Tag Archives: War

Unincorporated War

By Robin Hanson · July 25, 2010 4:15 pm · Comments (11)

In April I reviewed the The Unincorporated Man, a sf novel that last week won the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award.  The novel is set several centuries hence, in a rich peaceful hi-tech society of forty billion folks, spread across the solar system. On the plus side, war, crime, death, and religion are very rare, and a minimal world government is funded only by a 5% income tax. On the minus side, virtual reality is an illegal sin, and parents help kids far less than now; parents own 20% of kids’ future income, and force kids to sell more income shares to pay for school, etc. Most kids end up owning less than 50% of their income, which reduces their ability to control their job, home, etc.

A cryonics patient from our time is revived, refuses to sign paperwork to pay his 5% income tax, and inspires a mass movement blaming corporations (not parents!) for the “slavery” of having to pay installment payments on voluntarily purchased and consumed school, etc. In April I complained:

[It] is widely praised for its thought-provoking premise. Yet I find no evidence that it provoked thought about its premise. … Among the 70+ reviews/comments on the book I’ve read, a few take a position on this idea (all against), but none engage the idea, i.e., offering arguments for or against it based on details of the book. … In the book’s 500 pages no one ever resents parents; it is all those conniving corporations. … Also, the book never even considers the possibility of non-voting [income shares].

The sequel, The Unincorporated War, is “action-packed”, and readers seem to like it, but alas it inspires even less thought. Spoilers below the fold. Continue reading "Unincorporated War" »

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Rise & Fall of War

By Robin Hanson · June 8, 2010 3:30 pm · Comments (28)

There seems to be lots of confusion on the history of war, so let me try to clarify. Most confusion comes from seeking a one-way trend, as in “is there more or less war than in ancient times?” Problem is: overall, warfare increased, then decreased.

Since WWII, at least, we’ve seen a dramatic decrease in casualties from wars between states, from civil wars, and from crime. While these are lowest in richer nations, the strongest correlate seems to be the fraction of men aged 15-30. The fewer young men, the less war/crime. Rich societies today likely have the lowest war/murder rates ever. Rich industry does seem to have greatly discouraged war.

Yes, most of the “tribal” societies that anthropologists study have high rates of war.  But most of these are intermediate forms between very distant ancestors and very modern societies, with many relatively modern features. So high rates of war in such tribes does not imply that our very distant ancestors had such high rates.

The rise in density before, during, and after farming seems to have been associated with a huge increase in war. Long ago, strong social norms limited violence within nomadic forager bands, and the fact that one gender typically moved to neighboring bands to find mates greatly discouraged attacking such bands.  War was hard for foragers, as hostile victims were far away, at unpredictable locations, and with few physical goods worth taking; women taken in war could easily escape.  Trading places, with predictable locations and trade worth taxing, made the first good war targets. Increasing density made targets easier to reach and find, and marriage as property made wars to grab women more tempting.  Herding helped attacking armies to travel further and faster, while farming created more tempting and harder-to-defend targets to attack.

War is hell, not an especially modern hell, but also not an especially ancient hell.  War is most distinctly, a farmer’s hell.

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Nuke That Oil Well

By Robin Hanson · May 30, 2010 1:15 pm · Comments (73)

Back on May 4:

As BP prepares to lower a four-story, 70-ton dome over the oil gusher under the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians — the world’s biggest oil producers — have some advice for their American counterparts: nuke it. Komsomoloskaya Pravda, the best-selling Russian daily, reports that in Soviet times such leaks were plugged with controlled nuclear blasts underground. …

The Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities. The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966 with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers. KP also notes that subterranean nuclear blasts were used as much as 169 times in the Soviet Union to accomplish fairly mundane tasks like creating underground storage spaces for gas or building canals.

These kinds of surgical strikes to shut off underground leaks, however, were carried out only five times, with the last one occuring in 1979. And there was only one misfire, near Kharkov, Ukraine, where a nuclear blast was unable to stanch a gas leak. Happily, with a track record like that, “the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%,” KP writes. “The Americans could certainly risk it.”

Makes sense to me. Seems a low risk of fire or of a radioactivity release of comparable harm to the oil pollution. The Christian Science Monitor agreed May 13. On May 24 it looked like we might see reason:

President Obama has stepped in and has sent a team of nuclear experts to contain the spill. The man in charge to contain the spill is Steven Chu, U.S. Energy Secretary and also the one who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 50s. The five member multidisciplinary team are a creative lot involved in the first hydrogen bomb, finding ways to mine in Mars and ways to position biomedical needles. The team will work along with BP’s scientist to find a solution. Meeting at BP’s crisis centre in Houston, Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said after the meeting, ‘lots of nuclear physicists and all sorts of people coming up with some quite good ideas actually.’

Alas, Today’s Post:

The failure of traditional well-killing methods may also heighten the pressure on authorities to try unconventional approaches. Simmons, for example, suggests a military takeover of the whole operation, and possibly even an attempt to seal the well with an explosive device.

Allen, the national incident commander, dismissed the idea. “My view is since we don’t know the condition of that well bore or the casings, I would be cautious about putting any kind of kinetic energy on that well head,” Allen said, “because what you may do is create open communication between the reservoir and the sea floor.”

Seems caution isn’t working so well now.  [Added: And it is hard to believe the well bore or casings matter much - it is the kinds of rock/mud/etc. near the hole that matter.]  Alas, also seems Obama has decided the nuke option is politically unpalatable.   Sure BP deserves blame for the spill itself, but doesn’t anti-nuke political correctness deserve lots of blame for our reluctance to stop the spill?

More:

One prominent energy expert known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is “probably the only thing we can do” to stop the leak. Matt Simmons, founder of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, also says that there is evidence of a second oil leak about five to seven miles from the initial leak that BP has focused on fixing. That second leak, he says, is so large that the initial one is “minor” in comparison.

Obama seems to have avoided getting involved in fixing this spill, for fear of being tarred with its failures.  May 28:

Obama … said that his administration is doing all it can, but that, when it comes to plugging the leak, “the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP.”

But I’ll bet BP doesn’t have nukes. If nukes are the answer, then leaving the fix to BP has definitely made things worse.

Added 31May:

The Russian television channel RT described how Soviet authorities used underground nuclear explosions to seal off leaking gas pipes. The idea is that the explosion shears the leak closed for good. “That’s not something we’re considering. It would be far too risky,” said BP’s MacEwen. (more)

They don’t explain what risk they have in mind.

Added 3June:  Yesterday National Review had an article favoring the nuke option. The NYT had article “Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says.”

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True Tolerance

By Robin Hanson · April 25, 2010 9:05 pm · Comments (85)

Crush videos feature small animals … being slowly crushed or impaled by a woman wearing stiletto heels. … The Supreme Court decided … the law prohibiting such videos was too broad. As written, for example, the law could be construed to prohibit a deer-hunting video, which, though some might find cruel, relates to a legal activity. …

Obviously, no one ever intended that the free-speech provision of the Constitution protect the rights of deviants to torture animals and then to market videos for the sexual satisfaction of people who, by their tastes, are a probable threat to society. …

[Representatives] introduced a … [new bill] to narrowly focus the [overturned law]. … Although it specifically exempts hunting videos, animal rights advocates worry that it leaves a loophole. Hypothetically, a crush video could be built around a legitimate hunting scene and thus be protected from prosecution. …

The challenge to Congress is…: There is no argument ever to justify torturing animals and no defense — ever — for selling videos created to profit from that torture. Figure it out. Fix it.. (more)

This seems to argue that it should be illegal to distribute a video of a legal activity, e.g., hunting, because this might result in “sexual satisfaction of people who, by their tastes, are a probable threat to society.”  So the claim is either that it is bad to satisfy such tastes, even if no one else is affected, or that satisfying such tastes will intensify their “threat to society.” Perhaps such a threat intensification exists, but I’d need more concrete evidence of it before prohibiting otherwise harmless activities on that basis.

“Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means.  Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus.  But what they really mean is that they consider such things to be completely appropriate parts of their society, and are not bothered by them in the slightest.  That, however, isn’t “tolerance.”

“Tolerance” is where you tolerate things that actually bother you.  Things that make you go “ick”, or that conflict with strong intuitions on proper behavior.  Once upon a time, the idea of gay sex made most folks quite uncomfortable, and yet many of those folks still advocated tolerance for gay sex.  Their argument was not that gay sex isn’t icky, but that a broad society should be reluctant to ban apparently victimless activities merely because many find them icky.

Someday soon, technology will allow an explosion of possible creatures and behaviors, many of which will seem icky to many others.  No doubt it will be appropriate for some communities to ban some of them, but we face a very real danger of insufficient tolerance threatening our peace and prosperity. The alternative to living peacefully with those we dislike, may be to instead die with them.

Please, in preparation, let us learn to practice tolerance with the smaller variations we face today.  Unless we see a clearer harm from letting some folks watch vids of cruel but legal hunting, let us tolerate it. Same for polygamy, polyandry, or digitally-created kid porn. You don’t have to like them, or approve them, to tolerate them.

Added: Alex suggests “social change is not much driven by changes in tolerance.”

Added 5p: Note that the people who are actually the most tolerant are marginalized folks with strong opinions, like fundamentalist Islamists in the US, or politically-right profs in academia. By necessity, most such folks frequently tolerate bothersome behaviors by others.

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The Dark Side Of Cooperation

By Robin Hanson · April 12, 2010 9:35 pm · Comments (30)

A few hours ago I heard a talk by Frans De Waal, author of the great classic “Chimpanzee Politics,” on his new book, “The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society” (excerpt here).  Before and during his talk, De Waal showed a deep understanding of animal empathy and sociality, but he never once mentioned any of the lessons for humans his subtitle promised.   I inquired in the Q&A, saying: if humans show about as much empathy to each other as related species do, what more lessons can we learn from nature?

He said the lesson is that it is bad to have societies “like the US, based on social Darwinism”, as revealed by its shameful response to Hurricane Katrina and reluctance to support Obamacare.  I pressed: humans have some empathy, even in the US, so how can we tell what the right amount is?  A bit later I pressed: how can we tell who should show empathy for someone in need: their family, neighborhood, city, state, nation, continent, planet, or what?  Other than repeating that the US should do more, and that it is nations who are responsible, he had no further comment (though he had ample time).

Alas, I conclude that while De Waal is very smart and feels strongly on this topic, he seems incapable of even the most basic analysis of it.  He has a slogan, which identifies him with his side, and that is all he, or his readers, seek.  Sorta like folks who sing “Love is all you need.”

One might argue that empathy is good because it promotes cooperation.  But a striking experiment in the latest AER shows the dark side of cooperation; better cooperation within teams that fight each other can lead to far more destruction and waste. Continue reading "The Dark Side Of Cooperation" »

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Robots vs. Aliens vs. …

By Robin Hanson · April 5, 2010 10:50 pm · Comments (19)

There are a many kinds of potentially powerful creatures one might consider.  These include: robots, aliens, spirits, gods, alters, revived hominids (e.g., neanderthals, hobbits), time-travelers (e.g., ancestors, descendants), and extreme human personality types (e.g., aspergers, psychopaths).

For each creature type, consider the degree to which you might:

  1. accept/want to live intermingled with them?
  2. seek/expect to gain via deals & trade with them?
  3. worry if they have similar enough values?
  4. exterminate them if you could?
  5. enslave them if you could?
  6. hide us from them if you could?
  7. fear them killing us all?
  8. fear them enslaving us?
  9. fear them out competing us?
  10. mind them marrying your child?
  11. take their advice?
  12. mind killing a single one of them?
  13. help them lots if that were cheap for you?
  14. mind becoming one of them?
  15. mind if they dominate the universe?

OK, now here is the interesting meta question: what patterns are there in how different sorts of people answer these questions differently for the different possibly-powerful creature types?  Once we have some patterns, we can seek explanations for them.

For example, compared to other types of creatures, we seem to less fear alters having differing values or our-competing us, seem more willing to take their advice and kill them, but seem less willing to enslave them.

Added 7Apr: For spirits or time-travelers, stories about dominance or gift-exchange relations sometimes go well, but stories about trade relations usually go very badly.

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Realistic War Films?

By Robin Hanson · March 6, 2010 7:40 am · Comments (23)

A few months ago I had a nice long talk with a smart high-ranking, well-published (ex-) military officer who focuses on soldier psychological issues.  He said most war movies aren’t at all realistic.  When I pressed him for a realistic film, he offered Catch-22, at least for emotional realism.  This doesn’t appear on any of the four lists of most realistic war films I found in a quick search (here, here, here, here), which agree only modestly with each other.

The supposedly realistic Hurt Locker is favored to win Best Picture tomorrow, but some complain about its realism:

Many in the military say “Hurt Locker” is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for. … To those who were there, Iraq is real life. And they’re very sensitive — some would say overly so — when their war is portrayed via a central character who is a reckless rogue. … “When he puts a hood on like Eminem and starts roving outside the wire, it’s ridiculous.”

Is it even possible to make and sell a realistic war movie?  The experience of war varies enormously across wars, battles, roles, moments, etc., and most of that is insufferably slow and boring.  Since war is so powerfully symbolic, and so many care about those symbols, it seems many would complain about most any emotionally compelling war film, even if exactly accurate on a particular event.

What exactly could it mean for a film to be “realistic”?  Since few are entertained by watching random samples of real life, entertaining films must select strongly from the space of actual and possible events.  One might allow a movie any initial setting, no matter how strange, and call it realistic if events depicted that were typical conditional on that setting.  But then how long does the movie get to “set the scene,” after which we start to evaluate its realism?  And for how many settings could realistic behavior given that setting be entertaining?

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Fairness in Love And War

By Robin Hanson · February 22, 2010 6:40 am · Comments (21)

The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.  John Lyly, Euphues, 1578.

All’s fair in love and war, we hear at a tender age.  Though this is tempered by schoolboy concepts of fair play and never hit a man when he’s down.  Fair play is reasonable if you don’t mean to win at any cost and the other guy doesn’t mean to kill you, but all that goes by the board in any genuine confrontation. more

Does ethics describe key ultimate wants, or only minor wants, and social norms and signals which instrumentally help us achieve key wants?  Consider the saying “All is fair in love and war.”  It is often quoted, and rarely does a listener respond “Not it’s not.”  Yet folks also often complain loudly about unfairness.  Taken together, these suggest that for most, fairness is largely instrumental.

Those who embrace this saying suggest that a threat of military defeat, and perhaps extermination, would overwhelm most other considerations.  Similarly, they suggest that the threat of not attracting a hoped-for mate also overwhelms most other considerations.

Setting love alongside war as a similar reason to ignore fairness is quite telling.  Wars have often ended extremely, with total victory or total defeat.  But if you don’t attract a particular desired lover, you might well attract a lover nearly as good.  Those who equate the harm of getting their second favorite mate, vs. their favorite mate, with the harm of losing vs. winning a war, seem to say that mate quality is overwhelming important.  Little matters nearly as much – certainly not fairness (or racism).

Added 11Aug2010: This page has been translated into Belorussian.

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Mysticism’s Function

By Robin Hanson · February 18, 2010 10:00 pm · Comments (45)

For our ancestors, mysticism functioned mainly to offer “higher” and stronger motives and excuses to do what they had more practical reasons to do.  In war:

Anthropologists universally reported one “spiritual” factor as being among the most prominent causes of warfare among hunter-gatherers, as well as among primitive agriculturalists.  This was fears and accusations of sorcery. … Accusations of sorcery … do not appear randomly.  They generally arise and are directed against people whom the victim of the alleged sorcery feels have reasons to want to harm him. … Chagnon’s account … of sorcery among the Yanomamo:

No two villages that are within comfortable walking distance from each other can maintain such a [neutral] relationship indefinitely: They must become allies, or hostility is likely to develop. … A death in one of the villages will be attributed to the malevolent hekura sent by shamans in the other village, and raids will eventually take place between them. …

Trespassing was often regarded in hunter-gatherer societies as an offense against a group’s sanctified territory.  In other cases, an act of sacrilege against the clan’s totem was regarded as an insult to the clan itself. … The Dugum Dani … who fought for pigs, women, and land … [also felt] they had to placate their ghosts who became angry with them if a killing … was not avenged. … Similarly, the Gebusi of Lowland New Guinea had the highest homicide rates recorded anywhere. The reason given for the killings was retribution for sorcery, but … there remains a striking correlation in Gebusi society between homicidal sorcery attribution and lack of reciprocity in sister exchange marriage …. Gebusi sorcery attribution is about unresolved and even unacknowledged improprieties in the balance of marital exchange.

In “peace”:

During the witch trials in Europe the accused were precisely those persons who had somehow aroused the suspicion that they were envious and hence desirous of harming others.  Gradually, however, the envious man himself became the accuser, the accused being people who were good-liooking, virtuous, proud and rich. … This double role played by envy in witchcraft is again apparent among primitive peoples.  The outsider, the cripple, anyone at all handicapped, is suspected. ….

Of 222 cases of accusation of [Navaho] witchcraft … 184 involved adult males, 131 of these being of great age.  All the females  accused were also very old.  The Navaho are usually so afraid of the sorcery of old people that they do their best to propitiate them with lavish hospitality and the like, even though the person concerned may be extremely unpleasant. … [They are] suspicious of all persons in extreme positions – the very rich, the very poor, the influential singer, the extremely old. …

The Zuni Indians share with the Hopi a distaste for competitive behavior and open aggression, and sacrifice individuality to the collective.  Bu this does not eliminate envy.  Both very poor and particular rich Zuni can be suspected of witchcraft.  The constant accusation of witchcraft serves to maintain social conformity. … A deceived husband or a jilted lover is described in Zuni legend … as a man to whom it is intolerable that he alone should be unhappy. …

If an old [Comanche] man failed to adapt himself with good grace to the role of peaceable old age, he was suspected of envious magic.  He might even be killed by the relatives of someone who suspected him of being a witch.

Can’t bring yourself to slaughter a nearby village, or a long-time associate?  Mysticism can help you believe they already attacked you first, and that the stakes are so much higher than your personal gain.

We similarly self-deceive today to give ourselves higher and stronger excuses to do what baser motives require.  Beware: if you won’t accept and act on your baser motives, your subconscious may well get you to achieve similar ends via self-deceptive delusions.  For a better chance at believing the truth, accept your ignoble desires.

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Distinguishing Defense

By Robin Hanson · February 9, 2010 8:35 am · Comments (17)

Many folks are not that comfortable with the idea of working in or for the military.  Yes, at some level we all support armies via paying taxes, selling them food, teaching their kids, etc., but the more direct their support the more uncomfortable many folks get.  For example, actually stabbing enemy soldiers on the front line is more direct than most of us prefer.  No doubt this discomfort at directness deprives armies of the support of many talented folks.

Some military folks I know emphasize that their efforts are primarily defensive; they help resist enemy attack and protect civilians from harm.  They are clearly asking not to be treated as if they were just an average part of the military machine.  But I wonder: why don’t we make it easier for such people to show that their efforts are mainly defensive.  Why don’t more parts of the military, and more military contractors, officially distinguish themselves as more emphasizing defense over offense?  Why can’t I work for a particular “defense” contractor with a clear reputation for only working on the defensive side of war?

Now it is true that in this case orgs that did not explicitly identify as defensive would look more offensive, making some folks less willing to associate with them.  But many a brash young man is eager to show he is a front-line fighter, so there might be overall sorting gains from making this distinction.  Is it that those who run our military hate the idea of officially acknowledging and accomodating citizens who don’t offer full unconditional (offense or defense as required) support of our military?

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