[ExI] [extropy-chat] Back to Causes of War

[Keith Henson]

At 10:31 PM 5/1/2007 -0700, you wrote:
>Keith writes, quoting Gat

snip

> > _it [violence] is mainly in relation to resource scarcity and hence as a
> > factor in resource competition_
> >
> > that population density would function as a trigger for fighting.
> > Otherwise, Tokyo and the Netherlands would have been
> > among the most violent places on earth."
>
>Yes, those places would today soon revert to a "Lord of
>the Flies" scenario. But I *thought* that our inquiry was
>more general, namely into the causes---proximal or distal
>---of war throughout history.

It is.  And my case, if you read EP memes and war, is that wars are largely 
if not entirely due to human psychological mechanisms out of our stone age 
past.

> >>And the original main purpose of this thread and its predecessors was
> >>to address the causes of all wars, not just primitive fighting.

snip

> >>Second, a sea-change seems to have overcome the West around 1700 or
> >>1800:  gone were the constant wars of preceding generations. Especially
> >>per capita, wars became fewer and fewer over time.  Go graph the number
> >>of wars and the amount of blood shed between England and France:  it
> >>monotonically decreases from 1000 AD to 1815, and then stops altogether.
> >>(Of course there were fluctuations, but my point is that the wars 
> really did
> >>become fewer over the centuries and of less severity.)  What caused this
> >>sea-change?
> >
> > You need to consider what else happened over this time.  There was a huge
> > growth of income over this period of time, and some of the time even a
> > growth in income per capita.
>
>Yes, of course.  Such growth went hand in hand with leaders of
>nations being less rapacious.

Right.  And while there was no doubt feedback both directions, I make the 
case that the sea change in wars was due to the population on average *not* 
seeing a bleak future.

> >>My answer is that it simply became more profitable to maintain peace than
> >>to try to plunder adjacent nations. For one thing, there was less 
> comparative
> >>plunder than ever before (compared to the wealth of generating your own),
> >>and another thing, the dang wars just got too expensive and the ability of
> >>the other nation to inflict reciprocal damage kept growing.  So an era
> >>of game-theoretic cooperation has emerged.
> >>
> >>Three, the causes of modern era war are too numerous to allow 
> generalization.
> >>Keith sometimes said that population pressure causes war,
> >
> > That not exactly the case.
> >
> > "All wars arise from population pressure."  (Heinlein 1959 p. 145)
> > "Major Reid (Heinlein's character in Starship Troopers)was on the mark if
> > you take "population pressure" to mean a falling ratio of resources to
> > population (roughly income per capita in modern terms).  There are sound
> > evolutionary reasons why falling resources per capita (or the prospect of
> > same) usually drives human populations into war. Wars and related social
> > disruptions are here seen to be the outcome of a behavioral switch
> > activated by particular environmental situations and mediated by 
> xenophobic
> > memes.[1]"
>
>Au contraire, it *is* exactly the case.  Heinlein is quite wrong.  While 
>falling
>resources per capita is *one* reason indeed, you have been giving the
>impression, and Heinlein certainly does above, that it is the *sole* cause.
>It's not, as I have demonstrated with example after example.  Sometimes
>very prosperous nations with very good prospects go to war because their
>leaders get greedy, or they are playing a game of international one-
>upsmanship, or they simply want to expand their nation's territory at
>the expense of smaller weaker adjacent nations.

It is not the reality of the current situation that activates stone age 
psychological traits, but perception of that reality no matter how 
divergent perception is from physical reality.  And leaders don't take a 
country into wars without population support.  Now they are able to play 
off the stone age traits, especially lying about being attacked or in the 
current war, lying about who was responsible.

snip

> > I should add that fear of others *is* the result of xenophobic memes (such
> > as the English fearing the Germans or the Germans fearing the Russians and
> > Slavs).
>
>Yes, but your tone implies that this is to be considered a bad thing.
>Of course, it would be relatively heavenly if a magic wand were
>passed over the Earth, and there was no xenophobia.  But it wouldn't
>last long, becuse it's not an ESS. Sooner or later some gang would
>get going, and we'd be right back to Sargon I and the first empires.
>Realistically, the main thing about xenophobic genes is that you don't
>want *your side* to lose them, or into the dustbin of history you go.
>Or are going, like now.

Xenophobic memes and the genes for being infected by xenophobic memes are 
entirely different things.  A trait that deep in our evolution isn't 
something people could lose at least without gene surgery impossible to 
imagine right now.

The spread and high influence of xenophobic memes is (in this EP model) a 
conditional response.  Humans are not automatically xenophobic like chimps 
are.  Xenophobia in a population rises when people (on average) see a bleak 
future.  I make the case this evolved trait is mechanistic.   The way to 
correct a bleak future back in the stone age was to kill neighbors which is 
what xenophobic memes work the warriors up to.

The *other* and faster way to get heavy xenophobia going is to be 
attacked.  After 9/11 several murders happened that were the expression of 
instant xenophobia.  (Mostly against non-Arabs.)

> >>But throughout pre-modern times in the last millenium, a typical cause of
> >>war was one prince's avarice towards the domains of his neighbors. Most
> >>of the English-French wars were of this kind, for example, as were the
> >>endless wars between the various Italian city states. Another typical
> >>cause was vast population movement---the Avars or the Huns or someone
> >>would be on the move (chased by another tribe even more formidable) and
> >>the poor Romans or anyone else within range had to bear the consequences.

Missed making this point, but there is no doubt that the vast population 
movements were due to population pressure, that is population growth beyond 
what could be supported by the local ecosystem/economy.

> >>Yet none of these explanations account for all modern wars---exceptions
> >>can be found for any and all of them. E.g. the Great Patriotic war, which
> >>included the largest and most deadly battles ever fought,  was caused
> >>entirely by one man's irrational urges and his warped philosophy.
> >
> > I think you put too much causation on particular people and too little on
> > the situation that allowed their madness to flourish.
>
>To some degree, we have perhaps been arguing between distal and proximal
>causes. But it's not always "madness" either.  It's often a good survival
>strategy. Especially in some some circumstances as Machiavelli explained.

Oh, I agree.  But what is it that survives?

> > Consider forest fires as an analogy.  You can classify fires by how they
> > were started, lightening, careless campers, power lines sparking and
> > aircraft crashes.  You can also say a lot about the influence of the
> > weather, with forest fires being more likely when the temperature is high,
> > the humidity low and gusty winds.
> >
> > But the ultimate reason you get a forest fire is the slow accumulation 
> of fuel.
>
>In the forest fire case, yes, it can come to be an inevitability. That is, if
>a people becomes deprived enough, then they will either individually
>or socially get violent.  But to the degree---again---that this is also a
>historical inquiry, then we simply have that this does *not* explain
>all modern wars. Too many wars occurred in which evidence of over-
>population, resource depravation, etc., is not present.

None of these are needed to trip wars.  As I mentioned with the US Civil 
War, all it took was perception in the south of a bleak future, that is 
without slaves.  And they were right.

> > The ultimate reason you get a war is the slow accumulation of people (in
> > excess of what the economy can support).  Slow it down till the economic
> > growth is as high or higher than the population growth and no wars.
>
>You don't think that of all the wars in Europe between 1300 and
>1800 I could not find ones in which economic growth on both
>sides was as high as the population growth?

Given the model, you can inject factors anywhere in the chain.  False 
perception of a bleak future would do to up the gain of xenophobic memes 
leading to war.  False belief the country had been attacked would do 
it.  In fact this last is *widely* exploited by leaders, consider the US 
entry into the Vietnam war or the events that triggered the 1846 war with 
Mexico or the Spanish American war.

> > Incidentally, where you mention "young people are usually quite willing 
> and
> > able to go to war," this is the "excess males" causation theory of war.  I
> > forget what the proposed threshold was, but China (due to selective
> > abortion) is way above the point these researchers said would cause a
> > war.  The EP model say China will not be inclined to start a war as 
> long as
> > its population is experiencing a growth in income per capita.
>
>I would counter that they are *less* likely to go on a rampage.
>But even the U.S.---as seen by its enemies in the rest of the
>world---has gone on a rampage even though there has been
>prosperity beyond economic growth.

The psychological factor at work there was the perception by the population 
that the US had been attacked.  9/11 certainly was an event which would 
trip "we been attacked!!!" sensor.  That's why a majority of the US 
population supported the "war leader."

>In fact, a leader of China
>could very well use a well-known historical gambit:  get into a
>war if you feel that you are losing political control at home.

That's true.  The Falklands war was of that kind, an attempt to displace 
population unhappiness with a failing economy with an external enemy, but 
then both the leaders and the population also had darn good reason to be 
looking into a bleak future.

> > Of course, China could get into a war if it were attacked.
> > Before you say that's impossible, consider Pearl Harbor.
>
>What?   You're kidding!  You mean nations actually get into
>wars when other nations attack them?  Well---I guess I'll
>just have to add that to my list of the causes of war  :-)

Historically it's been used by a third country making both parties think 
they were attacked.

The factors involved are additive if not multiplicative.  I make no claim 
it is easy to untangle the complexities that are partly the result of 
polity scale up from bands of at most a hundred people to nations a million 
times larger.

However, it is better to have a even a poor model than to have none at 
all.  A poor model can be tested and improved or it may lead to a better 
model.  And in this model, it leads to an understanding of the long range 
importance of low or even zero population growth unless you want to have wars.

Keith