Usually, I don’t get worked up about local short term trends; I try to focus on global long term trends, which mostly look pretty good (at least until the next great era comes). But lately I’ve seen some worrying changes to big trends. For example, while for over a century IQ has risen and death rates have fallen, both steadily, in the last two decades IQ
There almost appears to be a pattern of larger conflagrations appearing every 50-75 years. Perhaps it correlates to the length of time for a generation to grow up without knowing massive scale war and then to come into power.
One thing that has changed (at least in the west) is that the internet means elites have much less control over narratives and opinion building than they used to. I would expect a big change from this, but in which direction?
To the question of is a new peak coming I fear the answer is yes. A simple theory on why -- ignoring the fundamental causes of why war at all. 1) Weapons of war grow cheaper and more effective leading to potential for more extensive harm.2) Due to the demonstrated capacity for harms many in the position to make such decisions -- and particularly in a democratic setting -- will seek ways to avoid the start of any conflict. The fear is escalation.3) The longer the conflict takes to occur, unless the underlying drivers are in fact resolved, the bigger the conflict ultimately will be. This will be driven by both the increased "hatred" of the other side as well increase coalition building.
Think in terms of plate tectonics, the stronger the resistance to the plate movement the greater the potential energy is. When the resistance is large, once overcome the resulting movement is greater, that is large magnitude earth quake rather than a slight tremor.
Ah, good catch - the number I pulled was for WW2 or larger. Large wars are defined in the paper as being >26,625 battle deaths, and the data set stops at 2003. This is not a difficult threshold to meet - according to Task and Purpose, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan would independently qualify, just counting opposition fighter deaths.
You might want to redefine "coalition" to a group that like each other is interconnected and interdependent enough to have shouting matches instead of wars.
It's possible, though not certain, that the world has reached this stage.
War is cheaper for taxpayers than welfare for illegal immigrants. Blow away communists in Cuba, Honduras, Guatemala, El salvador and Nicaragua and Voila! problem gone. The fact is, democrats are forcing us to choose war. Why not just build a wall?
I suspect that increased communications and trade causes a clumping effect. First there were many small bands and tribes, these fought in a constantish rate of small battles. Increasing trade made the tribes aggregate. With only a few large coalitions, wars between them were larger, and peaces more peaceful. WW 1, WW2 and the cold war are all examples of 2 large coalitions. Hopefully the world has reached the state of one big coalition, and won't fragment. (There are still a few small tribes fighting at the edges). Here a coalition is any group that like each other enough to have shouting matches not wars.
Speculating about causal mechanisms, I have been considering what was really different about WW2 relative to prior conflicts.
I suspect that the core difference is that every country on the planet had shared and accurate information about the strategic situation at the end of the war. There are a couple reasons for this: one, every major military power fought directly and so had immediate experience; two, all elites and even much of the commons had access to television and radio, so they could hear and see the results in relative detail; three, major institutions were formed to cement and promulgate that strategic situation, like NATO. This resulted in the first universal strategic equilibrium.
There is a recent paper out, The Frequency and Severity of Interstate Wars.
It is about the statistical model of interstate wars originally proposed by Lewis Fry Richardson. That data went up to WW2, and from it he proposed a power law distribution for severity and a Poisson process for frequency. The paper claims that these numbers have held up based on the larger Correlates of War dataset. The model predicts a war of WW2 size every ~161 years, which means that we have another ~80 years to go before the peace becomes statistically significant.
It specifically excludes civil wars on the grounds of different causal mechanisms, which I haven't followed up on.
the models indicate that the postwar pattern of peace would need to endure at least another 100 to 140 years to become a statistically significant trend.
pinker is a charlatan, pure narrative, bad math. Neoliberal apologist with a bag of "just-so" stories
Turchin's demographic-structural-theory explains this though no increases in magnitude. There is a 50-years Fathers-And-Sons cycle of violence roughly every 2 generations superimposed on the Secular cycle of violence which results from elite overproduction and not enough jobs to satisfy the elite, a situtation we've been in over the last 10 years or more.
Yes, alternating generations is the standard proposed explanation I've heard.
There almost appears to be a pattern of larger conflagrations appearing every 50-75 years. Perhaps it correlates to the length of time for a generation to grow up without knowing massive scale war and then to come into power.
One thing that has changed (at least in the west) is that the internet means elites have much less control over narratives and opinion building than they used to. I would expect a big change from this, but in which direction?
To the question of is a new peak coming I fear the answer is yes. A simple theory on why -- ignoring the fundamental causes of why war at all. 1) Weapons of war grow cheaper and more effective leading to potential for more extensive harm.2) Due to the demonstrated capacity for harms many in the position to make such decisions -- and particularly in a democratic setting -- will seek ways to avoid the start of any conflict. The fear is escalation.3) The longer the conflict takes to occur, unless the underlying drivers are in fact resolved, the bigger the conflict ultimately will be. This will be driven by both the increased "hatred" of the other side as well increase coalition building.
Think in terms of plate tectonics, the stronger the resistance to the plate movement the greater the potential energy is. When the resistance is large, once overcome the resulting movement is greater, that is large magnitude earth quake rather than a slight tremor.
Ah, good catch - the number I pulled was for WW2 or larger. Large wars are defined in the paper as being >26,625 battle deaths, and the data set stops at 2003. This is not a difficult threshold to meet - according to Task and Purpose, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan would independently qualify, just counting opposition fighter deaths.
You might want to redefine "coalition" to a group that like each other is interconnected and interdependent enough to have shouting matches instead of wars.
It's possible, though not certain, that the world has reached this stage.
War is cheaper for taxpayers than welfare for illegal immigrants. Blow away communists in Cuba, Honduras, Guatemala, El salvador and Nicaragua and Voila! problem gone. The fact is, democrats are forcing us to choose war. Why not just build a wall?
And how much time until wars smaller than WW2, or larger, for that matter?
Your "hopefully" sounds like wishful thinking.
I suspect that increased communications and trade causes a clumping effect. First there were many small bands and tribes, these fought in a constantish rate of small battles. Increasing trade made the tribes aggregate. With only a few large coalitions, wars between them were larger, and peaces more peaceful. WW 1, WW2 and the cold war are all examples of 2 large coalitions. Hopefully the world has reached the state of one big coalition, and won't fragment. (There are still a few small tribes fighting at the edges). Here a coalition is any group that like each other enough to have shouting matches not wars.
Speculating about causal mechanisms, I have been considering what was really different about WW2 relative to prior conflicts.
I suspect that the core difference is that every country on the planet had shared and accurate information about the strategic situation at the end of the war. There are a couple reasons for this: one, every major military power fought directly and so had immediate experience; two, all elites and even much of the commons had access to television and radio, so they could hear and see the results in relative detail; three, major institutions were formed to cement and promulgate that strategic situation, like NATO. This resulted in the first universal strategic equilibrium.
There is a recent paper out, The Frequency and Severity of Interstate Wars.
It is about the statistical model of interstate wars originally proposed by Lewis Fry Richardson. That data went up to WW2, and from it he proposed a power law distribution for severity and a Poisson process for frequency. The paper claims that these numbers have held up based on the larger Correlates of War dataset. The model predicts a war of WW2 size every ~161 years, which means that we have another ~80 years to go before the peace becomes statistically significant.
It specifically excludes civil wars on the grounds of different causal mechanisms, which I haven't followed up on.
the models indicate that the postwar pattern of peace would need to endure at least another 100 to 140 years to become a statistically significant trend.
pinker is a charlatan, pure narrative, bad math. Neoliberal apologist with a bag of "just-so" stories
https://advances.sciencemag...
https://www.fooledbyrandomn...
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1505....
is economic growth stagnating?https://rhsfinancial.com/20...
grossly exaggerated and highly inaccurate estimates, mostly used by people not interested in facts but in proving a tribal point.
Turchin's demographic-structural-theory explains this though no increases in magnitude. There is a 50-years Fathers-And-Sons cycle of violence roughly every 2 generations superimposed on the Secular cycle of violence which results from elite overproduction and not enough jobs to satisfy the elite, a situtation we've been in over the last 10 years or more.