3 ms·

My point was as a direct counter to your assertion that warfare increases with degree of difference between peoples. That would predict that the Germans would

My point was as a direct counter to your assertion that warfare increases with degree of difference between peoples. That would predict that the Germans would prefer to ally with other Europeans against people like the Japanese, who they are maximally different from. Historically this did not happen. Yes, there are clear conflicts between each of the groups named, but they are more similar to each other than they are to most other populations of humans. Let's say an alien combat spacecraft crash-lands in the middle of ISIS-controlled territory. Would you expect ISIS to immediately declare a cease-fire and surrender the craft and its weaponry to the UN so that humanity can work together to face this new threat, or do you think they would immediately go about using it as a tool to better murder their fellow humans?

ethbro 9y ago
Both of your statements are straw men. If you're proceeding purely from history, it's not supportive to say that armies on opposite sides of the world fight each other more rarely than armies next to each other. A more apt test of my assertion would be the frequency with which civil wars (excluding cross-ethnic wars in poly-ethnic societies) are initiated vs non-civil wars (allowing for the variance caused by internal policing, international politics, etc). Just because Poles and Germans are similar to you doesn't mean they're similar to each other. On the latter, I'd prefer a more fair: ISIS and a non-ISIS armed force are engaged in a firefight. An alien ship crash lands and disembarks five non-humanoid aliens. These aliens immediately begin shooting at both parties. What happens?
ItsDeathball 9y ago
@ethbro: I'd expect anyone who fires on any side on a battlefield to receive return fire. That hypothetical entirely disposes of "alienness" as a variable. In any case, I've been trying to argue a point on my own rather than being a Scott Alexander repost-bot, but I have clearly failed. Most of what I'm getting at is based on what I remember from http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... . He presents this far better than I have.

ethbro 9y ago

Both of your statements are straw men. If you're proceeding purely from history, it's not supportive to say that armies on opposite sides of the world fight each other more rarely than armies next to each other. A more apt test of my assertion would be the frequency with which civil wars (excluding cross-ethnic wars in poly-ethnic societies) are initiated vs non-civil wars (allowing for the variance caused by internal policing, international politics, etc). Just because Poles and Germans are similar to you doesn't mean they're similar to each other. On the latter, I'd prefer a more fair: ISIS and a non-ISIS armed force are engaged in a firefight. An alien ship crash lands and disembarks five non-humanoid aliens. These aliens immediately begin shooting at both parties. What happens?

ItsDeathball 9y ago

@ethbro: I'd expect anyone who fires on any side on a battlefield to receive return fire. That hypothetical entirely disposes of "alienness" as a variable. In any case, I've been trying to argue a point on my own rather than being a Scott Alexander repost-bot, but I have clearly failed. Most of what I'm getting at is based on what I remember from http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... . He presents this far better than I have.