is quite difficult. All the examples I know of required human agency (essentially genocide).


I both agree and disagree with you. First, cities are much bigger, so, there is a matter of scale. If you think that a city with a population of millions being reduced to thousands is not "killing it" then that is merely an argument of semantics. Second, supply chains are longer and more complex. Check where your supermarket vegetables some from. It isn't from a farmer coming to the city once a week, but flown in by aeroplane across continents. In addition, "Average Joe" himself, he doesn't even know how to cook meals anymore if they don't come in a plastic tub or a box from out of the freezer. 

However, cities and towns are built in strategic places - river mouths, where rivers pass through mountains, or at the place where the tides turn on rivers - and in defensible places - on hills and on land surrounded by rivers. So, unless they are somewhere like Milton Keynes or Las Vegas they will still be the best place to defend, and to trade and to hold markets. So, they will remain in those places and be rebuilt. 



sknox said:


> It's interesting to me that this discussion, and all others I've heard, presume not the end of the world but the end of the First World. How would people fare in other parts of the world? Much would depend on the nature of the catastrophe, of course. Heck, for some islands in the Pacific, the End of the World as They Know It is pretty much at hand.


This is a good point. I think it is partly because people write about what they know and I expect the majority of us posting here live in First World cities. I expect that rural less developed places would fare better, if they aren't islands underneath a higher sea level, merely because they don't have as far to fall.


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## Edward M. Grant

Dave said:


> I expect that rural less developed places would fare better, if they aren't islands underneath a higher sea level, merely because they don't have as far to fall.



But many of them have populations much larger than their natural carrying capacity. And often have underlying resentments between natives and newcomers that will rapidly turn violent once there's not enough food to go around.

I don't think many Pacific islands would be good places to be if the ships and planes stopped coming. Particularly if you're not a native. Whereas tribes who still live in the Amazon jungle might not even notice a collapse for a few years.


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## RJM Corbet

Edward M. Grant said:


> But they didn't have 'just in time' delivery that means they'll run out of food in two days. They also didn't have houses that rely on electricity and gas to heat them in the winter, and will drop to twenty below zero in a day or two if those go out.
> 
> They also had fewer crazy people (since crazies tended not to survive back then), and they had weapons to defend themselves against those that existed.
> 
> 
> 
> I'd say Africa would be toast. The Middle East would be the Middle East, but with a lot less people. India and China would be in trouble, but probably survive as intact societies. Hawaii would be... interesting; way too many people to support with its own production.


I'd dispute that: Africa could be a place least tech dependent, where very many people cook with paraffin and where even a coca-cola tin isn't thrown away unless it can't be  used as an oil burner or something else. I'm probably exaggerating, but the principle remains.  Necessity makes for innovation. And Shanghai and Mumbai are both huge cities ...


----------



## Edward M. Grant

Another thing to consider is that many Western nations are seeing a radical divergence in political opinions between town and country. If you look at a map of the US elections, for example, you find that pretty much all the votes for Clinton came from a few big cities, and everywhere else voted for Trump. Here in Canada, we're increasingly heading the same way, with left-wing cities and right-wing countryside.

So, if there was a major collapse, not only would the cities lose the supplies they rely on from the countryside, but those living in the country might actively work to blockade those cities, because why would they support people who hate them?


----------



## Edward M. Grant

RJM Corbet said:


> I'd dispute that: Africa is a place where even a coca-cola tin gets used as an oil burner or something else. I'mainly exaggerating, but the principle remains.  Necessity makes for innovation. And Shanghai and Mumbai are both huge cities ...



Without modern medicine, Africa will have no way to prevent the spread of diseases that will kill off most of its population.

There are reasons the population there was a tiny fraction of its current size until a century or two back. And disease is one of the most important.

Edit: and I didn't mean to imply that China and India wouldn't see massive problems too with their huge populations, just that I think they'd hold together as nations, whereas much of the rest of the world would break up into tribalism.


----------



## Onyx

Dave said:


> I don't have quite as much faith in 'education' - and I'm not criticising schools here - there is much that schools don't teach, and shouldn't need to teach. I've read recent research (which I can't reference and is possibly anecdotal) that young people can't name wild flowers (while our grandparents would name them all) - a symptom of our disconnect with nature. I've also read that young people can't do DIY and always need to get a tradesman in to do the work. @Onyx says most people have a home machine shop. That is not my experience in the UK, and certainly not for 'twentysomethings'. Having said that, my own kids are not completely useless - my daughter went to a girls school where she was taught to wire a plug. However, look at this thread https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/570168/ and the all the skills we learnt that are now totally redundant.


Actually, I said "many people" have machine tools - and by that I meant maybe 1 in 1000. Compared to 70 years ago, many more people have the ability to craft technology today. More people are restoring cars, renovating their homes, building their own PCs and that sort of thing. Home Depot is a testament to this DIY wave. We are less dependent on "tradesman" than we used to be, and if something happened to the usual infrastructure, a huge number of amateur tradesman would emerge.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Edward M. Grant said:


> Without modern medicine, Africa will have no way to prevent the spread of diseases that will kill off most of its population.
> 
> There are reasons the population there was a tiny fraction of its current size until a century or two back. And disease is one of the most important.
> 
> Edit: and I didn't mean to imply that China and India wouldn't see massive problems too with their huge populations, just that I think they'd hold together as nations, whereas much of the rest of the world would break up into tribalism.


That's moot. But in Africa no-one throws out their toaster or washing machine because the fuse in the plug has blown. There aren't many charity shops: when you've read your books, you sell them -- you don't give them away. 

Supermarkets don't throw away out of date food. It's given to charity on the expiry date. Charities have to apply and meet criteria to receive it. Edible food just isn't thrown away. Within reason. The first thing you do if your fridge breaks is try to fix it.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Incidentally South Africa was the first country in the world to introduce charging for supermarket plastic bags. And when you've drunk your coke, you return the bottle to any shop and get your deposit back ... or leave it for a poor person. It's always been like that.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. But Cape Town -- and southern Africa in general -- has some of the best hotels in the world, Africa isn't as backward as the west perhaps imagines. And China and India are important tech nations, imo ...

But that's enough from me. I'm getting tired of the sound if my own opinions, and these forums are, as usual, seriously eroding my reading time, lol


----------



## Parson

Edward M. Grant said:


> So, if there was a major collapse, not only would the cities lose the supplies they rely on from the countryside, but those living in the country might actively work to blockade those cities, because why would they support people who hate them?



Living in the country as I do I am a sure as I can be that when trouble hits country folk help. I believe the issue would be that at least in the Western Democracies farmers are about as dependent on stores as anyone else. We largely do not garden, we manage cash crops. My Dad's farm in the 40's and 50's could get along by itself quite well indeed. (As a small child I lived on a farm without electricity or running water) But today most farms have at most crops and feed animals, some have one or the other.


----------



## sknox

To invoke the OP subject line, human history is not going to provide much guidance about any sort of collapse of civilization. And the reference to the Dark Ages is ahistorical and the 7thc is highly unlikely to be level to which civilization would collapse. Also, the collapse would not be uniform. I'm out.


----------



## Dave

sknox said:


> To invoke the OP subject line, human history is not going to provide much guidance about any sort of collapse of civilization. And the reference to the Dark Ages is ahistorical and the 7thc is highly unlikely to be level to which civilization would collapse. Also, the collapse would not be uniform. I'm out.


I totally agree. I think we decided all that back on page 3 or 4 of this discussion. Please don't leave the conversation on account of what I replied to you though. It is precisely because I do agree with you that I don't think the siege of a Medieval walled city is going to provide much guidance to that of a Beirut or Damascus, though there must be some parallels and therefore your specialist knowledge is relevant. I also agree with you that you cannot kill a city. Even in the bombed out concrete shells of cities attacked by nerve gases there are still people living. I only think that there is an argument whether that is really 'living'.



RJM Corbet said:


> I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult. But Cape Town -- and southern Africa in general -- has some of the best hotels in the world, Africa isn't as backward as the west perhaps imagines. And China and India are important tech nations, imo ...
> 
> But that's enough from me. I'm getting tired of the sound if my own opinions, and these forums are, as usual, seriously eroding my reading time, lol


Sorry that you also feel the need to leave because people have a skewed view of these parts of the world. All that I meant was that some of the technology and skills still in use in Africa and China - clockwork radios, people who can mend TVs with soldering irons, washing machines that don't have complex electronic programs - would help them survive a world wide collapse better.

However, this thread has possibly run its course now. I'm not sure there is any more to say, given that the OP subject line is so flawed.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Dave said:


> I totally agree. I think we decided all that back on page 3 or 4 of this discussion. Please don't leave the conversation on account of what I replied to you though. It is precisely because I do agree with you that I don't think the siege of a Medieval walled city is going to provide much guidance to that of a Beirut or Damascus, though there must be some parallels and therefore your specialist knowledge is relevant. I also agree with you that you cannot kill a city. Even in the bombed out concrete shells of cities attacked by nerve gases there are still people living. I only think that there is an argument whether that is really 'living'.
> 
> Sorry that you also feel the need to leave because people have a skewed view of these parts of the world. All that I meant was that some of the technology and skills still in use in Africa and China - clockwork radios, people who can mend TVs with soldering irons, washing machines that don't have complex electronic programs - would help them survive a world wide collapse better.
> 
> However, this thread has possibly run its course now. I'm not sure there is any more to say, given that the OP subject line is so flawed.



Dave, I didn't leave because I was in any way upset or offended. I just felt, like you, that further discussion would be going nowhere, really. But we are probably the first generation in all history to have our literal lives hang dependent on the sort of technology we cannot ourselves alter or repair. It used to be that if your typewriter broke or misfunctioned, you could have a go at the little springs to try and do something to correct the failure. You could give a thing a kick, and sometimes it worked. But you can't do that with a computer.  With the Internet we are completely powerless to take anything  apart and try to patch it, lol ...


----------



## RJM Corbet

Sorry for the double posting: moderator please fix, lol.

@Dave: In fact I wasn't responding to anything you wrote, but to another member whose western viewpoint some Africans would find slightly offensive, although he certainly did not mean it that way?


----------



## Dave

RJM Corbet said:


> It used to be that if your typewriter broke or misfunctioned, you could have a go at the little springs to try and do something to correct the failure. You could give a thing a kick, and sometimes it worked. But you can't do that with a computer.  With the Internet we are completely powerless to take anything  apart and try to patch it, lol ...


That's also true. Mechanical things that break can often be fixed by bending the part, or with glue, or with ducktape! Modern machines have engineering pass codes and require an engineer call out, very expensive kit for diagnosis of the error, or else sitting on the phone to a helpdesk. Less complex equipment is cheaper to operate and might not be totally useless if those things are not available.


----------



## BAYLOR

Dave said:


> That's also true. Mechanical things that break can often be fixed by bending the part, or with glue, or with ducktape! Modern machines have engineering pass codes and require an engineer call out, very expensive kit for diagnosis of the error, or else sitting on the phone to a helpdesk. Less complex equipment is cheaper to operate and might not be totally useless if those things are not available.



Imagine the sum total of all human knowledge  locked up on hard drives and no way to access them.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Dave said:


> That's also true. Mechanical things that break can often be fixed by bending the part, or with glue, or with ducktape! Modern machines have engineering pass codes and require an engineer call out, very expensive kit for diagnosis of the error, or else sitting on the phone to a helpdesk. Less complex equipment is cheaper to operate and might not be totally useless if those things are not available.


Yes. A toaster with a microchip is really something


----------



## BAYLOR

RJM Corbet said:


> Yes. A toaster with a microchip is really something



Imagine a world in which I cannot make toast. 

That really would be a dark age !


----------



## Harpo

1. Build a clay oven.
2. Bake bread.
3. Slice the bread.
4. Impale one slice on a fork.
5. Hold it over the glowing embers of civilisation until it's done.


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## BAYLOR

Harpo said:


> 1. Build a clay oven.
> 2. Bake bread.
> 3. Slice the bread.
> 4. Impale one slice on a fork.
> 5. Hold it over the glowing embers of civilisation until it's done.



The scary part is that if our technology failed, there would be relatively few people who could even figure out how to do any of that.


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## RJM Corbet

BAYLOR said:


> Imagine the sum total of all human knowledge  locked up on hard drives and no way to access them.



So, where this is going is HOW could that come about? A generalised failure of computers to read their hard drives, memory sticks, etc?


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## RJM Corbet

Would it really have to be some sort of virus that just took everything down, and which permanently erased all hard-storage, also permanently destroying the ability of computers to read hard-drives, etc. All Internet and hard-drive/memory stick etc, information gone forever?

Could it happen?


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## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> So, where this is going is HOW could that come about? A generalised failure of computers to read their hard drives, memory sticks, etc?


Most discussions of lost human data point to the relatively short life of electronic storage media compared to printed paper, clay or metal inscription. You may have only a few decades to retrieve that data and transfer it to a stable media.

The other problem is decentralized storage means that the right document may not be available because the index or physical connection to its server is lost. What's stable on a hard drive in Kansas isn't going to help you if the internet no longer exists.

But the physical loss of stored data doesn't happen overnight, even with an EMP. I could happen with viruses, though.


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## RJM Corbet

Onyx said:


> Most discussions of lost human data point to the relatively short life of electronic storage media compared to printed paper, clay or metal inscription. You may have only a few decades to retrieve that data and transfer it to a stable media.
> 
> The other problem is decentralized storage means that the right document may not be available because the index or physical connection to its server is lost. What's stable on a hard drive in Kansas isn't going to help you if the internet no longer exists.
> 
> But the physical loss of stored data doesn't happen overnight, even with an EMP. I could happen with viruses, though.



Perhaps the unlucky coincidence of two or three independently created, perhaps even innocent or playful viruses all meeting at some crucial moment and breeding with each other and setting off a chain reaction?

Way hay ... Mad Max
(Remember him?)


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## BAYLOR

RJM Corbet said:


> Perhaps the unlucky coincidence of two or three independently created, perhaps even innocent or playful viruses all meeting at some crucial moment and breeding with each other and setting off a chain reaction?
> 
> Way hay ... Mad Max
> (Remember him?)



Given how  depend we are  on technology , a major worldwide tech failure would have devastating  repercussions.


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## Vertigo

RJM Corbet said:


> Would it really have to be some sort of virus that just took everything down, and which permanently erased all hard-storage, also permanently destroying the ability of computers to read hard-drives, etc. All Internet and hard-drive/memory stick etc, information gone forever?
> 
> Could it happen?


An awful lot of long term storage is write once and can't be simply erased or overwritten. CDs and DVDs for example some are rewritable but most (?) are not.


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## BAYLOR

Onyx said:


> Most discussions of lost human data point to the relatively short life of electronic storage media compared to printed paper, clay or metal inscription. You may have only a few decades to retrieve that data and transfer it to a stable media.
> 
> The other problem is decentralized storage means that the right document may not be available because the index or physical connection to its server is lost. What's stable on a hard drive in Kansas isn't going to help you if the internet no longer exists.
> 
> But the physical loss of stored data doesn't happen overnight, even with an EMP. I could happen with viruses, though.



Bottom line, we're vulnerable.


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## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> An awful lot of long term storage is write once and can't be simply erased or overwritten. CDs and DVDs for example some are rewritable but most (?) are not.



In less then a century , even those would likely decay to nothing.


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## Vertigo

BAYLOR said:


> In less then a century , even those would likely decay to nothing.


Yes of course but the point I was making is they would be unaffected by viruses, EMPs etc.


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## BAYLOR

Vertigo said:


> Yes of course but the point I was making is they would be unaffected by viruses, EMPs etc.



Opps sorry Vertigo. My fingers were moving  a bit quicker then my brain.


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## BAYLOR

Then there's the Internet. Yeah , we're doomed.


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## BAYLOR

RJM Corbet said:


> Perhaps the unlucky coincidence of two or three independently created, perhaps even innocent or playful viruses all meeting at some crucial moment and breeding with each other and setting off a chain reaction?
> 
> Way hay ... Mad Max
> (Remember him?)



A very realistic and frightening  possibility.


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## Dave

I have _The Second Sleep_ by Robert Harris on my 'to read' pile. I'm trying to quickly finish another book so that I can start it. It sounds excellent. Begins in 1469 with a monk riding to Devon to bury another monk. People began to write to Harris after they had only read the second page to complain about his historical inaccuracies. Spoiler: it isn't set in the past but in the future.


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## BAYLOR

Dave said:


> I have _The Second Sleep_ by Robert Harris on my 'to read' pile. I'm trying to quickly finish another book so that I can start it. It sounds excellent. Begins in 1469 with a monk riding to Devon to bury another monk. People began to write to Harris after they had only read the second page to complain about his historical inaccuracies. Spoiler: it isn't set in the past but in the future.



Sounds Interesting.


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## Dragonlady

I think there's a very real possibility of social collapse due to climate change. We are already seeing unpredictable weather leading to poor harvests and flooding and other natural disasters. A significant disruption to food supplies may not be too far away if our politicians and business leaders keep their heads in the sand.


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## sknox

Yet, human history is no guide at all to dealing with climate change. In fact, if we look to history we might well conclude that we'll be fine. After all, we've made it this far! And through some pretty major catastrophes.

In fact, I'll put forward an opposite propostion: the best guide to the future is not history but imagination. And here, artists lead the way. We are usually cautionary, only occasionally inspirational; not only science fiction writers, but artists of all sorts warn of dangers and point the way to possibilities. Think of the extent to which SF writers inspired whole generations of scientists and engineers. How writers and movie makers--these are the big influencers--painted nuclear apocalypse so vividly. Artists of all sorts reveal crimes and outrages, caution about social trends.

Scientists speak of these things as well, but they're often ignored. Artists set the goals; scientists help drive us toward those goals. Historians? meh. Looking forward isn't our forte. We aren't trained in it. Indeed, everything about our training mitigates against projection because the future has no documentation. There's nothing for us to study. We can speculate, but at that point we're the same as any other guy in the pub.


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## DannMcGrew

Dave said:


> I have _The Second Sleep_ by Robert Harris on my 'to read' pile. I'm trying to quickly finish another book so that I can start it. It sounds excellent. Begins in 1469 with a monk riding to Devon to bury another monk. People began to write to Harris after they had only read the second page to complain about his historical inaccuracies. Spoiler: it isn't set in the past but in the future.


The New York Times review:   It’s 1468. Why Does the Village Priest Have an iPhone?
OUCH!


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## Dave

I was going to edit that and put a spoiler tag around it, but it is Robert Harris who is doing this. He's on the radio and in newspapers spoiling his own book. So, if @dannymcg has a problem he'll need to speak with him.


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## Robert Zwilling

Brunner has a trilogy of sorts, more like ideas overlapping than feeding into each other. Stand On Zanzibar, Shockwave Rider, and The Sheep Look Up. We can stumble into "Dark Ages" just as easily by over reliance on science as we can denying it's existence. Abuse of science and denial of science go hand in hand. Like a bell curve. We have designed our world so moderation in the middle of the curve has steep slopes that make it a hard position to maintain.


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## Margaret Note Spelling

sknox said:


> Scientists speak of these things as well, but they're often ignored. Artists set the goals; scientists help drive us toward those goals. Historians? meh. Looking forward isn't our forte. We aren't trained in it. Indeed, everything about our training mitigates against projection because the future has no documentation. There's nothing for us to study. We can speculate, but at that point we're the same as any other guy in the pub.



Not the same. Never the same. The key to preparing for the future lies in understanding the way things are _now_--and the key to understanding the way things are now, will always lie in history. Where else do we ever get the grounding material for stories, but our own experiences of reality? And where else does our experience of reality lie, but in the past?

What's the equivalent of a month's memories, in the general experiences of humanity? Thirty, fifty years? Ignoring history's influence on the present and the future would be like forgetting your entire childhood and imagining you were born an adult. Personally, I'd be terrified if that ever happened to me. I would have to relearn practically _everything_--and if collective humanity doesn't remember its past, then our future _will_ consist of endlessly making the same mistakes and learning the same lessons, over and over again. Typically in brutal and bloody wars.

Come to think of it, that's kind of the way it is already. You can almost sympathize with the Eastern cyclical view of time.

Learning history is _amazingly_ important. Especially for artists, since they have so much influence over the way popular culture see things.


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## sknox

To argue that learning history is a way to understand the present or predict the future means first to assume that there is one and only one history, and that a proper study of it will lead everyone to the same conclusions. That's not how humans work.

I taught European history for 35 years. Almost from the start I had this message: history does not have a use. It does not have utility; it has value. In this, history is more like literature than like chemistry or mathematics. People do learn from history. They learn thousands of lessons and all of them different. And some of them are deeply pernicious. To paraphrase the old wisdom, some people say they are learning from history when they are merely reconfirming their prejudices.

Since it's demonstrably true that history has an infinity of "lessons" to teach, it's hard to argue that a study of history is going to lead to much of anything, save for unending discussions in bars and online forums. And universities. <g>

I'll say it again so no one misses it: the study of history has great value. It broadens and deepens and enriches life, at least when approached with the values that have been painfully developed by the discipline. But history is not a science, and the lessons it teaches me will not be the lessons it teaches you. And that's ok.


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## sknox

Ooh, and I loved _Stand on Zanzibar_. I thought the approach was wildly original ... until I read John Dos Passos' USA trilogy (a brilliant work). Even so, I've never forgotten one of the central lessons of Brunner's book--that societies can labor on under the worst of circumstances, crushing individuals while somehow persevering as a culture. 

John Brunner deserves far more recognition as one of the truly great SF writers of the century. _Shockwave Rider_ was a revelation when I read it in the mid-90s. _The Sheep Look Up_ is chilling. And we haven't even brought up _The Crystal World_ or _The Drowned World_. I still nominate SF writers as one of the key People to Have in the Room when considering the future. Us historians? Give us a free meal and a drink, and we'll sit quietly in the back, whispering among ourselves. <g>


----------



## olive

Questions like this remind me of the famous book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Chomsky and Herman which was published in 1988. _1988_. I feel highly depressed for a moment and then go on what I was doing previously.


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## olive

@sknox What do you think about the idea that history as a field is having a huge crisis similar to the one it did have in the 17th century, long before the discipline was established in the 19th century? From the point of the new age literal mindedness, symbolism and allegory, perception and perspective of history in the age of science.


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## Dave

@sknox is totally correct, and I'm surprised people really want to argue with an actual historian over this  That's like people on Twitter who argue with J K Rowling about the character of Snipe (that she invented.)

The other big point about recorded history not mentioned yet, is that what got recorded was about the rich and famous, the royalty and the generals, and mostly from the victors viewpoint. There was little, if anything at all, about very ordinary people. In fact, as someone did mention earlier in the thread, vast numbers of rural poor went totally undocumented as if they just never existed at all. It is only recently that we have had history research from a ordinary soldier's perspective, or a woman's perspective, or a feminist perspective. Those are only possible where the records exist i.e. you can't read their letters if people weren't educated to write. To look for these people in history requires a lot more digging around in records to find. It is only very recently that we have began keeping every piece of data electronically - before that there was neither the desire nor the space to do so and so all "unimportant" records got burnt. What is important, and what is unimportant is dependent upon the person making that decision.

@olive if this is what you mean then that isn't really a crisis, just some more for historians to argue over. There have always been arguments between historians and about the way history should be written or taught. A long time has passed since History (with a capital H) was taught as a straight line from the past to the present. Then it was thought that it could all be boiled down to a history of the progress of Marxism - from a history of the powerful to a history of the proletariat working-classes instead. I believe that what we have now is a much more balanced history, with room for every view, but there will always be passionate arguments over history. When I did my local history course, one of the other students came up with a great analogy for this: He said that when people watch Football on TV and there is a goal scored from inside the box, even though it is recorded on TV for all to see and re-watch, then you will still get different views about the match - the referee was blind, the ref is biased or incompetent, the goalkeeper was asleep or incompetent, the striker was on form, the striker was lucky, the manager is at fault - all depending on which team you support. This is just how humans are.


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## Dave

As regards to _The Second Sleep_, I have read arguments that our world falling back to a 1468 tech-level and remaining at that level, is not feasible and they give a list of reasons why not. However, (and I can't explain without spoilers) but Harris does provide... 



Spoiler



a reason and methodology for that in the book. It is the central theme of the book, and it explains the ending which many, many people don't like, and even the book's title.


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## olive

@Dave Why wouldn't people want to 'argue' about history with a historian? Arguing about something is not necessarily having a debate with an ignorant claim or trolling. I'm asking a question. History is very important. How is that remotely close to someone discussing a fictional character with its creator via twitter? For a proud pedant that is not a good example.

Why would I dismiss what historians are/have been arguing/writing about? And after having said that, all you give me is what historians have been arguing for a long time anyway. You didn't have that historical perspective through divine visions, did you?

I have asked that to @sknox, because the book I am translating right now is a study on historical consciousness in early modern Europe. Historical context, cultural context, context in context...etc. How context and historical context evolved. And most of the material I work on different books is about the records you mention. About not being able to 'read' the letters of the illiterate, you are incorrect. That's the kind of 'literal mindedness' I was referring to.

But I need to say that I find this dismissive attitude towards history; historical disciplines, humanities in general, esp. in this grand histoire theme, nonsensical. It reminds me of the way physics was taken as a field in the 19th century after Newton. Today reading/talking about history is more important than ever was in history itself.


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## Elckerlyc

It's about the interpretation of historical facts. Interpretation and facts are constantly argued and debated over. New insights can change all that thought you understood. It's not science you can apply with mathematical accuracy.
Politicians are no historians. Society wants bread and be entertained. And those 2 forces are mainly what drives our road to the future.
Even if they have historical insight, the decisions they take for the future are usually formed by totally different agendas. Their views are more aimed at tomorrow than next year.
Prejudices and dreams are very stubborn traits. Dreams brings us forwards, prejudices colors the decisions despite history.
Reading Jan Buisman's* Thousand Years Weather, Wind and Water* has learned me that society will persevere no matter the (un)natural disasters it endures. But in what type of Age we may find ourselves next century? It could be anything, but we will be there.

Just the 2c of an un-expert.


----------



## Nozzle Velocity

sknox said:


> To argue that learning history is a way to understand the present or predict the future means first to assume that there is one and only one history, and that a proper study of it will lead everyone to the same conclusions. That's not how humans work.



It doesn't mattter if that's how humans work. Humans have differing viewpoints over many things, including science. Huge ideological and powerful turf wars have been fought among scientists, sometimes for decades, all based on the idea that the mechanics of a natural phenomenon can be _knowable_. It should be the job of the historian, much like the scientist, to explore, reveal, and make linear, causal sense of the chaotic patterns in human history. I'm well aware this contradicts the "value" of history you espouse. I don't suppose there's anything wrong with the joy of simply collecting data points. I've heard many historians say this is the only kind of history they enjoy reading. Fair enough. But I'm utterly unconvinced that the study and teaching of history has no "utility". The endeavor doesn't have to serve as propaganda. I believe the search for a narrative synthesis is vital. Claiming there are many truths, all lost to chaos theory, is to shy away from that search. 

This matters because, if you don't know where you've been, then you don't know where you are. If you don't know where you are, then someone powerful will come along and tell you. Or to paraphrase Trotsky: You may not be interested in history, but history is interested in you.



Dave said:


> ...and I'm surprised people really want to argue with an actual historian over this.



Hold my beer.


----------



## Margaret Note Spelling

sknox said:


> But history is not a science, and the lessons it teaches me will not be the lessons it teaches you. And that's ok.



Absolutely! --As long as all the lessons are true, though. I think it's entirely possible to learn _wrong_ lessons from something. Even a single little novel can teach a hundred different people a hundred different things about reality. And history is better than even _lots_ of novels--it's three-dimensional.

Yes, there are practically infinite amount of lessons to learn from history. I want to learn my lessons, and _your_ lessons, and everybody else's if I can (which I simply don't have the capacity to). If they're all true lessons, they won't be _contradictory_. They will merely be fantastically _complex_.

Anyway, I'm sorry if it sounded like I was trying to debate history with a historian. It struck me more as debating _philosophy_ with a historian.  More like arguing with Rowling over the character of Gandalf.


----------



## Dave

@olive I'm afraid that not everything is always about you, and in this case I was commenting on @Margaret Note Spelling 's post and you have misinterpreted what I said. There is a huge difference between arguing about historical events (little h), and arguing about the discipline of History (capital H). Of course there are arguments within history, that is what history is all about. but you cannot argue this:


sknox said:


> To argue that learning history is a way to understand the present or predict the future means first to assume that there is one and only one history, and that a proper study of it will lead everyone to the same conclusions.



I simply wondered what your "crisis" was. Now, I wish I hadn't. On your other points, yes, I was aware that people can use other methods to uncover and 'read' those who don't have a historical voice. Thanks. That is what I meant by "a lot more digging around in records to find." It is harder. It requires interpretation. Historians can argue, not only over that interpretation, but additionally, over the methods employed.  However, I still don't understand where the "crisis" is.

@Nozzle Velocity There is a difference between History and Science though. In Science, the use of the scientific method can produce a proven hypothesis which scientists can at least agree upon until that hypothesis is disproved by further experimentation. Historians can never "prove" something is correct. There is no "great truth" to be uncovered if a historian can just uncover that missing piece of evidence, for the reasons I thought I had already given earlier. 'Truth' is wholly in the eyes of the beholder. That certainly is about how humans work. There will always be differences of opinion in history and so there will always be historical arguments.

Just like science and history, real life is mostly grey rather than black and white. Unfortunately, newspapers and courts of justice require there to be a definitive black and white answers. Newspaper headlines don't really work if they say "ALIENS MAY HAVE LANDED IN WOKING" and courts need to find the defendant guilty or not guilty. This is why there is a problem with the use of scientists and historians as "expert witnesses." And history itself was put on trial in 2000  Court 73 - where history is on trial


----------



## olive

Dave said:


> @olive I'm afraid that not everything is always about you, and in this case I was commenting on @Margaret Note Spelling 's post and you have misinterpreted what I said. There is a huge difference between arguing about historical events (little h), and arguing about the discipline of History (capital H). Of course there are arguments within history, that is what history is all about. but you cannot argue this:



Then you should have quoted her post. Because if you make a broad comment like that, without making a specific quote, just after I asked a question to the pointed member, it's very natural that you get that response from me. I don't believe I've misinterpreted it. This is not me, thinking everything is about me, but about you making a deliberate statement with a pushed lecture in between, but then getting annoyed when it is not welcome.

People _can_ argue about anything. Anything. We don't have an academic responsibility here, this is supposed to be a simple exchange.


----------



## sknox

olive said:


> @sknox What do you think about the idea that history as a field is having a huge crisis similar to the one it did have in the 17th century, long before the discipline was established in the 19th century? From the point of the new age literal mindedness, symbolism and allegory, perception and perspective of history in the age of science.


A crisis in the 17thc? Not sure what you mean. There were few historians in the 17thc. There was the literary squabble known as the Ancients vs the Moderns. That's about as close as I can come up with.


----------



## sknox

>what got recorded was about the rich and famous 
This isn't actually true. It's what got written by certain kinds of writers, but there's a *ton* of material about ordinary folks. My dissertation, to take an example where I feel confident, was about millers, shoemakers, joiners, and bathhouse keepers--four guilds in early modern Augsburg. The raw material consisted of hundreds of petitions from guildsmen to the City Council. There wasn't a lot of daily life stuff there, but it certainly wasn't all nobles and royals.  I cite the many "daily life" and _mentalite'_ books as another example of how history is not always (or even mostly) written by the winners.

Anyway, I just wanted to explain about this. And it is certainly true that one has to go quite a ways in academic courses before one gets down to the daily life level. This has always struck me as silly. I'd rather make an intro class on daily life in the Middle Ages than "Intro to ..." courses. Oddly, curriculum committees never consult with me.


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## sknox

@Nozzle Velocity makes some excellent points. I'll reply in detail.

>It should be the job of the historian, much like the scientist, to explore, reveal, and make linear, causal sense of the chaotic patterns in human history.
Historians have had a long, running argument on this one. Each of those verbs are significant. The historian should explore ... that's research. The historian should reveal ... that's the writing of history (an art form rarely discussed). The historian should make sense ... ah, there's the rub. Everything from positivists who really do see a line running clearly from past to present, to deconstructionism who argue the line doesn't exist or perhaps that all lines exist. The longer I've been in the field, the more convinced I am that the arguments reflect not so much the merit of one position or another as the temperament of the person holding it.

>I don't suppose there's anything wrong with the joy of simply collecting data points. I've heard many historians say this is the only kind of history they enjoy reading. Fair enough. 
I've not heard this. No historian merely collects data points. Collecting is just research. It becomes history once that research is communicated to others. Perhaps what's meant here is what is sometimes called micro-history--the study of a single event or small group to see what it can tell us. 

And now I know I'm going beyond what Nozzle said, but here goes anyway. I'm the sort of historian who studies the past in order to understand the past. Those people back then, in whatever place and time I look at, fascinate me. I want to understand them in their own terms. There's another kind of historian--one who studies the past in order to understand the present. I distrust this sort because too often I find they distort those people I love to study in order to construct their argument. They fit the past into a modern mould and proudly declare (to quote one of my old professsor's jokes) "these are the conclusions on which my data are based."  I'm reasonably sure those modernist historians (my name for them [TM]) have their own jokes to make about me.

>But I'm utterly unconvinced that the study and teaching of history has no "utility". The endeavor doesn't have to serve as propaganda. I believe the search for a narrative synthesis is vital. 
Absolutely. It's so vital, in fact, that human societies have always done this, despite having no historians in the village. We humans love to see patterns. We demand the world make sense; more, we demand that it make *our* kind of sense. We are constantly re-making and even inventing the past as a way to justify or understand or explain ourselves to ourselves. It has almost nothing to do with scholarly history. We will have our narrative synetheses (because just one is never enough), and historians be damned.

This is how I explain to myself why it is that generation after generation of historians have carefully pointed out that the RCC was not all-powerful in the MA, or that just because there are merchants doesn't mean that's capitalism, or that the Roman Empire didn't fall in the 5th century, and so on and on. Generation after generation, and yet still every new generation of bright young students drag these misunderstandings with them into the classroom. It is emphatically not the influence of movies or TV. 

It's that narrative synthesis thing. All the odd stereotypes about the MA are there because they're part of a story we tell ourselves, and we believe it's important to tell ourselves. Getting everyone to realize that plate armor was not the standard in the 12thc is beside the point when considered in the context of the cultural narrative. Academic history isn't going to "fix" that. And socieities don't need historians to create those narratives. In fact, we're rather a nuisance to them, and that's fine by me.

And finally, value. I have to make a pitch here. Value is valuable! Utility is merely useful. Both are needed, of course, but I hate to see value dismissed out of hand. Literature has value. Art has value. It raises the useful to the important. So when I say history has value more than utility, I'm really arguing for its importance. But the importance--as with any art--is going to vary from one person to the next, and will vary even over the course of one individual's lifetime.


----------



## sknox

And one more. Sorry for the post blizzard.

People get worked up about this. Not just here; I've seen it elsewhere. I took a step back to consider why this is so and I wonder. This is pure speculation, tossed out to this community for consideration.

History--never mind of what particular sort--matters to people because it's a tool for making sense of the world. This is important, because we have very few of those. Psychology had a day on the field. Various social sciences have waved their flag but I don't think any have been very convincing. 

Science is a big dog in the What Is Going On field, but scientists usually pull back when it comes to the squishy, human stuff. There's some reason to think that the brain scientists along with the geneticists may eventually offer explanation and guidance for a narrative synthesis, but those guys spook as many people as they comfort, at least so far. But science is definitely a contender.

The other big one is religion. I'm a medieval historian, but it's late MA and I wandered into the Reformation era, so religion and its social role has been an unavoidable topic for me. For all that I'm a social and economic historian, religious history fascinates me. One thing religions do is provide that narrative synthesis. How did we get here? Where are we going? How do I fit into it all? Religion has the answers. More importantly, it provides a context, a way to think about the world. That's powerful stuff. Stronger, even, than science, which steadfastly avoids moral issues or philosophy.

So. Science and religion. History may be a third. History not as academic study but history as cultural narrative. History as that understanding of the past that we all seem to simply absorb without being able to pinpoint quite where and when we learned it. Various sub-groups within a culture will have their own narrative, their own historical understanding, but for each that understanding provides a way to explain the world and their place in it.

If I look at it that way, then the passion of some of the arguments ... er, debates ... er, discussions ... about history make sense to me. And that leads me to make a major amendment to my "history is not a hammer" argument (that is, a hammer merely has a use). It's not that history has value more than utility, it's that *scholarly* history has value. The academic discipline of history has value. You could abolish all the departments of history worldwide and cultures would still go on much as before, inventing their own narrative syntheses. I have to remember that when I say history, I'm really only talking about my field, a specific profession and discipline. If I make broad statements about "history" outside of that field, I have to remember that others may not see the word in the same way.

Eh. Sometimes it takes me a few decades, but I get there.


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## Dave

@olive I didn't consider what you asked @sknox to be an "argument", so how could I think that you would take my comments to mean that I did. It was just your question that I didn't understand and wished to understand.

@sknox We need to reference exactly what period we are discussing. I admit that was being extremely broad. Most people here are interested in the Middle Ages and that is your own period of research. I know more about Early Modern.

There are records for sure of millers, shoemakers, joiners, and bathhouse keepers. There are Polls and Valuations of property. There are Wills if you have possessions. Diaries from travellers. Family reconstruction can be done from parish registers. That is the kind of social history research being done today and with which I'm very familiar with. You would think that everyone produced some written record of their existence, but in the 1600's there were "idle poor" and "vagrants," existing outside of towns who were not being recorded because they had no property, received no poor relief, and were not born or buried in the city, and they produced nothing of value. Not just a few people either, but impossible to say how many. I may not have explained myself well before, but they have no voice at all.

The further you go back, the less there is about ordinary or poor people. Bede's _An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, _just for example, is about Caesar's invasion of Britain and the martyrdom of St Alban, it is not about millers and shoemakers. Written hundreds of years after the events, it hardly contains contemporary accounts and is mostly about dates and places. My point is that is how history still used to be written, and how it was taught too, until quite recently.


----------



## Margaret Note Spelling

Dave said:


> 'Truth' is wholly in the eyes of the beholder. That certainly is about how humans work.



I'm sorry, that's something I personally can't accept as a premise. I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything--it's just that the existence of absolute truth, whether accepted or denied, is really going to be a fundamental part of _any_ argument. If one person believes there is, and the other believes there is not, there's no _way_ they're going to get something like the importance of history nicely sorted out without first figuring out where they stand on whether there's any such thing as non-relative truth in the first place! So cheers and respect to everyone, I'm just going to stand down and watch how this thread goes now. You guys are great.


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## Karn's Return

We definitely can fall into another dark age, especially since we're entering into a Grand Solar Minimum, which has been shown to have brought civilizations to ruin. Other problems we have, of course, are things like climate change, population issues, environmental destruction, anti-vaccinators...


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## olive

Margaret Note Spelling said:


> Absolutely! --As long as all the lessons are true, though. I think it's entirely possible to learn _wrong_ lessons from something. Even a single little novel can teach a hundred different people a hundred different things about reality. And history is better than even _lots_ of novels--it's three-dimensional.
> 
> Yes, there are practically infinite amount of lessons to learn from history. I want to learn my lessons, and _your_ lessons, and everybody else's if I can (which I simply don't have the capacity to). If they're all true lessons, they won't be _contradictory_. They will merely be fantastically _complex_.
> 
> Anyway, I'm sorry if it sounded like I was trying to debate history with a historian. It struck me more as debating _philosophy_ with a historian.  More like arguing with Rowling over the character of Gandalf.



Yes, mam! I can't be objective to that name though you know that right? I love your name.


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## olive

Karn's Return said:


> We definitely can fall into another dark age, especially since we're entering into a Grand Solar Minimum, which has been shown to have brought civilizations to ruin. Other problems we have, of course, are things like climate change, population issues, environmental destruction, anti-vaccinators...


 I apologise for that?


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## Margaret Note Spelling

olive said:


> Yes, mam! I can't be objective to that name though you know that right? I love your name.



Thanks! (I _didn't_ know....) Frightfully sorry if it's distracting, though--I certainly didn't pick it for any potential advantage in future philosophical arguments! It'd be cool if it was my _real_ name, now, but sadly it's not....


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## Karn's Return

olive said:


> I apologise for that?





For which?


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## olive

Magrat, I couldn't care less.


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## olive

Karn's Return said:


> For which?


I do apologise. You should see my dreams.


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## sknox

>Grand Solar Minimum, which has been shown to have brought civilizations to ruin. 
Source? I'm curious to know which civilization(s).


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## J Riff

History is all wrong so maybe, sure, I don't know, yes, possibly. But we could test people's theories - by hurling them into a lake. If they sink, they were right, if they float, they were wrong, and should be done away with.


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## Dave

Margaret Note Spelling said:


> I'm sorry, that's something I personally can't accept as a premise. I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything--it's just that the existence of absolute truth, whether accepted or denied, is really going to be a fundamental part of _any_ argument. If one person believes there is, and the other believes there is not, there's no _way_ they're going to get something like the importance of history nicely sorted out without first figuring out where they stand on whether there's any such thing as non-relative truth in the first place! So cheers and respect to everyone, I'm just going to stand down and watch how this thread goes now. You guys are great.



Well you did ask for a philosophical argument!

But again, the above isn't quite what I'm saying. I'm not promoting "alternative facts" here at all. I'm not saying that Red is actually Blue, or that 1 is 2. There are, however, many subjective opinions on which people will constantly differ, and will differ quite vehemently over, but which none can prove is true. There is a reason why we have stopped having political discussions on this forum. Just say that you disagree with me over some political decision. Which of us is correct? From our own particular political viewpoints we probably both would be. There is no magic formula that can be used to prove that one of us is correct. These are often arguments of ideology.

Let me put it another way by using the analogy I made earlier:



Dave said:


> ...when people watch Football on TV and there is a goal scored from inside the box, even though it is recorded on TV for all to see and re-watch, then you will still get different views about the match - the referee was blind, the ref is biased or incompetent, the goalkeeper was asleep or incompetent, the striker was on form, the striker was lucky, the manager is at fault - all depending on which team you support.



If the final score in the match is 2-1 then that is an undisputed fact. No one can change that fact. Even if the referee made a poor decision then it is still true that one team won and one team lost. However, that doesn't stop us from arguing that one team 'deserved to win,' or that one team 'played much better,' or over who was the man of the match. Those subjective views may be true, or they may not be.

It is these kind of arguments that historians can and do have frequently, just as we all do.

On the other hand, I have confidence in science and in the scientific method. If I was to propose the hypothesis made above that "Grand Solar Minimums result in civilisations being brought to ruin," then I have absolute confidence that using the historical record and statistical analysis, that I would be able to prove conclusively that this was either true or untrue.

If think that much earlier in this thread, the question set by this thread, "Using Human History as a guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall Into a New Dark Age?" was already answered as a "no." I only entered back into this conversation again because the Robert Harris book that I read actually used this as a premise, but that is obviously a work of fiction, and Richard Harris' views on the subject are no more the truth than anyone else here.


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## BAYLOR

Pandemics could end up. being our downfall.


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## Robert Zwilling

With the number of people on Earth, and the amount of knowledge and materials laying around, we might only fall back to the late 1800s. That seems uncomfortable to us, but back then I don't think people thought things were so uncomfortable. A lot got accomplished. I have an off the wall premise that Earth works as any living body would. The Earth mimics living bodies or living bodies mimic the Earth. Suppose viruses have functions similar to antibodies. The question is, can the Earth sense that the overall well being of the planet's overall life has improved since the virus has been circulating. Would the living Earth system be able to create more virus "antibodies" to keep the environment on a course to benefit the vast majority of life on it by slowing down our activities, putting us back to the late 1800s. Or when the conveyor belts of industry start blasting full strength again, will all this new life have the rug pulled out from underneath it and it disappears again, and everything goes back to normal.


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## -K2-

Robert Zwilling said:


> With the number of people on Earth, and the amount of knowledge and materials laying around, we might only fall back to the late 1800s. That seems uncomfortable to us, but back then I don't think people thought things were so uncomfortable. A lot got accomplished. I have an off the wall premise that Earth works as any living body would. The Earth mimics living bodies or living bodies mimic the Earth. Suppose viruses have functions similar to antibodies. The question is, can the Earth sense that the overall well being of the planet's overall life has improved since the virus has been circulating. Would the living Earth system be able to create more virus "antibodies" to keep the environment on a course to benefit the vast majority of life on it by slowing down our activities, putting us back to the late 1800s. Or when the conveyor belts of industry start blasting full strength again, will all this new life have the rug pulled out from underneath it and it disappears again, and everything goes back to normal.



Just my opinion, but what I'm suggesting in my primary project is that society as we know it--or knew it--can't bear such a roll-back and thrive.

How many folks know how to preserve food without refrigeration? How many people do you know that have the wherewithal to plant/breed, grow/raise, harvest/slaughter, process/butcher, can/preserve their food. Cities were surrounded by farms backed by generations, centuries of experience doing just that. Most people would be horrified if they saw a real country ham, only stored in a cool, dark place, COVERED in thick green mold...Mmmm, it's so good, seriously  Not just subsistence farming--which means most folks would not survive--but enough to supply millions using methods that struggled to do such for thousands.

Fix a shoe? Darn a sock? Mill grain? Take 8-hours to cook a meal? Oh...here's a good one. The average person around us has no concept how to make a fire. You know, the thing cavemen could do. Oh sure, they can make enough smoke with a pile of leaves to engulf the county, but they can't raise a flame out of it that burns instead of just smolders.

No joking, ask the average 20 year old how to change a tire or check their oil. People have no concept of how to maintain things, fix things, let alone make things. Commons skills that most people had until the 1980s. Most people believe you use things till they break or wear out, then buy new. That doesn't fly in 19th Century life. Neither does chucking out--anything--you save every scrap of cloth, wood, metal and so on to have just in case you need it.

The average person today hasn't a clue as to how to dig a ditch without a machine...shovel? That's for dog poo right?

How about basic medicine? My spouse's grandfather one day chewed up a finger in a piece of farm equipment. So, he races to the house, his wife calms herself as he had...what you need to do, and took him out to where she slaughtered chickens. Without debate or needing to think about it, he laid his finger on the stump, she chopped it off back to a good bone, had him dip it in white kerosene (will make it heal over and hair up in a day), wrapped it up and sent him back to the fields as she continued cooking supper.

There's no calling an ambulance or jumping in the car and racing to a hospital 30 miles away to have some specialist poke around and call your insurance company first. You do what you have to do, live with the consequences, and get back to doing what it takes to live another day...or you don't.

That's enough...I could write encyclopedias worth about what you must do, that most people flatly won't do. Today, only the rare few would even try. Everyone else will bow down and give it all up for someone else to do it for them. So, expect the U.S. 2020 330-million to either dwindle to 1900 76 million--or less--or it's the dark ages all over again, most yielding to those who will carry them, the rest overpowered and oppressed by those who will take advantage of it.

Just my opinion...

K2


----------



## Montero

Having done years of 17th century re-enactment, yup. And re-enactment friends of mine have said that their relatives have said, in event of an apocalypse we're coming to live with you - you know what to do.
So western society as we know it would falter, but all countries where there is little reliance on industry most people would survive (apart from lack of imported advanced medicines) and in modern countries everyone like re-enactors, Amish, new ager commune people would do OK. So the human race would continue, just not the ultra-modern bits.


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## Vladd67

Montero said:


> Having done years of 17th century re-enactment, yup. And re-enactment friends of mine have said that their relatives have said, in event of an apocalypse we're coming to live with you - you know what to do.
> So western society as we know it would falter, but all countries where there is little reliance on industry most people would survive (apart from lack of imported advanced medicines) and in modern countries everyone like re-enactors, Amish, new ager commune people would do OK. So the human race would continue, just not the ultra-modern bits.


Some of the living history lot were a little ‘intense’.


----------



## Parson

Montero said:


> So western society as we know it would falter, but all countries where there is little reliance on industry most people would survive (apart from lack of imported advanced medicines) and in modern countries everyone like re-enactors, Amish, new ager commune people would do OK. So the human race would continue, just not the ultra-modern bits.



Indeed. And even here in the very mechanized rural areas there is more than enough expertise to survive on a 1780's life plan. --- But there would be horrific die off in the first years to a decade.


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## Montero

Parson said:


> Indeed. And even here in the very mechanized rural areas there is more than enough expertise to survive on a 1780's life plan. --- But there would be horrific die off in the first years to a decade.


Rats would flourish.


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## Parson

Montero said:


> Rats would flourish.


Indeed they would. Rats are about the most adaptive mammal in the existence. Have a food source? Rats will gladly take advantage of it.


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## BigBadBob141

So take advantage of them, roast rat anyone???


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## Montero

Yeah, that is done. There are even ones farmed.


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## Temperance

Montero said:


> Rats would flourish.


After the Roman withdrawl from Britain - well within a century or so - the rat population collapsed, some species seem to have even become extinct.
They were simply used to feeding on the graneries and human waste, actually having to fend for themselves proved slightly beyond their...capabilities.
Britain simly didn't have the food output, storage and urbanisation to maintain a scavenger species


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## Montero

That's seriously fascinating.


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## Temperance

Montero said:


> That's seriously fascinating.


The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper has some insteresting aspects on just the level of kicking a pre-industrial society can take, and what happens to the local flora and fauna.

The Plague of Cyprian - best guess, a type of Ebola in a society with no concept of germ or virus theory - is particularly scary, where even the legion administration broke down due to the death rate.

And then there are the odd "doesn't translate" plagues, people being suddenly covered in blood and needles...which makes me think of Adam Bakers zombie novels with metal spines growing out of people.


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## Parson

Temperance said:


> the rat population collapsed, some species seem to have even become extinct


Interesting, but I would point out that collapsing is not the same thing as the rats becoming extinct. They adapted, and they thrived again, just not in the same numbers for a long time.


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## Dave

Parson said:


> even here in the very mechanized rural areas there is more than enough expertise to survive on a 1780's life plan.


I would dispute that, not upon their knowledge of farming and expertise, but because of both the amount of trade necessary, and the amount of land under cultivation necessary to achieve a balanced diet, even in the 1780's. There are a lot of people today, especially in post-Carbon Transition groups who promote self-sufficiency and who think we can survive by growing your own in your back garden or allotment. Gardening and growing food are great and should be encouraged. Lowering our food air miles is necessary too, but a family could not live for a year on the food produced from such a small area. The kind of community you describe would need a very large area under production and therefore a population of a village to work the land. Survivors would need to find each other and work together is some kind of structured society, after society had already fallen apart. They would need to exchange their excesses for shortages with nearby other villages doing the same. Even if they were able to trade, they would still have a more limited diet, be subject to famine due to weather and pest events, and possibly be deficient in some vitamins. They would not have access to chemical fertilisers or pesticides and yields would be much lower. They would not have medicines or vitamin supplements. Their health would suffer and their life expectancy fall. Over 90% of people would be employed in agriculture. Even the Mennonites and Amish trade with the outside. The global nature of our current society and our food production cannot be over emphasised.

Therefore, if there is any collapse of society, then I predict that it will be total and catastrophic, and while such collapses of society have in the past been regional, this would be world wide and on a global scale never before witnessed.

There are many theories for the collapse of the Roman Empire. One interesting one is that Lead Acetate, added to sweeten wine, poisoned them. However, whatever the reason. the importance of trade, even to the Roman Empire, is clear from the way that collapsed so suddenly.


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## sknox

The Empire did not collapse suddenly. In the East, it persisted until 1453. Even in the West, the Empire survived in a variety of ways long after Odoacer throttled Romulus Augustulus. At the other extreme, one could make a case that whatever it was after Diocletian, it wasn't the Roman Empire of Trajan or Vespasian. Or, if one is feeling playful, that the Empire never existed at all because Augustus restored the Republic.

The chief problem with all explanations for the "decline and fall of the Roman Empire" is that they all proceed from a false assumption. And they none of them spend much time defining what they mean by the key terms of empire and fall.

Given that there has never been anything like industrialized society, still less a post-industrial one, we can't predict what a collapse would look like (though it does make for fun fiction). But I'll stake my Historian's Gym Card (never used) that whatever happens, it won't go in the direction of anything pre-industrial. It'll be a whole new sort of catastrophe.


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## BAYLOR

sknox said:


> The Empire did not collapse suddenly. In the East, it persisted until 1453. Even in the West, the Empire survived in a variety of ways long after Odoacer throttled Romulus Augustulus. At the other extreme, one could make a case that whatever it was after Diocletian, it wasn't the Roman Empire of Trajan or Vespasian. Or, if one is feeling playful, that the Empire never existed at all because Augustus restored the Republic.
> 
> The chief problem with all explanations for the "decline and fall of the Roman Empire" is that they all proceed from a false assumption. And they none of them spend much time defining what they mean by the key terms of empire and fall.
> 
> Given that there has never been anything like industrialized society, still less a post-industrial one, we can't predict what a collapse would look like (though it does make for fun fiction). But I'll stake my Historian's Gym Card (never used) that whatever happens, it won't go in the direction of anything pre-industrial. It'll be a whole new sort of catastrophe.



Octavian was  one of histories  greatest  PR  con men.  He duped the Roman public into supporting him  by  preserving  the trappings  of the Republic. In reality,  he had no intentions  whosoever of  trying to revive the Republic because he knew the Republic was dead and , he wanted all of the power for himself and his extended family so  he took it.   His Uncle Julius Caesar  thought along similar lines.  Roman fate was largely sealed when she became an Empire.


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## Pyan

BAYLOR said:


> Roman fate was largely sealed when she became an Empire.



With all due respect:
 Roman Republic - *482* years. Roman Empire (to fall of Rome) - *503* years. Roman Empire to fall of Constantinople -* 1,480* years.
In what way was Rome's "fate sealed" by becoming an Empire?


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## sknox

BAYLOR said:


> Roman fate was largely sealed when she became an Empire.



What fate was that?


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## BAYLOR

sknox said:


> What fate was that?



Collapse , break up and disillusion.


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## BAYLOR

pyan said:


> With all due respect:
> Roman Republic - *482* years. Roman Empire (to fall of Rome) - *503* years. Roman Empire to fall of Constantinople -* 1,480* years.
> In what way was Rome's "fate sealed" by becoming an Empire?



With all due respect  do you see a 21st century  Roman  empire/Republic ruling Europe and part of Asia ?  Rome didn't make it to the present day.


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## Dave

sknox said:


> The Empire did not collapse suddenly.


Okay, that was a rather sweeping statement, granted. I was viewing it solely from the point of view of a Roman Briton when asking for military help, which must have had the reply, that the last person should turn out the lights. Yes, it did survive in some form for quite a bit longer, and certainly much longer in the East. Also, I was talking about trade. Without a strong government you can't have the same well maintained roads and defended sea routes.


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## Montero

The routes might not be defended, but I have a faint memory that pre-Roman Britain was regularly trading tin for olive oil, wine and nice pottery and the tin trade was one of the things that brought the Romans to Britain - maybe one of you historians will remember that better than me.
So while the European part of the route was probably defended, how much would the English Channel have been protected? And when were Spain and Gaul romanised?


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## Pyan

BAYLOR said:


> With all due respect  do you see a 21st century  Roman  empire/Republic ruling Europe and part of Asia ?  Rome didn't make it to the present day.


The Romans ruled most of their known world for the best part of two millennia. That's ten times the length of the British Empire, ten times the amount of time the United States has been in existence, and twenty times as long as the USSR lasted. The only comparable civilisation to the Romans for longevity are the Chinese - who, you could argue, with 3,500 years of written history, are unlikely ever to be caught, let alone surpassed.


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## BAYLOR

pyan said:


> The Romans ruled most of their known world for the best part of two millennia. That's ten times the length of the British Empire, ten times the amount of time the United States has been in existence, and twenty time as long as the USSR lasted. The only comparable civilisation to the Romans for longevity are the Chinese - who, you could argue, with 3,500 years of written history, are unlikely ever to be caught, let alone surpassed.



Fair enough.


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## -K2-

I can't speak about Rome or the like. What I can speak on is what I've researched regarding my projects. In my fictional example based on research, hi altitude nuclear airbursts could take down power grids temporarily. Things like your computer, cell phones, even cars would likely not be affected...

But, the worst part is, folks will expect a rapid recovery which will NOT happen. So, they don't plan, and if you don't plan, you run out.

With just-in-time supply chains (as we have seen during the pandemic), since items aren't stockpiled they need to be produced. To be produced a phone call at the least needs to be made and received. The phone and computer itself might work, but the infrastructure doesn't. And, you can't get the infrastructure up until that call is made. Once the call is made, the product needs to be produced...that takes power, people able to get to work, etc., which can't be done until the infrastructure is back up...Catch-22...Naturally, no one is going to produce something unless they're getting paid. But again, without the infrastructure financial services are down.

Okay, let's say they fix 'critical' systems (you know that means from the top down). All the while, most of the population's cold stored food is spoiling. Also, due to the way utilities work, and appliances, they can't cook it...or pump water to wash dishes with, use the toilet, let alone drink. Yes, people have generators...but...they can't get fuel for them and even natural gas companies use electricity to get it there.

So, that means canned goods you can eat cold. Okay, except the stores where you buy them are all blacked out. Besides that, they'll only accept cash...and you can't get cash because all the banks are shut down. Plus, you have to get there, but you'll not be able to get fuel for your car until the power is back. So what happens when people are hungry--or more likely panicked--and there is only a large pane glass window between them and food? After they strip the stores, you're right back to having to make up for the lost product which NOW isn't being manufactured...and won't be for a while as their storage is failing and their raw food materials are spoiling.

So, rather quickly the cities will see chaos as the least composed decide to panic and 'play' anarchy--which it really is because the LE can't keep up operations without fuel and communications.

Rural areas will fare better briefly, but it will be hand-to-mouth. Meaning, kill a pig to eat, and due to the loss of knowledge of how to preserve food, and the inability to 'buy' what is needed to do so, most of that pig goes to waste. Crops and garden stuffs can't be eaten until they ripen, and by that time people again unable to preserve the food will eat what they have and that's it. There will come a point where brood and seed stock is eaten--that means no future crop or livestock--besides the fact as the base of the food chain pyramid, the whole pyramid comes down without it.

Blah, blah, blah...

People go crazy after a week without power. Imagine a month without power, news, fresh food, and no water. Since cell phones and computers don't work, the people will consider them dead, even if they're not. A car without gas is junk. Today electricity is the lifeblood of the civilized world. Without it, it becomes uncivilized.

Mankind got through the dark ages because they had the skills to do so, and could avoid other people who embraced the chaos. In 1086 England had a population of roughly 1.5 million (google). Today the U.K. sits at 68 million, most in urban areas.

Anywho...a month or more without power and you'll see how strong civilization is.

K2


----------



## Parson

Dave said:


> Their health would suffer and their life expectancy fall. Over 90% of people would be employed in agriculture. Even the Mennonites and Amish trade with the outside. The global nature of our current society and our food production cannot be over emphasised.
> 
> Therefore, if there is any collapse of society, then I predict that it will be total and catastrophic, and while such collapses of society have in the past been regional, this would be world wide and on a global scale never before witnessed.



I don't think we disagree at all. Unless you mean that no one survives in mechanized rural areas. There are enough latent skills and knowledge to subsistence farm here, especially where the Mennonites, et. al. are found. But there will be a die off which is a mega superlative of immense. And the first year might mean the end for a lot of rural areas as roving groups of looters come to take what they don't have. But although, those who get past that will have a short and brutish life, they will survive in extremely small numbers.


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## Robert Zwilling

I think there are 2 distinct issues here. One is technology and the second is law and order. The technology is about making things. If you don't know something exists, it is much harder to make it than if you already know what you are trying to do. Because of preknowledge and the tons of stuff that will be laying around, I think 1800's is totally practical. There won't be any smart phones but there could be computers. We could have had computers in the mid 1800's if things had turned out differently. Everything was there to do it. There would definitely be all kinds of spring loaded weapons and gunpowder powered weapons last a very long time. The secret of gunpowder hasn't been a secret for a long time.

Ships didn't disappear with the end of the Roman Empire. The shipping routes changed, the products being shipped around changed, but there was still plenty of activity in the boating world.

It looks like there were millions of people living in Mexico before the Europeans arrived. These were not nomadic groups wandering around but large groups of people dependent on food production operations that went far beyond single family farms. Leisure time back then was not what it is now, time spent by yourself doing nothing could have been a luxury, unlike today where it can be leveraged into gainful employment.

Getting food off the land isn't easy and if you are in a area where it can't be done, you move to an area where it can be done. No more living wherever the hell you feel like living. On the other hand, animal life is pretty resilient if you give it half a chance. Chernobyl has plenty of wildlife living in the areas abandoned by people. There has even been a noticeable increase in wildlife activity because of the dent put into the economy by covid 19. A shut down of the automated features and big power transports would go a long way towards restoring the wildlife populations. Maybe even fish would make a comeback.

This isn't going to happen with only a minor dent in the global population, there will be huge losses. There will be no medical industry. People who can't get their own food are going to be in for very hard times, and probably won't last. Trees will make a comeback at first, but we were doing a pretty good job of ridding the Earth of trees a couple of hundred years ago.

We might even stop slaughtering horses for dog food. Interesting idea, how long will it take for all the food treasures to get used up, things like canned hams. 

Law and order, now that is something that could definitely go back to the stone age.


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## sknox

Spain was held by Rome since the time of Scipio. 3rdc BC. Gaul since the 4thc, but "all Gaul" not until Julius Caesar. 1stc BC.

Trade routes aren't really defended, except at specific points, and routes are (or were) extremely flexible. Sea routes even more so, though ports were certainly defended.


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## sknox

BAYLOR said:


> Collapse , break up and disillusion.


But "collapse" is altogether the wrong word to use. Break up is better because it doesn't imply a time period. The Empire did indeed break up ... over the course of centuries. As for disillusion, that's pretty difficult to demonstrate. Arguments have been made regarding St Augustine, but that can be said about most everything regarding him. Sidonius Apollonarius doesn't sound disillusioned. Procopius? More like cynical than disillusioned. OTOH, Edward Gibbon, most definitely.


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## Pyan

Mmm. Gibbon's views were highly influenced by the extreme anti-Catholic views at the time, not to mention his strong dislike of the Jews, and he wasn't much more tolerant of Islam. In his favour, though, he disliked using secondary and tertiary sources, preferring to go to the originals where possible. A reasonable source, but you always have to remember that he wasn't writing in a vacuum, so to speak.


----------



## Pyan

Montero said:


> The routes might not be defended, but I have a faint memory that pre-Roman Britain was regularly trading tin for olive oil, wine and nice pottery and the tin trade was one of the things that brought the Romans to Britain - maybe one of you historians will remember that better than me.


Yes, tin was traded well before 55BC - it's an essential part of making bronze. There's evidence that wine, iron, olive oil, salt and north-west European coinage was also circulating in Britain before the Romans arrived. It's also possible that as well as the trade across the Channel, there were also visits from Phoenician trading vessels from Tyre and Sidon, at the far end of the Mediterranean in what is now the Lebanon, and Antioch, in modern Turkey. This is a journey of over 5,000 miles, so they must have valued the trade extremely highly...


----------



## Dave

The point (which I was clumsily trying to make) must be - not only do we have enough people who know how to grow food and care for animals, but do we also have enough people who can navigate a sailing boat without GPS or navigation lights from the Lebanon to Cornwall; do we have enough people who can repair boats, or repair roads, or maintain carts and horses; do we have enough people who know how to find tin and mine it, or iron, or salt; or people who can make wine and olive oil? - because without those skills the fall of a civilisation would be necessarily more rapid and longer lasting.

Someone said "books", but you do realise that libraries are closing and books are being digitised. An iPad will be as much use a bicycle is for a fish.

I do agree that it is easier to discover or make something when you know it is possible and have some little idea of how to achieve it, but that could be lost in a generation or two without the thing.


----------



## BAYLOR

sknox said:


> But "collapse" is altogether the wrong word to use. Break up is better because it doesn't imply a time period. The Empire did indeed break up ... over the course of centuries. As for disillusion, that's pretty difficult to demonstrate. Arguments have been made regarding St Augustine, but that can be said about most everything regarding him. Sidonius Apollonarius doesn't sound disillusioned. Procopius? More like cynical than disillusioned. OTOH, Edward Gibbon, most definitely.



I have a bit of soft spot for Rome, always have. I look at Rome and think what might have been.   A part me wishes  that Rome had survived to the present day.  I know in such alt world, I would very likely not exist . But maybe the resulting world ends up a better place then what we have now.


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## Montero

I'm currently watching Walking Britain's Roman Roads and there has been all sorts about what a militaristic society and their love of games in which animals and people are killed for entertainment. Yes, they were impressive, but I'm glad they're not still around. There is still killing of animals for entertainment, plus some killing of people for likewise - usually as a whoopsie for example crashes in motor racing - but at least it isn't mainstream in UK culture anymore to turn out in crowds of thousands to watch deliberately caused death.


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## Robert Zwilling

There are plenty of fire arms from a hundred years ago that still work. I am not talking about ocean liners, billion dollar sport boats, just ordinary boats,  more than likely sailboats made out of wood. All you need is curiosity and you are already half way towards being able to repair things. If you don't have curiosity, a collapsed civilization is probably not easy to navigate. Before they started patenting every idea, new ingenious ways of doing things were freely shared in the original industrial revolution.


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## sknox

Most attention is paid to the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe. There are two other angles one might consider.

One is the Brunner Angle, a term I've just invented as a nod to the novel _Stand on Zanzibar_. There might not be a catastrophe. It might be a slow march into oblivion, with each generation perceptibly worse off, more restricted, less "advanced" than the previous. That hasn't been much explored by SF writers.

The other angle, which is currently nameless, is that there's a catastrophe (within a single generation, say) but what does the world look like a century later? It's usually that everything remains terribly backward, sort of locked where it got left. But a story of how society might put itself back together, and what that society might look like, seems like an interesting avenue for speculation. There's been more done there, especially in short stories. Maybe it should be the Miller Angle, after the author of _A Canticle for Leibowitz_.


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## Pyan

Can't improve on *Earth Abides*, IMHO. Written in 1949, and one of the rare books that you can call an absolute classic with practically no dissent.


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## Montero

So the big differences here are whether your scenario starts with sudden collapse of resources, so population far exceeds the resources, or there is a population collapse, which leads to a resource collapse - but the stockpile of resources will last the much smaller population for a long time.

(Where resource is food, water, medicines etc)


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## -K2-

Montero said:


> So the big differences here are whether your scenario starts with sudden collapse of resources, so population far exceeds the resources, or there is a population collapse, which leads to a resource collapse - but the stockpile of resources will last the much smaller population for a long time.
> 
> (Where resource is food, water, medicines etc)



You're forgetting the greatest resource...

USDA Estimated Energy Daily Sedentary Caloric Intake Requirements:
Age 2-17: Range: F=1,000-1,800, M=1,000-2,400; Mean: F=1,438, M=1,663
Age 18-75: Range: F=1,600-2,000, M=2,000-2,600; Mean: F=1,738, M=2,235
Calc. Mean: <18=1,550, ≥18=1,986; RDCR (*): <18=2,000 ≥18=2,400
Average Caloric Value: 110,000-81,500 calories, calc. avg.: 95,750
Projected Calculated Result: 95,750/2,200 = 43.5 
(*) Recommended Daily Caloric Ration should meet or exceed minimum requirements

_Brought to you by the_ 
*Soylent Corporation*
_Good people make good food._


K2


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## sknox

What interests me is how people adapt. So, yes death and disease and those other two horses as well. But people find ways to lead their lives even in the worst situations. They would still have their stories. They would still build and invent and create. The tools would be different, the goals different, so what they built would be different. That, to me, is much more interesting than how things fall apart in the first place.

Also interesting would be the stories the survivors told each other about the apocalypse itself. I'm thinking of something along the lines of "By the Waters of Babylon" by Stephen Vincent Benet.


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## Joshua Jones

Not to ignore all the discussion before, but I think answering this question requires a definition of what sort of civilization is being considered and what sort of catastrophe is envisioned. "Modern" civilization is not sufficient, because, for example, the United States and Great Britain, while at comparable technological levels, are worlds apart regarding easily exploitable natural resources, available space, proliferation of firearms, etc. Every bit of this is factored into the equation and may dramatically alter the outcome.

Also, it may not be common knowledge, but in the States (and I would presume most modern societies), every unit of government is required to submit an updated disaster plan on a regular basis, which for a city (where I'm most familiar with these plans), is often well over 1000 pages. The scenarios considered in this plans are insane in their specificity and scope. And yes, I know of cities with zombie apocalypse response plans. I really can't get into specifics about these plans, but suffice it to say most every situation outlined in at least the last 5-6 pages is dealt with in this plans.

TBH, though, the really tricky scenario is internal unrest caused by factors outside natural disaster and external attack. This isn't so much because plans aren't made for these scenarios, but that they are routinely ignored by well meaning and/or "well meaning" elected officials who think they know better than their staff. It's actually somewhat funny in a way; when it comes to external forces at work against a community, elected officials rarely step outside the disaster plan, but regarding constituent unrest, they almost always think they know best, and are often wrong. Of course, it becomes markedly less funny when lives and livelihoods are destroyed because of it... 

Ok, moving away from potential social commentary... 

If I were writing a cataclysm, I would go with large asteroid impact or social unrest devolving first to random riots, then organized riots, then open revolution. Those are probably the most difficult scenarios to maintain a functional society, especially if you're in a classically liberal society where the use of force against civilians is done with the greatest of hesitation, and may cause significant defection in the military/police forces. I could see either scenario causing a breakdown of civilization in the States.


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## Temperance

pyan said:


> Can't improve on *Earth Abides*, IMHO. Written in 1949, and one of the rare books that you can call an absolute classic with practically no dissent.


There's an awful lot of Nazi apologism and eugenics in the book though.
The only animals smart enough to avoid overpopulation and the inevitable plague is rats, as they kill the unproductive, the disabled, and genetically (within the understanding of the time) impure.
There's some moral hygiene matched by physical hygiene for good measure.


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## Montero

Yikes. I was going to add that to my to-read list.


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## Dave

Another huge difference with Rome or anytime in the past is that in 2018 it was calculated that 55% of the world's population lived in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. With good infrastructure, cities are an incredibly efficient way to supply people with the food, water, energy, and all the services that they need such as medical help. In a less industrial, more agricultural society then you need the labour spread out, living closer to the land that they work. After some kind of world devastation of the kind we are discussing, where that infrastructure is severely damaged, then such a large proportion of people could not carry on living in cities as they do now. In the news today, after the explosion in Beruit, there are reports of people leaving the city on mass, their apartment blocks devastated, just shells, missing doors and windows. In the post apocalyptic fiction that I've read or watched on TV people often do leave cities for some rural hideaway, but then they also return to pick up tinned food supplies and equipment, or the books of knowledge to repair and renew things. In fiction, outside of nuclear war scenarios, the cities are depicted as largely intact but simply reclaimed by nature. What if the cities were devastated and there was no one to rebuild them? Getting society back on its feet again quickly would then be a very different prospect.


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## sknox

>Getting society back on its feet again 

This is key, I think. The natural impulse for humans after a disaster is to "return to normal" in some fashion. This is well documented with floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. There's often great optimism and determination in the immediate wake.

After a while--years--the reality is far different. Lots of evidence of depression. Many in the younger generation move away. The aid that had poured in for the first year or two dries up. Few communities have "bounced back" twenty years later.

Now, that arc assumes there's "normal" society all around the catastrophe, making it easier for young folk to move out and providing a painful example for those who stay. If the catastrophe is wider, the human dynamic gets more interesting. I think there would still be a sense of determination, or at least resignation (_On the Beach_, _Forge of God, Childhood's End_), in the aftermath and that this would erode over time. New communities would form and these would be rather more isolated than now. I can see varying degrees of success in these communities, especially in the first two generations. But overall, I believe people would come to understand there was no going back, no recovering. There would only be going forward into a new sort of world.

They might still speak in terms of recovering. A frequent phrase in the central Middle Ages was _restoratio et renovatio_--restore and renew. Kings and such still used much of the old Roman vocabulary, but in new ways. They still looked to the ancients as exemplars. Curiously, the fifteenth century was far more enamored of ancient Rome and Greece than was the seventh or eleventh. I could see a post-apocalyptic world doing much the same, cherry-picking the past and profoundly misunderstanding it.

At least in the Middle Ages, they had a common past on which to draw. Our post-modern survivors would, in any surviving library, have access to the entire planet's past. It would be interesting to see how knowledge pre-apocalypse China or Africa might influence post-apocalypse Europe or India.


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## Montero

It would be interesting to study the aftermath of the Medieval black death (not the 17th century one). I remember fragments that it was a game changer because a 1/3 of the population died - so there was a big labour shortage. In England this made for some big social changes as peasants were suddenly a valuable commodity. Not necessarily universally well treated, but the brighter landowners made conditions more welcoming to attract more labour. The historians here probably know more about this.


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## BAYLOR

Montero said:


> It would be interesting to study the aftermath of the Medieval black death (not the 17th century one). I remember fragments that it was a game changer because a 1/3 of the population died - so there was a big labour shortage. In England this made for some big social changes as peasants were suddenly a valuable commodity. Not necessarily universally well treated, but the brighter landowners made conditions more welcoming to attract more labour. The historians here probably know more about this.



It pretty much ended Serfdom.


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## Toby Frost

Someone (Harry Harrison?) once said that it would be reasonably simple to get a country back to the level of the 19th century in the right circumstances, but nearly impossible to get back to the 20th. In _The Day of the Triffids_, John Wyndham makes the point that you need the basics to work properly and deliver in the short-term (to keep everyone alive) before you can support people whose work is geared towards long-term aims (such as scientists).


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## Justin Swanton

One aspect worth considering is whether the catastrophe is natural or man-made. Natural catastrophes in the past that decimated the population had surprisingly little effect on human civilisation: the recurring bouts of _Yersinia pestis_ from Justinian to the Black Death killed millions of people but societal structures remained intact and often grew in sophistication.

Man-made catastrophes however are a different story. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was a paralysis of political and military command, when generals were pitted against emperors in an ongoing cold war that lasted until the end of the West, making the Western Empire incapable of responding effectively to the barbarian threats. The barbarians by and large had no intention of destroying the empire but just wanted their slice of its wealth, which they got with relatively little fuss. Problem is that they didn't know how to maintain the imperial system, so its infrastructure gradually frayed away. One can see exactly the same thing in African states. I grew up in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia. I visited my old junior school, Nettleton, which had been built on the site of an old RAF airfield (the hangar had been converted into the school hall). When I returned the tennis court had rotted away, the swimming pool was empty, and the running track had lost its grass, but everything else, down to the school rules and schedules on the noticeboard, was exactly the same.

I would put my money on a future catastrophe being man-made. It could be of two kinds: in the first scenario fossil fuels run out in the second half of this century and people discover that nothing can replace them. Green energy is cute, but it requires such a massive infrastructure for such relatively little power output that it is not self-sustaining - and the evidence that green energy is a dead end is growing.

The second scenario has a drastic breakdown of confidence in the current political system. The Western Empire went to the wall because the people had absolutely no say in the political system and were passive onlookers, whilst those who did have a say were in it for themselves, having no sense of commitment to keeping the Empire afloat - or rather they may have had some sense of commitment but their primary goal was self-preservation and self-aggrandizement, in that order. They were quite prepared to sacrifice the well-being of the state if that furthered their own ends and by the time they realised the state was going to the wall it was too late.

I see something similar happening today: Western democracy works on live-and-let-live: you do your thing and I'll do mine, and we won't bother each other. But that only works if everyone has the same fundamental moral code - which underpins the laws - in common. Since live-and-let-live makes it impossible to defend any moral code it gradually fades away, and people eventually discover they have nothing in common that can act as a social glue. They lose faith in the system which is supposed to hold society together and begin to turn against each other, and the game is on.

In both of these scenarios the collapse of civilisation takes a little time: there is a downward slide punctuated by attempts to restore things which may result in a temporary improvement, inevitably followed by a further slide, and so on. A few decades to a century or so. What is abundantly clear is that there is no fixing it: people die in millions as the ongoing decay explodes in one crisis after another, and the whole thing only stops when the infrastructure finally stabilises at the pre-industrial levels or when a new political system arises from the ashes of the old. The new system will naturally be far more authoritarian as it has to impose order on chaos. 'Freedom of speech', 'human rights' and all the rest become treason, severely punished. A code of conduct is imposed and woe to anyone who objects to it. Buuuuut.....humanity has survived.


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## Don

BAYLOR said:


> It pretty much ended Serfdom.


Workers held real power for a brief period. At least until the Lord Mayor of the the world's richest square mile put them back into their place.


> Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Labourers could charge more for their work and, in the consequent competition for labour, wages were driven sharply upwards. In turn, the profits of landowners were eroded. The trading, commercial and financial networks in the towns disintegrated.
> 
> The authorities responded to the chaos with emergency legislation; the Ordinance of Labourers was passed in 1349, and the Statute of Labourers in 1351. These attempted to fix wages at pre-plague levels, making it a crime to refuse work or to break an existing contract, imposing fines on those who transgressed.


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## BAYLOR

Don said:


> Workers held real power for a brief period. At least until the Lord Mayor of the the world's richest square mile put them back into their place.



The Peasants got sick of the Status quo.


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## .matthew.

I liked -K2-s input on the survival side of things but people seem to have ignored the human factor in all this. 

As Joshua mentioned, there are plans in place for emergencies (albeit many that assume outside help will be coming). So naturally, everyone will pretty much accept local rule from bureaucrats or other authority figures in the short-term and those who take power are often reluctant to give it up. Now if the national government stepped in they would be all humble and resume their positions as though nothing happened, but how many do you think would call for elections if they were left alone for months or years?

Difficult decisions would have to be made;
"That farm should be taken for the good of the community. The produce now belongs to the people. Of course, we'll pay you when everything is back to normal."
"We can't accept any refugees, we don't have enough food for ourselves. We don't care that they're family."
"Protesting doesn't help anyone. In fact, it hurts the recovery efforts so you'll be punished if you do."
"We can't feed everyone? Who is the least valuable? Us? No, we're necessary to maintain order. How about the elderly?"
"Your child will die without antibiotics? We're sorry, but our supply has nearly run out and we need to save some for... emergencies."

There will be order, of that I have no doubt. After the chaos has subsided and the strong are forcing obedience. We see the same thing even with basic riots, so it'd be much worse when everyone feels threatened and people are being told their families will starve.

Now we'd begin to see a return to an almost feudal society. How would your suffering town respond if another nearby demanded you send them food or other supplies? Maybe they have the 'legal' right to do so by the measure of being the official authority, but that won't make people turn over their last meals. 

Maybe that would lead to caravans sent out to collect what's 'owed', which would lead to skirmishes and raids, possibly even small scale war. Many places would be abandoned to chaos or local rule by any of the national government that survived unless they had the resources to keep them under control. Let's not forget the simmering tensions that exist even in unified nations between different regions, many of whom would whip their people into an independence fervour.

I've run out of time to finish this, so I'll jump onto skills.

Farming will be taught quickly and will be considered important. Other skills not so much as there won't be that much need for them - we have plenty of homes and furniture to last for generations, but food and water are what will cause the problems.

Many studies will be pointless and people who live through all this would be shoehorned into only a few occupations, mostly manual labour.


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## sknox

The Black Death emphatically did not end serfdom. Serfdom as an institution increased after the Black Death in Poland, Hungary, Russia and other lands east of the Elbe River. It was already in decline in the West. There's some evidence the plague may have accelerated the process, but effects were so varied and localized that it's difficult to draw a straight line of cause and effect.

As for the Peasant Revolt in England, that was a reaction to the poll tax and was just one of many such revolts as nobles--especially in France and England--became increasingly demanding and increasingly effective in levying taxes. For structural change, look more to the cities than to the countryside.


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## Robert Zwilling

sknox said:


> but effects were so varied and localized that it's difficult to draw a straight line of cause and effect.


That is the situation in a nutshell. There are no straight lines in the interactions. They swirl around with localized eddy currents, long shots streak out like lightning, stuff lurches, jumps, falls by the way side, sometimes succeeds, sends out ripples that hit or die out or just get ignored. All this is happening in a wave front of time that has no solid dividing line between past and future. It has places lagging the present time, other sections are leading the present time, and the present time front line is wobbling back and forth and up and down, left and right, which ends up marking time as well as progressing through time or regressing.


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## .matthew.

sknox said:


> The Black Death emphatically did not end serfdom.



Wasn't there some law passed to increase the nobles control after peasants started trying to leverage the scarcity?


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## AE35Unit

Quite easily I think


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## sknox

.matthew. said:


> Wasn't there some law passed to increase the nobles control after peasants started trying to leverage the scarcity?


I'm guessing you mean in England. I'm not sure what you mean by increasing control. There were attempts at wage controls, and not only in England, and that was in part a reaction to the population losses. The attempts did not work.

It's worth pointing out that the Peasant Revolt in England came in 1381. The Ciompi Revolt in Florence came around the same time. That's a full 35 years after the Black Death, though only twenty or so after the second outbreak in 1360. The plague recurred throughout the later 1300s, both before and after manifestations of civil unrest.


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## .matthew.

Yup, poorly worded there. I looked it up and I meant the Ordinance of Labourers 1349 which was then followed by the Statute of Labourers in 1351 to enforce the ordinance. Apparently it was pretty much a failure in that regard but it was set out to amongst other things, freeze wages, prices of goods, and prevent poaching of other nobles workers.


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## Montero

.matthew. said:


> Many studies will be pointless and people who live through all this would be shoehorned into only a few occupations, mostly manual labour.



And those who are entertaining, whether story tellers, singers, tumblers - will have just a little extra clout. Travelling entertainers go way back - they are the ones with more record of them. So some studies will have their uses.......


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## MikeAnderson

The way technology has advance all-around, I do not see another Dark Age happening, barring a massive disaster. And even then, with the sheer volume of the human population alone ensures it would not be a long depressive era. However, what I am seeing is a trend with traditional powers making way for a new generation. Let's face it...

-The U.S. and U.K. are in massive declines, and most of the traditional European powers, with the exception of Germany, are non-factors.
-The Russian and Chinese systems are too bloated, and rely too heavily on either force or mass industrial output at the expense of conservation and fiscal responsibility to sustain their models.
-Brazil is probably going to literally burn itself out. They're torching their greatest resource by the square kilometer. I see that country becoming a total disaster in less than 30 years, a No Man's Land the rate they're going.

No, what I see is an era of "smaller is better" powers. look at some of the countries on the rise...

-South Korea, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa.

Smaller, less concerned with external expansion than internal development, do not butt their noses into world affairs. Basically, they're implementing the Swiss model, and it's starting to work. Especially Korea; that nation has evolved quickly, and is become a force.

I see an era of less is more. Not a global Dark Age; merely a massive paradigm shift.


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## .matthew.

Any noticable blanks here are probably from when I realised it was veering into the political, hopefully I got it all out 



MikeAnderson said:


> -The Russian and Chinese systems are too bloated, and rely too heavily on either force or mass industrial output at the expense of conservation and fiscal responsibility to sustain their models.


Not going to speak for Russia, but China is probably in one of the best places in terms of survival. First off they have massive amounts of agricultural land and a ridiculous amount of industrial capacity that would allow them to eat and rebuild, plus like 1.5 billion people... They would have far less trouble dealing with internal unrest than the rest of the world. Remember as well that they've had this total control since the communist party ousted the last government and that was pre 'modern' technology like the internet.



MikeAnderson said:


> -South Korea, Nigeria, Poland, South Africa.


South Korea has benefitted from massive external subsidies given to counter the threat of the north. Also, without the threat of other powers intervening, you can safely assume there would be a conflict there.

Poland gets a good deal of their development from ex-pats who work elsewhere and then bring the money back a few years later. I've worked with several Polish people who have gone on to do that and many more with that stated intention.

Not too sure about Nigeria or South Africa though, so you may be right about them 



MikeAnderson said:


> Basically, they're implementing the Swiss model, and it's starting to work.


The Swiss model is to have the most heavily fortified country on earth with assault weapons in nearly every home. Plus they handle everybody elses dirty money and have historically pandered to outside threats.



MikeAnderson said:


> I see an era of less is more. Not a global Dark Age; merely a massive paradigm shift.


I agree with that, but you also have to remember that almost all the technology we rely on, relies on a great deal of rare earth metals that are mined all over the world. Depending on the disaster, we may see access to these things disappear, along with noticeable shortages of everything from food to everything else.

But... to answer the main question of the thread, I think you're right and it wouldn't be a dark age (as I've argued in another thread). There is simply too much knowledge scattered around for us ever to get too far backwards. We may suffer greatly and be knocked back to a less silicon-based society but most places would survive.


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## AE35Unit

With the way things are here in England at least,  the government continuing to be out of touch with the lives of most people (especially us up north), and with tighter restrictions enforced there could be rioting. Marshall law could be put in place. And very quickly things could descend into chaos, ultimately resulting in a collapse of society. Also if some terrorist organisation were to take it upon themselves to destroy the comms satellites we could easily be plunged into a middle age type form of existence.


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## Narkalui

I started trying to read this thread from the beginning and on page 4 I 'Good Griefed' and skipped to the end. A lot of interesting ideas (and a few scary ones - I'll mention no names). 

Not sure if the point has been made yet on the subject of barter versus continued use of currency in post apocalyptic environment: if before The Fall we've adopted a cashless economy and we're only using credit/debit cards, then after The Fall, it's definitely heading towards barter...


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## -K2-

Narkalui said:


> Not sure if the point has been made yet on the subject of barter versus continued use of currency in post apocalyptic environment: if before The Fall we've adopted a cashless economy and we're only using credit/debit cards, then after The Fall, it's definitely heading towards barter...



I agree 100%. In fact, day 1 no plastic/checks. And soon enough folks will realize cash means nothing. Water/food/bullets, in that order, will become the standard currency. Everything else including services, all barter and trade.

As silly as it may sound, a great business will be using a well drilling truck (gas powered) to punch a well in, with the simple addition of a hand pump or windmill. Then all you have to do is defend it and not get too greedy.

K2


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## Overread

Interestingly coinage has often arisen in many societies as a form of trade superior to bartering, because money is a neutral element to trade. Everyone can want it and everyone can use it. 


Consider if your trade is farmer producing milk from cattle. In general you'll have milk and dairy produce and every so often meat/young cattle to trade. However what if your local smith is lactose intolerant and thus doesn't want your main product? Now you can't trade milk with him and meat is only going to happen infrequently. What do you do - does the smith accept dairy produce and then have to go find someone else to go trade that with for something he wants; or is the farmer going to have to go trade dairy for something the smith wants to then trade with the smith. 

Such systems can get complicated - what if whilst trading for the item the smith wants, the smith finds it in advance and thus no longer requires it. Just how much time can you dedicate to wheeling and dealing in trading away from your main work. 

However if you've traded your dairy for coin all year then you can pay the smith in coin. The smith doesn't need to trade away the coin to make it have value  it already has value. 


I would also say its possible to have a more fixed concept of relative values in relation to coinage, rather than to produce. Relative values vary a lot person to person so its going to be hard to sometimes come to agreements on what is more or less valuable than the other.






I think that its no shock that so many societies developed some form of money or cash which allowed them to help facilitate trading. Of course its not the only form and some societies did develop around herds being the pure value of a person to trade; though one notices that many of those systems often remained locked in a cycle with limited development for a very long time. 

Of course coinage is best used when you've larger social groups; smaller groups are often more dynamic and amenable to more group contributions and have less need to perfectly balance trades in the moment.


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## -K2-

@Overread ; I'd go along with that and agree, except, when people are hungry, thirsty, or desperately need other things, the concept of money and the long term means little. Ultimately it shifts to longer lasting, universally believed things of value. Hence the appeal of gold (which granted, could be viewed as the same). Once the people don't need in the immediate sense, gold--ridiculously--has an appeal over anything used as coinage/currency due to its permanence and universal belief of its value. Even today.

I think for any currency to be embraced by the people, requires leaders of a government they trust to back it...or...some universal agreement by the people which would be a longer time coming.

Just opinion...

K2


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## Narkalui

Take a £1 coin as an example, the actual value of the metal in the coin is less than 50p (I seem to remember reading this somewhere), after The Fall people would clock on to this very quickly. That's even if coins are still in circulation at the time...


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## .matthew.

Yea, plus these days most currency that exists isn't even in a physical form - a lot of 0/1s on a computer. 

As a result, the currency that does exist wouldn't be valued much and you'd need to create an entirely new one, probably on a local level, making trading with neighbours a challenge.

Then you have to remember that currency counterfieting is remarkably easy with the knowledge available today. The 'disaster' whatever it may be might hinder that somewhat but for coinage, you'd only really need a mold and the metals (which would pretty much be how it was made in the first place).

The only way to avoid that would be to use something like gold as K2 mentioned, but what are the chances of there being enough gold floating around to make enough? Plus, even gold coins can be debased by unscrupulous souls 

However, in small communities it would be possible to create a currency and have transactions processed through some sort of local bank, using IOU's and having the bank track everything.


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## -K2-

Narkalui said:


> Take a £1 coin as an example, the actual value of the metal in the coin is less than 50p (I seem to remember reading this somewhere), after The Fall people would clock on to this very quickly. That's even if coins are still in circulation at the time...



Well, worse than that... In our economy that coin might be worth 50p in metal scrap, but what value does it have when you can do nothing with it at all? More so, any work you do to it simply expends the one thing you're struggling for in the first place, food.

@.matthew. ; Just as I mentioned to Narkalui, even gold has zero value when hungry. It's only when you're past that stage--years?--and people's bellies are full enough they can consider luxuries that the appeal of gold catches their eye. Even then, gold only means something to the poor because the wealthy want it. Past filling a tooth, it's worthless in a primitive world.

Learn how to make tire tread sandals  There will be countless tires around, the ground will become more harsh, and once folks bellies are full, they'll kill for shoes and leave the gold ingots lying.

K2


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## .matthew.

@-K2- You'd be surprised what people will do for gold. It has a unique effect on the human mind. No idea why, but it probably has something to do with its warmth and lustre, and the fact it never tarnishes. Also SHINY 

I don't think gold is prevalent enough to be used but due to its already universal value, people would be willing to trade for it and it would be treated as a currency in itself. Technically worthless but people get weird around it.

But yea, as I touched on earlier, the manual and more menial workers will be most in demand, with office staff relegated to the thunder dome... 

After a while, some 'key' trades like cobblers and blacksmiths would come to be highly valued, but as we both seem to agree any initial disaster will kill off a lot of people which will leave a lot of 'salvage' laying around. The dozen of pairs of shoes most people seem to posess will last the survivors many many many years. The same is true for clothes, furniture, and even property.


----------



## BAYLOR

pyan said:


> Can't improve on *Earth Abides*, IMHO. Written in 1949, and one of the rare books that you can call an absolute classic with practically no dissent.



The best  end of civilization novel ever written , powerful, vibrant and poignant .


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## Vertigo

Gold and silver have been used as currency for as long as any kind of records go back at least as far back as the earliest urban civilisation. Hacksilver in particular was long used as currency whereby an agreed sized lump of silver would be hacked off a bigger lump to pay for things. It is not necessary for the metal to have any intrinsic use, only for it to be difficult to acquire and then it's value _in any one location_ will rapidly be determined through barter. Obviously if you are in a location where gold is easier to come by it will have less value with the reverse being true in scarce areas. The only essential for currency is that it is not easily forged and simply going by weight is the simplest form of that - there are issues of purity to be considered but there are ways to test that (was that not supposed to be the origin of Archimdes' original eureka moment).

As @.matthew. suggests, with a much reduced population the amount of scrap available - metal, glass, fabric, plastic, tinned food etc. - would make the transition period for the survivors much less serious. Compared with say bronze age humanity we would have a wealth of steel blades etc. available to us.


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## Overread

Also provided a few libraries survive unburnt and the skill of reading isn't lost; we can jump-start on at least some basic concepts. Heck even just knowing that you can melt rocks to make metals gives you a huge leap forward on the technology tree. The real risk is that you lose understanding and relative understanding of concepts. Even if you've got book after book on computer programming; if there hasn't been a computer for several generations, the information is quite alien even if you still use the language every day. Not to mention that often as not many concepts don't get fully explained in writing. They are filled in by reality, teachers, interaction and the fact that "everyone knows what they are anyway".


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## sknox

I think I said this before, but we're 17 pages along now, so I'll repeat it. We can't fall into another Dark Ages because there was never a first one. That's a construct made by some (rather poor) historians and has long been debunked. 

A catastrophe would be catastrophic, that's about all we can say. We cannot see its shape over on this side of the catastrophe. On the other side, it will all seem inevitable.


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## Overread

Well Native Americans had one. Far as my casual reading recalls the nomadic "Indian" style Native Americans in the northern regions were the left-over survivors of a much more sophisticated and sedentary nation that collapsed. Azteks also crumbled before the Spanish invaded and the plagues they brought which pretty much wiped them out. 

So there is scope for civilisations falling. Perhaps not the romantic take on the Medieval "dark age" style, but there's always been scope for civilisations to crumble and lose knowledge.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan

sknox said:


> We can't fall into another Dark Ages because there was never a first one. That's a construct made by some (rather poor) historians


 I think that's, to some degree, because most historians have a strong pro-Roman bias & the "dark ages" were mainly the European face of the decline of Rome. They have a pro-Roman bias partly because they have a pro Great Big Polity bias. They usually speak of successful conquerors in approving terms. _"King Gobbledygook may have killed all his siblings, imposed a state religion, and tortured his political opponents, but he left the Kingdom of Bumfukistan 5 times the size it was when he assumed the throne."  _As if that were a good thing. 

Most historians tend to be very shallow people. They're either in the trad camp Peter Hoffer calls "consensus" who treat history like they are writing a novel woven of selected facts with "human interest" or they're in the SJW camp he calls "New History" who disguise their own fictions with a pretense of scholarship and physics envy. Serious examinations of causation are rare. Frankly, most of them aren't intellectually equipped for it.

Roman ideas of law were one of the foundations of modern civilization, but much of the more concrete [ahem, literally in some cases] achievement historians faun over can be summed up simply: _"We got really good at stealing sh*t and enslaving people, built an army to do it on a grand scale, stole and enslaved far and wide, brought the swag home and built really nice buildings. Then we kicked back and wrote a lot."_ I'm pretty sure I have ancestors from both sides of the conflict, but I'd rather claim those illiterate, dung footed, German farm boys who whipped Roman ass at Tuetonberg. Historians may claim they helped bring on the "dark ages". Seems to me they ended tyranny.


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## Narkalui

Kings only get to be kings because their ancestors were a bigger bunch of murdering b@st@rds than anyone else. And when they get usurped, deposed or conquered it's not saviour from tyranny it's just replacement by another bunch of murdering b@st@rds.

that's Pratchett via Sam Vimes, not the actual quote but a paraphrase obviously


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## .matthew.

I think sknox is right about it in that society and technology didn't 'devolve' over that period traditionally thought of as the Dark Ages, but we didn't exactly advance much for whatever reason either. Of course, it's all up to interpretation because of the patchiness of records and what dates you use.

I will say that the causation argument is fair though, most history books seem to cover who, what, and when, and neglect the why. However, that is mostly because records get worse the further back you look and it becomes harder to assign motive... especially when the public narrative of events is far from what actually motivates leaders.


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## Venusian Broon

.matthew. said:


> I think sknox is right about it in that society and technology didn't 'devolve' over that period traditionally thought of as the Dark Ages, but we didn't exactly advance much for whatever reason either.



I'd disagree with this statement. Even if we were to just look at Western Europe - the Middle East and the Islamic worlds, to name one area of the globe were going through their golden ages of science, technology, knowledge etc... during these dark ages - there were many advances in Western Europe as society adjusted to different conditions. Just because a famous Roman hadn't written about it in Latin doesn't mean it didn't happen. Agriculture to name one area was essentially booming during the 'dark ages', but there were also advances in lots of other areas - literature, architecture to name two.

I'd argue, although I don't have the data, that the _real _stagnation actually occured earlier in the late Roman period.  Ever growing bureaucracy, vast resources wasted on border wars and outside threats, an ever increasing and vast demand for exotic commodities from the India and the far east, added with an Empire coming off it's apex (why change how you do stuff if the methods that conquered the mediterrean world were so successful?) led to a temporay lack of 'advancement'

Monasticism, that started out as hermits and fanatics shunning society became powerhouses and repositorties of knowledge and practical innovation in many territories after the end of the Western Roman Empire - see Celtic Monasticism for example.


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## Pyan

I'm locking this thread pending discussion with my fellow Moderators, because it may be in breach of the forum rules. The ones relevant to this thread are pretty straight-forward - no politics, no social politics and no religion.


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## Brian G Turner

Re-opened, with a reminder that we don't discuss politics and religion here, after having to remove a couple of posts that tried to.


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## .matthew.

Venusian Broon said:


> Agriculture to name one area was essentially booming during the 'dark ages', but there were also advances in lots of other areas - literature, architecture to name two.


Most of the farming innovation I found (like the three-field system) came about around 1100. That was the first European advance in a long time, with major inventions and innovation occurring either in Islamic Spain (which while technically Europe, was more closely tied to Africa and the Middle-east) and China (China being the major innovator in the millenium before that).

The Italians came up with the concept of zero a little over a hundred years later in around 1202 (as a whole number in of itself and unrelated to an empty space marker like in 1202).

About 30 years after that Germany came up with the buttonhole... so that was useful I guess 

And then we had to wait another 200 for the printing press in the 1430s, which I'd argue helped jump start the following centuries of rapid development which bring shame and the definition of stagnation to the preceeding years.

Basically, not much was discovered or invented during the 'dark age' period that I could find, at least not in Europe which is where it is traditionally talked about. Now I realise dark age is about how few records were kept but I really couldn't find much that we actually did over those centuries (though I'd have probably said it was between 500-1000 rather than reaching all the way into the 1500s.


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## sknox

Few historians use the term Dark Ages, for a couple of generations now. It's not merely an unhelpful term, it leads to a good deal of misunderstandings. Early Middle Ages is more common and more neutral. 

Similarly, few historians speak in terms of "advancement" as a useful historical concept. For one thing, it tends to restrict the conversation to technology or production and so leaves out huge areas of human experience; for another, it tends to proceed from progressivist assumptions that say more about modern times than they do about the Middle Ages.

There's a huge body of literature about the early MA, going back at least half a century. Anyone wishing to know what historians think about the era can easily find more books on the topic than they could read in a decade; Patrick Geary's _Before France and Germany_ is old but still a worthwhile starting point.

Much the same can be said about the decline of Rome. That, too, is a concept rarely voiced, for at least as long (the two--decline and fall, and dark ages--are closely related). Change and transformation are much more useful as a framework for understanding the period. What period? I (and many other historians) would put it between Constantine and Charlemagne--early 4thc to mid 8thc. There has been a great deal of very fine work on those centuries. It's also worth mentioning that the documentary record is fuller than many people suppose.

And I'm not even a specialist in this area. Talk to someone actually working in the field and you will get a much more detailed (and more current) response.


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## Justin Swanton

I agree that calling the post-imperial centuries in Europe 'Dark' is misleading up to a point, but there was a period when the political fragmentation following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire on the death of Louis the Pious in 840 (no more emperor, no more kings even), combined with the assaults of the Vikings, Saracens and Maygars, did make Europe an unpleasant place. There is a sense of chaos - not so much social anarchy (society was stable enough) as Europe being composed of a mosaic of petty political entities that were divided and powerless against foreign predators, at least more powerless than Europe had even been before. The civilisation of Antiquity had also run down by this time. City life had almost completely disappeared by Charlemagne. It is significant that his capitals were country estates. The chapel at Aix was thought to be a notable achievement but it was just a small church, a poor copy of the church of San Vitale in Ravenna (the place of the famous mosaic of Justinian). Illiteracy was almost universal - even Frankish priests often could hardly read enough to perform the sacraments. The Popes were at the mercy of the robber barons of Rome - the Crescentius and Theophylact families that made the Corleones look good - and were regularly poisoned, strangled or suffocated (I think the average reign of a Pope was about a year). It wasn't a brilliant time and began to end only when Otto I rebuilt the Empire in 962 and Hugh Capet founded the French monarchy in 987.

Does any of it apply to the present though? The general lesson seems to be that political fragmentation leads to rivalries and military weakness which in turn opens the door to various forms of brigandage. But would a complete collapse of any central authority be possible nowadays? Seems to me that central authority is only getting stronger and more autocratic.


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## Don

Montero said:


> And those who are entertaining, whether story tellers, singers, tumblers - will have just a little extra clout. Travelling entertainers go way back - they are the ones with more record of them. So some studies will have their uses.......


Didn't medieval minstrels also spy on the side? Or, perhaps, espionage was their primary mission?

The troubadour's life worked out fairly well for Asimov's Mule's empire building.


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## Montero

I think only the posh ones. Your Friday night pub entertainer not so much.


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## sknox

Excellent points, Justin, across the board. I'd point out that most times the phrase "Dark Ages" is used, it's applied to a much greater stretch of time.

I also agree that the century after the division of Charlemagne's empire was chaotic when looked at from the point of view of central authority. But 843 to 962 comes to a grand total of 119 years, which isn't much of an Age. 

My real objection is to the vocabulary of rise and fall, or of progress and regression. The ideas are baked deeply into our historical consciousness, which leads to the conversations such as this one. As if the human experience is best explained as if we were climbing a mountain or rising in a weather balloon. There can only be up or down, and level is merely a precursor to falling. There is only forward, lest we go backward. But the measures of progress are flawed and fuzzy and not especially helpful.

Many of the nobles living at the time, even in the darkest of the dark centuries, would readily call weak central control a good thing. It meant freedom. We moderns see the nation-state as the epitome of political order and then measure all previous forms against that.

So, no. In the event of world catastrophe we won't fall back. We'll fall forward, inventing new woes and recapitulating old ones.

One brilliant vision of the future comes from John Brunner, _Stand on Zanzibar_. That's an example of how we might "fall forward." It envisions a world in which nothing works very well but works just well enough for everyone to continue in various forms of misery. No apocalypse, no dragon lords, just slow rot.


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## Justin Swanton

sknox said:


> One brilliant vision of the future comes from John Brunner, _Stand on Zanzibar_. That's an example of how we might "fall forward." It envisions a world in which nothing works very well but works just well enough for everyone to continue in various forms of misery. No apocalypse, no dragon lords, just slow rot.



You're talking about southern Africa! My family lived through the Zimbabwe economic collapse (eventually making it to South Africa with a carload of kids and luggage and not much else). In South Africa we see the rot progressing steadily. Power cuts are now a way of life. Unemployment was about 30% before the Corona virus epidemic and I believe is floating around 50% now. I meet beggars everywhere - help who I can but you can't help everyone. It's gradually getting harder to live. In the wicked old days whites could afford a house and garden without too much trouble. Today, we have converted our own back garage into a house which is rented, and have subdivided the main house, installing a new shower to create a three-room potential flat for possible future renting. Nobody plans their life too far ahead. The only real plans we have are where to emigrate should everything go belly up. Australia is the first choice, followed by New Zealand, the US, Canada and the UK. If Elon Musk sets up a base on Mars we'll take it. (he'd *better *help out his fellow sah thefficuns!)


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## Robert Zwilling

Justin Swanton said:


> Seems to me that central authority is only getting stronger and more autocratic.


Unless they get too sick to do anything. We may be underestimating how fast our personal situations can change. People who have the bulk of their investments in stocks which is just paper and can become worthless over night don't generally worry about this because it is dreamed that everything propped up by paper can't all fail at the same time. 

Covid is taking its time in getting around and varies in impact, and because of that, the economic damage while large, is not all happening overnight, and can take months to cause drastic change. This generates a false sense of security. There is no reason why the damage can't all be done in a week instead of a year. There is no reason why the symptoms can't all suddenly show up at the end of 4 weeks. People universally subscribe to the idea that if something doesn't happen then everything is pretty much okay, even if people know that something could still happen in the future. More than likely there are a lot of things getting passed around that people encounter everyday that do nothing. 

If a lot of people got incapacitated right away, because of the technological complexity of civilization, and lack of checks and balances, the improperly managed machinery would start doing a lot of severe damage immediately which could reduce central authority's overpowering role back to how far it could physically reach on foot.


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## Justin Swanton

Robert Zwilling said:


> Unless they get too sick to do anything. We may be underestimating how fast our personal situations can change. People who have the bulk of their investments in stocks which is just paper and can become worthless over night don't generally worry about this because it is dreamed that everything propped up by paper can't all fail at the same time.
> 
> Covid is taking its time in getting around and varies in impact, and because of that, the economic damage while large, is not all happening overnight, and can take months to cause drastic change. This generates a false sense of security. There is no reason why the damage can't all be done in a week instead of a year. There is no reason why the symptoms can't all suddenly show up at the end of 4 weeks. People universally subscribe to the idea that if something doesn't happen then everything is pretty much okay, even if people know that something could still happen in the future. More than likely there are a lot of things getting passed around that people encounter everyday that do nothing.
> 
> If a lot of people got incapacitated right away, because of the technological complexity of civilization, and lack of checks and balances, the improperly managed machinery would start doing a lot of severe damage immediately which could reduce central authority's overpowering role back to how far it could physically reach on foot.



My take from history is that natural disasters like plagues do absolutely nothing to overturn a social order. The Black Death killed up to half the population of Europe, but was hardly a blip on European culture other than helping to free many of the peasants who now owned their land but lived pretty much as before (previously they had nearly all been tenants of landowners and had to pay them a tithe from their crops but otherwise were left to their own affairs).

What overturns societies are man-made disasters, the worst being the collapse of a social order, i.e. a previous loyalty to the system is replaced by a sense of every man for himself. This is what destroyed the late Roman Empire: its army remained good but its generals were pitted against the emperor and each other in an ongoing cold war that paralyzed their ability to deal with the barbarian threat.

The second worst is a war, especially a war in which the victors are a free-ranging army of professional soldiers/raiders like Huns and Mongols, rather than a properly structured state.

I would bet on a societal collapse - a loss of confidence in and loyalty to the system, leading to an every-man-for-himself situation in which warlords rise up and wreck the infrastructure, similar to what happened in China in the 1920's and 1930's and Somalia today. This loss of confidence would arise from the collapse of any common moral norms that are necessary to prop up the legal system and glue society together, combined with an economic falling-off prompted by stagnation in technological progress (already a fact since the 1970's) and rising energy prices due to increasing shortages in fossil fuels, shortages that cannot be made up by green energy. Economic collapse accompanied by societal anarchy will result in tens or hundreds of millions of deaths before the situation finally stabilises at something approximating to pre-industrial civilisation, with technology, especially powered technology like transport, becoming a privilege of the few.

Now that's worth a novel...


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## sknox

>Didn't medieval minstrels also spy on the side? 
I don't know of any specific examples. Most minstrels were essentially free agents and so weren't going to be sent *by* anyone. Moreover, for the ones I know about, their goal in life was to gain employment at a noble court, where they would remain. Also, at least a few of the trouibadors were themselves members of the nobility.

But it's a great device for fiction!


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## Montero

Maybe they were traders in gossip - but you'd have to be really careful not to besmirch a potential employer.

On the flip side, I was just picturing a travelling minstrel who was observing the towns, farms, villages as he went past, gathering at least economic data. Then I thought - hang on, a professional musician paying attention to their surroundings rather than thinking about music or practicising their fingering, or doing singing exercises while they walk/ride. Nah.


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## sknox

So, I just said they weren't spied. However, there's another model. Merchants very often would assess conditions in the places to which they traveled. Venice made a whole cottage industry out of this, with merchants or other officials delivering their reports to the Senate. In a similar fashion, the Fugger family (go ahead, snicker) had regular reports from their representatives. (these men were called factors, so they were the Fugger family factors, yes)  Those reports have been collected and translated and provide interesting glimpses into 16thc Europe. They contain a healthy dose of economic reporting mixed with political reporting, as you might imagine, plus the occasional odd gem.

Minstrels, actors, and other disreputable sorts wouldn't necessarily report to anyone, but I could see one of them keeping a diary, or perhaps weaving what they saw/heard/smelled into their performances.


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## Montero

Er no, you didn't quite say they didn't do any spying, you said they were unlikely to be sent out as spies. I was postulating freelance info gathering for purposes of sucking up.

The whole thing about collected reports is fascinating. Are they published anywhere?
I've tried reading Celia Fiennes diary and was bored out of my head.


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## sknox

News And Rumor In Renaissance Europe: The Fugger Newsletters
Stupidly overpriced at Amazon, but readily available through university libraries. Or, once upon a time, in second-hand bookstores.


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## Montero

And it turns out you can get it through the County Library - or at least it is listed in the catalogue. Will see if my order arrives. Thanks.


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## sknox

Fair warning: you may find most of it rather pedestrian. But there are bits and pieces. There are also preserved speeches to the Venetian Senate, but I'm not sure if any have been compiled and published.


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## Montero

Well, I can always quit. 
On the other hand, speaking as a former re-enactor, pedestrian can be fascinating.


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## BAYLOR

One of my best topic thread ever.  Lots of interesting conversation on this one.


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## Montero

So, been dipping into the Fugger Newsletters at random and fascinated by the description of the plans for the wedding of the King of Poland in 1592. The bride was to travel to the wedding in a coach pulled by six white bears and six black bears. I wonder how well that went.


----------



## Justin Swanton

Montero said:


> So, been dipping into the Fugger Newsletters at random and fascinated by the description of the plans for the wedding of the King of Poland in 1592. The bride was to travel to the wedding in a coach pulled by six white bears and six black bears. I wonder how well that went.



Ebony and ivory,
(white is bigger, black is history)
Side by side on my piano keyboard, 
oh Lord, why don't we?


----------



## Montero

Justin Swanton said:


> Ebony and ivory,
> (white is bigger, black is history)
> Side by side on my piano keyboard,
> oh Lord, why don't we?



You totally lost me....  (and that is a friendly emoticon not an "I'm laughing" emoticon..... just in case)


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## Justin Swanton

Montero said:


> You totally lost me....  (and that is a friendly emoticon not an "I'm laughing" emoticon..... just in case)


See here. I just added a bit to the lyrics.


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## sknox

Montero, if you've looked through those entries (and the translated, edited version is but a tiny subset), maybe you can see how blurry was the line between reporting and spying. It was really just information gathering.

Real spying was done by ambassadors, complete with secret (and coded) messages back to the home country, and specific instructions from back home. Donald Queller wrote the classic on this, _The Office of Ambassador in the Middle Ages_. I remember groaning when I found that one on my assigned reading list in grad school, but it was fascinating.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan

sknox said:


> Few historians use the term Dark Ages, for a couple of generations now. It's not merely an unhelpful term, it leads to a good deal of misunderstandings. Early Middle Ages is more common and more neutral.
> 
> Similarly, few historians speak in terms of "advancement" as a useful historical concept. For one thing, it tends to restrict the conversation to technology or production and so leaves out huge areas of human experience; for another, it tends to proceed from progressivist assumptions that say more about modern times than they do about the Middle Ages.
> 
> There's a huge body of literature about the early MA, going back at least half a century. Anyone wishing to know what historians think about the era can easily find more books on the topic than they could read in a decade; Patrick Geary's _Before France and Germany_ is old but still a worthwhile starting point.
> 
> Much the same can be said about the decline of Rome. That, too, is a concept rarely voiced, for at least as long (the two--decline and fall, and dark ages--are closely related). Change and transformation are much more useful as a framework for understanding the period. What period? I (and many other historians) would put it between Constantine and Charlemagne--early 4thc to mid 8thc. There has been a great deal of very fine work on those centuries. It's also worth mentioning that the documentary record is fuller than many people suppose.
> 
> And I'm not even a specialist in this area. Talk to someone actually working in the field and you will get a much more detailed (and more current) response.


I jumped into this thread to more or less support your point that the term "dark ages" was misleading. I'll grant that I'm a contrarian Devil's advocate by reflex, and that you are perhaps reacting to my


Lew Rockwell Fan said:


> Most historians tend to be very shallow people.


[Maybe I'd have emphasized the "most" if I had suspected any were in the house, but I stand by it.]

and/or to my mention of Professor Hoffer, whom a lot of American historians would retroactively abort if they could find a time machine, but still, the *["Trust me, you ignorant peasants. I'm an expert."]* tone of this would provoke an astronaut to defend flat earthism.

The "decline of Rome" is not some silly illusion or "construct" (egad, what a pretentious term) born of distorted ethnocentric or presentist perspective. One may argue about whether it was a good or bad thing, and I lean toward good, and the causes, and I believe in several, including Mises' & some of Gibbon's, but the reality is not realistically disputable. It's objective fact, supportable by many quantifiable metrics. This one for example:





from Graph of the Population of Rome Through History


Look at it. That is a decline. Unambiguously and objectively. You claim that "few historians speak" of it, but "few" is a vague word that I suspects translates "none of the people I like." Certainly the most casual search will show that *many* do employ that term. This guy for example, uses the term freely without apology. You can't dismiss him as second rate, elderly or a hick from flyover country. He's young, well credentialed, and teaches in the belly of the beast of pomo insanity:





						Dennis Campbell | Department of History
					

My area of research is in the history and languages of the ancient Near East. My primary specialization is in the Hittites (ancient Anatolia/Turkey), the Hurrians (northern Mesopotamia, Syria, southeastern Anatolia) and the Urartians (eastern Anatolia). I have also been heavily involved with...




					history.sfsu.edu
				




As much as many hate it, some things are not just matters of perspective. Some things are real, and reality matters.


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## Lew Rockwell Fan

BTW, I shouldn't have let my word pedantry about "dark ages" or "decline" distract me from the actual point of the title question. Darn tootin' [will that pass the cussin' filter?] it could. It looks to me like we are in imminent danger of our Great Filter moment. Not that I expect a sudden catastrophe - more like going too far down the wrong road to turn back and a long, slow and irreversible decline in options. I can't honestly answer the detailed questions of the OP about how, patterns, and signs and so on without treading into forbidden intellectual territory of Things of Which We Must Not Speak, though. So, I'll leave it at that.


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## Robert Zwilling

Coming Dark Ages for continued enlightenment. The decline will probably be in things we don't want to see going away. Other practices that hold things together by keeping them in line will probably get stronger. There will be a great deal of energy expended doing what people will be doing to maintain their situations. Responding to situations will probably be geared towards getting the machine world back on track. So long as there are a lot of people around, protecting property will probably be more important than protecting ordinary people. The weather is going to get tough, but it has been tough before. There will be more people standing around in the mud but there will also be space traffic overhead. More like the way things were set up in medieval times.


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## sknox

A response to the Lew Rockwell fan. First, a big thank you for reminding me about Flandry. Been years.

Second, about that graph. The source is explicit: those figures are about the city of Rome itself. I'd argue that when people speak of the "decline of Rome" they are talking about much more than just the city and certainly are talking about more than mere demographics. Not sure what was the point of invoking an ancient Near East historian.

WRT to few versus many, I ought to have been more precise. If one looks at the current generation of late antique historians, and go back one or even two generations, I believe you will find the term Dark Ages is out of favor and the notion of decline and fall has been deprecated in favor of evolution, change, or other more neutral terms. That said, the phrase and the interpretation it more or less represents is still very much current outside the research specialties, including public schools.


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## Dave

Re: The use of "Dark" as a descriptor.

Are the problems here really those of semantics?

Wasn't the term "dark" used once because scholars actually couldn't see any recorded evidence of civilisation in Great Britain (and these would have all been UK based scholars) after the Romans left Britain, and until works like those of Bede? Since then, we've had the discovery of Sutton Hoo and archaeology itself has moved on quite a lot. However people today use "Dark" not just to mean little or no light, but instead in the way they use it in "Grimdark" and "Dark humour"; sad, without hope, evil and threatening, and just in the same way that people confuse the "great" in "Great Britain" which is concerned with its geographical extent rather than its eminence.

When someone says the "Decline of the Roman Empire" to me, then I naturally think of the Romans leaving Britain, rather than of the sack of Rome. That's very parochial of me, sorry! Elsewhere, the end of the empire was undoubtedly much slower. By the time Rome was sacked it had already been replaced as the capital of the Western Roman Empire, and the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire continued on for another 1,000 years, so you could argue that there was actually no fall. Surely, it is all in the way that you look at things and the words you use to describe them. It doesn't seem worth arguing over.


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## sknox

>It doesn't seem worth arguing over.
Ah, but you aren't a historian challenging or defending an interpretation of an age! <grin> Just about every phrase for every age has been argued over across multiple generations of historians. It makes for fascinating reading if you're in the field, and dreadfully dull reading if you aren't.


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## paeng

Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse | Cathy Alexander and Graham Turner
					

Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander: Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon




					www.theguardian.com


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## BAYLOR

paeng said:


> Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we're nearing collapse | Cathy Alexander and Graham Turner
> 
> 
> Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander: Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.theguardian.com



They're not the first to project collapse.


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## sknox

BAYLOR said:


> They're not the first to project collapse.


Nor will they be the last. Predicting the end of the world, of Civilization As We Know It, is nearly as popular as post analysis of football games.


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## Dave

Quite true. But some of the so-called predictions are nothing of the sort. Just because the Mayan Calendar ended on 21 December 2012, doesn't mean that it predicted the world would end. Every diary I ever owned ended on 31st December that same year. And Nostradamus predictions, like many others, are characteristically vague and open to interpretation.

The Club of Rome's, Limits to Growth predictions are based upon science and economics. And while it may not have been a very rigorous piece of research, the basic premise that unlimited economic growth on a finite planet is impossible cannot be disputed. To argue this further would become political, so I won't, but resources are finite and the environment has already been degraded. The argument can only be regarding the timespan.


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## Robert Zwilling

We passed the point of debate about the climate. People can still argue about who is going to pay for past damages but there is a more immediate cost that needs to be paid now. That is the cost of responding to the effects of everyday weather. People's houses, businesses health, and livelihoods are getting knocked down by various things everyday. The amount of damage done is increasing every week, and the amount of unrepaired damage is also increasing every week. It cost money to put things back up right again, and even more if you want, or more likely need it done right away. Academics aside, it will be the quality and quantity of the response that will determine if we rise or fall.


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## BAYLOR

Time to kick this on back upstairs


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## Pyan

After four months without a post, perhaps it's run its course...


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