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Size and complexity shouldn't be confused. Often large size necessitates simpler policies and procedures. I happen to be rereading Gibbon right now. He doesn't

Size and complexity shouldn't be confused. Often large size necessitates simpler policies and procedures. I happen to be rereading Gibbon right now. He doesn't focus in on complexity, he contradicts it - pinpointing Constantine's crude-but-effective solution to constant rebellions and civil wars as the cause of the slow collapse: namely stationing perhaps two-thirds of Rome's military permanently in the cities with independent commands (the "palantines".) This prevented the regular barbarian-fighting armies (the "Borderers") and their commanders from rebelling successfully because they were now a relatively small military minority that would have to fight city after city - even in their own area - just to usurp power locally. But, with one hand tied behind its back, Rome's fall was inevitable from that point on. This "prepared the ruin of the Empire" in Gibbon's words. (But it was, arguably necessary, rebellion and civil war were incredibly frequent before that decision was taken.) Size (and inequality) had undermined solidarity across the empire, not complexity. Diversity isn't exactly complexity. Keeping large groups together is hard, and the traditional pagan religion had lost most of its force well before Christianity came along; soldiers were no longer too afraid of the Gods to break a solemn oath in order to join a local rebellion under their particular commander. Most people's religion, particularly in the upper classes, had become much simpler - they really didn't have any. It's possible to see this inexorable tendency toward rebellion as a result of Augustus' previous simplification long before; when drafting soldiers became too complex and unpopular, he ended conscription. This set up the situation in which soldiers became more loyal to their commanders, and themselves, than to the official emperor in Rome. Looking at other societies, from other books, local chiefs and individuals slowly learned how to undercut central authority, in particular, slowly starving the center of revenues. Deviousness and a growing culture of tax-cheating and avoidance. It ain't that hard to keep things together if you have the money.

smallnamespace 9y ago
The complexity that is being referred to is social and administrative complexity, the huge military upkeep being a side effect of that. A simple policy can still reflect a highly complex, expensive form of social organization. It's rather hard to argue that stationing massive garrisons throughout an empire is not a massive exercise in social complexity and organization. > Diversity isn't exactly complexity. Keeping large groups together is hard, It's difficult to argue that late Imperial Rome, with its multiple levels of bureaucracies, military and civilian, a nascent Church, along with large standing garrisons wasn't far more socially and economically complex than the societies of the invading barbarians. And all that complexity went exactly towards 'keeping large groups together' without the benefit of a unified ethnicity or other identity. But note that in earlier times, Rome's technological and social complexity was able to pay for itself and then some: it was able to field and man large military organizations, and the complexity brought in a profit by conquest and war booty. In other words, size was a logical end result to earlier complexity: in order to keep the system running, Rome had to continue to grow. Unfortunately, Rome ran out of rich easily-conquered lands and its inefficient (and complex) economy could not make the economic transition (unlike the Eastern Empire, which had richer and more densely populated lands). Your example of stationing two-thirds of a massive standing army just to keep order is an example of just how inefficient the late Western Imperial economy must have been, and why it fell against barbarian groups that had much simpler, flatter social hierarchies based on ethnic kinship and trust.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Much conflation of size and complexity, here, once again. And you seem to merely elide my points. The size of the Roman army allowed a remarkable degree of standardization in the tools of war, and training. That's not complexity. Roman society hadn't gotten poorer; but it had gotten less cohesive, fewer were ready to sacrifice for the whole.
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    Size automatically required large amounts of social complexity in the days of Rome, especially if you measure complexity in the actual cost it took to hold Rome together. I'll remind you that the contemporaneous Chinese Han dynasty also evolved into a large militarized, centralized bureaucratic state despite the wide differences in geography and developmental path, and faced very similar problems of replacing conscripts with professional soldiers and then keeping them loyal. What forced them to have similar organization was their sheer size and the organizational pressures this caused.
    - Nomentatus 9y ago
      But I started with a profound example of the reverse. Cost is size, not complexity. There were considerable savings due to scale in Rome, including assembly lines for manufacturing amphora, etc. Re China you give another example of size creating simplicity and standardization. In contrast to your first paragraph.
      - smallnamespace 9y ago
        > Cost is size, not complexity. You're narrowly defining 'complexity' as only 'complexity of procedure' and completely ignoring social complexity and specialization. How about you justify why only the single measure of 'complexity' is sufficient for our discussion? A few direct responses to your example: 1. Standardization may save costs overall, but they represent a form of social complexity (you now have specialized bureaucrats and administrators to determine standards and communicate with troops, weapons must move a long way to supply every legion, training is now done in a centralized fashion) 2. This social complexity adds fragility to the system—if your army depends on having standardized gear to function properly, and barbarians capture your centralized workshops, then all of a sudden you lose the ability to equip the troops effectively; barbarians don't have that problem 3. It's not even clear that standardization saves overall costs here; it may save administrative cost at the Imperial level (it's easier to manage and train troops if they are interchangeable) but incur large hidden costs at the local level; in other words standardization may be an externalization of administrative problems onto the provinces. A direct example would be: if you force all the troops to use standard gear, they might fight worse than if they used weapons that were specialized for dealing with local enemies; also now your troops have a huge delay in being equipped from a central armory, and may end up pay out of their own pockets for local wares just to survive. Anyone who has sat through multiple re-orgs at a large corporation will understand that what is 'simple' for the administrator (let's make the org chart simple and clear!) may actually cause tons of hidden additional complexity at the bottom layers, so that total complexity has risen even though things look 'simpler' at one particular level.
FranzFerdiNaN 9y ago
Please don't read Gibbon to learn anything about Rome unless it's what 18th century British scholars think of it. He is important for the historiography of the field but wrong about a lot of things, especially anything about religion and the Byzantine Empire.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  It would be shocking if we hadn't learned more about the subject, since, but the vast majority of source material we now have was available to Gibbon and well-digested by him. It's perfectly evident reading Gibbon that he couldn't be straightforward about religion at that time. "a degree of professional esteem which remains as strong today as it was then", from: "In the early 20th century, biographer Sir Leslie Stephen ["Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794)," Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7, (Oxford, 1921), p. 1134.] summarized The History's reputation as a work of unmatched erudition, a degree of professional esteem which remains as strong today as it was then: The criticisms upon his book...are nearly unanimous. In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the History is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. ...Whatever its shortcomings, the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period."
Nomentatus 9y ago
I'm a bit less happy with my answer, on reflection. I'm using "complexity" to mean something close to Kolmogarov Complexity, which I still think is reasonable. But we may need more categories to have a sensible discussion. I now begin to think we should perhaps distinguish between size, complexity of design, the number of moving parts, and I might also add redundancy (since it trades off with many of the above.) These can all vary independently. There's a sense in which redundancy (or fail-safe system design) can add parts but reduce overall design complexity, or at least management complexity/too many bad decisions that are too easy to make or implement. So maybe the latter is an additional meaning of complexity that should be considered. "Control Complexity." For example, an aircraft with no dihedral is simpler, but far harder to manage, to keep level. Note re the above that the number of moving parts (and size) in a physical system doesn't nec reflect Kolmogarov Complexity since the Turing machine simulating that system can loop.

smallnamespace 9y ago

The complexity that is being referred to is social and administrative complexity, the huge military upkeep being a side effect of that. A simple policy can still reflect a highly complex, expensive form of social organization. It's rather hard to argue that stationing massive garrisons throughout an empire is not a massive exercise in social complexity and organization. > Diversity isn't exactly complexity. Keeping large groups together is hard, It's difficult to argue that late Imperial Rome, with its multiple levels of bureaucracies, military and civilian, a nascent Church, along with large standing garrisons wasn't far more socially and economically complex than the societies of the invading barbarians. And all that complexity went exactly towards 'keeping large groups together' without the benefit of a unified ethnicity or other identity. But note that in earlier times, Rome's technological and social complexity was able to pay for itself and then some: it was able to field and man large military organizations, and the complexity brought in a profit by conquest and war booty. In other words, size was a logical end result to earlier complexity: in order to keep the system running, Rome had to continue to grow. Unfortunately, Rome ran out of rich easily-conquered lands and its inefficient (and complex) economy could not make the economic transition (unlike the Eastern Empire, which had richer and more densely populated lands). Your example of stationing two-thirds of a massive standing army just to keep order is an example of just how inefficient the late Western Imperial economy must have been, and why it fell against barbarian groups that had much simpler, flatter social hierarchies based on ethnic kinship and trust.

Nomentatus 9y ago
Much conflation of size and complexity, here, once again. And you seem to merely elide my points. The size of the Roman army allowed a remarkable degree of standardization in the tools of war, and training. That's not complexity. Roman society hadn't gotten poorer; but it had gotten less cohesive, fewer were ready to sacrifice for the whole.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  Size automatically required large amounts of social complexity in the days of Rome, especially if you measure complexity in the actual cost it took to hold Rome together. I'll remind you that the contemporaneous Chinese Han dynasty also evolved into a large militarized, centralized bureaucratic state despite the wide differences in geography and developmental path, and faced very similar problems of replacing conscripts with professional soldiers and then keeping them loyal. What forced them to have similar organization was their sheer size and the organizational pressures this caused.
  - Nomentatus 9y ago
    But I started with a profound example of the reverse. Cost is size, not complexity. There were considerable savings due to scale in Rome, including assembly lines for manufacturing amphora, etc. Re China you give another example of size creating simplicity and standardization. In contrast to your first paragraph.
    - smallnamespace 9y ago
      > Cost is size, not complexity. You're narrowly defining 'complexity' as only 'complexity of procedure' and completely ignoring social complexity and specialization. How about you justify why only the single measure of 'complexity' is sufficient for our discussion? A few direct responses to your example: 1. Standardization may save costs overall, but they represent a form of social complexity (you now have specialized bureaucrats and administrators to determine standards and communicate with troops, weapons must move a long way to supply every legion, training is now done in a centralized fashion) 2. This social complexity adds fragility to the system—if your army depends on having standardized gear to function properly, and barbarians capture your centralized workshops, then all of a sudden you lose the ability to equip the troops effectively; barbarians don't have that problem 3. It's not even clear that standardization saves overall costs here; it may save administrative cost at the Imperial level (it's easier to manage and train troops if they are interchangeable) but incur large hidden costs at the local level; in other words standardization may be an externalization of administrative problems onto the provinces. A direct example would be: if you force all the troops to use standard gear, they might fight worse than if they used weapons that were specialized for dealing with local enemies; also now your troops have a huge delay in being equipped from a central armory, and may end up pay out of their own pockets for local wares just to survive. Anyone who has sat through multiple re-orgs at a large corporation will understand that what is 'simple' for the administrator (let's make the org chart simple and clear!) may actually cause tons of hidden additional complexity at the bottom layers, so that total complexity has risen even though things look 'simpler' at one particular level.

FranzFerdiNaN 9y ago

Please don't read Gibbon to learn anything about Rome unless it's what 18th century British scholars think of it. He is important for the historiography of the field but wrong about a lot of things, especially anything about religion and the Byzantine Empire.

Nomentatus 9y ago
It would be shocking if we hadn't learned more about the subject, since, but the vast majority of source material we now have was available to Gibbon and well-digested by him. It's perfectly evident reading Gibbon that he couldn't be straightforward about religion at that time. "a degree of professional esteem which remains as strong today as it was then", from: "In the early 20th century, biographer Sir Leslie Stephen ["Gibbon, Edward (1737–1794)," Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7, (Oxford, 1921), p. 1134.] summarized The History's reputation as a work of unmatched erudition, a degree of professional esteem which remains as strong today as it was then: The criticisms upon his book...are nearly unanimous. In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of a vast subject, the History is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive. ...Whatever its shortcomings, the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period."

Nomentatus 9y ago

I'm a bit less happy with my answer, on reflection. I'm using "complexity" to mean something close to Kolmogarov Complexity, which I still think is reasonable. But we may need more categories to have a sensible discussion. I now begin to think we should perhaps distinguish between size, complexity of design, the number of moving parts, and I might also add redundancy (since it trades off with many of the above.) These can all vary independently. There's a sense in which redundancy (or fail-safe system design) can add parts but reduce overall design complexity, or at least management complexity/too many bad decisions that are too easy to make or implement. So maybe the latter is an additional meaning of complexity that should be considered. "Control Complexity." For example, an aircraft with no dihedral is simpler, but far harder to manage, to keep level. Note re the above that the number of moving parts (and size) in a physical system doesn't nec reflect Kolmogarov Complexity since the Turing machine simulating that system can loop.