Reading this right now after Jordan Hall (in another online discussion) reminded me that I need to check it out.
It gets pretty deep with examples but the idea is that society, through all of history, has been a constant cauldron of multipolar traps and that those conditions, along with more general arms races, almost guarantee failure conditions for any civilization. It also does a good job of describing why cultures go into decadence and move toward something that looks like maximum corruption before decline:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/m ... on-moloch/
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
25 Feb 2021, 10:25 pm
