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Comment by 001sky | Hacker News Reader

There is actually some merit to the notion that this is one of the <least> violent times in Human History. But I wouldn't trust that intuition very far. The world is becoming a much more dangerous place as we speak. But for comparison, The US has been at war for 12 years, with under 5K combat deaths including the invasion of IRAQ and what-ever-u-want-to-call mess in Afghanistan. Thats comparable in order of magnitude the civillian deaths of the single day 9/11 in the US.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualti...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

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The Iraq war alone has resulted in at least 100 thousand total deaths (including civilians) according to the most conservative estimates. How is the 5k figure relevant? That's like AlQaeda claiming 9/11 wasn't very violent, since they lost only a dozen combatants.

Historically, however, these conflicts pale in comparison to the 'normal' wars of the 20th century. Read some history if you doubt this. [1]

_________

Iran-Iraq War [2]

Casualties and losses

320,000–720,000 soldiers and militia killed (Iran)

150,000–375,000 soldiers and militia killed (Iraq)

Economic loss of more than $500 billion (per side)

100,000+ civilians killed on both sides

______________

World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed, which was over 2.5% of the world population. [3]

_________________

[1] This is also clearly visible in the citation of the GP comment, but i provide more examples.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Like pron, you for some reason insist on taking the casualties of one side as representative of the scale of the conflict overall. He says, 25,000 Israelis killed puts the Israeli-Arab conflict on the same scale as the Mexican Drug War (30,000) when in fact the overall death toll puts it more on the scale of the Wars in Yugoslavia (115,000).

You say that the 'cost' of the Iraq war is a mere 5,000 deaths, coldly ignoring the deaths of many tens of thousands of people just because they're on 'the other side'.

I hesitate to ask exactly which historians you recommend that would justify this selectivity.

Oh, you've misread me. I wasn't comparing the number of Israeli deaths to the drug war, but the total number: 100,000 in 70 years, vs. 100,000 (highest estimate) in mere 6.

My apologies, then. It was my mistake.

I hesitate to ask exactly which historians you recommend that would justify this selectivity.

The post-9/11 wars are not in (or near) the top 10 conflicts for the US. And, en-toto casualties are an order of magnitude lower than Iran-Iraq war, etc if you want to look at it that way.

Either way, you lose.

I've certainly lost the thread of your argument since you've replaced the comment I replied to, about 'the cost of doing business', with statistics from the Iran-Iraq war.

I'm not really interested in whether certain wars are bigger than other wars. I am interested in how the trivialisation of ongoing conflicts tends to dovetail neatly with pro-war agendas ('cost of doing business').

[Unexplained downvotes, how novel.]

The comment thread you are interjecting to is not of your interest, then. This sub-thread is explicitly about the quantification of violence, and comparing data accross conflicts. It seems clear you have not read either the earlier comments or much history very carefully.

Your repeated attempts to politicise (a/k/a dumb down) the conversation are also trivial and out of place.

Excuse me but it's not for you to dictate who is interjecting and who is merely participating.

What I have pointed out, and what your own comments clearly demonstrate(d), is that this exercise in 'comparing data across conflicts' as you so euphemistically put it, has a distinctly political edge which could be missed by the unwary reader.

Interjecting is what you call it when you disregard the topic being discussed, qualifications made to observations, you don't read the data in the footnotes...etc.

Steven Pinker: The surprising decline in violence

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455883115

Filmed Mar 2007 • Posted Sep 2007 • TED2007

http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...

to which the counter=argument is somthing like this:

The biggest problem with [Pinker], though, is [his] overreliance on history, which, like the light on a caboose, shows us only where we are not going. We live in a time when all the rules are being rewritten blindingly fast—when, for example, an increasingly smaller number of people can do increasingly greater damage. (Scientific American)[1]

I don't fully dis-agree with this latter qualication. If you go back and read my initial comments, you will see this.

[1] from: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bookreview-...; See also: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-decline...

I don't accept that this minor qualification is the main critique of Pinker's thesis, which in the end has very little to do with the fact that violence has declined. (And, BTW, this qualification also serves a political agenda which regards terrorism as a discreet phenomenon that can only be dealt with by military means.)

But failing to acknowledge the circumstances surrounding outbreaks of violence as being intrinsic to the nature of that violence is, generally, a matter of choice.

[Again, the fact that you don't like what I'm saying doesn't give you the right to set the terms of the discussion, and condescending comments about my ability to read don't really help either.]

[Edit: Your reply below, which doesn't yet have a reply button, is not coherent so I can't respond to it anyway. (A? B? Bozos? What?) I don't think there's much more that can be usefully said at this point. Speaking of non-falsifiability though, ain't evolutionary psychology a hoot?]

If A->B there are a million (infinite) things C that may or <may not> follow from B. In terms of style you have a lot of "I don't accept..." and "XYZ...serves a political agenda" which are not counter-arguments, but rather non-falsifiable statements about your own beliefs. In particular, your beliefs about C=Politics. Its generally not helpful or interesting to jump the gun to C=politics, without working your way through the discussion of A,B first.[1]

____________________

[1] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/waldo/2012/07/27/the-bozo-event...

I upvoted you for admitting upthread you mis-understood the premise of the conversation. Its probably best to leave it at that.

That's a shameful distortion of what I admitted.

Pron explained why the association with your comment was unfair and I admitted that it was. Your comment, however, remains.

2 million murdered in Darfur and South Sudan - nobody cares.

1 Hamas terrorist killed - CNN breaking news.

Make your own conclusions.

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