Tag Archives: War

Schools Are For War

By Robin Hanson · May 13, 2012 11:00 am · Comments (27)

The main reason we had rules to force kids to attend primary school was to make obedient soldier citizens to support their nation in time of war. This effect was even stronger for democracies:

Using data from the last 150 years in a small set of countries, and from the postwar period in a large set of countries, we show that large investments in state primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. By contrast, we find that democratic transitions are negatively associated with education investments, while the presence of democratic political institutions magnifies the positive effect of military rivalries. …

We study historical panel data on education spending and enrollment – for Europe since the 19th century and a larger set of countries in the postwar period – to assess the correlation between military rivalry (or war risk) and primary education enrollment (or the occurrence of educational reforms). … [Our models] show a positive and significant effect of rivalry on primary enrollment, a negative direct effect of democracy, and a positive and significant interaction term between the two. Overall, our empirical results indicate a causal relationship from rivalry to primary educational enrollment. …

An economic literature … finds robust correlations between past wars and current state capacity in international panel data. … [A study] shows that military rivalry raises fiscal capacity in postcolonial developing states. … [Others] find that democracy does seem to have a systematic influence on top rates of estate taxation, whereas wars with mass mobilizations do significantly raise those rates. …

[Prussia pushed schools] to arouse a moral, religious, and patriotic spirit in the nation, to instill into it again courage, confidence, readiness for every sacrifice. …

[France pushed schools to] teach Frenchmen to be confident of their nation’s superiority … It should … eliminate disruptive conflicts and promote the unity of the classes. … The new teaching program … was … designed to teach the child that it was his duty to defend the fatherland, to shed his blood or die for the commonwealth, to obey the government, to perform military service, to work, learn, pay taxes, and so on.

In Prussia, France and Japan … military defeats and/or perceived military threats appear to have prompted an otherwise reluctant ruling class to invest in mass primary education. …In most countries of the sample a war preceded the educational reform, while a democratic transition rarely occurs before the education rise … Most often, the democratic transition instead takes place *after the education reform period. (more)

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Is Conflict Inevitable?

By Robin Hanson · May 3, 2012 1:00 pm · Comments (28)

Imagine you’ve been hiking in the wild for several days, with six others. Feelings are raw. Some think others aren’t carrying a fair load, some have been arguing politics, some are workplace rivals, and one has been having an affair with the spouse of another.

For weapons, the group has only a few small paring knifes. It is about time to find a place to stop for the night, and up ahead you spy a pile of rocks just the right size for violence – small enough to lift, and big enough to crush a skull. So you suggest stopping there for the night.

You think, “Violence is bad, but there is going to be violence here, so I might as well start it, so I can win. I’ll pretend to sleep then when others are still I’ll get up and smash my rival’s skull with a rock. I’ll conspire with my best ally George, who I may have to betray later. After all, the violence may continue until only one of us is left alive.”

Now, yes, it is possible to have Hunger-Games-like situations where everyone strongly expects everyone to fight until only one is left standing. And yes, in such situations you are better off hitting first, before they can hit you. But the first question you should always ask is, just how sure are you that you are in fact in such a situation.

This is what I think every time I hear people talk about inevitable future conflicts, be they Earth v. alien, robots v. humans, human v. animal, west v. east, rich v. poor, liberal v. conservative, religious vs. atheist, smart v. dumb, etc. Yes, if enough folks will see this as unrestrained war to the death, then you should consider striking first. And yes, there probably will be some sort of war eventually. But if you are wrong about the war being likely soon, you could cause vast needless destruction.

Alas, there is a unusually strong temptation to think in terms of inevitable conflict in far mode. In far mode we think more using a few sharp categories of us vs. them, we insist more on following basic principles no matter what the cost, and we think more in terms of dramatic story lines.

Worse, over the very long run, we do in fact expect a lot of winning and losing. Some firms will grow and others will go bankrupt, some professions will rise and others will fall, some musical genres will be remembered while others are forgotten, some families and races will have many kids while others have few, etc. This makes it easy to frame the long run as a no-holds-barred struggle to the death.

But if you are tempted to think this way, you should realize that that it will be very hard to preserve everything you like against future competition. It is very unlikely that you could simultaneously ensure the triumph of your planet, species, race, language, nation, city, musical tastes, favorite sport and team, preferred style of dress and home decoration, favorite story genres and characters, favorite school and profession, etc. If you are going to fight to the death for one thing, you will have to be ready to give up most everything else you like, if need be, for that one thing. And by initiating unreserved conflict in the hope of getting a first mover advantage in favor of your one thing, you may hasten the loss of many other things you treasure.

It seems to me that for most of the things you like and treasure, your best way to promote them is via peaceful trade and persuasion. Yes, most of them will probably fade away, outcompeted by something else. But your best bet to extend their duration is usually to compete peacefully, prospering as best you can to gain resources to help you support the things you like.

Maybe on the hike, Fred is your rival at work, and maybe he will beat you to that promotion you both want. Maybe he is also considering making a move on your gal. You might lose that competition too. Even so, you are usually better off trying your best via peaceful competition, than bashing in his skull with a rock during the night. He who competes but loses, and walks away, may live to fight another day.

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Trillions At War

By Robin Hanson · November 20, 2011 11:00 am · Comments (34)

The most breathtaking example of colony allegiance in the ant world is that of the Linepithema humile ant. Though native to Argentina, it has spread to many other parts of the world by hitching rides in human cargo. In California the biggest of these “supercolonies” ranges from San Francisco to the Mexican border and may contain a trillion individuals, united throughout by the same “national” identity. Each month millions of Argentine ants die along battlefronts that extend for miles around San Diego, where clashes occur with three other colonies in wars that may have been going on since the species arrived in the state a century ago. The Lanchester square law [of combat] applies with a vengeance in these battles. Cheap, tiny and constantly being replaced by an inexhaustible supply of reinforcements as they fall, Argentine workers reach densities of a few million in the average suburban yard. By vastly outnumbering whatever native species they encounter, the supercolonies control absolute territories, killing every competitor they contact. (more)

Shades of our future, as someday we will hopefully have quadrillions of descendants, and alas they will likely sometimes go to war.

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Counter Indoctrination

By Robin Hanson · September 1, 2011 10:35 pm · Comments (32)

A case study and new micro-level data in Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) forcibly recruited thousands of youth and plied them with threats and violence in order to make them stay. The evidence suggests that child [soldier] recruits were less able than adult ones, so superior ability is not a driving force of child soldiering in this case. Rather, the Uganda data and interviews suggest that children were retained because they were more easily indoctrinated and misinformed than adults, and had more difficulty escaping—with ease of indoctrination being especially influential. … Initial data from a random sample of [African rebel] groups display two relationships consistent with our model. First, where we observe child recruitment we also tend to observe forcible recruitment (one of the most easily measured forms of coercion). Second, forced child recruitment is most common when punishment is cheap. … Child recruitment is inversely associated with military protection of refugee and displacement camps. (more)

The US military also relies heavily on near age 18 soldiers, even though age 28 soldiers are probably more skilled at most tasks. The US also probably prefers younger soldiers because they are more easily indoctrinated, misinformed, and intimidated. Which reminds us that interest groups often fight over who gets to train kids, as the winners get to choose their favored indoctrination. Which reminds us that the winner of such a fight indoctrinated you when young.

Once you are an adult who realizes that your younger self was unreasonably gullible, you should try to undo that bias, at least if you want to have accurate beliefs. If you can imagine how other powers would have instead tried to indoctrinate you, had they controlled your indoctrination, you might try to believe something in-between these various indoctrination extremes. Of course you should also add in whatever can be inferred from the fact that one particular power was in fact strong enough to win the contest to indoctrinate you. Though it is not clear why this would mean their indoctrination was more true.

So what biases we expect from young school indoctrination? Perhaps excess respect for:

  1. Teachers and their allies
  2. Life value of formal education
  3. Being quiet and doing what you are told
  4. Governments like those that run schools
  5. The region or nation where you lived
  6. Having regular workday, like at school
  7. What else?

Added 8a: The military is an especially capital intense industry, which makes it especially important to have skilled labor to complement all that expensive capital. All else equal, this would induce this industry to outcompete other industries for more skilled workers, such as 28 year olds. So there must be some other factor that pushes them to hire 18 year olds. It can’t be pure physical strength and stamina, as few military jobs today require that.

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Space vs. Time Genocide

By Robin Hanson · June 16, 2011 9:30 pm · Comments (25)

Consider two possible “genocide” scenarios:

  • Space Genocide – We expect the galaxy to have many diverse civilizations, with diverse behaviors and values, though we don’t know much about them. Their expansion tendencies would naturally lead to a stalemate, with different civilizations controlling different parts of the galaxy. Imagine, however, that it turns out we luckily have a chance to suddenly destroy all other civilizations in the galaxy, so that our civilization can expand to take it all over. (Other galaxies remain unchanged.) Let this destruction process be mild, such as sudden unanticipated death or a sterility allowing one last generation to live out its life. There is a modest (~5%) chance we will fail and if we fail all civilizations in the galaxy are destroyed. Should we try this option?
  • Time Genocide – As their tech and environments changed, our distant ancestors evolved differing basic behaviors and values to match. We expect that our distant descendants will also naturally evolve different basic behaviors and values to match their changing tech and environments. Imagine, however, that it turns out we luckily have a chance to suddenly prevent any change in basic behaviors and values of our descendants from this day forward. If we succeed, we prevent the existence of descendants with differing basic behaviors and values, replacing them with creatures much like us. There is a modest (~5%) chance we will fail and if we fail all our descendants will be destroyed or exist in a mostly worthless state. Should we try this option?

Probably, more people can accept or recommend time genocide than space genocide, even if success in both scenarios prevents the existence of a similar number of relatively alien creatures, to be replaced by a similar number of creatures more like us. This seems related to our tending to admire time-stretched civilizations (e.g., Rivendale) more than space-stretched civilizations (e.g., Trantor), even though space-stretched ones seem objectively more prosperous. But what exactly is the relation?

The common thread, I suspect, is that the far future seems more far, in near/far concrete/abstract terms, than situations far away in space, or in the far past. The near/far distinction was first noticed in how people treated the future differently, and our knowing especially little detail about the future makes it especially easy to slip into abstract thought about the future.

As we are less practical, more idealistic, and more uncompromising in far mode, we see civilizations time-stretched into the future as more ideal, and we are more willing to commit genocide to achieve our ideals regarding such a civilization, even at a substantial risk.

Of course the future isn’t actually any less detailed than the past or places far away in space. And there isn’t any good reason to hold the far future to higher ideals now than we’d be inclined to want when the future actually arrives. If so, time-genocide should be no more morally acceptable than space-genocide. Beware the siren song of shiny far future thought.

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Congress Sells Secrets?

By Robin Hanson · June 11, 2011 3:35 pm · Comments (13)

Compared to ordinary investors, US Congress members get huge returns on their investments, presumably via their inside line on upcoming government actions. In particular, Congress gets inside info on upcoming US-backed coups, and someone has been trading lots on that info. Gee I wonder who …

Researchers examined 16,000 common stock transactions made by … 300 House representatives from 1985 to 2001, and found … portfolios based on congressional trades beating the market by about 6 percent annually. … A study of senators … five years ago found members of the higher chamber even better at beating the market — outperforming it by about 10 percent. … Members of Congress … [can legally] trade on non-public information. (more)

We estimate the impact of coups and top-secret coup authorizations on asset prices of partially nationalized multinational companies that stood to benefit from US-backed coups. Stock returns of highly exposed firms reacted to coup authorizations classified as top-secret. The average cumulative abnormal return to a coup authorization was 9% over 4 days for a fully nationalized company, rising to more than 13% over sixteen days. Pre-coup authorizations accounted for a larger share of stock price increases than the actual coup events themselves. (more)

We let Congress profit from insider trading that would be illegal for corporate executives. Even so, I doubt it is legal to trade stocks using top-secret info on planned coups, thereby leaking that info to the world. But I’ll bet Congress has been doing a big share of that leaking – who else has access to that info and needn’t fear prosecution for such misdeeds?

Good thing we are cracking down on insider trading by CEOs …

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Conscription Is Slavery

By Robin Hanson · May 16, 2011 10:20 am · Comments (83)

Bryan Caplan:

Slavery is involuntary servitude; conscription is involuntary military servitude; therefore not only is conscription slavery; it’s a particularly heinous form of slavery that often ends in maiming and death. Yet most people disagree – and so did the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1918. … I think I finally figured out what most people are thinking. Namely: They implicitly regard slavery not as mere involuntary servitude, but as low-status involuntary servitude. … conscripts have high status – and therefore can’t be slaves.

Comments there give many reasons conscription is not slavery:

  • “The key difference is the idea of … `servitude for the public benefit’.”
  • “Cannot sell its conscripted soldiers … conscription offers pay.”
  • “Slavery as an institution appears to cause a lot more social harm than limited conscription powers.”
  • “People hate slavery because it is malicious and exploitative.”
  • “Conscripted soldiers are not owned by a private person. This is the same reason that we don’t consider taxes theft”
  • “Conscripts still have civil rights, slaves did not. Conscripts were paid, slaves were not. Conscripts could own property, especially real property,and wait for it, conscripts could VOTE.”
  • “If the ‘slaves’ could neither be bought nor sold, then they would just be serfs.”
  • “Slavery … is a permanent condition and [conscription] is not. One can apply to anyone, the other only to a specific cohort.”
  • “The connotation attached to conscription and slavery evokes different emotions … positive for conscription and negative for slavery.”

Consider that “comfort women,” forced to serve as prostitutes for the Japanese military during World War II, are often called “sex slaves.” Would they not be slaves they were paid, served only for a limited time, could own property and vote, could not be bought or sold, and were seen by the Japanese public as serving their benefit and evoking positive emotions? Would such conditions also imply comfort women were not “raped”?

It is hard to believe that one must argue this point. OF COURSE conscripts are slaves. Conscription may be a good form of slavery – I for one do not accept a moral axiom that slavery must always be bad. But surely it is slavery. And Bryan is probably right – we don’t call conscripts slaves, but do call comfort women slaves, because the first is high status and the second low.

Added 10a: On reflection, the main effect here is probably that many people take “slavery is bad” to be part of the definition of slavery. So therefore by definition anything good cannot be slavery. For what other words do we take value to be part of the definition? Democracy? Rape?

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War Is Bad

By Robin Hanson · March 26, 2011 11:45 am · Comments (81)

War is bad. Defending against war, that can be justified. But starting a war, well that is presumably very bad. Not that starting a war could never be justified. Just that the bar should be set really high. Not it sort of seems like war might help something. No you, and those watching you, should really worry that you are accepting excuses to start a war for other reasons.

Among all the policy arguments I accept, the above argument against war seems among the most solid. And among all the things policy can get wrong, war seems among the worst. So for me, war policy tends to trump other considerations. I haven’t said much about how I vote on this blog, but now I’ll say: I often vote on US presidents primarily based on their war stance. I voted against Bush in ’04, and and I’ll vote against Obama in ’12, because they both started wars without meeting the high standards I hold for justifiably starting a war.

I’ve argued before that the US should cut its vast military spending in half. Our spending half the world’s military budget seems to embolden us to start wars – this makes me all the more eager for that cut.

Added:  Bryan Caplan has long had a similar position.

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Academics As Warriors

By Robin Hanson · January 15, 2011 2:30 pm · Comments (30)

Why should you be (or buy) a warrior? Wouldn’t the world be better off if there were no warriors, even could be no warriors? Yes, maybe we’d be better off if good property rights would just enforce themselves. But given that there are already other warriors, then it can make sense for you to be (or buy) a warrior, to defend yourself against other warriors.  Yes there are some positive side effects, such as increased technical innovation in war-tech related areas.  But mostly one wars to block opposing war.

Why should you be (or buy) an academic, such as a philosopher or economist?  It seems to me that often the main reason to hire or be an academic is to defend against other academics.

Consider philosophy.  Yes human thinking is often sloppy, with sloppy categories and circular arguments. But mostly this doesn’t cause that many problems. What does go wrong is that some people specialize in noticing such sloppiness, and then using it to persuade us of particular conclusions.  When philosophers ridicule a particular sloppy argument, they shame the conclusion that argument had supported, which is then taken as supporting whatever is framed as the obvious alternative conclusion.

For example, imagine you thought that the conclusions of scientists were reliable because they followed a “scientific method.”  This creates an opening for a philosopher to point out there there really is no coherent scientific method.  Most scientists don’t actually follow most of the supposed scentific methods, and different sciences follow quite different methods.  You might then be tempted to conclude that the conclusions of scientists are not reliable at all.

Yes that conclusion doesn’t directly follow from the mere fact that science reliability had been supported by sloppy arguments. But yet, all else equal, the fact that the best argument for something isn’t as good as you’d expected is an anti argument. If one side has stronger looking arguments than the other side, that seems to support the first side.  Which is why all sides need to hire philosophers to find support, and to ridicule sloppy opposing arguments.

Similarly, often the main reason to hire or be an economist is to defend against other economists. It is bad for your side if the economic arguments supporting it seem sloppy, shallow and unsophisticated relative to the arguments from the other side.  Each side needs to hire economists to offer supporting arguments, just to stay in place.

I’m not saying that philosophers’ or economists’ efforts never make us all better off; I’m just saying there is more of a counter-acting war effect than many realize.  Much of the waste of academia is status seeking – some patrons funding academics in order to raise their status relative to others.  And another big chuck is due to partisans recruiting academics to war on their side of common divides.

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On Sex & Violence

By Robin Hanson · December 21, 2010 9:30 pm · Comments (10)

Sex and violence, the most-complained-of classic movie draws, also seem to draw the most complaints re my forager-farmer hypothesis, that many non-functional industry-era trends are due to a natural human tendency to return from farmer to forager ways with increasing wealth and comfort. So let me try again to clarify.

On violence, Bryan Caplan “suspect[s] forager societies had plenty of internal violence.” But I’ve talked mainly of farmers having more organized violence like war. (Quotes below.) Foragers may well have high murder rates, but those are individual acts of passion and retribution. It is farmers who taught themselves to be professional and organized killers, who could benefit from that, though yes with time farmers learned to have less war.

On sex, I responded to Roissy here, and Razib Khan complained:

Hoe vs. plough agriculturalists shows that a simple hunter-gatherer vs. farmer narrative does not suffice. In some ways the hoe agriculturalist remains more like the hunter-gatherer, and in some ways more like his or her fellow agriculturalist. The most polygynous societies for example are arguably those of hoe based agriculturalists, as well as nomads. In contrast, hunter-gatherers and ploughman tend to be more monogamous, at least in a genetic sense.

On sex, I’ve consistently talked of “promiscuity,” not monogamy vs polygamy. (Quotes below.) The issue is how long relationships lasted, and tolerance for mating outside official relationships. Compared to farmers, foragers had shorter relations, and tolerated more unofficial mating. Polygamy is a stable long-term relation, and by tolerating more inequality is actually more farmer-like.

Now for those promised quotes. Continue reading "On Sex & Violence" »

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