Again, I certainly agree that it would be good to think about things that could cause disarray as well. Like you said, maybe an AI could easily arrange for there to be a convenient pandemic at about the time it makes its move...
And yeah, in light of your pushback I’m thinking of moderating my thesis to add the “disarray background condition” caveat. (I already edited the OP)This does weaken the claim, but not much, I think, because the sort of disarray needed is relatively common, I think. For purposes of Cortes and Pizarro takeover, what mattered was that they were able to find local factions willing to ally with them to overthrow the main power structures. The population count wasn’t super relevant because, disease or no, it was several orders of magnitude more than Cortez & Pizarro had. And while it’s true that without the disease they may have had a harder time finding local factions willing to ally with them, it’s not obviously true, and moreover there are plenty of ordinary circumstances (ordinary civil wars, ordinary periods of unrest and rebellion, ordinary wars between great powers) that lead to the same result: Local factions being willing to ally with an outsider to overthrow the main power structure.
This conversation has definitely made me less confident in my conclusion. I now think it would be worth it for me (or someone) to go do a bunch of history reading, to evaluate these debates with more information.
Again, I certainly agree that it would be good to think about things that could cause disarray as well. Like you said, maybe an AI could easily arrange for there to be a convenient pandemic at about the time it makes its move...
And yeah, in light of your pushback I’m thinking of moderating my thesis to add the “disarray background condition” caveat. (I already edited the OP)This does weaken the claim, but not much, I think, because the sort of disarray needed is relatively common, I think. For purposes of Cortes and Pizarro takeover, what mattered was that they were able to find local factions willing to ally with them to overthrow the main power structures. The population count wasn’t super relevant because, disease or no, it was several orders of magnitude more than Cortez & Pizarro had. And while it’s true that without the disease they may have had a harder time finding local factions willing to ally with them, it’s not obviously true, and moreover there are plenty of ordinary circumstances (ordinary civil wars, ordinary periods of unrest and rebellion, ordinary wars between great powers) that lead to the same result: Local factions being willing to ally with an outsider to overthrow the main power structure.
This conversation has definitely made me less confident in my conclusion. I now think it would be worth it for me (or someone) to go do a bunch of history reading, to evaluate these debates with more information.