Update 2023-06-06-collapse_overview.md

_posts/2023-06-06-collapse_overview.md

@@ -107,7 +107,9 @@ Figure 5: Types of collapse based on the structure of the system from Cumming an
 
 My main takeaway is that this field still has a long way to go. This is troubling, because in our society today we can see signs that could be interpreted as indications of a nearing collapse. There are voices warning that our global society has become decadent (writers like [Ross Douthat](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/28/21137971/the-decadent-society-ross-douthat-book)), that we are pushing against environmental limits (for example, [Extinction Rebellion](https://rebellion.global/)), that we are having a decreasing return of investment for our energy system (for example, work by [David Murphy](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2013.0126)) and that there has been an overproduction of elites in the last decades (writers like [Noah Smith](https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elite-overproduction-hypothesis)). This means we have warning signs that fit all major viewpoints on collapse. Moreover, new technological capabilities pose novel dangers that require us to extrapolate beyond the domain of historical experience. All this means that understanding how collapse really happens is rather urgent. 
 
-While the work of Jared Diamond and others brought the field forward by sparking a variety of discussions and new research, the field of collapse research is still in the process of finding a theory that is widely accepted in the community. There is no clear definition of what collapse is. Depending on their background, people argue for a bigger focus on the environment or a bigger focus on societal factors. This also seems to lead to a lot of discussion about semantics. Researchers criticize each other's definition of collapse, even though most of the researchers seem to agree that there are clearly discontinuities in the historical record. The closest to having an actual model of collapse prediction is the field of structural demographic theory. However, their focus is mostly on internal mechanisms of society, and less so on the interaction of society with the environment. A good way forward would be to couple structural demographic theory work with a more complex environmental model. This could also be combined with the work of Cumming and Peterson, to make it more widely applicable. However, this is a long term project, which requires much more work. Still, it would be an important piece of work, as we need to understand how past collapse has worked, to be safe against the complex, intricate and possible unexpected ways our society might be in danger today. Something along those lines has been proposed by Hoyer (2022), but so far there do not seem to be any published results. 
+While the work of Jared Diamond and others brought the field forward by sparking a variety of discussions and new research, the field of collapse research is still in the process of finding a theory that is widely accepted in the community. There is no clear definition of what collapse is. Depending on their background, people argue for a bigger focus on the environment or a bigger focus on societal factors. This also seems to lead to a lot of discussion about semantics. Researchers criticize each other's definition of collapse, even though most of the researchers seem to agree that there are clearly discontinuities in the historical record. 
+
+The closest to having an actual model of collapse prediction is the field of structural demographic theory. However, their focus is mostly on internal mechanisms of society, and less so on the interaction of society with the environment. A good way forward would be to couple structural demographic theory work with a more complex environmental model. This could also be combined with the work of Cumming and Peterson, to make it more widely applicable. However, this is a long term project, which requires much more work. Still, it would be an important piece of work, as we need to understand how past collapse has worked, to be safe against the complex, intricate and possible unexpected ways our society might be in danger today. Something along those lines has been proposed by Hoyer (2022) and partially implemented in Hoyer et al. (2024). I discuss this in [another post](https://florianjehn.github.io/Societal_Collapse/2024-04-09-big_data_history/) in more detail, but the general gist is that it is difficult to attribute the survival of a society to a small number of factors. Still, if you had to choose the interplay of elite behavior, the state capacity and the size the external shock is probably a good place to start looking. This is obviously only a partial answer, but at least it provides a good place to start looking. 
 
 *Thanks for reading! If you want to talk about this post or societal collapse in general, I’d be happy to have a chat. Just send me a mail to florian.u.jehn at posteo.de and we can schedule something.*
 
@@ -133,6 +135,8 @@ Burja S. (2018, September 5). Great Founder Theory. https://samoburja.com/great-
 
 Hoyer, D. (2022). Decline and Fall, Growth and Spread, or Resilience? Approaches to Studying How and Why Societies Change. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/43rgx
 
+Hoyer, D., Holder, S., Bennett, J. S., François, P., Whitehouse, H., Covey, A., Feinman, G., Korotayev, A., Vustiuzhanin, V., Preiser-Kapeller, J., Bard, K., Levine, J., Reddish, J., Orlandi, G., Ainsworth, R., & Turchin, P. (2024). All Crises are Unhappy in their Own Way: The role of societal instability in shaping the past. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/rk4gd
+
 Hunt, T., & Lipo, C. (2012). Ecological Catastrophe and Collapse: The Myth of “Ecocide” on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 2042672). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2042672
 
 Kareiva, P., & Carranza, V. (2018). Existential risk due to ecosystem collapse: Nature strikes back. Futures, 102, 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2018.01.001