Summary

Many question why societies often make so many disastrous decisions that ultimately cause their collapse. Were their intentions malicious or done out of ignorance? Complex societies are not likely to fail due to the mismanagement of environmental resources. However, it is exactly this behavior that has brought down many societies in the past.

Group-decision making is at the core of a society’s collapse. The failure to anticipate a problem, recognize a problem once it has emerged, not try solve it and then fail to solve it all contribute to the collapse.

The failure to anticipate a problem may be due to a group’s inexperience. Global warming has sneaked up on a lot of people through ignorance or denial even though there have been signs of its impact for decades. “Creeping normalcy” refers to developing trends...