[ExI] Wars was defeat physics

[hkhenson]

At 10:25 PM 3/13/2009, you wrote:
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of hkhenson
> >...
> >
> > Iran has a decent chance of becoming a peaceful country
> > having reduced its population growth to under 1% in the past decade.
> >
> > It is not at all clear how this happened, but it is probably
> > culturally dependant.  Iran's culture is Persian, not Arabic.
> >
> > Iran 1.87 children per woman (2008)
> >
> > Gaza  5.19 children born/woman (2008 est.)
> >
> > Of course a sharp economic downturn can switch on war mode,
> > i.e., Germany pre WWII.
> >
> > Keith
>
>Keith, there is something about the psychology of war theory that has been
>making me squirmy for some time.  It seems at times to underaccount for
>other factors leading to war.

You might be right, but I make the case that the ultimate causative 
factor is the average population perception of a bleak future.  You 
might recall that simpler theories are to be preferred to more complex ones.

>I agree the rising population or reducing
>resources leads to war, but we have a whole mess of other stuff that comes
>into play as well, such as written history of past grievances.  This is
>especially true if the written history is considered sacred writings, and
>includes specific instructions regarding how the believer should deal with
>non-believers.

That's certainly true.  But the point of the theory is that *some* 
xenophobic meme or meme set will come to dominate thinking if there 
is to be a war.  I view religions (between wars) as seed xenophobic 
memes.  They are not acted on unless the population sees hard times 
a-coming.  There may be a genetic advantage to being able to keep 
seed xenophobic memes going in your local population.

>Iran has population growth under control and is Persian.  These are good and
>promising factors in their favor, yet they are ruled by an apparent madman,
>which is bad.

Yeah, but it is interesting that the madman's pronouncements about 
raising the birth rate had zero effect on the Iranian women.

>If nukes are not fired in anger in the next decade I will be
>most pleasantly surprised.

Especially since in a totally pissed off state I reduced the 
difficulty of making nukes by an order of magnitude or more.

Keith

>spike