Yeah I was fully expecting this site to be making fun of all the wacko conspiracies about armageddon, such that it would make me feel better. But instead, the "Limit to Growth" summary seems entirely plausible.

It’s also worth noting that Strauss, Howe, and Turchin all repeatedly stress in their books that firm dates aren’t a guarantee, that sometimes the cycle doesn’t line up correctly (like the Civil War cycle), and that none of their words are meant to be taken as literal predications so much as cautious warnings that history often rhymes.

Having finished both The Fourth Turning and End Times recently, Strauss and Howe’s specific guesses as to what might fuel the next crisis are laughably off track even if their broad strokes still paint a compelling (and at times, frightening) picture, while Turchin feels more prescient in his observations.

Ultimately, though, Turchin has the better message: even when a crisis destroys an empire, the world continues onward. That gave me some bleak hope to hang onto.

The Limits to Growth predictions are laughable.

I think that they Simon–Ehrlich wager showed how laughable they were but I guess we have to revisit every couple of decades.

We do have this dashboard https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/?dm_id=world2

Plenty happens, but:

1. Events, including big ones like 9/11, don't unfold like in the movies as even direct consequences are often far removed.

2. Pax Americana + Hypernormalization + Cheap Food + Digital Escapism = a drug which convinces its users of neverending stability and order.

"The end of the world as we know it" != "Eradication of humanity"

The prediction aren't for total extinction events or even events where the internet wouldn't be around. Also, it' just a silly site provided for our entertainment.

Societal collapse does not necessarily mean the loss of all writing or knowledge of that society. The wikipedia article you linked to proves this.

Out there, somewhere, is a nerd, laser etching Wikipedia onto metal plates, and burying them to be dug up later, just to be able to say, I knew this would happen!

Yea im not sure how a civil war in the United States would affect me as an European... It certainly would, but I'd survive. Isn't the whole point of apocalyptic events to not survive them?

Pending means we haven't reached the start of the predicted time range for that event yet. If I predict a collapse in November of 2025, it would be pending for the rest of October, then active on November 1st until either the collapse happens and it becomes successful or December 1st arrives and it becomes failed.

Don't disagree with any of that, and I don't want to minimize the seriousness of the issues you've cited, but that kind of reinforces the implication of the scorecard?

People are persistently presented with perils (plagues, parasites, pollution, power-hungry politicians, propaganda, plutonium-powered projectiles, etc...) and humanity keeps finding a way through (though certainly at great personal and population-wide cost sometimes).

Some pretty serious chokepoints in the full history (including research suggesting that something reduced our ancestors numbers by ~99% a little under a million years ago) and yet this particular strain remains.

The way Cliodynamics, Turchin’s field, is explained feels like a very early and remedial version of psychohistory from the Foundation universe.

'The world continuing to go on' is the status quo and has been for millenia at this point. Sure, the argument can be made that the world will end eventually, but if we do not have our reference timescale, what do we have? People aren't afraid that the world will eventually end (because 'eventually' should be thousands of years from now), people are afraid the world will end NOW, which does nullify your experience and efforts on the subjective human timescale. Life as we know it continuing to go on without ambiguity on our confidence to prevent world-ending events does resolve those anxieties.

beautifully stated thank you

I am reminded of Roy Scranton's essay Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene [1]

> I found my way forward through an 18th-century Samurai manual, Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s “Hagakure,” which commanded: “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.” Instead of fearing my end, I owned it. Every morning, after doing maintenance on my Humvee, I’d imagine getting blown up by an I.E.D., shot by a sniper, burned to death, run over by a tank, torn apart by dogs, captured and beheaded, and succumbing to dysentery. Then, before we rolled out through the gate, I’d tell myself that I didn’t need to worry, because I was already dead. The only thing that mattered was that I did my best to make sure everyone else came back alive. “If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead,” wrote Tsunetomo, “he gains freedom in the Way.”

[1] https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

For me the problem is managing the transition minimizing unnecessary suffering.

The world is inevitably going to end, our work isn't going to be forever preserved into the future and there will be no "end of history" until there are living humans.

The thing is that the world can end in many ways. My world can end in many ways. I'd rather pass on with a clear consciousness, with my faculties preserved more or less, and with a legacy of having at least tried to make the lives of other that tiny bit better, so I'm aware if I'm not vigilant I can spend my final days suffering from an avoidable disease or accident or regretting I wasted my life chasing a better tomorrow that never came while neglecting what I already have today.

This is virtually the same for all society. It's going to fade into oblivion, but it matters a great deal that the process is as gentle as possible for everyone involved.