larrydunbar:

July 6th, 2006 at 7:21 am

I think Steve missed one important point of Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam. To me the doctor seemed to be saying that The Roman Empire didn’t fall because of complacency and decadence, complacency and decadence were possible symptoms of a society that couldn’t deal with complexity.
Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam says, “In a review of history, the development of hierarchies can be seen to enable progressively more complex behaviors. There are two complementary aspects to this development, complexity at the scale of the individual and complexity at the scale of the collective.”
“The complexity/diversity of individual behaviors does not, by itself, cause the breakdown of the hierarchies. It is the complexity of collective behaviors that is important since controlling these behaviors, i.e. coordinating the behaviors of the individuals, is the role of central control.”
He then writes of Empires, “ From earliest recorded history until the fall of the Roman Empire, empires replaced various smaller kingdoms that had developed during a process of consolidation of yet smaller association of human being. The degree of control exercised in these systems varied, but the progression towards larger more centrally control systems is apparent. As per our discussion of the difference between independent individual and coherent behaviors this process was driven by military force.”
But what happens when the military force is no longer needed, when the law of the land prevails. I believe your coherent profile is lost and the situation becomes correlated and specialized. This gives the Roman Empire a complexity profile that declines gradually with increasing scale instead of the sharp decline with decreased scale that is contributed by military action.
If the leaders of the Roman Empire were unaware of the change in the complexity profile, they may have become complacent and decadent simply because they didn’t understand what was happening. Their situation was getting more complex than they were. They reverted to the less complex beings of their character.

mark:

July 7th, 2006 at 2:55 pm

Hi Larry,

Check out ERMB – Steve has continued his thoughts; on your points:

“complacency and decadence were possible symptoms of a society that couldn’t deal with complexity.”

The leaders weren’t unaware but the Imperial system generated frequent & unpredictable changes in leadership as the legions proclaimed new Emperors and assassinations removed them. The stability for long term planning was rarely there even if the Romans had thought in those terms, which I think is dubious. Different cognitive outlook than modern Westerners like ourselves.

The Empire reached a crisis point here under Diocletian who responded with a policy of political decentralization and economic stasis, both of which proved exceptionally negative in their consequences. So much so that instituting the exact opposite might have been better.

I think you are correct though that the complexity profile exceeded the readily available tools (institutions, communication technology) which left the Roman elite at a loss.

Dan tdaxp:

July 9th, 2006 at 10:03 pm

A networked civilization by definition will see greater interaction by these specialists across domains , in horizontal thinking fashion, and that such multidisciplinary collaboration

Yes, but as long as the network focusses on collaboration (soft rulesets) and not control (hard rulesets). Hierarchicalization of security has been increasing for the past many millennia, and we are the better for it.