I find it very difficult to reason rigorously about this topic, and none of the below is rigorous. But in terms of sources of hypotheses or proto-models of what if anything is up here, some of my favorite books:
Atlas Shrugged (a fictional portrayal of societal decay that has been increasingly reminding me of current events, particularly since 2016 or 2020)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (an argument that the West was, since ~Aristotle, built on an almost-coherent philosophy whose incoherence has been becoming more visible across time, and a theory of what the gap is. Pays some rent IMO).
Moral Mazes (similar content to Atlas Shrugged, and not as deep I think, but maybe easier to read because based in current observations instead of fiction)
The above are my favorites. Others that seem less good but still helpful to me:
Possibly Pink Floyd’s movie “The Wall”, which shows societal programming since WW1 as a set of increasingly out of sync software programs being echoed and richocheted by a bunch of overwhelmed/traumatized people and processes
Maybe Venkatesh Rao
The Tao Te Ching — it’s pretty abstract but it has a fair bit to say about what happens when Goodhart’s Law hits mass human behavior
Chapter 1 of Vol. 1 of Hayek’s book “Law, Legislation, and Liberty” (the introduction was too hard, and I didn’t make it much past the first chapter, but I got a lot from that chapter)
Possibly “Century of the Self” (a 4-hour propaganda film about the impact of marketing/psychology/self-help on the contemporary world; possibly a must for anyone as involved in trying to develop self-help or “rationality” techniques as you are), and/or the more recent movie sequence that I am partway through by the same person, “Can’t get you out of my head”. Both by Adam Curtis.
Possibly Vervaeke’s 50-hour history of Western Civilization called “Awakening from the meaning crisis”, on themes similar to Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
Possibly Eric Weinstein’s model of “embedded growth obligations”, as a theory of how society in general accidentally overpromised and then headed toward lies/unsustainability rather than rethink itself, kinda like a Ponzi scheme.
I find most relevant Michael Vassar, Ben Hoffman, Jessica Taylor, and Zvi on the same topics; I’d have listed them toward the top except that you (Eli) already know them, and I’m afraid of setting off peoples’ “politicized topic” detectors. I’d be pretty interested to try exploring why/how their writing sets this off in people, and what it indicates about them/us, if anyone wants to.
"The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter (1988) is a good place to start for a historical perspective. To put in relation with the Club de Rome report "Limits to Growth" (1974).
Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery. Makes the case many civilization collapses are attributable to poor agricultural practices
John Michael Greer is (I think) very good on societal decay in general. I read him because he’s a good writer, and he challenges my assumptions in an interesting way, which is to say that his foundational beliefs are very very different from mine (and most people here, I would guess). But his writings on modern society and peak oil make a lot of sense. You can start here - https://www.ecosophia.net/ - and there may be a link there to his older blog, which was more collapsonomic-related.
I got a lot out of reading Peter Turchin's "Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall", and I'm going to read more of his works soon. He makes elegant mathematical arguments about the intertwining effects of population, technology, and social cohesion on growth and collapse of societies.
Although this is an old question, I want to provide an answer, since this is a topic that I am interested in and believe matters for GCR and X-Risk reduction, though it seems quite plausible that this field will radically transform under different level of AI capabilities.
First, if the author of this post has updated their believes about the field of decline and collapse or has formulated a resource list of their own, I would appreciate these being remarked, so I may engage with them.
Of note, I have not fully read some of these books and other resources, but I have minimally skimmed all of them. There are resources I am not including, since these I feel are not worth their time in opportunity costs.
The following are not put in priority order, but I have provided simple ratings of one to three ✯ indicating how much I believe the books are valuable to thinking about collapse. Ratings come after titles so as not to prime the reader.
Books:
Web-Links:
Some further considerations
Anna's previous comment used the term "proto-model" and alluded to the greater dearth of formalization in this field. It is worth adding here that "this field" (which, at times, I have referred to as "cliodynamics", "studies in complex societies", "historical dynamics", "studies in collapse", "civilizational dynamics"), is a collection of different academic disciplines, each of which has different levels of quantitative rigor.
Many who have entertained theorizing about human societies and their rise and fall (even the notions of "rise" and "fall" are somewhat dubious) have seldom incorporated quantitative measures or models, though I have still found their work valuable.
The authors in the anthology How Worlds Collapse seem not to interact and or collaborate much with those who study global catastrophic risk (e.g., those who would cite books such as X-Risk or Global Catastrophic Risks), which seems to be a loss for both fields, since those studying GCR and or X-Risks have adopted, more readily (or seemingly so), models and mathematics, with a good canonical paper for the latter entry being Classifying Global Catastrophic Risks (2018), and those in the field of collapse typically are more ready to consider patterns across historical complex societies and psychological dynamics relevant to recovery of complex societies under forces of calamity.
Anyway, best of wishes in your studies of human societies and their dynamics, including their decline.
This covers Toynbee, Spengler, Gobineau, and other historical figures in the field of "collapse" or "complex societies", including Peter Turchin. ↩︎
From their sites: Seshat: Global History Databank was founded in 2011 to bring together the most current and comprehensive body of knowledge about human history in one place. The huge potential of this knowledge for testing theories about political and economic development has been largely untapped. Our unique Databank systematically collects what is currently known about the social and political organization of human societies and how civilizations have evolved over time. This massive collection of historical information allows us and others to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. ↩︎
There's a recent post on Astral Codex Ten, Etirabys' review of Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies", which seems like the sort of thing you're looking for: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-collapse-of
I've often heard rationalist and EAs talk about civilizational collapse, or civilizational decay: the set of trends whereby society seems to be becoming increasingly less functional, and might at some point fail entirely.
Some examples:
Note that I'm not confident that all of these people are talking about precisely the same phenomenon. In fact, I'm pretty sure that they're not, but they are all looking in a similar direction.
I'd like to get more orientation on how to thinking about these, and related ideas, including read whatever analyses, or speculations, that currently exist on this topic or cluster of topics.
Does anyone have suggestions?