[extropy-chat] Function of war, was My Dilemma

Keith Henson hkhenson at rogers.com
Fri Jul 7 13:56:34 UTC 2006


At 12:23 PM 7/7/2006 +0200, Eugen* Leitl wrote:

snip

>Again, I'm still waiting for a list of of goodies to come
>out of the Iraq lunacy. Surely, given the price tag and the
>number of dead people (100 k victims in the Lancet study
>has turned out to be an estimate on the low side), it
>must be something really really good.

The function of war and the evolved mechanisms that turn on "war mode" was 
to reduce the population, bringing it back into a range where the ecosystem 
could support it.

Hunter gatherer wars typically kill 1/2 percent per year with lots of 
oscillation around the carrying capacity number, Easter Island being a 
spectacular example where wars reduced the population by about 95%.

The reason there were not 2 billion war deaths in the last century instead 
of something like 200 million is a combination of economic growth, 
particularly in farming, and slower population growth.

Of course we don't live in the EEA where we evolved.  So you really can't 
expect wars to be particularly adaptive in the modern world.  Heck, wars 
amplified a weather glitch around 1260 CE in the American Southwest into a 
90% die off/abandonment of the land over a huge area.

The annoying part about understanding this is that it comes along too late 
for the knowledge to be of much use.

Keith Henson
(Lets see if it posts)






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