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Old 11-24-2021, 09:13 AM   #1
Tom Mazanec
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Do Collapses help Technology?

Bronze Age Collapse
TL 1 to TL2 followed
Fall of Rome
TL 2 to TL 3
Black Death
TL 3 to TL 4
Coincidence or pattern?
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Old 11-24-2021, 09:48 AM   #2
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec View Post
Bronze Age Collapse
TL 1 to TL2 followed
Fall of Rome
TL 2 to TL 3
Black Death
TL 3 to TL 4
Coincidence or pattern?
Illusion? "Collapses" are at most local and the Black Death isn't usually considered a collapse.
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Old 11-24-2021, 09:52 AM   #3
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec View Post
Bronze Age Collapse
TL 1 to TL2 followed
Fall of Rome
TL 2 to TL 3
Black Death
TL 3 to TL 4
Coincidence or pattern?
Some of both. TLs are imaginary and extended to the extent they can be defined and localized several of those "transitions" are centuries to either side of the collapse.

On the other hand, something serious enough to label a "collapse" necessarily means a change in the way your economy works, and that opens space for things that previously weren't worth doing to become important. And any kind of change in stuff used is a candidate for being labeled a TL transition. Is the new technology "better"? Well it works better *now*, regardless of whether it would have in the old economy. That makes it progress, right?
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:17 AM   #4
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Some of both. TLs are imaginary and extended to the extent they can be defined and localized several of those "transitions" are centuries to either side of the collapse.

On the other hand, something serious enough to label a "collapse" necessarily means a change in the way your economy works, and that opens space for things that previously weren't worth doing to become important. And any kind of change in stuff used is a candidate for being labeled a TL transition. Is the new technology "better"? Well it works better *now*, regardless of whether it would have in the old economy. That makes it progress, right?
I would argue that the transition to TL2 was more what caused the Bronze Age Collapse than vice versa. The introduction of new weaponry helped disrupt the established order of things which led to a breakdown in trade networks. It's possible that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to the development of new agricultural techniques, but realistically the failure of the old agricultural methods were what led to the demographic collapse that produced an enfeebled Western Roman Empire in the first place.

Last edited by David Johnston2; 11-24-2021 at 10:27 AM.
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:21 AM   #5
Curmudgeon
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec View Post
Bronze Age Collapse
TL 1 to TL2 followed
Fall of Rome
TL 2 to TL 3
Black Death
TL 3 to TL 4
Coincidence or pattern?
Unless you can show:
<Collapse>
TL4 to TL5
<Collapse>
TL 5 to TL6
<Collapse>
TL6 to TL7
<Collapse>
TL 7 to TL8
you don't have a pattern (and we should by your suggestion see a collapse responsible for TL0 to TL1).

The cause for the Bronze Age Collapse is disputed.

Going by the effects of your three postulated collapses, the pattern is more: the collapse of international trade and diplomacy isolates and disrupts the expected order of things for the societies of the known world. This gives leeway for new methods to be in effect when those societies reconnect. Not for the new methods to be present of necessity, but simply for it to be possible that new methods exist.

Absent the pattern, I'd say coincidence, maybe even happenstance.
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:36 AM   #6
ericthered
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post
Unless you can show:
<Collapse>
TL4 to TL5
<Collapse>
TL 5 to TL6
<Collapse>
TL6 to TL7
<Collapse>
TL 7 to TL8

I mean, I can point to political systems that go down around the time of most of these changes, from the Soviet Union to Swedish empire. A lot of these are knocked down by technological changes, rather than bringing them about. I think that's a much more interesting case to look at, and you can argue that's also the case with both the bronze age collapse and Rome.



But there are people who will argue that none of these things are a collapse. Not even the bronze age collapse.
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Old 11-24-2021, 10:44 AM   #7
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
I would argue that the transition to TL2 was more what caused the Bronze Age Collapse than vice versa. The introduction of new weaponry helped disrupt the established order of things which led to a breakdown in trade networks
That's the other problem, correlation isn't causation. Both collapses and TL transitions involve economic and political changes, but the direction is hard to pin down. For the other direction you could make a pretty good case for the TL3 to 4 and TL4 to 5 transition being responsible for the "collapse" of a lot of traditional societies outside of Europe for example, and the causation is definitely running in the other direction on that one.

The relationship is more like "things changing allows for other things to change" which is a lot less interesting a thesis than either "collapse brings progress" or "progress brings collapse".
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Old 11-24-2021, 11:46 AM   #8
Phantasm
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

While it can be argued that the Great Depression of the 1930s and WWII of the early 1940s was a "collapse" that led into TL7, it pales next to the Bronze Age Collapse. And there was no real Collapse between 5 and 6, nor between 7 and 8. And the shift from TL4 to 5 was increased reliability rather than a disruption (the Golden Age of Piracy and the English Civil War weren't widespread enough to cause a Collapse).
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Old 11-24-2021, 11:49 AM   #9
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

This reminds me of a quote from the webcomic Genocide Man, which starts here (although I should note that page and the next have serious spoilers). I'll note this is the speech of an AI that has gone a bit cuckoo (as all AI's are wont to do in the setting).

"The human race. It's a paradox. The most adaptable species ever - so resilient, they crave suffering to test their ability. Catastrophe makes them stronger. The invention of warfare brought metallurgy. The Crusades proliferated mathematics. The Cold War spawned the Internet. The Plague Wars created the Guayaquil Upgrade*. Paradox. Paradox. There's only one way to help them... and it's a paradox. If you have gifts to give them... if you want to see them thrive... if you truly, deeply, love human beings...

Then kill as many of them as you can."


*From the setting's timeline, although there it's called the Genocide Wars, and is considered to have started in 2037 with genegineered humans being used as weapons. The Guayaquil Upgrade was one of the "plagues" during this time period (when there were worldwide, engineered, targeted pandemics - Jews and natural redheads no longer exist in the setting, thanks to this), and contained a retroviral package that, amongst other things, made human immune systems sufficiently efficient that widespread pandemics largely couldn't happen anymore. For those who survived anyway - around 1.5 billion died from the Upgrade.
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Old 11-24-2021, 11:58 AM   #10
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Default Re: Do Collapses help Technology?

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
I would argue that the transition to TL2 was more what caused the Bronze Age Collapse than vice versa. The introduction of new weaponry helped disrupt the established order of things which led to a breakdown in trade networks. It's possible that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to the development of new agricultural techniques, but realistically the failure of the old agricultural methods were what led to the demographic collapse that produced an enfeebled Western Roman Empire in the first place.
I've seen it argued that the causality was the other way. Trade routes collapse, you couldn't get the tin to make bronze, so you had to try this new-fangled iron stuff which takes a lot more fuel to make, but the raw material is everywhere.
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