40 ms·

The crazy thought is, would it still be possible for the world to fall back into some sort of "dark ages", and we all end up living in some crazy mad max/aquawo

The crazy thought is, would it still be possible for the world to fall back into some sort of "dark ages", and we all end up living in some crazy mad max/aquaworld nightmare? It's happened before when societies fall apart, just because we have more technology now doesn't seem to me to mean it can't happen again.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Mad max worlds are deeply crazy and whilst there were I am sure equivalents (without the fast cars and the hacksaws) Mostly they would be short lived - no-one benefits from madness and humans don't like it. So pretty quickly a more stable equilibrium asserts itself, usually around one strongman. Democracy definitely optional. Will it happen again - pretty likely. We are on a growth treadmill - the Romans growth fed by an seemingly inexhaustible supply of slaves from conquered regions, that dipped after Tiberius around 110. And us. Well we have machines to do all the work for us - on average a UK citizen burns up 120kw per day - or 40 slaves burning 3000 calories a day. We need to keep inventing more efficient machines or inexhaustible energy supplies So make room temperature fusion work and I will say its unlikely we will collapse. Without it, probably inevitable - but we keep going, because the poor are starving and the Syrians are getting shelled.
- ImprovedSilence 14y ago
  Yeah, I didn't mean mad max worlds literally, as much as I meant "a darker period of 'civilization'", or a loss of knowledge/ability/technology. That's interesting thought you have though, of building society on "energy consumption" (labor, work, joules, whatever) whether it be slaves or oil. I suppose you could say it boils down to physics.
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    To be fair I doubt it's mine - but I fully agree - one could use energy or rather work efficency as a proxy for economic wealth. The first wood burner must have halved the energy needed to keep warm - probably the best investment society made ever. Of course energy efficiency as a metric Must make bankers even less useful to society than we think :-)

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

Mad max worlds are deeply crazy and whilst there were I am sure equivalents (without the fast cars and the hacksaws) Mostly they would be short lived - no-one benefits from madness and humans don't like it. So pretty quickly a more stable equilibrium asserts itself, usually around one strongman. Democracy definitely optional. Will it happen again - pretty likely. We are on a growth treadmill - the Romans growth fed by an seemingly inexhaustible supply of slaves from conquered regions, that dipped after Tiberius around 110. And us. Well we have machines to do all the work for us - on average a UK citizen burns up 120kw per day - or 40 slaves burning 3000 calories a day. We need to keep inventing more efficient machines or inexhaustible energy supplies So make room temperature fusion work and I will say its unlikely we will collapse. Without it, probably inevitable - but we keep going, because the poor are starving and the Syrians are getting shelled.

ImprovedSilence 14y ago
Yeah, I didn't mean mad max worlds literally, as much as I meant "a darker period of 'civilization'", or a loss of knowledge/ability/technology. That's interesting thought you have though, of building society on "energy consumption" (labor, work, joules, whatever) whether it be slaves or oil. I suppose you could say it boils down to physics.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  To be fair I doubt it's mine - but I fully agree - one could use energy or rather work efficency as a proxy for economic wealth. The first wood burner must have halved the energy needed to keep warm - probably the best investment society made ever. Of course energy efficiency as a metric Must make bankers even less useful to society than we think :-)