The first issue is that my question was whether civilizations collapse—in the sense that the system collapses to the point where large portions die—infrequently or very infrequently. The argument is that conquered civilizations are “missing data” in that it seems very likely that an unstable or otherwise damaged society that has a higher chance of collapse, whether due to invasion or to other factors, also has a higher chance of being supplanted rather than us seeing a collapse. So I noted that we have data missing in a way that introduces a bias.
The second issue is what a collapse would look like and involve. Because civilization is more tightly interconnected, many types of collapse would be universal, rather than local. (See both Bostrom’s Vulnerable world paper and my Fragile world paper for examples of how technology could lead to that occurring.) Great power wars could trigger or accelerate such a collapse, but they wouldn’t lead to decoupled sociotechnical systems, or any plausible scenarios that would allow a winner to replace the loser.
So I noted that we have data missing in a way that introduces a bias.
Hmm, I don’t know. I think I get what you’re saying, but it feels analogous to saying “If no one died in car accidents, more people would die of heart attacks. So we have data missing in a way that introduces a bias. So the real risk of heart attacks is higher than it might seem based on historical data.”
I think that’strue if we expect car accidents to become less common. E.g., now that I think about it, this may be the case in the real world over the coming decades, as self-driving cars become more common. (I now expect heart attack rates to maybe decline for other reasons, but to be pushed up by the reduced frequency of car accident deaths, such that the risk is higher than it might otherwise seem.)
But I think that the above statements aren’t true if we don’t expect car accidents to become less common.
So I’d want to say something like “There was a factor that reduced the risk of collapses in the past—namely, conquest pre-empting the collapse of weak states. And this factor may not hold in the present or future. This means the risk of collapse in future may be higher than one would think if one ignored this fact.”
That phrasing more accurate/clear to me than saying there’s “missing data” or a bias”.
Does my suggested statement still sound like it matches your idea? And does my reason for finding your phrasing strange seem reasonable to you?
Yes, that seems clearer and accurate—but I think it’s clear that the types of external societies that are developing independently and are able to mount an attack, as occurred for Greece, Rome, when Ghengis Khan invaded Europe, etc. That means that in my view the key source of external pressure to topple a teetering system that does not exist now, rather than competition between peer nations. That seems a bit more like what I think of as inducing a bias, but your point is still well taken.
Yeah, I think I now understand your point, and that it updates me towards thinking collapse is now likelier than one might think, based on historical base rates, if one was ignoring this argument.
Though I’d also maybe say “There was a factor that increased the risk of collapses in the past—namely, external invasions or raids weakening states, and contributing to their collapse (not counting cases in which the states were “conquered”). And this factor is probably less likely in the present and future, as the rate of invasions and raids has declined and the world has become more unified. This means the risk of collapse in future may be lower than one would think if one ignored this fact.”
And at first glance, that effect seems like it could easily be stronger than the other one.
So overall, it seems like changes with respect to “conquests, invasions, and raids” (taken together) could easily have decreased rather than increased the chance of collapse. Which made it feel a bit odd to me that you highlighted one side of that story, but not the other.
Yes, and I would include a significant discussion of this in a longer version of this post, or a paper. However, I think we mostly disagree about what people’s priors or prior models were in choosing what to highlight. (I see no-one using historical records of invasions / conquered nations independent of when it contributed to a later collapse, as relevant to discussions of collapse.)
Great power wars could trigger or accelerate such a collapse, but they wouldn’t lead to decoupled sociotechnical systems, or any plausible scenarios that would allow a winner to replace the loser.
What do you mean by saying “they wouldn’t lead to [...] any plausible scenarios that would allow a winner to replace the loser”? E.g., if there was a war between China and the US, couldn’t China replace the US as the dominant power?
FWIW, I agree with the following statement:
Because civilization is more tightly interconnected, many types of collapse would be universal, rather than local.
(Though I don’t feel highly confident about whether the net effect of increased interconnectedness—and the things that go along with it—on the chance of universal collapse is positive or negative, at least when one considers other things that tend to go along with increased interconnectedness.)
China could replace the US as a dominant power, but they wouldn’t actually take over the US the way nations used to conquer and replace the culture of other countries.
And I agree that it’s not obvious that interconnection on net increases fragility, but I think that it’s clear, as I argued in the paper, that technology which creates the connection is fragile, and getting more so.
they wouldn’t actually take over the US the way nations used to conquer and replace the culture of other countries.
I do think this is much less likely now than it was in the past.
Though at first glance, the “wouldn’t” feels a bit strong. (Though I think I know much less about both geopolitics and forecasting than you do.)
Do you mean something like “Conditional on a hot war between China and the US with military actions on at least one of those countries’ mainland territories (not just e.g. sea battles), and conditional on China clearly winning, the chance China would actually then administer the US as an annexed territory is <x%”? Or were you thinking about not just annexation but also a massive shift in US “culture” towards Chinese “culture”?
And roughly what x did you have in mind? E.g., 50%? 1%?
I’d be comfortable with 1% - I’d take a bet at 100:1 conditional on land warfare in China or the US with a clear victor, they winner still would at the most extreme, restore a modified modern national government controlled by citizens that had heavy restrictions on what it was allowed to do, following the post-WWII model in Japan and Germany. (I’d take the bet, but in that case, I wouldn’t expect both parties to survive to collect on the bet, whichever way it ends.)
That’s because the post-WWII international system is built with structures that almost entirely prevent wars of conquest, and while I don’t see that system as being strong, I also don’t think the weaknesses are ones leading to those norms breaking down.
But maybe, despite sticking to my earlier claim, the post-WWII replacement of Japan’s emperor with a democracy is exactly the class of case we should be discussing as an example relevant to the more general question of whether civilizations are conquered rather than collapse. And the same logic would apply to Iraq, and other nations the US “helped” along the road to democracy, since they were at least occasionally—though by no means always—failing states. And Iraq was near collapse because of conflict with Iran and sanctions, not because of internal decay. (I’m less knowledgeable about the stability of Japanese culture pre-WWII.)
The first issue is that my question was whether civilizations collapse—in the sense that the system collapses to the point where large portions die—infrequently or very infrequently. The argument is that conquered civilizations are “missing data” in that it seems very likely that an unstable or otherwise damaged society that has a higher chance of collapse, whether due to invasion or to other factors, also has a higher chance of being supplanted rather than us seeing a collapse. So I noted that we have data missing in a way that introduces a bias.
The second issue is what a collapse would look like and involve. Because civilization is more tightly interconnected, many types of collapse would be universal, rather than local. (See both Bostrom’s Vulnerable world paper and my Fragile world paper for examples of how technology could lead to that occurring.) Great power wars could trigger or accelerate such a collapse, but they wouldn’t lead to decoupled sociotechnical systems, or any plausible scenarios that would allow a winner to replace the loser.
Does that make sense?
Hmm, I don’t know. I think I get what you’re saying, but it feels analogous to saying “If no one died in car accidents, more people would die of heart attacks. So we have data missing in a way that introduces a bias. So the real risk of heart attacks is higher than it might seem based on historical data.”
I think that’s true if we expect car accidents to become less common. E.g., now that I think about it, this may be the case in the real world over the coming decades, as self-driving cars become more common. (I now expect heart attack rates to maybe decline for other reasons, but to be pushed up by the reduced frequency of car accident deaths, such that the risk is higher than it might otherwise seem.)
But I think that the above statements aren’t true if we don’t expect car accidents to become less common.
So I’d want to say something like “There was a factor that reduced the risk of collapses in the past—namely, conquest pre-empting the collapse of weak states. And this factor may not hold in the present or future. This means the risk of collapse in future may be higher than one would think if one ignored this fact.”
That phrasing more accurate/clear to me than saying there’s “missing data” or a bias”.
Does my suggested statement still sound like it matches your idea? And does my reason for finding your phrasing strange seem reasonable to you?
Yes, that seems clearer and accurate—but I think it’s clear that the types of external societies that are developing independently and are able to mount an attack, as occurred for Greece, Rome, when Ghengis Khan invaded Europe, etc. That means that in my view the key source of external pressure to topple a teetering system that does not exist now, rather than competition between peer nations. That seems a bit more like what I think of as inducing a bias, but your point is still well taken.
Yeah, I think I now understand your point, and that it updates me towards thinking collapse is now likelier than one might think, based on historical base rates, if one was ignoring this argument.
Though I’d also maybe say “There was a factor that increased the risk of collapses in the past—namely, external invasions or raids weakening states, and contributing to their collapse (not counting cases in which the states were “conquered”). And this factor is probably less likely in the present and future, as the rate of invasions and raids has declined and the world has become more unified. This means the risk of collapse in future may be lower than one would think if one ignored this fact.”
And at first glance, that effect seems like it could easily be stronger than the other one.
So overall, it seems like changes with respect to “conquests, invasions, and raids” (taken together) could easily have decreased rather than increased the chance of collapse. Which made it feel a bit odd to me that you highlighted one side of that story, but not the other.
Does that make sense?
Yes, and I would include a significant discussion of this in a longer version of this post, or a paper. However, I think we mostly disagree about what people’s priors or prior models were in choosing what to highlight. (I see no-one using historical records of invasions / conquered nations independent of when it contributed to a later collapse, as relevant to discussions of collapse.)
What do you mean by saying “they wouldn’t lead to [...] any plausible scenarios that would allow a winner to replace the loser”? E.g., if there was a war between China and the US, couldn’t China replace the US as the dominant power?
FWIW, I agree with the following statement:
(Though I don’t feel highly confident about whether the net effect of increased interconnectedness—and the things that go along with it—on the chance of universal collapse is positive or negative, at least when one considers other things that tend to go along with increased interconnectedness.)
China could replace the US as a dominant power, but they wouldn’t actually take over the US the way nations used to conquer and replace the culture of other countries.
And I agree that it’s not obvious that interconnection on net increases fragility, but I think that it’s clear, as I argued in the paper, that technology which creates the connection is fragile, and getting more so.
I do think this is much less likely now than it was in the past.
Though at first glance, the “wouldn’t” feels a bit strong. (Though I think I know much less about both geopolitics and forecasting than you do.)
Do you mean something like “Conditional on a hot war between China and the US with military actions on at least one of those countries’ mainland territories (not just e.g. sea battles), and conditional on China clearly winning, the chance China would actually then administer the US as an annexed territory is <x%”? Or were you thinking about not just annexation but also a massive shift in US “culture” towards Chinese “culture”?
And roughly what x did you have in mind? E.g., 50%? 1%?
I’d be comfortable with 1% - I’d take a bet at 100:1 conditional on land warfare in China or the US with a clear victor, they winner still would at the most extreme, restore a modified modern national government controlled by citizens that had heavy restrictions on what it was allowed to do, following the post-WWII model in Japan and Germany. (I’d take the bet, but in that case, I wouldn’t expect both parties to survive to collect on the bet, whichever way it ends.)
That’s because the post-WWII international system is built with structures that almost entirely prevent wars of conquest, and while I don’t see that system as being strong, I also don’t think the weaknesses are ones leading to those norms breaking down.
But maybe, despite sticking to my earlier claim, the post-WWII replacement of Japan’s emperor with a democracy is exactly the class of case we should be discussing as an example relevant to the more general question of whether civilizations are conquered rather than collapse. And the same logic would apply to Iraq, and other nations the US “helped” along the road to democracy, since they were at least occasionally—though by no means always—failing states. And Iraq was near collapse because of conflict with Iran and sanctions, not because of internal decay. (I’m less knowledgeable about the stability of Japanese culture pre-WWII.)
Interesting, thanks for the response :)