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New Scientist 20 Jan 2018

PostPosted: Sun Jan 21, 2018 4:31 pm
by Bruce Mardle
I see the cover story on New Scientist is "The worrying signs that civilisation has started to collapse".
Can't read most of it yet, though, cos my library doesn't have the latest edition (or the 1 before) :(

Re: New Scientist 20 Jan 2018

PostPosted: Mon Feb 15, 2021 7:31 pm
by Dave Z
Dmitry Orlov's essay on Collapse uses the analogy of an aging, deteriorating bridge to illustrate the distinction between declaring with certainty that something will collapse vs when it will.

LINK: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/06/fragility-and-collapse-slowly-at-first.html

So yeah... I think it's very fair to say that Collapse has been underway for quite some time!

Dave Z

Re: New Scientist 20 Jan 2018

PostPosted: Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:41 pm
by tahanson43206
For Dave Z re Collapse scenarios ...

Another way of looking at the current situation (or at any situation at any point in time) is that Entropy is CONSTANTLY at work, trying to tear down whatever humans (or other creatures) try to build.

I have become increasingly aware of entropy as I add years. The home I'm in was built in 1927, and some parts are aging better than others, but there's ** always ** (ie, daily) something that needs repair or inspection.

The human body is self repairing to a point, but there are plenty of subsystems that don't seem to be able to renew.

The recent near death of the United States due to the failure of about 70,000,000 people to grasp the concepts on which the nation was founded is an example of Entropy hard at work trying to destroy social systems.

Upon reflection .... the Nation was founded with an embedded acceptance of human slavery, and the valuing of one person over another due to skin color, so perhaps I have missed the point that the 70,000,000 people were just trying to restore the original flawed concept. In either case, entropy came ** very ** close to pulling the United States down, and the battle to try to salvage the system is very much ** not ** over.

An insight that ** might ** be derived from the recent near collapse of the United States is that a complex social system of human construction can collapse in a single generation.

Small hints of something similar are coming from Russia and even the apparently sturdy mainland China.

(th)