The Coming Collapse; or, how I learned to love my inner Barbarian - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The non-democratic state: Platonism, Fascism, Theocracy, Monarchy etc.
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#14982770
Sivad wrote:That would be great but the problem is how would you ever know the virtual you was actually sentient? I don't doubt that eventually we'll be able to create pseudo-conscious algorithms that perfectly mimic us, but it's pretty horrifying to think that someday the world might be nothing but a dead lump of computronium running a sterile simulation for nothing and nobody till the end of time.

How do you know that isn't already the case? :eh:
#14982829
lol....

One thing the collapse will end are conversations like these. There will be no doubt of one's existence and reality, because one will not have the option very long of living in some dreamworld, unless others are willing to foot the bill for you to ''live'' that way.

Come to think of it, that's pretty much the true reality of the situation now, is it not?

As i've said, generally these things take some time, a century or two, before it's clear to all that life is qualitatively different enough that people can say that civilization as their great-grandfathers knew it, is over, and that a new Dark Age has come.
#14982890
Sivad wrote:That's not a collapse that's a slow decline.


From readings of people like Spengler, Toynbee, and Quigley, I've come to believe that a Civilization lasts roughly 1000 years or so. 100 or 200 years of that time, on the tail end of a Civilization's timeline, is fairly standard for how long a collapse plays out.

Western Civilization-or ''Faustian'', if your prefer as I do Spengler's name for it-began in 800 AD with the crowning of the Carolingian Frankish warlord Charlemagne as ''Roman Emperor'' on Christmas Day in Old Rome. By 1806 AD, a little over 1000 years later with Napoleon's forceful ending of the Holy Roman Empire, I say we (Westerners) found ourselves within a new Dark Age, marked by that time by the usual features of a Dark Age. To say that a Collapse cannot happen in a space of time longer than a human lifetime does not appear to be correct. Historically speaking it is the blink of an eye anyways, 200 years.

A personal anecdote to put it in that perspective. I was born in 1969 AD. My Grandfather was born in the early 20th century and knew Robert Lincoln, who died in the 1920's, Lincoln was Secretary of War but best known for being President Abraham Lincoln's son. Now Abraham Lincoln knew men who fought in the American Revolution which began in 1776 AD. Therefore, I myself am only three person's lives removed from events over 200 years ago.
#14982907
annatar1914 wrote:From readings of people like Spengler, Toynbee, and Quigley, I've come to believe that a Civilization lasts roughly 1000 years or so. 100 or 200 years of that time, on the tail end of a Civilization's timeline, is fairly standard for how long a collapse plays out.


Our civilization is unique in certain respects, notably continual technological/scientific advance, so I don't think it will share the fate of previous ones.

By 1806 AD, a little over 1000 years later with Napoleon's forceful ending of the Holy Roman Empire, I say we (Westerners) found ourselves within a new Dark Age, marked by that time by the usual features of a Dark Age.


:?: After Napoleon, Western civilization was on the threshold of unprecedented material and scientific progress, quite unlike a dark age.
#14983068
These claims of science/technology coming to our rescue remind me of people believing their religion would save them from the invaders. It is simply sticking your head in the sand. Wishful thinking. When different people, or too many people, want the same resources then technology will be destroyed in the struggle. If it was capable of being the solution, then it would have already done so.
#14983070
starman2003 wrote:Our civilization is unique in certain respects, notably continual technological/scientific advance, so I don't think it will share the fate of previous ones.


And we have much broader and much more detailed histories so we have a perspective those other civilizations lacked. Liberal fascism could easily become a thousand-year reich. That's the historical turn we need to be working to prevent, a civilization wide collapse is extremely unlikely.
#14983079
One Degree wrote:These claims of science/technology coming to our rescue remind me of people believing their religion would save them from the invaders. It is simply sticking your head in the sand. Wishful thinking.

If it was capable of being the solution, then it would have already done so.



Technology has always been the key to liberation, it is a double edged sword and it has been used to tyrannize and enslave, but if you look at the history the trend has been one of emancipation and empowerment. The only thing it hasn't yet liberated us from is human nature but it looks like that's going to be occurring over the next couple centuries. AI will crack the genetics of intelligence and mental stability and people will be much smarter and saner on average than the dumb aggressive apes they mostly are today. Life spans will be doubled or tripled so there will be much more wisdom guiding the world. And as people become smarter and saner and wiser they're just going to accelerate that process and the people a thousand years from now will be as far beyond us as we are beyond chimpanzees.

The human world is almost over and I say good fucking riddance.
#14983084
Sivad wrote:Technology has always been the key to liberation, it is a double edged sword and it has been used to tyrannize and enslave, but if you look at the history the trend has been one of emancipation and empowerment. The only thing it hasn't yet liberated us from is human nature but it looks like that's going to be occurring over the next couple centuries. AI will crack the genetics of intelligence and mental stability and people will be much smarter and saner on average than the dumb aggressive apes they mostly are today. Life spans will be doubled or tripled so there will be much more wisdom guiding the world. And as people become smarter and saner and wiser they're just going to accelerate that process and the people a thousand years from now will be as far beyond us as we are beyond chimpanzees.

The human world is almost over and I say good fucking riddance.


Anything is possible, but I see a world where we have accumulated knowledge yet become less wise in doing so. I think AI is a pipe dream. Nothing more than an admission of our own inability to become wiser ourselves, so we look to the same technology as a solution that has made us braindead. The few remaining ‘clear thinkers’ are no match for the brain deadening technology we have already unleashed on ourselves. In a few more years, we will be such brainless zealots that nothing will save us. Perhaps we already are.
#14983088
@starman2003 ;

Our civilization is unique in certain respects


All civilizations are unique in certain respects, while sharing traits in others. The similarities are the bigger part of what I'm discussing as for the most part human nature does not change.


notably continual technological/scientific advance


While it's incorrect to assume that, I'm glad you mentioned it, because the funny thing about Dark Ages is that there is an advance in certain material factors within these periods in every case that i've studied, often significantly. The Dark Age in the end of the Near East/Middle East/Mediterranean Bronze Age saw the rise of the Iron Age in tools and weapons, but the near total collapse of civilization everywhere except Egypt, including the use of writing in Greece. It lasted some 400 years.

The European Dark Ages after the fall of the West Roman Empire and the rise of Islam saw an incredible growth in some areas of technical progress, including the moldboard plow and the invention of the modern clock, etc... But also, there was a significant decline in other technical and scientific respects.

What does collapse during a Dark Age in every case are the political structures and institutions, spiritual and cultural values and morality, and a rise in endemic and savage warfare, revolutions, raiding, criminal activity, and a state of flux between absolute tyranny and absolute anarchy without much solidity in between. There is often extreme want and destitution and also extreme wealth, even within the same societies. Palace coups and conspiracies, bizarre sects and secret societies are commonplace during these times...

Of course, just like a fish in the ocean does not see water, a person raised in such a period entirely often does not see that this is a Dark Age or collapse period


, so I don't think it will share the fate of previous ones.


Often said. There's a reason though that Spengler called it the ''Faustian'' Civilization, as there has been a deal with the Devil made. And so when it is falling, the slide to rock bottom will likely be more profound than that of previous civilizations.



:?: After Napoleon, Western civilization was on the threshold of unprecedented material and scientific progress, quite unlike a dark age.


See above about ''unprecedented material and scientific progress''. I understand that that is also the metric by which you personally measure things so there is that, but all I can say to that is to ''look ahead''. It'll reach you, the Collapse, you'll know it.

As for Napoleon, he was a Condotierre, an Adventurer. The very fact that he rampaged across Europe for over a decade, after the cataclysms of the American and French Revolutions, is pretty compelling proof of the things i'm talking about.
#14983092
One Degree wrote:I see a world where we have accumulated knowledge yet become less wise in doing so


I don't see that at all, if anything people are smarter and wiser now than ever before. People are thinking farther ahead and they're expanding their sphere of moral concern. You just want to regress back to a time that was good for you because you don't give a shit about the suffering of others, there's no fucking wisdom in that at all.

One Degree wrote:I think AI is a pipe dream.


I think you need to put down the pipe because AI is a reality. Conscious computer programs don't seem very likely but a general intelligence AI is just a matter of time and that's not even necessary for what I'm talking about.
#14983094
Related issues i'll be bringing up next week, that will bring on the next phase of the present Dark Age;

1. A prediction; ISIS, or a group very much like it and with some of the same membership, will absolutely rule the greater part of the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian Subcontinent, and Central Asia, and will threaten to engulf Europe as well, seizing what is now the Balkans, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and Britain. Pretty much everything on the Western and Southern sides of the Elbe and Danube rivers. And all this, within the next 50 to 100 years, and hundreds of millions of people dead and displaced.

2. America will not exist in it's present form in 30 years or less.

3. neither will China or India.
#14983100
I don't see that at all, if anything people are smarter and wiser now than ever before. People are thinking farther ahead and they're expanding their sphere of moral concern. You just want to regress back to a time that was good for you because you don't give a shit about the suffering of others, there's no fucking wisdom in that at all.

How quickly you give up on an exchange of ideas and resort to personal attacks. This is a symptom of the loss of wisdom I referred to. A wise man does not become defensive and offensive to others.
I see no evidence of people thinking farther ahead. They seem more concerned about now than ever before in history. ‘Expanding your sphere of moral concern’ , imo, is misguided self righteousness not wisdom. It also is simply a repetition of what has always been done. The ‘righteous’ have always tried to enslave others.


I think you need to put down the pipe because AI is a reality. Conscious computer programs don't seem very likely but a general intelligence AI is just a matter of time and that's not even necessary for what I'm talking about.

Again, why look for the ‘solution’ in what I believe you agree is part of the problem. How little time did it take for the internet to be corrupted from being a ‘tool of the people’ to being a ‘weapon of propaganda against the people’? What makes you believe it would be used for our benefit? There is no solution to be found in giving control to a few.
#14983112
One Degree wrote:How quickly you give up on an exchange of ideas and resort to personal attacks. This is a symptom of the loss of wisdom I referred to. A wise man does not become defensive and offensive to others.
I see no evidence of people thinking farther ahead. They seem more concerned about now than ever before in history. ‘Expanding your sphere of moral concern’ , imo, is misguided self righteousness not wisdom. It also is simply a repetition of what has always been done. The ‘righteous’ have always tried to enslave others.



Again, why look for the ‘solution’ in what I believe you agree is part of the problem. How little time did it take for the internet to be corrupted from being a ‘tool of the people’ to being a ‘weapon of propaganda against the people’? What makes you believe it would be used for our benefit? There is no solution to be found in giving control to a few.


Like I was saying, One Degree; a fish doesn't see water, nor do people who live in a era of collapse and decline believe that things are collapsing and declining. For one thing, people slip from the moorings and mores of the previous generations of their civilization during these times, and find justifications for it. They don't see the breakdown, because they are to some measure, the breakdown.
#14983120
One Degree wrote:How quickly you give up on an exchange of ideas and resort to personal attacks. This is a symptom of the loss of wisdom I referred to. A wise man does not become defensive and offensive to others.


Yeah, well some attitudes just need to be marginalized. You've made it clear that you only care about yourself and your kind and that's just not a mentality that can be reasoned with. The sad thing is your intransigent pettiness pretty much guarantees the liberals are gonna come out on top in this culture war and that's not going to be good for anyone. The only reason the liberals are politically viable is because the right is so crazy. If wingnuts didn't already exist the liberal class would have to manufacture them.


I see no evidence of people thinking farther ahead. They seem more concerned about now than ever before in history.


Then you're just not paying attention. The one good thing about the climate change hysteria is that it does have people thinking in terms of social trajectories over generations and centuries.


‘Expanding your sphere of moral concern’ , imo, is misguided self righteousness not wisdom. It also is simply a repetition of what has always been done. The ‘righteous’ have always tried to enslave others.


You're against empathy and fairness? :lol: You're against extending the same respect and consideration you demand for you and yours to all human beings? Whatever.

Again, why look for the ‘solution’ in what I believe you agree is part of the problem. How little time did it take for the internet to be corrupted from being a ‘tool of the people’ to being a ‘weapon of propaganda against the people’? What makes you believe it would be used for our benefit? There is no solution to be found in giving control to a few.


All technology cuts both ways, so far the trend has been overall positive.
#14983125
annatar1914 wrote:Like I was saying, One Degree; a fish doesn't see water, nor do people who live in a era of collapse and decline believe that things are collapsing and declining.


What you're calling a decline is really a transition. Like when Rome went from republic to dictatorship. Institutions do breakdown during major transitional periods, there is major social, political, economic upheaval and realignment but it's not the end of days. We're transitioning from one world into the next and that's always scary and can even seem apocalyptic, but it's happened a thousand times before and it'll probably happen a thousand times again. Unless there's a major extinction level event the world is just going to keep getting bigger and crazier than ever the same as it always has.
#14983134
Yeah, well some attitudes just need to be marginalized. You've made it clear that you only care about yourself and your kind and that's just not a mentality that can be reasoned with. The sad thing is your intransigent pettiness pretty much guarantees the liberals are gonna come out on top in this culture war and that's not going to be good for anyone. The only reason the liberals are politically viable is because the right is so crazy. If wingnuts didn't already exist the liberal class would have to manufacture them.

You mean my attitude that I believe others are more capable of deciding their own solutions than I am? You believe I should be marginalized for believing they are truly equal? I should believe they are inferiors who need me to enlighten them?
The liberals are winning because they give their ‘wingnuts’ their support. Conservatives should do the same. You don’t have to agree with the ‘wingnuts’ to see their value. The ‘wingnuts’are the ones who take to the streets. It is an essential part of a cultural battle. We can’t compete against literal protests by posting on the internet.



Then you're just not paying attention. The one good thing about the climate change hysteria is that it does have people thinking in terms of social trajectories over generations and centuries.

Yes, that is an exception. Unfortunately, even there they are looking at the wrong changes dictated by politics.


You're against empathy and fairness? :lol: You're against extending the same respect and consideration you demand for you and yours to all human beings? Whatever.


Again, I see no reason to believe I have anything to offer that they aren’t capable of figuring out on their own. I don’t understand how people who profess a belief in equality could think otherwise.

All technology cuts both ways, so far the trend has been overall positive.

Really? How come I feel like I am losing the freedom for my voice to be heard? What is more important than that?
#14983145
One Degree wrote:You mean my attitude that I believe others are more capable of deciding their own solutions than I am? You believe I should be marginalized for believing they are truly equal? I should believe they are inferiors who need me to enlighten them?


That's just a lame rationalization for turning a blind eye to injustice and suffering. You're just equivocating socio-economic equality with human equality.


Really? How come I feel like I am losing the freedom for my voice to be heard? What is more important than that?


Because your demographic has lost the juice to dominate politics. The playing field is leveling out and you resent that.

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