Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…The period that I normally work on is from the High Roman Empire, the glory days of the Pax Romana in the first or second century, through what we call the late antique or early medieval period, the sixth or seventh century. At the beginning of this period, Rome dominates this Mediterranean empire. It's what you think of when you think of ancient Rome. It's the largest city in the world. It's the center of this huge network. By the end of this period, the city of Rome has 50,000 to 100,000 people. It's a tenth or twentieth of its former size. I think we now can say pretty clearly that environmental factors like climate, but also especially diseases, play a part in that really big transformation. While there's a problem because we don't have the same kind of modern government mortality statistics that we do for COVID or even for the last century or century and a half, we have to piece together from clues. But it's pretty clear that the bubonic plague events, whether you're talking about the Black Death of the 14th century or the plague of Justinian in the sixth century, these events are capable of causing death rates, temporarily, that are just orders of magnitude beyond what we're accustomed to. Even in these ancient societies, the reason why these were so shocking, in a world where the death rate is always pretty high—probably several percent of the Roman population, three, four percent a year may be dying in a normal year—is telling. For them to just be utterly shocked by the death rate already tells you that it's some multiple of what they're accustomed to. Yeah. I think you discuss in the book the possibility that the death rate might have been close to or even over 60% wherever the Black Death hit. This is literally the most significant thing. Yeah. It's mind-blowing. In the case of the Black Death in the 14th century, it's pretty clear. It kills 50, 60% of the population in entire regions. We don't necessarily think that it killed 50, 60% of the whole continent, although that's actually not impossible. But even the fact that it's killing 50% of the people in cities, in provinces, in countries, is just beyond the damage that other plagues do.…

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