Human Social Evolution (in the face of civilization collapse)

Just to quickly throw a few bits in.This question has been covered many times over in the science fiction literature. However schlocky some of it can get, sci-fi especially in written form is mainly a "what if?" kind of fare.Also, I remember a thread about a year or so ago, most likely on this forum, which dealt with a similar question, though a bit more along the lines of "if you were the only person left, how long could you survive on what was left?".A lot of things to consider. Some consideration of how civilization had actually fallen after Rome would be needed. But let's just start with today. We are so interdependent on infrastructure, that most of what we could do to be "self-reliant" will go away when that infrastructure collapses (assuming that it will immediately). Concern has been expressed over lost how quickly skills and knowledge will be lost, but we have already lost so very much. As technology advanced, skilled workers have forgotten how everything was done before all this great technology. They know how to dug a tunnel with modern tech, but how did they do it before? Drill holes in rock? Easy now, but what did they do before electricity? (HINT: star bits, which you might still find at a hardware store, if you're lucky) So when electricity is no longer available and nobody knows about star bits anymore, then what? Ever use a router? (the woodworking kind) While working with my father (whose carpentry experience started before electric tools), I used his hand router on the job on one or two occasions and it's still in my garage. Anybody here ever use a hand router? Or even seen one or knew that one existed? That's what we'll need when electricity goes away. What is anybody's chances of finding one? Rather, you'll need to re-invent one, which will be loads of fun when you don't even have any idea what one might look like. Starting to get the idea?Also, I am reminded of one particularly stupid creationist claim: that "evolutionists" believe that the people who built the pyramids were "ape men" (not only was it expressed by a fairly well-known minor creationist, but it was also posted on Answers in Genesis). The truth is that, given the intelligence of gorillas (Hanabi-ko ("Fireworks Girl"), AKA "Koko" of National Geographic fame, had been tested at a human IQ of about 80 and only score so low because of species bias), we would expect ancient man at the beginning of history to be about equal in intelligence to us. The truth of the matter is that, because their technology did not have as much brute-force strength as ours, they had to work a lot smarter than we do.Eg, a German schoolmaster was angered by his students' bad behavior, so as punishment he gives them a massive arithmetic assignment: Add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. All the boys immediately start writing furiously, except for one boy who just sits there thinking. Then he writes a few things down and turns in his assignment, which was completely correct. The boy's name was Karl Friedrich Gau, one of the greatest of Germany's mathmaticians*. The point is that anyone of us given the same assignment would have programmed it into his computer to grind out the answer through sheer brute force. Take our computers away (as when the electricity infrastructure goes away) and we will be reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates.Ever read the sci-fi classic book, Earth Abides (c. late 40's)? The world human population had gotten to a point where nature puts it back under control as it does to other animal populations, through disease. Civilization collapses (the protagonist is in the mountains suffering from a rattlesnake bite, so he misses the actual collapse). He returns to his home in San Francisco and, after a time, a small community of survivors gather together, of which he ends up being the oldest survivor. They have children and grandchildren. They try to pass civilization on to their progeny, but it doesn't take. I've seen it with a foreign language: if the child doesn't see any use for it, it won't bother to learn it. Reading and all that other stuff didn't mean anything to the kids, so they never bothered to learn it -- the only exception was the protagonist's own son, who was sickly and died young. When the protagonist himself dies of old age, none of his culture has been passed on, though they do know how to tell whether a can of food had gone bad.Which brings up the main problem, which will not be with us, but rather with our offspring. We know what is important, but can we pass that on to our progeny? How many generations does it take to lose everything? Fewer than we may think.Remember, we are incredibly dependent on infrastructure, so we are incredibly vulnerable to loss of infrastructure. And, over 1000 years, we are talking about ten's of generations.Also, the difference with the modern scenario and the Dark Ages is that while the West fell into darkness, the East was still vital and keeping the ancient knowledge alive. Remember, it was the renewed contact with refugees from Byzantium and with the Arabs that helped to spark the rebirth of civilization, the Renaissance. Which brings up another question. What was the role of Christianity in the on-set of the Dark Ages, what with Christianity's dependence on its followers' ignorance? After all, it took the reintroduction of pagan knowledge to bring about the rebirth of Western civilization, the Renaissance in case some have forgotten.Carl Friedrich Gauss - Wikipedia[/url]:

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Another famous story, and one that has evolved in the telling, has it that in primary school his teacher, J.G. Bttner, tried to occupy pupils by making them add a list of integers. The young Gauss reputedly produced the correct answer within seconds, to the astonishment of his teacher and his assistant Martin Bartels. Gauss' presumed method, which supposes the list of numbers was from 1 to 100, was to realize that pairwise addition of terms from opposite ends of the list yielded identical intermediate sums: 1 + 100 = 101, 2 + 99 = 101, 3 + 98 = 101, and so on, for a total sum of 50 101 = 5050 (see arithmetic series and summation).[6] However whilst the method works, the incident itself is probably apocryphal; some, such as Joseph Rotman in his book A first course in Abstract Algebra, question whether it ever happened.

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To sum consecutive integers from 1 to n, the formula is (n (n+1) / 2). Now that's the smart way to work the problem.has beenmany authors have given your question a

Pardon that I start off out of sequence. To quote Emily Litella: "Never mind!"That was a remnant of the first pass at an earlier paragraph that I overlooked and failed to clean up. What it became was:

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This question has been covered many times over in the science fiction literature.

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If you're hep to the jive, then you already know t'ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it. If you're not, then the meaning of that swing song reference from 1939 should still be self-evident.I'm a computer programmer by profession. Part of our academic training is studying the efficiency of algorithms. There are many problems that would take enormous amounts of time to solve, even with our most powerful computers ... if we were to attempt them with brute-force methods. To attempt those kinds of problems, we need to be smarter about it.More basically, you do not just use a computer, but rather you tell it what to do and how to do it. That's what a program is. And even if you yourself did not actually write the program you're running, somebody did write that program that tells the computer every single thing to do. And we can be smart about what we're telling that computer to do, or we can be dumber than a sack full of hammers. And for some problems, like this one (the summation of integers from 1 to 100), it doesn't really make much difference. BTW, the sack-of-hammers approaches are what we call "brute force methods", which are, let's face it, how most amateur programmers would hack it together.But I had explicitly stated the point I was making, right there at the end of the paragraph you qs'd. Here, I will bold the punch line:

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The point is that anyone of us given the same assignment would have programmed it into his computer to grind out the answer through sheer brute force. Take our computers away (as when the electricity infrastructure goes away) and we will be reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates.

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And by being "reduced to the level of Gau' hapless schoolmates", I specifically meant that we would be scribbling away frantically with pencil and paper (or whatever we're left with). When we have the technology to do the brute force work for us so rapidly that who cares?, then we can very well afford to be dumb as a bag of hammers and we will get away with it every time! But when that technology is taken away from us, then we can no longer afford to be dumb. When all we have going for us is the sweat of our own brows, then we need to start doing everything a lot smarter.Now, a practical story of over-reliance on technology and how we fall apart when it suddenly disappears. One day while I was in line at a computer store (Micro Center in Tustin), the store lost all power. Management's solution (the right one, BTW) was to bring more people in to the check-outs and hand them calculators to add everything up, factor in sales tax, and write every transaction down so that the computers could get updated when power returned. But their trained, experienced clerks looked at those calculators and threw up their hands; they had no idea how to figure sales tax on those things! Well, being 57, I remember back when clerks didn't even have that! Back in the day, beside every cash register was a small printed chart that broke down the sales tax over a dollar and gave the sales tax for multiples of a dollar. That way, the clerk only had to look up and add two numbers to get the sales tax for any transaction.Similarly, there's giving change. The clerks need their computer cash register to tell them how much change to give. My mother once taught me the non-tech method she had learned while working for the post office in the late 1930's: start with the amount of the purchase, count out the pennies up to a multiple of dimes or nickels, then count dimes or nickels up to a quarter boundary, quarters up to a dollar level, ones up to a higher denomination, those higher denominators to a next higher, up until you arrive at the amount the customer had given you. Very simple, but how many clerks know it? Well, with our technology doing it all for them, why do they need to know it?Nowadays when kids learn logrithms and trig functions, they use computers and scientific calculators (which are actually special-purpose computers). When I learned those things, we used tables; that is all we had to work with. Therefore, we studied and practiced long and hard to learn interpolation, a technique of approximating the value we're looking for between the two bracketing values from the table. Do the kids today learn interpolation? I doubt it very much, because they don't need to know it. When they lose their calculators and computers, then they will not only have to suddenly reinvent interpolation, but they'll have to try to hunt down a book of tables real fast.Oh, no book of tables? OK, we'll have to reinvent that too. Well, at least the Maclaurin series (a special case of the Taylor series) should still be easy enough to look up. Then they'll just have to do lots and lots of calculations by hand. Know how we used to do massive iterative calculations? Get a room full of girls (young women; you know, the low-paid types) into a room sitting at desks arranged in a rectangular array. At each desk they had a mechanical calculator. Each girl performed a single calculation and passed her result to the girl in front of her who then performed the next. Over and over again (which is to say, iteratively). Know what "computer" meant before the 1940's? One of those girls.Also on the topic of lost skills, math classes today are very different from the classes in the past. A very basic part of math class for every single year was ... mental calculations. You would spend time in class going through exercises in which you performed complex mental calculations. Why? Because when you grew up and went out to work, you would very well need to perform such mental calculations in daily life. Know what else you learned? Math tricks. Tricks that mathematicians had discovered over the centuries to simplify many calculations and as ways to check a calculation. Any math tricks being taught in school now? Why not? They don't need them what with their calculators and computers. So when that technology disappears, they're going to have to be very lucky to find any old books that will teach them those tricks again. Assuming, of course, that they even realize that those tricks had ever existed to begin with.OK, I guess the wine is kicking in sooner than I thought it would. To summarize, my basic points were:1. Before we did everything the way we do now, we did it some other way. If we lose our current technology, then in order to do the same things, we will need to revert back to that older way.2. Problem is, nobody has been taught that older way. For the most part, nobody has even been taught that that older way even ever existed.3. Our current technology allows us to solve too many problems with the brute force of our machines. The ancients who did not have such machines had to do everything smarter, whereas with our machines we can do things very stupidly and still be able to do the job. When we lose our current technology, we will suddenly have to learn how to work a lot smarter.4. Problem is not only having to suddenly be a lot smarter, but also discovering the smart solutions to problems. It's not just a matter of being smarter, but also of knowing the techniques for doing all those things. The first time around, it took us generations to figure all that out and now we have lost it within a couple/few generations. How long will it take us to relearn all that?Kind of just because I'm bordering on stream-of-consciousness mode now, but also because it touches on rediscovering lost technology. In a gaming magazine a couple decades ago, there was once a short story called "Half the Battle." It wasn't the best sci-fi short story by any stretch of the imagination (hey, look at where it was published!), but it has stuck with me. In a post-apocalpse future, generations of archaeologists were digging through the ruins of our current civilization searching for information about the technologies they had lost. Information about the steam engine which seemed unimaginable, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". And then generations later they dig up plans for a Messerschmidt plane whose engine far outstripped the steam engine at an incredibly small fraction of the weight, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". Then finally, a new discovery of incredibly advanced technology unlike anything else they had dug up. Very sketchy in the details, but "knowing it can be done is half the battle". It took them two hundred years with many false starts but they kept driving forward with the knowledge that "knowing it can be done is half the battle". The story ends with the first-person perspective belonging to the commanding officer of the product of that advanced technology as he gives the historic command: "Helm, ahead warp factor one!"

Parte Deux. Though again a bit out of sequence. OK, that changes a lot. We're down the tubes, but other parts of the world are still hunky-dory? OK, so what's keeping those other parts of the world from moving in and taking over us?OK, let's revisit my particular poor understanding of the fall of Rome and the onset of the Dark Ages. The Empire had already split in two. Then the Western Empire collapses, but not in terms of loss of infrastructure. Rather, it had stopped functioning as an empire. Communication with the provinces fell apart, tribute stopped flowing in, support stopped flowing out. Those provinces continued to function as separate entities, but now they were indeed separate entities. As barbarian pressure on their borders increased, they could no longer hold it back (actually, the Germans really needed to move west because the Huns were tight on their backs) and were overrun. The Empire had stopped working and everybody (ie, every ruler) was on their own, which didn't work against what they were up against. After a few hundred years, a new system, feudalism, developed as a way to get several political entities to work together for their mutual support.So what about the Eastern Empire? They kept a hands-off approach. Why? Was it because of the politics that had led to the split? Was it because of the barrier of the distances, logistics, and cost in resources had they attempted to take over the Western Empire? Was it because they had their own border problems to deal with? Whatever it was, they stayed away until a millenium later when they reached out to the West seeking help against Islamic invasion, which resulted in the Crusades. Which in turn, because we were suddenly exposed again to lost ancient, pagan knowledge that the Eastern Empire (AKA "Byzantium") had preserved, helped to spark the Renaissance.Knowledge. Let's let that one ride for right now.OK, now for your scenario. We collapse, but the rest of the world survives? OK, what is to keep them from rolling in and taking us over? Seriously. The only way we will be completely on our own is if the rest of the world that survived were to be kept the hell away from us. What would that be?Let's follow a scenario where we collapse, after which another country or coalition moves in and takes over. Why? Because of our resources? Because of the remnants of our industrial power? They would have a selfish interest in reconstructing our devastated infrastructure, because they need that infrastructure to exploit whatever it is that they came wanting to exploit. Hence, our infrastructure would be restored in fairly short order; it's mainly just our political structure that would need a lot of work.There has to be a really good reason for the surviving part of the world to leave us alone.Oops! Nearly left yet another prose fragment at the end.

Please reconsider the OP: He was obviously positing a global collapse, not a localized one as you are. In a global collapse or in a localized collapse that is somehow rendered identical in effect to a global collapse, the issues we've been discussing are all relevent. However, in a localized collapse, all such discussion is rendered completely moot. In a localized collapse such as you posit, the question is not one of what can we retain, but rather how long will it take for us to recover. The only way in which a localized collapse could still be considered in this discussion would be if for some reason the affected region were to be kept isolated from the rest of the globe that was not affected.The Western Empire was a case of a localized collapse that was rendered identical to a global collapse because the affected region remained isolated from the rest of the globe that was not affected. For about 1000 years after Rome had fallen, Constantinoble continued to function and to rule the Eastern Empire, Byzantium. Yet when Rome fell, Constantinoble did not come to its aid and so Rome's localized collapse effectively became a global collapse.Now, we could come up with reasons for Constantinoble not having come to the aid of Rome, which might include political, logistical, economical reasons or any others. If the USA were to collapse suddenly, what would we expect to happen? Let's ignore our immediate neighbors for now, because they could have been affected as well. Would our friends and enemies in the rest of the world that had survived simply stand by and do nothing? You replied to this idea with: OK, so what is there to discuss then? They would move in, take over, lead us to recovery, albeit along paths that would benefit them. Maybe different countries would squabble over us and might even have wars to settle who got what from us, but that still renders the original question of the OP moot. So have I answered that now? We could rationalize why Byzantium had not acted upon the collapse of Rome. If we were to run the same scenario with modern technology (ie, the technology of the rest of the globe that had survived the localized collapse that you posit), modern communications, modern transportation capabilities, modern logistic capabilities, etc, then the outcome would have been extremely different. When Rome collapsed, the sheer logistics of what it would have taken for Byzantium to have come to her aid could have served as explanation enough for her not having come to Rome's aid. If the USA were to collapse today, I cannot think of any reason for the surviving countries to not come rushing in, whether to her aid or to feed on her carrion. Bolshoi! (refer to that classic scene in the movie "Z" (1969), which played identically in the original French and in the dubbed English -- in case you don't have the time nor access to now-obscure movies, it sounds a lot like "Bullshit!" and was used for that purpose, even in French (the first week it played in the US, it was in French subtitled in English and that is when I, a first-year French student, first saw it))I submit that Byzantium's logistical reasons were compelling enough to have kept it from intervening in Rome's collapse. Those same logistical reasons would not by any stretch of the imagination prevent the rest of the globe from intervening in the collapse of the USA.OK, Byzantium's obstaining from intervening in Rome's collapse rendered that localized collapse global (as far as the West was concerned). If the USA were to similarly collapse, there is nothing to prevent anybody else in the uneffected globe to intervene, not do you expect them to not intervene (indeed, you seem to explicitly expect them to intervene).Therefore, all your scenarios are rendered moot.Also, your scenarios have nothing to do with the OP, which posited a global collapse.QEDPS Uh, hello????? A "post-apocalpse future" is hardly dissimilar to "the fall of civilization." In the case of a global collapse, the two are identical. In the case of a localized collapse, as I have demonstrated the point is completely and utterly moot.Also, I have watched Star Trek in its various incarnation ever since it first aired on 08 Sep 1966 (Man Trap). I also purchased Franz Joseph's "Tech Manual" (apparently the document dug up by the archaeologist in the story) in 1975. I am also a "Trekker", not a "Trekkie", since I do not have two sets of Vulcan ears in my desk drawer (not even a single set, FWIW). However, the irony of the story, that an imagined future technology could be taken seriously and allowed to be achieved, is just too beautiful to be ignored. Especially since it was buried in an obscure magazine that even I cannot find.Please indulge me for one moment. Reread that synopsis.
Let your mind soak it in.OK, if your mind has failed you, then please consider this.It was known for a fact that it was impossible to exceed the speed of sound. Every time we tried, we hit a wall that destroyed the aircraft that had attempted to exceed the speed of sound. We knew that for a fact.That is, until the Glorious Glennis piloted by Chuck Yeager proved us wrong!We know for a fact that even the most basic technology of Star Trek is impossible. Just imagine for one moment a society that had been given a glimpse of that technology, but they had been told that it was not only possible, but had actually been achieved.Armed with that knowledge, what could possibly hold them back?Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

OK. My posts regarding the relevance of your particular scenario, which differs greatly from the scenario posited by the OP, have already been posted. To summarize, the scenarios that you posit are all moot.OK. There's a lot of old knowledge out there. Knowledge that was absolutely necessary before our over-abundant technology. Knowledge that was mentioned to us by our teachers but which we never paid any attention to.OK, here's a challenge. In 7th grade, my math teacher demonstrated to us a long-hand method to calculate the square-root of calculating any given number. Do not use any Internet resource.That was in the mid-1960's. What are the chances of that still surviving? OK, back in 1999, I completed a US Navy math correspondence course that included calculating the square root of a number by that same method. I just now tried to find the same course on the Navy's on-line resources (I'm still an active -- OK, VTU -- reserve member). I couldn't find it.From 1968 to 1976 (when I enlisted in the US Air Force subsequent to my marriage and started my computer career), I worked with my master carpenter father in his general contractor career. My father was born in 1914 and had started working for his master carpenter father at the age of 14, in around 1928. From 1928 to 1940 when he married, he worked as an apprentice with several family members, such as with his plumber Uncle Joe (whom I grew up knowing, since he lived in the city I was born in). My father lived through the times from totally manual labor to gasoline-enabled labor ("single-lung engines" as opposed to 4-cycle engines, which I've seen demonstrated in the Orange County Fair's exhibits) up through the electric tools that all construction workers know. To his credit, he tried to teach that history to me. In addition, he bequethed to me a 1930's correspondence course he had taken. An incredible amount of things had changed during that time. I am perhaps unique in realizing how much had changed in that interval of time.
Perhaps I am not as unique as I believe I am.Nonetheless, an incredible number of things have changed in this century. It was a change from the manual way of doing things to the technilogical way of doing things.So then, if we were to suddenly lose the way that we currently do things, we would still need to do those same things. So we will still need to reinvent how to do those same things even when we no longer can do them the same way as when we still had that technology we used to have.We're still at the same place I was at. Nu?

With all due respect, would you please pull your head out of whatever orifice it's jammed into and just respond to what I'm saying instead of making up minutiae to quibble over. Don't be an idiot! I was not challenging your math skills, but rather placing you in the situation of a post-collapse person who needs to calculate a square root in order to accomplish a task. Is it possible for you to stop and think for a moment?I told you to not use any internet resource, because, guess what, in the post-collapse world there is no internet anymore! You got that?No internet, no computer, no calculators. You would need to think your way to a solution. Our ancestors had methods to solve that problem, but -- and this was my point -- most, if not the vast majority, of us were never taught those old methods and those who were taught them never practiced them enough to remember them decades later.So post-collapse man would either need to find some reference somewhere with that information or else he would need to reinvent the wheel from scratch. I have only encountered the technique I was briefly taught in 7th grade (similar in format to long division) one other time: in a US Navy correspondence course. The other night I tried to find it again, but couldn't. Also, nowadays those courses are published as PDF files and we all know how readable those will be in the post-collapse world.There is one out, though. It is possible that this post-collapse man had found a slide rule. But how many people currently under 50 ever learned to use one of those, let alone learned what it was based on?

No problem. That was SOP back in the day when CompuServe charged for every minute of connect time over a 300-baud modem. Get on only long enough to download replies and capture new posts, then read and reply to them off-line. Well, while it seemed obvious to me, I guess almost anything is open to different interpretations. Though now DBlevins has explicitly stated in Message 22:

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As far as your replies to my question, I would like to clear up any misconceptions about what it is I am asking. I am positing the collapse as one that is Global, for whatever reason, ...

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So that issue is now rendered moot. So now you're arguing with yourself? I wonder who will win that one. Well if you agree with me, then what's the problem? If I've been supporting what you were saying, then what's the problem?I correctly took the thread to be talking about a global collapse (this kind of discussion most commonly is on a global scale) while you mistook it to be about a localized collapse. So it appears that we were talking past each other. I saw you talking about this global collapse actually being localized, so I pointed out, quite correctly I believe, that the only way for this localized collapse having the same effects as a global one would be if for some reason those other surviving powers were to not intervene. You seem to agree with that, yet you keep opposing it. So what's the problem? {blink, blink}OK, so groups fled Rome. And this alleviated the isolation of Rome exactly how? They were leaving Rome, not arriving with support to rebuild Rome. The outside world received those refugees and may have been affected by them, but not Rome. Rome remained isolated. For that isolation to be lifted, groups such as those refugees would have to have come streaming into Rome, bringing their customs, knowledge, skills, and insight with them. Which didn't happen for another 1000 years, when Byzantium herself started to fall.BTW, do you have any information on those groups of refugees? Where they went? What they founded and what that eventually became? What effect they had on the regions where they eventually settled? Out of curiosity. And it turns out that you are wrong; it was a global collapse, not a local one. And the OP also admits that Rome was perhaps not the best example.The dynamics and recovery from a local collapse are different from a global collapse. All your scenarios were for a local collapse and are therefore moot for a global collapse.However: Despite your inappropriate ad hominem (and it would help if you were to at least appear to attempt to pay attention), you do raise a good point that is applicable to a global collapse: How did the collapse occur?Just off the top of my head, I see two ... no, three ... factors here that would affect the extent of the collapse and the rate of recovery out of it.1. How quickly did it happen? An over-night collapse would be more devastating than one that takes years or decades. Our local political and social systems would be better able to survive a slow collapse and so our ability to organize our survival and recovery efforts would be better. A rapid collapse would undoubtedly cause much of society to unravel, requiring us to rebuild much of it later as we try to recover.2. How extensive was the damage? If a lot of artifacts and written knowledge survived, then our hopes of recovery and of regaining the old lost knowledge that we now need again will be much better. If virtually all of it has been destroyed, then we're basically back in the Stone Age having to reinvent all those old skills all over again. And there is a broad spectrum between those extremes.In any case, our global and national and state infrastructure would not survive, though local infrastructures could still survive to varying degrees depending on the extent of the damage.3. How much of the population survived? Just a few of us, small bands, entire communities? And how long did the decimation take?And as for the rest of your inventing minutiae to quibble over, in this case "we knew for a fact", haven't you ever heard of Common Wisdom (AKA "Conventional Wisdom")? That is the generally held consensus of the community. That does not by any stretch of the imagination (except your own, apparently) mean that everybody held that view. Indeed, it is those who challenge Common Wisdom who lead us to most advances in knowledge and technology.And thank you for pointing out how true that Star Trek story was. Most of those advances you mention, if not all of them, were inspired and motivated by Star Trek. Despite Common Wisdom, they want to find a way to make that technology happen.Exactly my point. Again, since you agree with my point, what's the problem?Edited by dwise1, : Added AKA