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.
This is a topic which comes up a lot in science fiction, and in discussions of first contact with alien civilizations. There's always the big question: "do we strike at potential enemies or risk them doing it to us first?" It's generally phrased as an absolute -- that civilizations have the ability to exterminate each other, there is no higher power, so the only question is whether ensuring one's own survival is best served by pre-emptive genocide.
One also saw this back during the Cold War, in discussions of deterrence strategy and the destabilizing effects of things like missile defense, civil defense, and stealth weapons.
In both cases, it seems like there's a big disconnect between "far thinking" as Robin calls it, and actual immediate problem-solving. In other words, it's all very well to theorize about whether SDI would provoke a pre-emptive Soviet strike, but you also have to think about whether today, some particular Thursday in 1986 or whenever, the Soviets would decide to ignite a global war. Or whether today, a Thursday in 2086 when we've discovered an alien civilization, they would decide to launch an interstellar attack on us.
Things which seem logical and inevitable in far thinking become absurd or at least highly unlikely in specific thinking.
I wonder if the decline of violence has a locus of stability similar tothat of the demographic transition to lower fertility.The stability of moresthat inhibit violence requires coordination (or a leviathan state thatamounts to coordination). Currently, the demographic transitionoccurs when incomes rise even without explicit coordination,because of currently frozen-in preferences from our evolutionaryheritage - but maintaining it is likely to require coordination.Perhaps both maintaining low violence and maintaining lowfecundity are contingent on future success in coordination?Lose one, lose both?
Could you clarify some of your thoughts for me please?
What do you mean by acquisition of power attained by competition? How does it matter how power was attained? What are you referring to as power? Could you provide examples?
In a way, survival always requires competition, competition between competing alternatives or paths. Life is continuous problem solving, and if you eliminate the variation of potential solutions and the competition between which paths lead to surviving and thriving and which lead to immediate death, then you have in effect moved toward total failure. We must constantly choose between competing paths.
Competition is not a bad thing. It is a necessary thing. That is why I stress constructive competition as highlighted below in my answer to KPres.
I agree with you that we are not at a utopian state of perfect constructive competition. Even in science and free enterprise, our institutions of competition are not ideal. However, if there was no competition for grants, then everyone would get a grant, which means nobody could. Do I believe society could benefit from improved grant funding? Yes. And by this I mean the funding process should be more constructive at separating good requests from bad. Constructive competition solves problems better.
As Daedelus mentions above, you are selecting for survival. If the game is survival by eliminating rivals, you will be optimizing for destructiveness. You will be left with one propagating solution by destroying all the other solutions. This would be extremely destructive and wasteful.
Constructive competition is not competing to create problems it is competing to solve problems. Slavers competing with each other to find and enslave natives is competition to exploit. Coke competing with Pepsi to provide you a tasty beverage is competition to solve a problem for others.
Constructive competition is also less destructive within the rules between competitors. Coke and Pepsi are not allowed to lie about each other, steal from each other, kill off employees, burn down factories, or repress each others freedom to compete in constructive ways. They compete constructively by minimizing costs, persuading consumers, improving distribution, creating new or improved products and so forth.
Another thing about constructive competition is that competitors get better at solving problems by the mere existence of competitors. They can benchmark, borrow ideas, learn from each others failures and so on. Constructive competition is a self amplifying value creation, problem solving system.
Darwinian evolution (and social Darwinism) is much more destructive and much less constructive.
Even your so-called "destructive" conflict is constructive in the long run, because it weeds out the losers so that they have less influence in the future.
"Foreign policy “realists” often say that 'the tragedy of great power politics' is that there is no leviathan at the global level, so each power seeks to dominate others lest it be dominated."
That's why I don't buy the "realist" model of IR. In practice, defending territory/power etc. is always easier than expanding. So, even in anarchy, the equilibrium is for everyone to claim easy-to-defend property rights and commit to defending them as needed, some skirmishes occurring mostly for signaling reasons, but very little outright aggression. See David Friedman, "A Positive Account of Property Rights".
You and your family (3 people) are stuck on an island with another family (3 people) and food supply that feeds only 3 people until rescue arrives. Both you and the father of the other family has a gun with 3 shots of ammo left. There are no secrets.
I agree. Pinker's book is good on the decline of violence. I think it is a real phenomenon. A lot of it is due to the decline in the payoff of violence. When the payoff to violence rises though, all bets are off.
just like how i am secretly boning your mum! boom conflict.
I'd rather shit in my hands and clap then read this article
this is complete shit
This is a topic which comes up a lot in science fiction, and in discussions of first contact with alien civilizations. There's always the big question: "do we strike at potential enemies or risk them doing it to us first?" It's generally phrased as an absolute -- that civilizations have the ability to exterminate each other, there is no higher power, so the only question is whether ensuring one's own survival is best served by pre-emptive genocide.
One also saw this back during the Cold War, in discussions of deterrence strategy and the destabilizing effects of things like missile defense, civil defense, and stealth weapons.
In both cases, it seems like there's a big disconnect between "far thinking" as Robin calls it, and actual immediate problem-solving. In other words, it's all very well to theorize about whether SDI would provoke a pre-emptive Soviet strike, but you also have to think about whether today, some particular Thursday in 1986 or whenever, the Soviets would decide to ignite a global war. Or whether today, a Thursday in 2086 when we've discovered an alien civilization, they would decide to launch an interstellar attack on us.
Things which seem logical and inevitable in far thinking become absurd or at least highly unlikely in specific thinking.
Ask the other 6 billion people on earth.
Which ones?
I wonder if the decline of violence has a locus of stability similar tothat of the demographic transition to lower fertility.The stability of moresthat inhibit violence requires coordination (or a leviathan state thatamounts to coordination). Currently, the demographic transitionoccurs when incomes rise even without explicit coordination,because of currently frozen-in preferences from our evolutionaryheritage - but maintaining it is likely to require coordination.Perhaps both maintaining low violence and maintaining lowfecundity are contingent on future success in coordination?Lose one, lose both?
Daedelus,
Could you clarify some of your thoughts for me please?
What do you mean by acquisition of power attained by competition? How does it matter how power was attained? What are you referring to as power? Could you provide examples?
In a way, survival always requires competition, competition between competing alternatives or paths. Life is continuous problem solving, and if you eliminate the variation of potential solutions and the competition between which paths lead to surviving and thriving and which lead to immediate death, then you have in effect moved toward total failure. We must constantly choose between competing paths.
Competition is not a bad thing. It is a necessary thing. That is why I stress constructive competition as highlighted below in my answer to KPres.
I agree with you that we are not at a utopian state of perfect constructive competition. Even in science and free enterprise, our institutions of competition are not ideal. However, if there was no competition for grants, then everyone would get a grant, which means nobody could. Do I believe society could benefit from improved grant funding? Yes. And by this I mean the funding process should be more constructive at separating good requests from bad. Constructive competition solves problems better.
KPres,
As Daedelus mentions above, you are selecting for survival. If the game is survival by eliminating rivals, you will be optimizing for destructiveness. You will be left with one propagating solution by destroying all the other solutions. This would be extremely destructive and wasteful.
Constructive competition is not competing to create problems it is competing to solve problems. Slavers competing with each other to find and enslave natives is competition to exploit. Coke competing with Pepsi to provide you a tasty beverage is competition to solve a problem for others.
Constructive competition is also less destructive within the rules between competitors. Coke and Pepsi are not allowed to lie about each other, steal from each other, kill off employees, burn down factories, or repress each others freedom to compete in constructive ways. They compete constructively by minimizing costs, persuading consumers, improving distribution, creating new or improved products and so forth.
Another thing about constructive competition is that competitors get better at solving problems by the mere existence of competitors. They can benchmark, borrow ideas, learn from each others failures and so on. Constructive competition is a self amplifying value creation, problem solving system.
Darwinian evolution (and social Darwinism) is much more destructive and much less constructive.
Even your so-called "destructive" conflict is constructive in the long run, because it weeds out the losers so that they have less influence in the future.
yes there are.
"Foreign policy “realists” often say that 'the tragedy of great power politics' is that there is no leviathan at the global level, so each power seeks to dominate others lest it be dominated."
That's why I don't buy the "realist" model of IR. In practice, defending territory/power etc. is always easier than expanding. So, even in anarchy, the equilibrium is for everyone to claim easy-to-defend property rights and commit to defending them as needed, some skirmishes occurring mostly for signaling reasons, but very little outright aggression. See David Friedman, "A Positive Account of Property Rights".
In experience peaceful resolution works but does not make history. What you hear about and gauge as typical is actually the rarer.
Yes, availability heuristic strikes again.
You and your family (3 people) are stuck on an island with another family (3 people) and food supply that feeds only 3 people until rescue arrives. Both you and the father of the other family has a gun with 3 shots of ammo left. There are no secrets.
As long as there are secrets there will be conflict.
I agree. Pinker's book is good on the decline of violence. I think it is a real phenomenon. A lot of it is due to the decline in the payoff of violence. When the payoff to violence rises though, all bets are off.