[extropy-chat] What is "war" (was: My Dilemma)

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jul 7, 2006, at 5:59 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> So you're agreeing that ROI on war is horribly low,
> and you'd get two or three orders of magnitude of
> better return on investment, if you'd avoid a war,
> and invest directly into R&D instead?


How about backing up a couple more steps and define "war".

Several thousand years ago, the definition was relatively simple as a  
matter of practical circumstance and largely revolved around a few  
brutes beating on each other for the privilege of rape and pillage.   
Fast forward to modern times and the practical reality has blurred  
enough that there is no obvious delineation or definition of what is  
war and what it is not, even practically.  Sure, some things still  
*look*  kind of war-like, but I would argue that those are legacy  
vestiges shortly doomed to be historical artifacts.  There are many  
activities that generate the functional result of wars without the  
body count, and it does not take much of an active imagination to  
envision devastating "wars" where there is little or no body count.

What, precisely, makes war "war"?  It is thrown about as a suitcase  
term filled with a lot of negativity, but it does not mean anything  
for the purposes of this discussion.  Are all outcomes not the result  
of war if no one dies?  I think not.  How much individual autonomy  
must be restricted before a situation becomes "war"?  Given the  
current state of the world, it is hard to think of a definition that  
is a superset of body count that does *not* put most of us on the  
battlefield with consistent application.  Body counts suck, but there  
is more than one way to skin a camel that do not require body counts  
per se.

The amount of warfare has not declined, just the body count (and even  
that may be temporary).  If merely reducing the body count makes one  
think they are winning the war, it just means they are fighting the  
last war and losing the current one.  Sun Tzu would respect that  
people and governments can win all manner of war these days firing  
few if any shots, but he would be under no illusions as to whether or  
not the activity was "war".

In the big scheme of things, getting over-run by a mob of  
bloodthirsty brutes does not even register on the radar, but that is  
a recent luxury of the human experience.  It does not mean that human  
nature has changed, just the nature of the techniques used to express  
that human nature.


J. Andrew Rogers