Reddit Reddit reviews Collapse of Complex Societies 1ed (New Studies in Archaeology)

We found 26 Reddit comments about Collapse of Complex Societies 1ed (New Studies in Archaeology). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Ancient Civilizations
Collapse of Complex Societies 1ed (New Studies in Archaeology)
Cambridge University Press
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26 Reddit comments about Collapse of Complex Societies 1ed (New Studies in Archaeology):

u/wes11 · 15 pointsr/AskHistorians

Systems gain in complexity until they are unable to marshall the energy required to maintain themselves. Then they "collapse" into more energy efficient entities.

This book is a fantastic illustration of the answer to your question and uses several different civilizations as case studies: [(http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345043996&sr=8-1&keywords=collapse+complex+societies)]

u/[deleted] · 8 pointsr/collapse

Tainter wrote an excellent book called The Collapse of Complex Societies

u/SophisticatedPeasant · 7 pointsr/collapse

They don't know what they are doing.

They core of the power elite are Religious Fundamentalists.

We had so many close calls, they truly want to usher in the apocalypse via nuclear war or environmental catastrophe.

I absolutely do not buy the "but the .1% have planned this all along, they even created the various recent crises, to include GoM Oil Volcano and Fukushima, they are omnipotent!"

No. They are stupid fucking religious zealots.

This should speak a thousand words:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text

Youre probably spending too much time on the internet. This is a popular, but grossly erroneous meme right now, that the .1% have planned all of this for decades, that it's an extremely sophisticated multi-faceted plan to deal with human overpopulation.

Try reading some conventional literature on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Thy-Will-Done-Rockefeller-Evangelism/dp/0060927232/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1487442325&sr=8-4&keywords=thy+will+be+done

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487444280&sr=8-1&keywords=the+collapse+of+complex+societies

(The .1% of the Mayan Empire managed to trick their subjects into similarly believing that they were in control of things, that they were in direct contact with the Gods and that they could avert crop failure / food shortage by increasing human sacrifice in conjunction with the intensification of monumental architecture, right up until the very end, RE: Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter. I'm sure members of their populace were also subscribing to a similar meme: "No, they have everything under control, they are secretly behind the maize crop failure because they want to satisfy the gods...." some other mumbo jumbo)

The narrative you espouse does nothing but continue to empower the ruling elite. This is the mythos that they wan't you to subscribe to. That THEY, through pure technological ingenuity, have command of the climate and other life-systems on this planet, and that we are powerless, and that they have a grand plan for Humanity.

They don't.

Things are spiraling out of control.

They TRULY believe in a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Read this again and let this sink in, THE CORE OF THE POWER ELITE, THE SHADOW GOVT., BELIEVE IN A LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Truth-Forbidden-Steven-Greer/dp/0967323827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487444452&sr=8-1&keywords=hidden+truth%3A+forbidden+knowledge

And you think they have a handle on what's going on?

I want whatever youre smoking dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjR7AWSmI6o

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/30/president-trumps-right-hand-man-steve-bannon-called-for-christian-holy-war-now-he-is-on-the-national-security-council_partner/

u/mayonesa · 7 pointsr/Republican

>can you please clarify your ideological position

Sure.

I'm a paleoconservative deep ecologist. This means I adhere to the oldest values of American conservatism and pair them with an interest in environmentalism through a more wholesome design of society.

I moderate /r/new_right because the new right ideas are closest to paleoconservatism in some ways. I tried to write a description of new_right that encompassed all of the ideas that the movement has tossed around.

Beyond that, I think politics is a matter of strategies and not collectivist moral decisions, am fond of libertarian-style free market strategies, and take interest in many things, hence the wide diversity of stuff that I post.

I've learned that on Reddit it's important to ask for people to clarify definitions before ever addressing any question using those terms. If you want me to answer any specific questions, we need a clear definition first agreed on by all parties.

I recommend the following books for anyone interesting in post-1970s conservatism beyond the neoconservative sphere:

u/test4702 · 7 pointsr/Futurology

No problem at all. A lot of people disagree with this and fight it, because the implication is that the only real solution to our problem is to force everyone to move towards the equator so they consume less energy for heating/cooling, have less kids, quit driving, basically accept a sort of 2nd-world lifestyle. Obviously this will never happen, I suspect humans will basically keep going down this path until their demise.

Here are a few things I'd recommend on the subject:

http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/09_Energy-Return-on-Investment_R1_012913.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Environment-Power-Society-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0231128878/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=XQGQEPWX5X3VJY0B5S63

This professor writes a lot of good stuff on the subject:

http://www.esf.edu/EFB/hall/#publications

I guess the key concept in what you are asking about, is energy return on energy invested (EROEI). This is imo one of the most important concepts all people need to understand about energy generation. Something is only a resource, if you get more energy out of it, than what you have to put in to extract it. So for example, if it takes a gallon of oil in energy to pump one gallon of oil out of the ground, then that oil in the ground is no longer a resource.

There is a lot of debate about the true EROEI of these different types of energy production. For example this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Spains-Photovoltaic-Revolution-Investment-SpringerBriefs/dp/144199436X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358872742&sr=1-2

In which the authors do a complex analysis on the true EROEI of solar and come up with a much lower return on energy invested than others often claim. They find that in amazingly sunny areas like Spain, the EROEI is only around 2, where in less sunny countries like Germany, it is between 1-1.5, which is absolutely abysmal.

You can see this is already becoming a problem with nuclear, in particular. There have been a few nuclear plants recently that were abandoned halfway through the project, because they blew so far over the budget, and the energy/money they were putting in to build the plant to modern standards, with all of the safety regulations, etc, made it a net loss to finish the plant. So it would never generate anywhere near the energy that it would take society to build it to spec. This will likely be a trend we see as technology gets more and more complex - things just require too much of societies resources to build, to the point that it is a net loss.

Another book on this subject is from Joseph Tainter:

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

...who argues that the reason all societies eventually collapse, is because increasing complexity provides diminishing returns. Eventually things get so complex, that society doesn't have the energy and resources to maintain everything and to keep solving the harder and harder problems that complexity inevitably creates.

u/lukey · 5 pointsr/collapse

Dr. Joseph Tainter has researched this issue!

He's an anthropologist who notably wrote: "The Collapse of Complex Societies."

Jump to this YouTube video to listen to a discussion of this.

u/BrandoTheNinjaMaster · 4 pointsr/collapse
u/Richardcm · 3 pointsr/collapse

Joseph Tainter suggests Rome collapsed because the increasing complexity of the bureaucracy required to organise it couldn't be sustained. Our society does depend on cheap energy; whether it will be the collapse of the energy supply that brings society down, or the collapse of organisation (possibly as a financial collapse, as Nicole Foss suggests) is going to be one of those things that's only obvious after the event.

u/Narrator · 3 pointsr/Economics

A great book if you're interested in this kind of thing is Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter.

u/vakerr · 3 pointsr/DarkEnlightenment

In case you're not aware Tainter has a whole book on this topic.

> looting the stored solar energy of other nations

I think this is being done as well through the dollar. Everybody needs it for trading, and the US gov inflates away their holdings.

> difference between a conservative and a liberal

More often that not the left is destroying order and complexity. In a way that may even be a needed balancing force eliminating fossilized, unnecessary complexity. Except the contemporary left has got way too much power, gone way too far, and for some time it's been destroying desperately needed order and complexity.

I had another thing stuck in my mind. Tainter pointed out how innovation was not typical human behavior, and how there were long periods without any technological change or improvement. At first glance Kurzweils idea of self-reinforcing speedup answers this. But I wonder if there's some other genetic/cultural/energetic influence, some switch that got thrown.

I'd also love to hear Kurzweil and Tainter debate Tainter's point about research picking the lowest fruits and then hitting diminishing returns and slowing down.

u/Hermel · 3 pointsr/TrueReddit

My favorite is The Collapse of Complex Societies by Prof. Tainter. It describes in detail how bureaucracy contributed to the collapse of various ancient empires, e.g. the Roman empire. The main thesis of the book is that bureacracy normally grows and only very rarely and in the face of catastrophic events decreases. And that eventually, every society will collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy.

u/endtimesranter · 3 pointsr/collapse

I'm a determinist - evolution & thermodynamics so the stuff I like best deals with the big picture - Why are humans the way they are?. Most can't deal with it and that's not a choice either.

......

Straw Dogs by John Gray (book)

......

15 Big Ideas From Straw Dogs And John Gray (The Philosopher)

......

https://selfhacked.com/2014/10/07/review-straw-dogs-john-gray/

.....

Adventures In Flatland - 4 Essays by Dave Cohen. Chocked full of links to relevant research that demonstrates the humans are not in control of anything.

......

  1. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland.html

    ......

  2. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland-part-ii.html

    .....

  3. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/11/adventures-in-flatland-part-iii-1.html

    .....

  4. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2017/03/adventures-in-flatland-part-iv.html

    .......

    Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower (2013)

    ......

    https://un-denial.com/denial-2/book/

    ......

    Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid
    discharge of the earth-space battery foretells
    the future of humankind

    .....

    https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pnas-2015-schramski-1508353112.pdf

    .....

    Specific examples - The Collapse of Complex Societies
    by Joseph Tainter

    .....

    https://www.amazon.ca/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Joseph-Tainter/dp/052138673X

    ....

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI

    .....

    There's more, but all that is needed is to understand that the humans are abstract and insatiable reward seekers incapable of turning it off. Nobody's fault, just evolution. Sure there are some who are behaving badly and will cause much harm to others, but that too is part of the human condition. Has always been there and always will. I think that the humans being at there very best could only have ever resulted in stringing out the industrial cancer a handful of decades longer. Seriously, a creature who was ruled by logic would have stopped destroying their life giving and sustaining biosphere a long time ago. Humans are not that creature.
u/chewingofthecud · 3 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

> Does the development of increasingly sophisticated institutional organizational structure within such movements happen to all human institutions whatsoever?

Yes.

> What implications does this have for the capitalism vs socialism debate?

A lot. The long term implications for increasing complexity in social institutions are dire. The most authoritative work I'm aware of on this topic is Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies. The TL;DR is that complexity offers diminishing returns as it scales upward. But scale upward it must; with the necessity to handle complexity better than your competitors (effectively an organizational "arms race"), you've got a recipe for cyclical history.

Neither socialism nor capitalism escapes this problem. However the two have proven variously effective by the way they handle complexity. Capitalism, unafraid of hierarchy, is able to handle it via the mechanism of emergent or spontaneous order which is more in keeping with the way complex systems self-regulate in the natural world. Socialism on the other hand, (wherever and to whatever extent it has been attempted) typically reverts to an ad hoc and hastily cobbled together imposed order when its egalitarianism proves fractious, destabilizing, and unworkable.

EDIT: In case it's of interest, there's a school of thought ("neoreaction") which has spilled alot of virtual ink on the idea of building governance and information structures in parallel to those representing power. See: the true election and the antiversity and the plinth.

u/demoiselle-verte · 2 pointsr/ArtefactPorn

There are a lot of theories on collapse of complex societies which are really interesting archaeologists at the moment, though probably not as interesting as Atlantis myths. The basic principle is that societies have the capacity to be resilient based on how "healthy" their system is - economically, politically, environmentally, etc. When too many of those things are out of whack, they become vulnerable to things like floods and droughts. The 4.2 kiloyear event theory ("Megadrought" theory) is a really interesting and scientifically supported theory, which caused collapses all over the world. Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond are both experts on collapse theory, though their books can get a little depressing at times. Always happy to give recommendations though, people usually only get to see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to archaeology!

u/bogus · 2 pointsr/conspiracy

I am guessing you didn't read the article or any other article on Orlov's blog about the inevitable collapse of empires, so here's a snippet that might give some perspective on your "new things that are so different" statement --
>based on Joseph Tainter’s theory of diminishing returns on complexity—or diminishing returns on empire.

Not "history repeating itself", but a theorem that takes the quantifiable increasing complexity of empires over time and proves that diminishing returns on investment (in the empire) will inevitably lead to collapse.

This premise is not about history repeating itself, but rather about a overwhelming likelihood that the mathematics of complexity will precipitate a collapse.

I haven't read Tainter’s book but you might want to pony up $44 and give it a read:
>http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

u/GadsdenPatriot1776 · 2 pointsr/collapse

Personally, I think the American Empire is declining. Sir John Glubb had a wonderful write up of this, and I have copied his conclusion below. The full PDF can be found here and it is only 27 pages long.

Glubb looked at eleven empires over the course of history. I copied a relevant summary from the end. The pdf is online here.

> As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.

> (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.

> (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.

> (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?

> (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great
nations seem to be:

> The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

> The Age of Conquests

> The Age of Commerce

> The Age of Affluence

> The Age of Intellect

> The Age of Decadence.

> (e) Decadence is marked by:

> Defensiveness

> Pessimism

> Materialism

> Frivolity

> An influx of foreigners

> The Welfare State

> A weakening of religion.

> (f) Decadence is due to:

> Too long a period of wealth and power

> Selfishness

> Love of money

> The loss of a sense of duty.

> (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

> (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.

> (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.

The real question is how technology will either speed up, slow down. or prevent the same thing from happening to America.

I also recommend the following books:

The Collapse of Complex Societies, By Joseph Tainter

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, By Jared Diamond

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change

Finally, when it comes to survival information, I highly recommend www.survivalblog.com. To me, they are the best of the best.

I also would like to plug Radio Free Redoubt (podcast) as well as AmRRON (American Redoubt Radio Operator's Network).

u/bbartlog · 2 pointsr/worldnews

Shitty book. Diamond tells some stories that are poorly supported by archaeological evidence in order to support his foregone conclusions. A better book on the same topic is http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X

u/Numero34 · 2 pointsr/metacanada

Yeah.

There's actually a book on this topic, iirc it was called Demosclerosis, and it was supposedly (haven't read it myself) how civilizations fail as government becomes more complex because of continued expansion, which ultimately results in an inability to respond to a disaster situation, eg economic, natural, etc., when they arise, resulting in the destruction of that civilization. Or something to that effect.

https://www.amazon.ca/Demosclerosis-Silent-Killer-American-Government/dp/0812926323/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474740487&sr=8-1&keywords=demosclerosis

Actually, I think it may be this book The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter

Also the effect of creating an irrelevant barrier to entry for other businesses to meet the demand for said business.

Typical prog-think though.

u/Bloaf · 2 pointsr/preppers

If the coin flip wasn't chaotic, no one would use it as an example of randomness. The question, which I think is not nearly so clear, is whether or not the "potential war event" we're thinking about is that strongly affected by such waves of change. Are we obsessed about the chaotic nature of the ripples and waves in a pot, but asking about the likelihood of the pot freezing? There are people who do believe that there is a kind of civilizational thermodynamics at play underneath the chaotic particulars, which means that at least some kinds of societal turmoil ignore these day-to-day crises.

u/Blindweb · 1 pointr/taoism

Speaking of Archaeology... The future will be dominated by conservatives - The Collapse of Complex Societies. We're already on the downslope of industiral society.

u/EntropyAnimals · 1 pointr/collapse

I don't know if these are essential, but I have Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies and Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind, but I can't comment on the quality of scholarship in these books. I'm at the mercy of their perspectives. Also, we're not "too smart for our own good". We're just smart enough to be incredibly stupid.

u/boob123456789 · 1 pointr/collapse

Collapse = A society can be said to collapse when it undergoes a rapid and substantial loss of an established level of socio-political complexity. This, according to Tainter, is always a political process. It stems from the destruction and decay of social organisations and institutions. He gives a list of the kinds of things you can expect to see less of in a society undergoing collapse. These include: less social stratification and differentiation, less economic specialisation, less centralised control, less trading and economic activity and less production of ‘cultural epiphenomena’ such as monuments, buildings, and artworks (Tainter 1988, 4)

​

It's not my definition twit. It's the definition according to Joseph Tainter which any collapser worth their salt would fucking know. I'm done here. Go somewhere else, you do not belong. You don't even know the definition of this place.

u/traumazein · 1 pointr/collapse

Read Tainter on the Collapse of Complex Societies, and then come back here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Joseph-Tainter/dp/052138673X

u/slomo68 · 0 pointsr/MensRights

Not entirely true... Read Tainter's _Collapse_of_ComplexSocieties for (in my view) a more nuanced explanation. Tainter's argument is basically that societies collapse when their investments in marginal complexity become more costly than their benefits. In Rome's case, the investments in hierarchy and military power paid off when Rome was able to expand its territory and loot vassal states, but when the frontier was sufficiently remote and poor, the benefits did not justify the costs. At that point, the Roman empire "collapsed", in the sense that its political structure dropped down to a level of complexity that matched its needs.