My personal belief on this is that our technology advancement has reduced the effort it takes for people to survive so there is less drive to become hostile towards people who have what we need.
Human history is full of counterexamples to your belief: those initiating hostilities, often at a great personal peril, are usually the ones enjoying the most comfortable living: kings, presidents, tribal chiefs. Consider updating your map to reflect the territory better.
There is a lot more correlation between hostility/violence levels and the amounts of various substances in your body, such as testosterone, lead or lithium.
When we look at the total historical view of violence we can not limit ourselves to just “war” or “group violence”, and this data was included in Pinker’s presentation. Therefore, kings, presidents, and chiefs, (if we consider them the sole source of the conflict, which we shouldn’t) only contribute approximately 1/9th of the total global violence.
Sure there’s a correlation that increased substances increase violence, but that in no way suggests that historical increased violence is due to increased substances. I don’t think we have any kind of data that shows that these substances have been steadily decreasing over the past 10,000 years the same way that violence has been decreasing over the last 10,000 years.
Can you provide actual data for this statement? The trend on a global and historical scale has always been downwards, as far as we can tell. And this data spans thousands of years. (see the Pinker video for an overview of that data). This data is suggesting that wars, even the big 2 of the last century, aren’t changing the global stats THAT much.
The 2012 − 2014 doesn’t perfectly represent history but that just means history isn’t exactly 9 to 1 for individual to group violence. It could be 8 to 1 or 6 to 1 or even 3 to 1, I don’t know that exact number. But I very strongly doubt the ratio flopped to a 1 to 4 ratio. That’s a massive change that I don’t believe has happened and I need to see real stats before I’ll accept a contrary statement.
Thus, I still contend the majority of violence is individual (Pinker video supports this idea too).
Can you define the terms that you’re using? The PDF you linked to, for example, takes a rather broad view of “violence” as encompassing, say, corporal punishment of children by parents. Or when you say that the trend “has always been downwards”, how large a perturbation are you willing to ignore?
Under a sufficiently wide definition of violence, every person engages in it (some more frequently than others).
Homicide and assault are what I think most people are referring to. The harming of the physical body through force. Additionally these numbers are referenced per capita and not as raw numbers. If we look at raw numbers, modern times certainly have more. If we look at per capita, the trend is downward.
As far as size of perturbation? That’s difficult to really answer. My rough opinion would be to ignore any perturbations that span less than 100 years. So while WW1 and WW2 might cause a spike to the graph, post-WW is still lower than pre-WW and so the trend is still continuing and valid. Could also try reducing it down to 50 year averages as well to help smooth out the variation.
Human history is full of counterexamples to your belief: those initiating hostilities, often at a great personal peril, are usually the ones enjoying the most comfortable living: kings, presidents, tribal chiefs. Consider updating your map to reflect the territory better.
There is a lot more correlation between hostility/violence levels and the amounts of various substances in your body, such as testosterone, lead or lithium.
I’m not sure your counter-example is that accurate either. This is a report for only recent time and so the historical accuracy is not guaranteed but from 2012 to 2014, individual violence outweighed group violence by about 9 times. http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/conflict_assessment_-_hoeffler_and_fearon_0.pdf. I think it is safe to assume that historically it’s at least similar.
When we look at the total historical view of violence we can not limit ourselves to just “war” or “group violence”, and this data was included in Pinker’s presentation. Therefore, kings, presidents, and chiefs, (if we consider them the sole source of the conflict, which we shouldn’t) only contribute approximately 1/9th of the total global violence.
Sure there’s a correlation that increased substances increase violence, but that in no way suggests that historical increased violence is due to increased substances. I don’t think we have any kind of data that shows that these substances have been steadily decreasing over the past 10,000 years the same way that violence has been decreasing over the last 10,000 years.
I think it is completely different. Take German or Russian statistics over whole 20 century—it will be much closer to historical average.
Can you provide actual data for this statement? The trend on a global and historical scale has always been downwards, as far as we can tell. And this data spans thousands of years. (see the Pinker video for an overview of that data). This data is suggesting that wars, even the big 2 of the last century, aren’t changing the global stats THAT much.
The 2012 − 2014 doesn’t perfectly represent history but that just means history isn’t exactly 9 to 1 for individual to group violence. It could be 8 to 1 or 6 to 1 or even 3 to 1, I don’t know that exact number. But I very strongly doubt the ratio flopped to a 1 to 4 ratio. That’s a massive change that I don’t believe has happened and I need to see real stats before I’ll accept a contrary statement.
Thus, I still contend the majority of violence is individual (Pinker video supports this idea too).
Can you define the terms that you’re using? The PDF you linked to, for example, takes a rather broad view of “violence” as encompassing, say, corporal punishment of children by parents. Or when you say that the trend “has always been downwards”, how large a perturbation are you willing to ignore?
Under a sufficiently wide definition of violence, every person engages in it (some more frequently than others).
Homicide and assault are what I think most people are referring to. The harming of the physical body through force. Additionally these numbers are referenced per capita and not as raw numbers. If we look at raw numbers, modern times certainly have more. If we look at per capita, the trend is downward.
As far as size of perturbation? That’s difficult to really answer. My rough opinion would be to ignore any perturbations that span less than 100 years. So while WW1 and WW2 might cause a spike to the graph, post-WW is still lower than pre-WW and so the trend is still continuing and valid. Could also try reducing it down to 50 year averages as well to help smooth out the variation.