September 13th, 2025
In classical rhetoric, the refutatio was a section of an oration directly addressing objections that might be raised against the speaker’s thesis. Here I shall attempt to address some of the objections that I anticipate might be raised against my proposition that any technological civilization will inevitably reach a point where the rate of change in the civilization’s environment exceeds the civilization’s speed of response to change, resulting in the collapse of the civilization.
The most common counterargument is that we cannot know the structure and capabilities of every possible civilization; how then can we be certain that there is not some civilization that can either a) keep the rate of change of technology to within its adaptability limits; or b) enjoy such extreme plasticity that it can adapt to any change instantly, or at least fast enough to cope?
Constraining technological progress through ignorance
The first possibility arises from a civilization that fails to develop science; its development of technology is strictly empirical. This might seem weird, but in fact, on earth it was the norm. Of all the independent civilizations that arose on this planet, only Europe developed science. For a detailed explanation of how this happened, please consult this lengthy explanation. Yes, many civilizations recorded astronomical phenomena, noted interesting natural behavior, and so forth. But observation is not science.
Science is a process by which we combine many, many observations to induce an underlying principle. This process requires the development of abstract concepts for perceiving natural behavior. For example, it’s easy to conceive the notion of position. It’s only a little more difficult to conceive the notion of speed as the rate of change of position with time. But we start straining our minds to conceive the notion of acceleration as the rate of change of speed with time. The notion of acceleration is incorporated into the most fundamental law of physics:
F = ma
This asserts that the force on an object is equal to its mass multiplied by its acceleration. These three abstract concepts (force, mass, and acceleration) were essential to developing the science of motion.
This intellectual approach (inducing the relationships between abstract concepts from multiple observations) was unique to the West; no other civilization ever developed the technique.
China
A familiarity with Chinese technology opens one’s eyes to this reality. We have an excellent source on this subject in Joseph Needham’s magnificent series of books “Science and Civilization in China”. You can find the first volume here.
China developed quite a few impressive technologies, but reading Needham, you realize that none of this technology was ever created by the application of scientific principles to social problems. Here’s a detailed explanation of my point.
China was the biggest, richest, and most powerful nation in the world right up until around 1600. But Western science and technology gave it an advantage that it used to conquer the world. That’s why Mr. Xi wears Western clothing and Mr. Obama does not wear Mandarin clothing.
Since China never developed science, its technological progress was driven solely by empirical experience. Some Chinese technological progress was serendipitous, but most was the result of endless experimentation to improve some already extant technology.
This raises an interesting question: suppose that the West had not discovered science? After all, the discovery of science by the West was the result of a series of fortuitous accidents; in an alternate earth history, it probably would not have happened, and China would have eventually come to dominate humanity. What would civilization look like in such a case? China would continue to be the technological leader, but its progress would have been much slower than it has been in the West. My own wild guess is that it would take China several thousand years to reach the current state of technological progress. I rule out the possibility of China eventually developing science on its own, because Chinese culture has always been, and still is, extremely conservative. To give you an example of how conservative Chinese culture is, I need only cite Chinese concepts of filial duty. 2500 years ago, Kong Qui, whom we in the West refer to as Confucius, wrote that family duties were of supreme importance, and sons owed their parents absolute obedience; they were required to care for their parents for their entire lives. In 2500 years, that has not changed; in 2013, the Chinese National People’s Congress passed the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People law, which mandates that children provide “culturally expected” care for their parents over age 60.
Note, however, that the conservatism of Chinese culture might serve well in the alternate history in which China dominates the world. If humanity had several thousand years to adapt to all the changes brought on by technological progress, might humanity be able to cope with those changes?
Yes
Certainly a slower rate of technological progress would give humanity more time to adapt to the changes wrought by technological progress, conferring greater ability to cope effectively.
But no
Nevertheless, technological progress would still accelerate, meaning that the rate of change would always increase to a point exceeding the capacity of conservative Chinese culture to adapt.
Capacity for rapid social change
Why must every civilization be constrained in its response to rapid technological change? Why could there not exist a civilization capable of instantaneous response to technological change?
The first difficulty here is that response to stress requires investigation into the precise nature of the stress as well as some experience with that stress. Suppose that a terrorist cell uses AI to develop a lethal airborne virus that they unleash upon the world. In order to defeat the virus, we would need time to study its function, discover a technology to defeat it, and deploy that technology. It took us over a year to develop and deploy vaccines to counter the Covid-19 pandemic.
Even then, our problem would not be solved; the terrorist cell could easily develop a new lethal airborne virus, or variations on their original virus. We would always be one step behind them, while their avalanche of viruses steadily kills more and more people.
Deliberately constrained technological progress
What if a society had a fundamental opposition to rapid technological progress? What if the people of planet Ludd had a law requiring years of research into the consequences of adopting a new technology, and permitted its deployment only after all the measures necessary to protect the Luddites from the harmful effects of the technology had been implemented? Such a civilization would be immune to the threat of overly rapid technological progress.
The flaw in this argument lies in the fact that technological progress confers power upon those who make use of a new technology. That power might be directly military, but it can also be economic or social. If there were any faction of Luddites who did not like the current system, they could secretly break the law and develop the technology, then use it to dominate the other Luddites.
Existential threat triggers ban on technological progress
Let’s defer to the sages in Hollywood who have been warning us that computers might someday take over the world and wipe us out. Suppose that our development of AI technology advanced to the point that its advocates call “AGI” — Artificial General Intelligence. This is artificial intelligence that’s just as good as human intelligence (assuming that you are willing to grant that humans are intelligent). Then the computers would get so smart that they’d decide to get rid of us stupid humans. Perhaps they’d invert our videogame designs so that, in the real world, humans play the monsters and computers get the guns. They’d vie with each other to see who could get the most points…
Anyway, let’s continue with our Hollywood scenario. The computers start to kill humans, triggering a panic among humans, who, under the leadership of a handsome yet tormented leader whose gorgeous girlfriend helps him cope with the stress of leadership, while occasionally kicking some computer ass herself, fight back and, after endless spectacular battles involving hand-to-hand combat between humans and computers equipped with hands, eventually emerge triumphant, with a celebratory ceremony in which the handsome yet tormented leader and his gorgeous ass-kicking girlfriend get married in front of millions of cheering humans. The HYT leader and GAK girlfriend declare that humanity will never allow such a thing to happen again, and ban all technological progress so that humans can spend all their time hugging and kissing.
But alas, after centuries of blissful communion with nature, humans return to their true form and start arguing with one another over whether pine trees are better than oak trees, or whose god can beat up whose-else's god, or exactly where the line between one village’s lands and another village’s lands should be — you know the pattern. And one group decides to get a leg up on the other group by inventing atomic bows and arrows, and here we go again with the race of technological progress.
If you’re such a stuck-up fuddy-duddy that you don’t like this version, you’re welcome to concoct your own scenario.
If you’d like to offer another hypothesis for me to refutatio-nate, just email it to me.