Why the Roman Empire collapsed | Elon Musk and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Elon Musk is CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and CTO of X. DJ Seo is COO & President of Neuralink. Matthew MacDougall is Head Neurosurgeon at Neuralink. Bliss Chapman is Brain Interface Software Lead at Neuralink. Noland Arbaugh is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[LexClips]

Guest bio: Elon Musk is CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, and CTO of X. DJ Seo is COO & President of Neuralink. Matthew MacDougall is Head Neurosurgeon at Neuralink. Bliss Chapman is Brain Interface Software Lead at Neuralink. Noland Arbaugh is the first human to have a Neuralink device implanted in his brain.

[schassis_eddi]

Doesn’t even mention the wars where most soldiers died

[jbp]

Empire collapse is always from a multitude of factors.

[coornhenning]

@coornhenning
0 seconds ago
I admire Elon but this is an extrem simplification why Rome fell. First of all, it didn't fall, it kept living on in the east.

In my opinion the real major reason why the western roman empire fell was two decision that was made 150 years earlier by Constantine: (1) moving the capital to Constantinople and (2) converting to Christianity. This shifted the focus from the west to the east and created a lot of internal division between pagans and Christians, and Christians and other Christians over various heresies.

[paulristow]

Lead water piping didn't help much either.

[Robosci]

Rome has fallen because all the young men were sent to battle field and never returned leaving children and their mothers alone. Society never had hope for thier families and it was all about what a Mad king and politicians around him wanted

[jaredrandall]

Studying these things on long timescales and boiling them down to one cause-effect relationship obscures the many factors involved in any specific situation. Thinking in this way can then lead to focusing on this one supposed cause-effect relationship for what is a complex problem, resulting in ignoring all kinds of factors that of not addressed will lead to the same collapse anyway. This isn’t it, only good for armchair discussions. Sorry.

[cyphr.]

This is simply not true. Maybe low birth rate was one of many contributing factors, but to over-simplify it and claim it was the main reason is just not correct.

[ElectricIguana]

Good times > Low birth rate > rise of the Tesla Bot > Good times > end of civilization.

[dakota-sessions]

Out of control military expansion and over spending. The rest is all down-stream.

[reneleinthaler]

Rome fell - beside other reasons- because of extreme social inequalities and the dying out of the middle class. There was a small class of extremely wealthy senators and landowners that didnt contribute to the state. They were the same type of people as Musk is today, a minority of plutocrats and oligarchs that were among other reasons and during a longer period responsible for the failing of the later roman empire that was a military organized autocracy. They had their private armies and they didnt pay taxes and established realms of independent rule.

[mohammedalsenaid]

Well, birth rate has risen significantly after WW2 which was a prosperous time for most of the world

[mattboy]

Actually, even pro-fertility Christiany couldn’t turn it around. Other people became monks or nuns and so were celibate. The more important reason is that there were no economic incentives to have children. Many people fled the cities to foreign lands or to the countryside to escape the unbearable tax pressure. The Roman Empire taxed itself to death and could not withstand foreign invasions, but the Eastern half survived for another millennium.

[zyx]

The Roman Empire collapsed because, in the same century, they were hit by famine, plague, low birth rate, barbarian fast invasion with big groups, senate coruption that many didn t care about the future, the gold and silver mines and grain lands where outside of Rome and they were taken by invaders, and most important, CHRISTIANITY, All of these factors hit them all in one round, in a very short time. Christianity made the legions nonhostile to the crisis

[jtsjtsm-bc]

Let's not forget that the word Mars represents blood, the God of War. It will be interesting to see what happens in March and on Martinmas Day. Mars, March, Mark, mark, Martius, mensis, Martin. Elon Musk has some very interesting ideas about birthrate.

[SJ-rmff]

und deshalb möchte er Roboter herstellen?

[JamesArray]

Rome fell because of a decline in virtue and a rise in vice.

[leoniebachmann]

The Western Roman Empire collapsed, among other factors as a consequence of uncontrolled immigration.
The Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire survived until 1453.

[burtonvigil]

" there was other thing's " 😅

[YoungBillyKatastrophe]

The Romans of antiquity would have been disgusted by these WS. North Africa was fully integrated into the Roman Empire at all levels of society 600 years before Rome even expanded into many parts of Western and Eastern Europe. To put that in perspective, America is only about 250 years old—let that sink in 😂😂