Civilizations-and-Collapse on Yuval Bloch — Complexity & Ecology

Chaos Theory of Human Hubris: From Jurassic Park to Afghanistan

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I came across Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park by chance. The school I attended as a child had limited physical resources, and its small library didn’t offer many books. With so few options, I often ended up reading whatever I could get my hands on, even stories that didn’t immediately grab my interest. Jurassic Park was one of them.

Unlike the movie, which is remembered mainly for dinosaurs devouring people, Michael Crichton’s novel is about something deeper: chaos theory, complex systems, and the limits of human control. The book is divided into “iterations,” each beginning with a quote from Ian Malcolm about chaos theory. Every chapter opens with a fractal diagram that becomes more intricate as the story unfolds—mirroring how the park itself unravels, shifting from apparent order into uncontrollable chaos.

Thanos's Flawed Premise: A Deeper Look at Population and Resources

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Avengers: Infinity War, the villain Thanos offers a drastic and brutal “solution” to a universal problem: halve the population to prevent resource scarcity. While his methods are fictional, his reasoning echoes a real historical debate on the relationship between population growth and resource availability—a debate with deep intellectual roots.

The first systematic exploration came from Thomas Malthus in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus argued that human populations grow exponentially, while the resources needed to sustain them—especially food—grow only linearly. This imbalance, he warned, would inevitably push societies beyond their limits, leading to famine, disease, and conflict—what he referred to as “positive checks” on growth. His preferred solution was preventive checks: delayed marriage and smaller families.

Rent-Seeking, Complexity, and the Fall of Empires

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Long Shadow of Babylon

The idea that an empire’s fall can be anticipated is not new. Over 2,500 years ago, Daniel’s prophecy foretold the rise of four beasts from a chaotic sea—each representing a great empire destined to dominate and then decline. His message was clear: Babylon’s reign would not last, nor would any that followed.

This historical pattern has been repeatedly affirmed. But why do empires fall? Why has no civilization sustained supremacy forever? In this post, I will explore two powerful, complementary theories that explain this recurring cycle of rise and collapse, then examine them in a journey through history.

The Ghost of Hari Seldon: Asimov's Foundation Revisited in the Light of Complexity Science

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Ghost of Hari Seldon: Asimov’s Foundation Revisited in the Light of Complexity Science

As a child, no book shaped my worldview more than Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. While others dreamed of studying at Hogwarts or exploring Narnia, I longed to shape the future of the galaxy as part of the First or Second Foundation. Years later, with a computer science degree in hand, I embarked on a search for my next intellectual challenge. That search led me to Stefano Allesina’s paper, “Going Big.”