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Comment by crwalker | Hacker News Reader

> Thankfully, we seem to have left the world of total war.

Deaths in armed conflict form a fat-tailed distribution. Extreme events dominate, and the absence of any world wars for several decades is not evidence that humanity has gotten more peaceful if world wars happen roughly every couple hundred years. See Taleb, who is much more clear. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/violencenobelsymposium.pdf

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Yuval Noah Harari has a different argument in his book Sapiens. He says that we’re living in the most peaceful period of human existence ever and it’s caused by a few factors. #1 the stakes are too high because of nuclear weapons and #2 now more than ever a country’s resources are the brains of its inhabitants, which can’t exactly be conquered.

I think we’re definitely seeing the landscape of war changing. I really hope traditional bloody war is obsolete.

Both views could be correct: Taleb's point is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I haven't read Sapiens, and I hope Harari is correct, but I'm not tracking the second argument. Certain governments believe they can conquer minds, as evidenced by detention/propaganda camps and universal surveillance/scoring. If a government with this perspective successfully invaded another country, wouldn't they institute a similar program there and expect similar results?

> If a government with this perspective successfully invaded another country, wouldn't they institute a similar program there and expect similar results?

No country of consequence can be invaded like this today - nuclear weapons upped the stakes considerably.

> No country of consequence can be invaded like this today - nuclear weapons upped the stakes considerably.

No nuclear power can be, nor can any country closely allied with a nuclear power, but not every country of consequence is in one of those categories.

Unless you define “of consequence” specifically to mean in those two categories, and so exclude, e.g., Ukraine.

#2 seems obviously wrong; minds can be conquered (that's what propaganda is about), if you conquer minds you don't need to fire a shot to conquer, and—except perhaps for a handful of the most totalitarian regimes as targets—its never been easier for a hostile power to deliver propaganda to the citizenry of a target state, especially if the target is a developed democracy.

So, yeah, the importance of minds as resource might be part of the reason for the absence of major armed conflict, but for almost the exact opposite of the reason Hariri suggests.

Hararis argument is that when the main resource of the country is brains, conquering that country with army wouldn't give you anything useful, and you need other methods to conquer like the propaganda you ention.

And because the propaganda tends to kill less than bombs, the conflicts do not end up as wars.

It's interesting you mentioned Harari because he mentioned Google when describing #2.

I'm familiar with Taleb's argument on this point, and it's a fair point. A massive nuclear war in 70 years would change any current conclusions that nuclear weapons make us safer.

On the other hand, I'd personally rather take a 1% chance of obscene nuclear war and otherwise peace, than a (let's say) 40% chance of ongoing infantry warfare.

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