The Collapse of Complex Societies

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• Sabin Roman (Centre for the Study of Existential Risk)
• Tuesday 24 May 2022, 13:15-14:00
• Darwin College, Richard King Room.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Stefanie Ullmann.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Lunchtime Seminar series. Grab your lunch at the servery and join us for an interesting talk. Everyone is welcome!

Why do societies collapse? Some famous examples include: Easter Island, the Maya, the Roman Empire and the Chinese dynasties. I have developed mathematical models for these cases and will present what these models teach us. I will also provide a general perspective of the methodology I employed in modelling past cases of collapse. The modelling does not focus on the collapse in particular, but rather on the long-term development of a society from its beginning to end. To build an accurate model we need to identify the relevant feedback mechanisms that operate over those time scales. In the case of societies, the long-term feedback loops involve its complexity and resource usage. What is complexity? That’s a key topic that will be addressed in the talk.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Chris Davis' list
• Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars
• Darwin College Research Talks
• Darwin College, Richard King Room
• Darwin Lectures and Seminars
• ESRC DTP
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• custom

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