Complex systems fail due to single causes exactly that way. First the system runs well; once the cause is introduced the system adapts so that the visible cost is minimal, but the adaptations are costly by themselves, and demand further adaptations; then the adaptation cycle runs for a while (that can be very long), until everything finally breaks down.

It is very unlikely that the lead pipes that were there since the beginning would be such a cause, but the duration of the fall alone is not enough evidence that it wasn't caused by an immediate problem.

By way of example:

You can use a caustic solution to unclog your pipes and it will work flawlessly, every time for an indefinite amount of time. Then, at some point, you'll have leaks due to glue being eaten away, PVC melting, or other damage.

True for complex systems, but West Roman empire didn't "collapse" instantaneously, nor within a year/decade.

If I remember correctly what I read on it, the actual date is arbitrarily taken for didactic clarity, and it's the date the capital moved to another city. But the kingdom still called itself Roman, so contemporaries didn't quite notice the difference. BTW, this is how modern Romania got its name -- smaller kingdoms in the former empire called themselves the glorious Rome.

The curious detail is that Barbarian leaders actually wanted to become king of Rome and to be acknowledged as equally civilized, rather than merely sack and loot it. Some of them were actually legioneers, if I remember it correctly. So it's not clear if a legioneer sacked Rome and set himself as king, was the new state still Roman or already not.

Curious if you have any reading suggestion on how complex systems fail?

The two iconic texts are:

- "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph Tainter (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Ar...)

- "Normal Accidents" by Chuck Perrow (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Normal-Accidents-Living-High-Risk-Tec...)

Tainter deals directly with the Roman Empire, but the nutshell is the cost of complexity begins to outweigh its returns, requiring more and more resources just to maintain the status quo, until the entire thing becomes weak and susceptible to failures large and small.

- "Panarchy: Understanding Human and Natural Systems" (Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Panarchy-Understanding-Transformation...) is also a fantastic book drawing from ecosystem science and proposes a general model for this. It's pretty well accepted in ecological circles but has been criticised for a lack of empirical data. The general model is the same as Tainter's though.

- "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner is also a classic! (https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...)

Well worth reading all of the above.

This is more or less how more recent scholarship looks at complicated, long-term multi-modal sort of events and changes. Fate of Rome is a fairly recent book that examines things like disease and climate change, for instance:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691166834/th...

I don't know if that's a new viewpoint. I have been hearing about how the island and frequent disasters shaped Japan for as long as I remember.

It's definitely newer than Gibbon, in the case of the fall of the Roman empire.

> So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries...

I don't think anyone is (was?) suggesting that someone replaced the pipes overnight and they were all dead the next morning, but rather that it was an extremely gradual process that after centuries of extending its implantation managed to reduce cognitive capabilities by a couple points, etc.

The simple counterargument "lead use didn't increase" manages to kill such a theory, though.

In software we (or at least I) often see situations where careful forethought put systems and checks in place that survive long after the responsible parties are gone, and it can be difficult to identify or accept that the project failed this year because Tom quit last year. There are too many forces arrayed against looking too closely at those situations, and once the wheels come off there's no longer a quorum to even rationally discuss such a thing, except amongst a few veterans having a beer and trying not to draw too much attention to themselves.

If you idiot-proof something well enough, it can take a long time for the Universe to invent an idiot good enough to pull the whole thing down. We tend to look at Rome as one of the oldest well-documented cases of the power of logistics, so it's not outside of the realm of reason to suggest that a good process might survive even a generation or two before Chesterton's Fence wins out. But whether that's due to a loss of cleverness or just human nature is likely going to be hard to prove.

Water piping isn't likely the primary cause of Roman lead poisoning. They were putting (acidic) wine into lead ewers to sweeten it and directly applying lead acetate powder to food.

Countries, let alone empires, are very large entities. I'd argue that they fail long before they collapse. Consider the Soviet Union. While the final reason they collapsed was economic, it would be difficult to argue that it could have continued to persist indefinitely otherwise.

In my opinion the Soviet Union had failed decades prior to its collapse (which is saying something for a system that only lasted 69 years), the root cause being the loss of faith of their own citizenry. And in such a scenario, any bump in the road is suddenly going to turn into a catastrophe. I think blaming the bump is failing to see the forest through all those trees.

The Roman Empire spanned from Great Britain, across Europe, and even along North Africa. And the speed of light was the speed of horseback or sail. Things, even when done with the utmost haste, were slow. And so in this scenario the separation between the failure and collapse was going to be even greater.

This line of publishing, much like nutritional science, is great for scientists. You can fudge data into flip flopping conclusions every couple of years. Infinite papers = tenure.

And here's a reason science can die in complex societies: because people want to score points over engaging with it. On a surface level it's easy to say "suggestions are changing, therefore it's a scam." But it's also a highly-expected outcome of a field being actively researched! Working as intended = ammunition for those who want to play games instead.

That's not to say there is no fraud, or bad actors. It's just to say that your comment falls hideously short as a potential way of spotting bad acting, so far short that it looks intentionally misleading.

> But it's also a highly-expected outcome of a field being actively researched!

But that's the point. It isn't "research". It's meaningless busy work to justify a paycheck.

> It's just to say that your comment falls hideously short as a potential way of spotting bad acting, so far short that it looks intentionally misleading.

I disagree. The guy was offering his honest opinion. Your comment comes off as someone working in the industry selfishly trying to justify your existence.

It's expected for hypothesis that make up a field to converge over time towards something resembling "truth".

When hypothesis change wildly decade by decade (e.g. in nutrition research) without convergence, you can reason that the system isn't working as intended.

In the nutrition example, I think the lack of progress is due to inadequete data and tooling to tackle such a complex field, as well as the limitations imposed by ethical considerations.

Another issue is research bias due to funding from industry. I don't this should be as much of an issue since the efficacy of scientific methods should be mostly independent of funding source.

If you could earnestly profile even a few scientists who have personally flip-flopped their way to tenure like that, you'd surely have a red carpet welcome across a thousand podcasts and alt-media outlets

Heck, maybe you could even get tenure somewhere if you happened to have academic creds of your own.

Surely someone's done it? Are you familiar with any such profiles that you could share?

How to get published: "Other authors are wrong."

How not to get published: "The general consensus is right."

So although individuals may not flip-flop constantly, fields as a whole do. Pick almost any topic in almost any field (especially humanities) and read papers 10-20 years apart. There's a constant cycle.

The cycle becomes self reinforcing too, because now you can interact with previous criticisms (Dr. A said this, but Dr. B said he was wrong. In fact, A was correct because B neglected to consider...).

As someone who made their living publishing scientific papers for over a decade and amassed a track record that showed that I was pretty good at it, I can tell you from first hand experience that you are absolutely wrong about this.

A much better approximation to the truth would be something like this:

How not to get published: "Other authors are wrong."

How to get published: "These specific other authors are right, and I have built upon the solid foundation laid by their brilliant work to do this other thing that may or may not have any actual utility or be of interest to anyone."

[UPDATE] I actually did once publish a paper [1] that explicitly described (some of) the reasons that one of the then-leading theories in my field was wrong and how I thought it could be improved. It was more or less the beginning of the end of my career. I don't know if there was any causal relationship between these two events, but there was definitely a temporal one.

And now that I reflect upon it, it wasn't even me who pointed out the problem, I was actually just citing Ralph Hartley who had pointed out the problems seven years earlier. He was, AFAICT, never heard from again either.

[1] https://www.coursehero.com/file/60834776/tlapdf/

You don't attack established authors and frameworks. The low hanging fruit I was referencing is choosing something easy to disprove such as "eggs kill" or "roman empire fell because lead poisoning". After these results are published, the process is reversed. You disprove "eggs don't kill" or "lead poisoning had no bearing on the fall of roman empire". Ad infinitum.

Is this because those other authors are the "peers" that get to peer review the paper?

Yes. Exactly.

Yes, earnestly contributing your effort towards a controversial or unsettled issue is a good way to publish and make progress in your career.

And yes, some fields aren’t able to perform the kind of reliable science of physics or chemistry, and so end up with a lot of papers that just collectively oscillate around topics.

But I have a hard time seeing how that’s what the above commenter was suggesting.

Null hypothesis confirmation is not a good source of papers. Framing of problem is part of the craft. It's not a secret that there is a big reproducibility problem in science today. Why? Because problems and results are hand crafted to go from "let's disprove this... oh look I did it".

Are you really arguing that attacking the credibility of established scientists would be a viable way to prosper as a scientist?

> So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan.

So often people forget the last 'W' question - Who, What, When, Where, Why and Why Now?!

There are many things that contributed to the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire, natural degradation of a system ain’t one of them.

If we extended that line of thought into current times, what would that lead to?