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A great book to read on the decline of violence in the world: The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker. The Hacker News comm

A great book to read on the decline of violence in the world: The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker. The Hacker News community should like it as it focuses on the stats and facts rather than anecdotal stories the media slings. The main thesis: Violence (in nearly every form) has been on a precipitous decline in the modern era. War deaths (and civilian causalities) are at all time lows and still declining. http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0143122010/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387212392&sr=8-1&keywords=better+angels+of+our+nature http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...

pantalaimon 13y ago
Now would you say there would be more or less violence if the US stopped killing people on foreign soil?
- holograham 13y ago
  Loaded question for sure :) You're asking me if the US's geopolitical and military operations currently are increasing or decreasing total violence in the world. A tremendously complex question to answer accurately. My answer (opinion) is this: On the whole I think the US has contributed to a decline in total violence in the world. Not to say there haven't been bad decisions along the way. Advances in military tactics and foreign aid policies have been aimed to decreased violence. As for an exact figure, that is impossible to know. How many future wars were averted when the US won the nuclear arms race? How many civilian casualties are minimized with each advance in precision bombing over the last ~75 years of military aviation? How many wars have been averted through foreign political action (aid, coups, treaties, etc)? Obviously those are unmeasurable in each discrete instance but the book I referenced above provides some aggregate statistics which, when correlated the US's rise as a world power, show a huge decline in worldwide violence (and not just in 1st world countries).
  - peterkelly 13y ago
    They should keep doing the stuff that reduces violence. That's all good. They should stop doing the stuff that increases violence. Like this incident.
    - holograham 13y ago
      Agreed. Just like a startup tries new tactics so does the US military and foreign policy organizations. And just like startups, some of those ideas fail miserably and look like ideas that should have never been tried in the first place :)

pantalaimon 13y ago

Now would you say there would be more or less violence if the US stopped killing people on foreign soil?

holograham 13y ago
Loaded question for sure :) You're asking me if the US's geopolitical and military operations currently are increasing or decreasing total violence in the world. A tremendously complex question to answer accurately. My answer (opinion) is this: On the whole I think the US has contributed to a decline in total violence in the world. Not to say there haven't been bad decisions along the way. Advances in military tactics and foreign aid policies have been aimed to decreased violence. As for an exact figure, that is impossible to know. How many future wars were averted when the US won the nuclear arms race? How many civilian casualties are minimized with each advance in precision bombing over the last ~75 years of military aviation? How many wars have been averted through foreign political action (aid, coups, treaties, etc)? Obviously those are unmeasurable in each discrete instance but the book I referenced above provides some aggregate statistics which, when correlated the US's rise as a world power, show a huge decline in worldwide violence (and not just in 1st world countries).
- peterkelly 13y ago
  They should keep doing the stuff that reduces violence. That's all good. They should stop doing the stuff that increases violence. Like this incident.
  - holograham 13y ago
    Agreed. Just like a startup tries new tactics so does the US military and foreign policy organizations. And just like startups, some of those ideas fail miserably and look like ideas that should have never been tried in the first place :)