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Anyone have an argument (or the argument Tainter provides) for whether the "trick" that a civilization exploits has to be (1) singular, (2) original, or (3) not

Anyone have an argument (or the argument Tainter provides) for whether the "trick" that a civilization exploits has to be (1) singular, (2) original, or (3) not exploitable by contemporary civilizations? And who wants to chime in their two cents about what the USA's "trick" is in maintaining its global pre-eminence?

dredmorbius 10y ago
The trick isn't necessarily singular. Tainter's argument is actually that what happens is complexity (roughly: technology, though it's a bit more involved than that -- enumerable parts with distinct structures is a good first approximation) increases because it solves problems. The second order problem is that that complexity itself has a cost, and perhaps an accruing technical debt. When you reach the point of not being able to pay those, not only do you lose the complexity incurred but its capabilities -- you're in a worse hole than you started from. On the question of whether there's a singular trick that's exploited, I'm not aware of anything in Tainter's writing that suggests this at all. There is the concept of Leibig's Law of the Minimum -- the idea that for any system (Leibig is speaking of ecosystems or populations) there's some one factor which imposes a constraint on the system. In that regard, you could could likely look at a single technology which is the operative constraint. But if you're looking at a complex system with multiple modes of failure, you'd be arguing precisely the opposite: that there are multiple technological tricks which aren't presently binding constraints but which, if any one of them failed, would rapidly become one. There's no basis that the trick need be unique. I'd argue that they're anything but. Basic modalities include agriculture, construction, fire, transport, arms or weapons, and control over hygiene factors. The United States' trick was in large part massive overwhelming self-sufficiency in resources, most especially energy. See Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History, Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power: How energy forges human history, or Robert Ayres, The Economic Growth Engine: How energy and work drive material prosperity. http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/30398523 http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/3... http://www.worldcat.org/title/sources-of-power-how-energy-forges-human-history/oclc/615587426 http://www.worldcat.org/title/sources-of-power-how-energy-fo... http://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-growth-engine-how-energy-and-work-drive-material-prosperity/oclc/320022081 http://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-growth-engine-how-ene...

dredmorbius 10y ago

The trick isn't necessarily singular. Tainter's argument is actually that what happens is complexity (roughly: technology, though it's a bit more involved than that -- enumerable parts with distinct structures is a good first approximation) increases because it solves problems. The second order problem is that that complexity itself has a cost, and perhaps an accruing technical debt. When you reach the point of not being able to pay those, not only do you lose the complexity incurred but its capabilities -- you're in a worse hole than you started from. On the question of whether there's a singular trick that's exploited, I'm not aware of anything in Tainter's writing that suggests this at all. There is the concept of Leibig's Law of the Minimum -- the idea that for any system (Leibig is speaking of ecosystems or populations) there's some one factor which imposes a constraint on the system. In that regard, you could could likely look at a single technology which is the operative constraint. But if you're looking at a complex system with multiple modes of failure, you'd be arguing precisely the opposite: that there are multiple technological tricks which aren't presently binding constraints but which, if any one of them failed, would rapidly become one. There's no basis that the trick need be unique. I'd argue that they're anything but. Basic modalities include agriculture, construction, fire, transport, arms or weapons, and control over hygiene factors. The United States' trick was in large part massive overwhelming self-sufficiency in resources, most especially energy. See Vaclav Smil, Energy in World History, Manfred Weissenbacher, Sources of Power: How energy forges human history, or Robert Ayres, The Economic Growth Engine: How energy and work drive material prosperity. http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/30398523 http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-in-world-history/oclc/3... http://www.worldcat.org/title/sources-of-power-how-energy-forges-human-history/oclc/615587426 http://www.worldcat.org/title/sources-of-power-how-energy-fo... http://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-growth-engine-how-energy-and-work-drive-material-prosperity/oclc/320022081 http://www.worldcat.org/title/economic-growth-engine-how-ene...