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“Maybe there’s a pattern here” Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it? Snark aside, we

“Maybe there’s a pattern here” Is is that surprisingly few weapons inventors expressed regret and doubt? Or just that very few wrote about it? Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days.

onion2k 7mo ago
Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days. That's true if your definition of 'die in armed conflicts' is limited to 'the soldiers on the battlefield.' If you extend that definition a little to 'people who would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict' then you need to scale it up to about a million people a year today. That's just from 5 countries where it's been studied. Globally it's likely to be much more. There's some good information about it, from a credible source, here: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human
- ineedasername 7mo ago
  No, you are mistaken, inconsistent. Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed". Do you think "would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict" wasn't a thing in 1900? I know such things to have been high then, though not with precision, but starvation followed conflict whether because crops went unharvested or were burned or scavenged by the armies. Logistic to rapidly transport food from other regions easily, humanitarian aid, not very good compared to today. That's just one area things may have been worse at those times.
  - watwut 7mo ago
    A deliberate bombing of hospitals and whole cities were not a feature in 1900. Deliberate attempts to create refugee crisis or just kill then all are feature now. By all means, count in all the civilians killed in 1900 too. But it is completely ridiculous to count only soldiers. Civilians are more likely to die due to wars. And soldiers kill civilians intentionally. > proportion of people that die in armed conflicts That must include the majority of victims of it all.
    - ineedasername 7mo ago
      I’m not counting only soldiers. I didn’t pull these estimates out of thin air they’re not hard to find so I’m not going to take my time. I’ll say this: the difference isn’t small around this general question, hospitals don’t get bombed every day, and if you’re going to disagree with something that would be commonly known among knowledge among people familiar with a topic if you pause for a moment to reflect then the habit of checking to see if your instinct or sense of a thing is actually correct is a useful habit. Analysis is both a profession for me as well as a habit so I’ll stipulate I could be wrong and would welcome discussion of anything I’ve missed. That said: things like bombing a hospital is now possible yes but destroying them has ever been so, or simply slaughtering their residents as you march through, and there were far fewer norms against that sort of thing. Much worse things done more often. Deliberate slaughter of non combatants isn’t new. Prohibitions against it arose for a good reason and strong precedent of the practice from times where marching armies were more common and therefore systematic slaughter of this sort more convenient to those inclined. Accidentally or on purpose, giving smallpox via infected blankets to people forcibly removed from their land and marked across thousands of miles is just one variety. Cholera and other disease outbreaks are another. These too are not unobvious things to if you consider possible modes of death by or adjacent to military campaigns and they too are also not hard to find estimates for.
  - onion2k 7mo ago
    Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed". Very true. I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the tens of millions killed in wars and as the indirect result of wars decades ago. I'm only saying that there's still a really large number of people killed. If you take a war like World War 2 that resulted in an estimated 10 million deaths per year (60 million dead over 6 years) we've only reduced that by a factor of 10 (at most, because the study I linked to is not all conflicts) which isn't very much, and that's still a catastrophic and tragic number of deaths.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      Isn't very much? The difference between 20% of worldwide deaths and 2% sounds like very much to me.
bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
you also need to compare people injured so badly that they are significantly worse off for life after the war is over, as most of those people would probably have been killed in previous wars but thanks to modern medicine can be kept alive to suffer for years afterwards. not a knock on modern medicine, and probably the people who survive are happy that they did for the most part, however if you compare the results in the way you did, you should compare those as well.
- ineedasername 7mo ago
  No, incorrect. You're conflating "People injured died much more often" with other outcomes. Survivors in past times were often more commonly crippled in more severed ways, even when the initiating injury was minor. At those times the only redress for any injury was amputation. These days a very large numbers of injuries can be addressed with less life changing impact. >"should compare" I'm not going to include "better dead than crippled" in my considerations here. It seems both absurd and also not something that was encompassed in the orignal point I was adressing.
  - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
    OK I thought the comparison was the cost to human beings of war. But call it what rhetorically suits you best.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      They're not ignoring anything, they're disagreeing with [what they perceive as] your implications. Because while some injuries that would have caused deaths cause lifetime damage now, injuries that would have caused lifetime damage cause a lot less of it now.
      - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
        this might be the case, obviously advanced arthroscopic procedures can improve results that in the recent past would have been lifelong problems, but not sure if the benefits of modern medicine across all sorts of battlefield problems are so evenly distributed, I think not given generally the articles I read seem to be echoing my point and not saying that but it all evens out because of this additional benefit, but maybe. Given that I believe my point is pretty commonly argued and his rebuttal does not seem to me to be as commonly given I would have liked a link to "army study showing the percentage decrease of what were serious injuries match pretty evenly the percentage decrease of what fatalities, showing an even distribution of medical improvements across the range of possible trauma", something like that. Obviously depending on what was meant by "survivors in past times" applies here, because that is a pretty long range of time. on edit: my googling shows lots of discussions of improving should injuries that used mean disability are now trivial and so forth, but not overall stats showing the decrease in overall battlefield injury significance matches the decrease in overall battlefield fatality to a reasonable degree.

onion2k 7mo ago

Snark aside, we have massively more people alive today than in 1900 and yet the proportion of people that die in armed conflicts is— while horrific- barely noteworthy in most years around the dawn of the 20th century and not infrequently dwarfed by the body counts racked up in those days. That's true if your definition of 'die in armed conflicts' is limited to 'the soldiers on the battlefield.' If you extend that definition a little to 'people who would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict' then you need to scale it up to about a million people a year today. That's just from 5 countries where it's been studied. Globally it's likely to be much more. There's some good information about it, from a credible source, here: https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human

ineedasername 7mo ago
No, you are mistaken, inconsistent. Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed". Do you think "would not have died if there hadn't been an armed conflict" wasn't a thing in 1900? I know such things to have been high then, though not with precision, but starvation followed conflict whether because crops went unharvested or were burned or scavenged by the armies. Logistic to rapidly transport food from other regions easily, humanitarian aid, not very good compared to today. That's just one area things may have been worse at those times.
- watwut 7mo ago
  A deliberate bombing of hospitals and whole cities were not a feature in 1900. Deliberate attempts to create refugee crisis or just kill then all are feature now. By all means, count in all the civilians killed in 1900 too. But it is completely ridiculous to count only soldiers. Civilians are more likely to die due to wars. And soldiers kill civilians intentionally. > proportion of people that die in armed conflicts That must include the majority of victims of it all.
  - ineedasername 7mo ago
    I’m not counting only soldiers. I didn’t pull these estimates out of thin air they’re not hard to find so I’m not going to take my time. I’ll say this: the difference isn’t small around this general question, hospitals don’t get bombed every day, and if you’re going to disagree with something that would be commonly known among knowledge among people familiar with a topic if you pause for a moment to reflect then the habit of checking to see if your instinct or sense of a thing is actually correct is a useful habit. Analysis is both a profession for me as well as a habit so I’ll stipulate I could be wrong and would welcome discussion of anything I’ve missed. That said: things like bombing a hospital is now possible yes but destroying them has ever been so, or simply slaughtering their residents as you march through, and there were far fewer norms against that sort of thing. Much worse things done more often. Deliberate slaughter of non combatants isn’t new. Prohibitions against it arose for a good reason and strong precedent of the practice from times where marching armies were more common and therefore systematic slaughter of this sort more convenient to those inclined. Accidentally or on purpose, giving smallpox via infected blankets to people forcibly removed from their land and marked across thousands of miles is just one variety. Cholera and other disease outbreaks are another. These too are not unobvious things to if you consider possible modes of death by or adjacent to military campaigns and they too are also not hard to find estimates for.
- onion2k 7mo ago
  Analysis cannot be X in ~1900's vs. x + y these days -> "Oh wow things have changed". Very true. I'm not suggesting that we should ignore the tens of millions killed in wars and as the indirect result of wars decades ago. I'm only saying that there's still a really large number of people killed. If you take a war like World War 2 that resulted in an estimated 10 million deaths per year (60 million dead over 6 years) we've only reduced that by a factor of 10 (at most, because the study I linked to is not all conflicts) which isn't very much, and that's still a catastrophic and tragic number of deaths.
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    Isn't very much? The difference between 20% of worldwide deaths and 2% sounds like very much to me.

bryanrasmussen 7mo ago

you also need to compare people injured so badly that they are significantly worse off for life after the war is over, as most of those people would probably have been killed in previous wars but thanks to modern medicine can be kept alive to suffer for years afterwards. not a knock on modern medicine, and probably the people who survive are happy that they did for the most part, however if you compare the results in the way you did, you should compare those as well.

ineedasername 7mo ago
No, incorrect. You're conflating "People injured died much more often" with other outcomes. Survivors in past times were often more commonly crippled in more severed ways, even when the initiating injury was minor. At those times the only redress for any injury was amputation. These days a very large numbers of injuries can be addressed with less life changing impact. >"should compare" I'm not going to include "better dead than crippled" in my considerations here. It seems both absurd and also not something that was encompassed in the orignal point I was adressing.
- bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
  OK I thought the comparison was the cost to human beings of war. But call it what rhetorically suits you best.
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    They're not ignoring anything, they're disagreeing with [what they perceive as] your implications. Because while some injuries that would have caused deaths cause lifetime damage now, injuries that would have caused lifetime damage cause a lot less of it now.
    - bryanrasmussen 7mo ago
      this might be the case, obviously advanced arthroscopic procedures can improve results that in the recent past would have been lifelong problems, but not sure if the benefits of modern medicine across all sorts of battlefield problems are so evenly distributed, I think not given generally the articles I read seem to be echoing my point and not saying that but it all evens out because of this additional benefit, but maybe. Given that I believe my point is pretty commonly argued and his rebuttal does not seem to me to be as commonly given I would have liked a link to "army study showing the percentage decrease of what were serious injuries match pretty evenly the percentage decrease of what fatalities, showing an even distribution of medical improvements across the range of possible trauma", something like that. Obviously depending on what was meant by "survivors in past times" applies here, because that is a pretty long range of time. on edit: my googling shows lots of discussions of improving should injuries that used mean disability are now trivial and so forth, but not overall stats showing the decrease in overall battlefield injury significance matches the decrease in overall battlefield fatality to a reasonable degree.