Regarding an old comment that made me think.
Do you think that the world today is more fragile? For example, removing one every three people would cause a much greater collapse than what could be caused by a pandemic in the Middle Age?
I think this is the case, due to the level of specialized knowledge required to operate the world today and the very existence of nuclear power plants.
Another possibility is that a civilization can only contain so much complexity given a certain number of people, and so a one billion people civ cannot be more sophisticated than a three billions people civ. The next obvious question: is our optimized for the number of people that there are on the planet?
Anyone has any strong opinion about?
Do you think that the world today is more fragile?
Depends on the threat. More fragile with respect to, say, disruption of trade networks. Less fragile with respect to e.g. a new pathogen.
You also have to be careful about the yardsticks you're using. Something like a 25% drop in GDP would be treated as a collapse and the end of the world in the developed countries. But in this scenario how many people will starve to death? I expect the number to be approximately zero. In a preindustrial society, on the other hand, a collapse basically meant that most peo...
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