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Comment by dforrestwilson1 | Hacker News Reader

I have seen a lot of comments supporting Pax Americana, stating that we have seen fewer conflicts and therefore that violence has been in decline... This would seem to refute that.

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Pax Americana is kind of riddiculous name for the fact that US has started over 200 military conflicts since WW2. America is at war 93% of it's existence:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/america-war-93-time-2...

To be fair, Pax Romana worked the same way right?

It did - while the inner parts of the empire were quite peaceful, there were still conflicts along the outer borders. Since there haven't been any wars on US soil for ages, calling it Pax Americana seems alright to me.

> there haven't been any wars on US soil for ages

I think, to be meaningful, Pax Americana must refer to an "empire" larger than the territory of the United States. There hasn't been a war in Western Europe since 1945; the longest lasting war in South America was the Falklands War at 74 days.

You don't consider Columbia's conflict with the FARC a war?

I meant to write "non-civil" or "international" war. Oops. I definitely had that in mind.

I don't understand how the two are in conflict. Taleb asserts that the drop in violence is not somehow inherent to human nature, while the Pax Americana is a time of relative peace guaranteed by americas military advantage. When that advantage drops and other countries contest it, then violence will go up, just like the Roman Empires temporary advantage in military power produced a time of relative peace. For the two to be in conflict you'd have to assert that the Pax Americana was an inevitable and inherent development in human nature, which I'm not aware of anyone claiming.

The world will never again reach the world wide death rates the Mongol empire inflicted. One hopes.

Those wars are the reason why 1 in 200 men are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Inter 'race'(this is an artificial construct but I am using the word for lack of another better understood term) breeding happens only during time of war ..I.e. Conflict due to stressed resources.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC65039/

When peace lulls, there is no social change.

So I would say that there may not be wars fought with swords and cannons as much as olden days..but it's still being fought over land, ideology, water and resources.

I think Pinker has done his earlier fans a disservice by transforming into someone I certainly don't recognize but I am not all broken up about it because I have disowned Richard Dawkins too and that had prepared me. Maybe that's why he is calling himself an 'experimental psychologist' now instead of the cognitive scientist, linguist and psychologist he used to be..

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