Comments by "" (@redtela) on "The WEST is FINISHED and I FINALLY Know WHY" video.

  1.  @raymondbristow4007  thank you, both for what you did, and for what you continue to put up with
    4
  2. Tim, the format of this video made it's content lost on me. I see the point you were making by playing the game while talking, but it made it difficult to tell me what parts were the essay author's, and what commentary you were adding. So, I went back to basics, back at college, I was a Computer Science student wanting to get into AI (so I took Psychology & Physics too), my girlfriend at the time was doing soft sciences (Sociology etc) and my best mate is now a Barrister (he was doing Law & History)... Tainter's book was right up our alley for reading & discussing without it being on any particular course. So we did, knocking on the door of 30 years ago. Wanting to get into AI and being aware of Mr Asimov's work around robotics, I always wanted to structure things around a moral framework - for no other reason than it felt like it made sense. Regrettably, Tainter was an archaeologist rather than a historian, and in the book (in which he lays out his theory - and it is just that, a theory) he cites his framework as explaining the fall of Rome, for example. At it's very heart, his framework is reductionist at best. Sure, he might be on to something, but it needs fleshing out. To that end, a list of other books around the same subject that I recall reading: - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright - The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes - The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins - The list goes on, I'm sure you get the point... Sure, there are parallels between modern society and Tainter's book... but one thing I don't remember mentioning (perhaps the essay didn't mention it), Tainter's book also states that the collapse need not be catastrophic. Not to mention his work being very ethnocentric - which always trips my "why though?" circuit when someone tries to be divisive (as he was - I'm not suggesting you are being). For example, his framework doesn't appear to fit the Mongol empire, or the Ottomans. You make a long video, I make a long comment. Seems fair to me. 🤣
    1