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from the Wait-long-enough-and-sc-fi-always-becomes-sci-fact dept.
In 1951 Isaac Asimov inflicted psychohistory on the world with the Foundation Trilogy. Now, thanks to data sets going back more than 2,500 years, scientists have discovered the rules underlying the rise and fall of civilizations, after examining more than 400 such historical societies crash and burn - or in some cases avoid crashing. More here:
Turchin's approach to history, which uses software to find patterns in massive amounts of historical data, has only become possible recently, thanks to the growth in cheap computing power and the development of large historical datasets. This "big data" approach is now becoming increasingly popular in historical disciplines. Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, believes we are living through "the glory days" of his field, because scholars can pool their research findings with unprecedented ease and extract real knowledge from them. In the future, Turchin believes, historical theories will be tested against large databases, and the ones that do not fit – many of them long-cherished – will be discarded. Our understanding of the past will converge on something approaching an objective truth.
Discuss. Or throw rocks.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 18 2019, @11:05PM (2 children)
We have no other choice. You do notice the ubiquity of sayings like "the best laid plans of mice and men," "life is what happens when you are busy making other plans," "The Capriciousness of Fate," etc.
Do we, really? Of those 450 civilizations, how many do we even know, really know - not just an "educated" (educated how? based on what?) guess the most basic economics like average hours per day worked by the common laborer? Relative robustness and health of the common worker? Were they able to productively work the farms 200 days a year, or were they laid up with debilitating weakness from parasites and infections 200 days a year? How do you come by this information for even 50 of those 450 civilizations, and what are the chances that your input data is even within a factor of 2 of what really happened?
Correlation is not causation, yadda, yadda...
That's quite an assertion. How strong is your ancestral Puritan work ethic? Any potential bias bleeding in from there?
Absolutely. I have worked, in limited capacity, with the disabled who are existing on SSI - functionally similar to UBI for them, but with some key shortcomings. They do indeed suffer depression, horrible self esteem, and poor health as a result of not having a feeling of purpose. Volunteerism can help a little, but paid work is a much stronger medicine for them, and that's a major failing of the SSI system because it strongly dis-incentivizes them from seeking paid work due to the bureaucratic nightmare that ensues when they start receiving a little income. The group I worked with tries, hard, to get these people working - for at least some kind of pay, and that component of being paid for their labor makes all the difference in their quality of life, and health.
Some preliminary UBI study results have shown a dramatic increase in happiness, security, sense of well being, etc. among those who do not have to fear for losing their food and shelter while they pursue something that is meaningful to them.
UBI is a strong positive for that feeling of control of one's destiny. Far from bread lines and occasional circuses, UBI is freedom from fear and a marked increase in security. If the working world doesn't need all the people, then some subset can turn on the Netflix and Playstation, tune in to whatever wastes of time engage them, and drop out until they're ready to engage. If UBI only provides enough for rent in a windowless basement, rice and beans for food, and basic connectivity for continuing education (strong subsidy candidate there) and entertainment... let the hobbyists grow weed in the sunlight of their one window if that's their passion, once it is legalized for a few years it won't be nearly as compelling as it is today. And, when they grow tired of their low impact lifestyle and want to engage with the world that they see on their screens, they have the option to up their game and do that - prove themselves worthy and compete for real jobs in the real world with real income that can fund travel, meals prepared by others, fancy toys and fancier living accommodations.
It is my strong feeling that, instead of employing legions of Wal-Mart greeters, Fast Food slingers, warehouse and delivery personnel, etc. we would be better off, as a society, to let people off the grinding treadmill where they spend decades getting nowhere, and instead give them the option to pursue education, or entertainment, or any number of other low impact lifestyles without the fear of total homelessness, starvation, or vexatious tribulations from the social benefits inquisition.
Then I have to say something unpopular about birth control, but that needs to happen regardless of whatever else the future holds. Prosperity is not the answer to out of control population growth, that is a myth perpetuated in large part by those whose fortunes are dependent upon positive population growth.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:04AM (1 child)
As I've pointed out elsewhere, and as the theory points out when checked against data for the last 2500 years, excessive population increases drive economic disparity, resulting in boom/bust cycles as more wealth gets concentrated into fewer hands. Societies that don't have an active safety net are going to be in trouble, same as every other society that imploded. The USA is well along the road, with wealth concentration that makes the gilded age look like underachieving pikers. Climate change will be the spark that sets everything to maximum instability, and the USA will probably fail to make the necessary changes voluntarily because "communism ". A revolution is probably what's needed to drain the swamp. Elect Trump again and it will probably happen. Maybe it's for the best, long term. I don't know.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 19 2019, @02:43AM
Pardon the rant, but the Puritans were an outcast sect who voluntarily emigrated (as opposed to the Aussies who involuntarily emigrated), and through a random stroke of luck ended up in the most developed country least destroyed by World War II. Even though they abhor seeing others "not work hard" they still can't manage to muster fiscal responsibility, and the lazy slobs they left behind in Europe not only rebuilt from the rubble of WWII, but are also managing universal healthcare and state paid higher education while they cannot, or will not. Just saying.
Lack of education isn't holding back economic productivity, but as far as the environment is concerned economic productivity is a major part of the problem. If 2/3 of the population would sit on the couch smoking weed and watching Netflix all day instead of working two part time jobs just to be able to afford a car to drive between them, it leave a much smaller dent in the environment. Indeed the benefits of increased productivity need to be shared better, but we're a long way from convincing the voting public that that's even remotely possible. I really like the idea of a reduced work week and increased vacation time (yet another thing those lazy slobs in Europe have been doing for decades, while still affording their socialist agendas), though anything below about 20 hours a week makes social cohesion at the workplace challenging, at least by today's standards.
I'm not perceiving UBI as a solution so much as a social contract / safety net - a guarantee that: as a citizen, you will be provided for to this minimum level, no matter what. Like the Danish who are guaranteed 500 heated square feet and a television, or whatever it is these days, knowing that you'll always have at least enough to eat and pay for some kind of basic shelter is infinitely better than the threat of living 15 hours a week at the Social Security Office just to ensure you don't starve to death, and still having to deal with intermittent homelessness in the meantime. I actually also see it as an answer to illegal immigrants. You want to come here? You want to "take our jobs" - by all means, come, work hard, be productive, we all know that your labor benefits your (taxpaying citizen) employer more than it benefits you, we'll educate your children, we'll even provide basic healthcare, but... you're going to be competing with citizens who have the safety net of UBI, who get that UBI while they are working and you do not, and you're going to be buying goods, services, rent, etc. in an economy based on citizens who get that UBI, so... it's probably going to be not very economically attractive for illegals to come here anymore.
Is that causation established, or just correlation observed?
Boomers are passing 70 years on this cycle, despite all the hue and cry over the great economic collapse of 2008, that was a tepid soft contraction as compared to the crash of 1929 through World War II.
Ergo: UBI
Spark? How about the horde of virtually immortal 800 lb gorillas inexorably destroying the coastal cities and otherwise wreaking havoc on inland weather, biodiversity, basic agriculture, and other very significant challenges we haven't even identified yet?
I think it's more because God has always told us what to do and we must follow His will, particularly when telling other people how to live their lives. Work Hard, Don't have Sex before Marriage (which is Only a Holy Union of One Man and One Woman), Respect Authority, Punish the Guilty - and if you can't find the truly Guilty make sure that someone who seems like they deserve it suffers retribution when something bad has happened to "one of Our people." It's all the more insidious because the people who shout the loudest for these rules and punishments have secretly broken most, if not all of them, and are usually continuing to dig deeper for ever more depravity in their own private/secret lives. They beg forgiveness when exposed, but offer no clemency when others are. There's no reasoning with people who have such disconnect between what they practice in their own lives and what they preach as "the Way." This is the country that looks set to finally approve a Constitutional Amendment acknowledging that Women have equal rights to Men, fully 98 years after it was first presented to Congress as a followup to Women's right to vote.
There are all kinds of revolutions, I do hope we can effective positive change without declaration of Martial Law or abandonment of the Constitution. For all my complaints, I really do believe we have made tremendous positive progress since 1776.
I hope that 4 years of Trump is enough for a true wakeup call in 2020, but it's hard to know. Poll numbers like "70% disapproval ratings" have little correlation to the figures that come out of our electoral system. Been "hoping for change" since 2008, but precious little has really happened. Got a rude wakeup call in 2009 when I complained to the ACLU about disabled children being told to enter the school grounds through a hole in the back fence, dropped off and picked up on a dirt/mud traffic circle and spending their entire day in temporary portable classrooms. Seems that the Federal standards of inclusion, even after the Obama "get serious" changes amount to: if at least some disabled children are served in the main building (1 class out of 12, check.) and some non-disabled children are served in the temporary facilities (1 class out of 60, check.) then that is sufficient integration that the Feds will not investigate, and the local schoolboard, headed by the town's KKK Grand Wizard, knows these rules all too well.
No way to know. What I do know is: as dire as things look today, in many ways they looked worse in 1965 when my parents met, and as dire as they looked then, they looked worse in 1942 when their parents met. Even though we did our best to keep calm and carry on, the threat of massive global devastation was even more dire in 1988 than it is today. We seem to be in less control now than we were in those crises, but, actually the control of today's major problems are more democratic than it was back then - more in everybody's hands than just the hands of a few leaders. That could be the worst aspect of today's crises, or it might surprisingly turn out to be the best. No way to know until the show plays out.
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