In April 2024 I asked myself a question and then didn’t answer it. Back then I was writing a blog post about “model collapse”, the unsettling metaphor for what happens when an AI trains on its own output, degrading generation after generation like a digital case of mad cow disease. I then began to wonder whether there might be a link between model collapse and civilisation collapse, but immediately backed away from asking myself this question, thinking that it was probably hype.
After that I forgot the blog post and the question I had asked until I stumbled across it again in the context of a catastrophic glacier collapse in Nepal and the question now strikes me as no longer being hype and hypothetical. But what is the answer to the question? Another serendipitous re-reading of an even older, and strangely rather cheerful, blog post from 2012 about taking charge of the apocalypse might contain the beginnings of an answer.
To get to this answer, I’ll first go back to the 2012 post about the apocalypse, then the 2024 post about model collapse before coming to current events that one can only call the ‘apo-collapse’.
Apocalypse
In my 2012 post I was still able to talk about ‘the apocalypse’ in a rather detached way, even referencing a comical walrus. I also mentioned of course the four horsemen of the apocalypse but I homed in on Terry Pratchett’s four (lesser, and lesser known) horsemen of Panic: Misinformation, Rumour, Gossip, and Denial.
In 2012 I had begun to think about misinformation and denial in the context of climate change ‘scepticism’, but this was not yet the time that we are living through now of widespread disinformation, post-truth and denial of reality, where the lesser horsemen have become increasingly stronger and have joined forces with war, famine, pestilence and death.
Model collapse
Move forward twelve years to 2024 and a lot has changed and I am writing about model collapse in the context of generative AI. This is no longer about climate pollution or human information pollution through misinformation. This is about the flattening of knowledge and information, the gradual erosion of difference, diversity and nuance because models train iteratively on their own or other models outputs in a type of artificial autophagy. Anything that is statistically uncommon is sanded away over time; unusual details are blurred; everything is averaged or bleached out of human knowledge, corroding what makes us distinctly human.
I called this pollution of knowledge the pollution of the epis-sphere, which is now going hand in hand with the pollution of our atmosphere, the former leading to model collapse, enshittification and slop, the latter to climate collapse, ecosystem collapse, glacier collapse and more. Both together, I speculated, might contribute to the collapse of civilisation. This process itself may be hastened, I would say, by Pratchett’s horsemen of misinformation, rumour, gossip and denial, joined by a fifth horseman: disinformation.
Apo-collapse
And with that we come to 2026 when we are witnessing what I call the ‘apo-collapse’, when both the atmosphere and the epis-sphere are collapsing. We are witnessing climate collapse in the form of floods, wildfires, heatwaves and now, on 26 August, glacier collapse leading to catastrophes that we can’t even name. What can the mega-mud-landslide-and-debris-super-flow-flood in Nepal/Tibet be called? I heard somebody call it a ‘tsunami from the sky’… We have all seen videos of this tsunami from the sky rolling through the Nepal-Tibet valley destroying everything in its path and extinguishing countless of human lives. Like the people in Germany during the 2021 floods, some compared this to a monstrous steamroller, bulldozer or juggernaut. And like the people in Germany, the whole event was “beyond comprehension“.
But just as much as glacier melts are distorting our physical and mental landscape, so misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake videos made by AI are distorting our information landscape, collapsing fact into fiction.
Taking charge of the apo-collapse?
Our living world, the reality we live in, is physically under threat but we are also threatened epistemically. Disinformation and denial are destabilising people’s beliefs regarding climate change and vaccination and the artificial intelligence or knowledge systems that we invented may also be, by their own technical definition, collapsing. That’s a triple whammy: physical reality, beliefs in realities like climate change and the importance of vaccination, as well as the production of real and fact-based knowledge, are endangered. That sounds rather gloomy. Can anything be done?
In my 2012 post, I talked about ‘taking charge of the apocalypse’, instead of letting ourselves be overwhelmed by worry and fear. That is easier said than done, especially in a world where the various horsemen of the apocalypse are increasingly walking, indeed swaggering, amongst us. It might help though to stare them in the face, especially the four lesser horsemen that are now so strong.
Let’s square up to misinformation or the false or incorrect information that spreads widely and is often mistaken for fact; to rumour or unverified talk or reports that circulate before the truth is known; to gossip as idle talk about other people and events that fuel anxiety; and to denial or the refusal to accept the reality of a frightening or stressful situation. And finally, and most importantly to disinformation or the false or misleading information that is spread deliberately to deceive people.
Armed with this knowledge, we can begin to understand and act upon the what, where, how and why of the apo-collapse that we are living with in terms of climate collapse, information collapse and model collapse and begin to act in the knowledge that they exist and need dealing with. We must take charge of the apo-collapse before it is too late.
Epilogue
I started my 2012 apocalypse blog with a funny anecdote about a walrus. Being funny in 2026 is difficult. But it’s also dangerous to dwell only on the dread. So, I’ll end this post not with a walrus or a sealion, but with a cat. Thinking about how we can make things better even in apocalyptic conditions, I came across a Bluesky post by Larry the Cat who wrote after the death of Dolly Parton on 25 August (just before the Nepal disaster): “We should put this sign on every politician’s desk” above an image of a bright pink desk plate saying, “What would Dolly do?” We should all keep that question in mind and answer it with kindness and tolerance, science and literacy and take it from there. If there are cats there are smiles. If there is comedy there is laughter and if there is kindness there is hope.
Image: Wikimedia Commons: The End of the World, commonly known as The Great Day of His Wrath, is an 1851–1853 oil painting by the English painter John Martin
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