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.
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.
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...
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?]
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[1] http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/waldo/2012/07/27/the-bozo-event...
Pron explained why the association with your comment was unfair and I admitted that it was. Your comment, however, remains.