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.
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.