Re: Why the West has 'won'.
Robin Hanson (hanson@hss.caltech.edu)
Sun, 17 Aug 1997 20:28:51 -0700 (PDT)
Anders Sandberg writes:
>A good point. On the other hand, a global civilization may be more
>resilent than a local civilization. Previously, most civilizations
>have been monolithic administrative systems; empires, states or
>closely allied states. But today we are seeing a civilization more
>defined by a global economic, scientific and political framework.
You could look at centralization as the form that failure takes at
first, which induces other failures later. From this view the lack of
global centralization simply shows that we have not yet failed, offers
little hope by itself that we won't fail later.
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/