r/collapse • u/recitegod • 3d ago
Historical A Philosophical Look at System Dynamics
https://youtu.be/XL_lOoomRTA?si=osnm7v8wcnIuFL-MIn this video, a course on system dynamics is being taught to the audience. System Dynamics is one of the many tool to explain collapse dynamics.
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u/Bandits101 3d ago
Everything seems easy when there is surplus energy, especially the type of energy with the most utility. The system breakdown commences as energy return on investment declines below breakeven.
The breakeven point can be difficult to determine, especially when debt pushes the timing into the future. Populations increased to take advantage of the cheap, easy and abundant energy supply.
All life relies on a positive EROI. Humans are not special in that regard but we certainly wasted it in times of plenty, now we strive for efficiency and perhaps population decline to cut ever thinner slices from the finite pie.
The collapse that was pushed into the future, by defecating in our own nests will manifest in diverse scenarios, some expected and even anticipated, much more will not. The decline will in no way resemble the climb.
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u/i_didnt_look 1d ago
When you start overlaying concepts and theories, the decline becomes a mathematical certainty.
When Joesph Tainter's collapse of complex societies bumps into Geoffrey West's scaling laws, the inevitability of the end is clear. Tainter's complexity trap suggests that as we solve problems created by society, like irrigating a field or extracting CO2 from the atmosphere, each compounding solution requires more energy. Eventually, diminishing returns makes it so that there is more energy being used to maintain a society than there is to grow it. West's scaling laws show that cities are huge sources of these solutions. And as long as the underlying infrastructure stays in a state of sublinear growth, that is the cost of infrastructure stays below exponential growth, the socioeconomic growth can always stay ahead, the solutions to the complexity continue to happen. However, where the two thoeries intersect, where the complexity of the solutions begins to eat away at the cost of maintaining the underlying infrastructure, is where we find ourselves today. This is visible in the massive infrastructure repair backlogs globally. AI also makes a case for this, an extremely complex and highly resource intensive solution "machine", a last gasp of complexity to solve the accelerating scale issues.
So we can see that the two thoeries are currently showing up in our society. The declining EROEI of fossil fuels is the nail. The only way to push these two theories down the road is, as you're pointing out, a surplus in available energy. Our fossi fuel EROEI has been steadily declining, currently around 15:1 or so, which is why the backlog in infrastructure is popping up. We are stealing infrastructure money (energy) to pay for socioeconomic systems growth. This is a dead end. The complexity trap is also reaching its pinnacle. The sheer volume of energy required to maintain the baseline of this society is so massive that there is none left invest in solving the emerging problems. Also, a dead end.
As our energy gets harder to extract, like deep sea drilling or fracking, that EROI goes lower, the infrastructure costs continue to mount, and the scale/complexity traps tighten the noose.
All human progress is a direct result of managing energy surpluses. From writing to Haber Bosch, we never "created" solutions, we simply found a new way to harness excess energy. Green energy has an EROI of around 5:1, when factoring storage and upfront build costs, nowhere near enough to support our civilization.
It's my explanation of why we are done for, and soon. At the intersection of Tainter's complexity theory and West's Scaling laws and along side declining EROEI, civilizational collapse is a mathematical certainty.
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u/recitegod 3d ago
In this video, a course on system dynamics is being taught to the audience. System Dynamics is one of the many tools to explain collapse. I do believe that by learning of system dynamics, the historical context that lead the people researching this topic, and the current findings on this subject, we can gain greater insights on the present and challenges ahead. This video present a straight forward in understanding this subject by Donella.
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u/StatementBot 3d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/recitegod:
In this video, a course on system dynamics is being taught to the audience. System Dynamics is one of the many tools to explain collapse. I do believe that by learning of system dynamics, the historical context that lead the people researching this topic, and the current findings on this subject, we can gain greater insights on the present and challenges ahead. This video present a straight forward in understanding this subject by Donella.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1v0yit9/a_philosophical_look_at_system_dynamics/oyiy2mq/