{"id":66247,"date":"2023-11-30T11:05:02","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66247"},"modified":"2023-11-30T11:05:02","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:05:02","slug":"todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-clxvii-the-future-aint-what-it-used-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66247","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0CLXVII–The Future Ain\u2019t What It Used to Be"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0CLXVII<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Tulum, Mexico (1986). Photo by\u00a0author.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Future Ain\u2019t What It Used to Be<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Contemplation is my brief comment on an article<\/a> posted on Facebook by Tristan Sykes of Just Collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article in question (short and concise) is an update of the World3 model used in creating the various scenarios in the 1972 The Limits to Growth<\/a> study using the most recent empirical data.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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While the authors make clear the uncertainty involved in a data\u2019s trendline after it reaches its \u2018tipping point\u2019 (although one could argue there exists great uncertainty in any such modelling beyond the present; complex systems with their nonlinear feedback loops and emergent phenomena are impossible to map out with \u2018perfect\u2019 accuracy), the interesting\u200a\u2014\u200abut not surprising\u200a\u2014\u200athing to note is that virtually all of these projections exhibit not just shifts of their peaks into the future but \u2018higher highs\u2019 followed by temporally-contracted declines (i.e., a quicker \u2018collapse\u2019) resulting in \u2018lower lows\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Deniers\u2019 will argue this highlights the fallibility of \u2018doom-based\u2019 narratives\u2019 and \u2018bargainers\u2019 will likely suggest this buys humanity more time to \u2018mitigate\/manage\u2019 our predicament. But, perhaps, this merely points out how non-linear system-feedback loops behave.<\/p>\n

As Donella Meadows argued in Thinking in Systems: A Primer: \u201c\u2026Delays that are too long cause damped, sustained or exploding oscillations<\/strong>, depending on how much too long. Overlong delays<\/strong> in a system with a threshold, a danger point, a range past which irreversible damage can occur, cause overshoot and collapse<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The delays in these peaks that are projected are looking to allow us to go further into overshoot\u200a\u2014\u200aproviding fodder for those rationalising away our predicament\u200a\u2014\u200aand most likely result in a \u2018correction\u2019 that will most certainly \u2018dampen\u2019 adaptive responses as the time to do so will be shorter. Such a situation may also possibly feed into further negative feedback loops as attempted adaptations could be quite maladaptive (as many (most? all?) have been the past few decades given the influence and direction of our societies\u2019 wealth-extractors who are leveraging our predicament at every turn).<\/p>\n

While it is indeed difficult to make predictions, especially if they\u2019re about the future, overshoot and collapse remains the predicted \u2018conclusion\u2019 of this business-as-usual scenario, despite the uncertainty painted by the authors.<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, the future ain\u2019t what it used to be; it seems to be getting worse by the day\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Today\u2019s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh\u00a0CLXVII Tulum, Mexico (1986). Photo by\u00a0author. The Future Ain\u2019t What It Used to Be Today\u2019s Contemplation is my brief comment on an article posted on Facebook by Tristan Sykes of Just Collapse. The article in question (short and concise) is an update of the World3 model used in creating the various scenarios […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4,5,6,7],"tags":[150,341,31335,391,8150,3197,10693,32909,30370,33947],"class_list":["post-66247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-future","tag-future-prediction","tag-growth","tag-limits","tag-overshoot","tag-prediction","tag-the-limits-to-growth","tag-todays-contemplation","tag-todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66248,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66247\/revisions\/66248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}