This is probably the first time that a major war has been fought between two countries that are both well below replacement birth rate, which seems totally bonkers. What does it imply about human values?
What are the implications for international cooperation on AI risk and other x-risks? Bad news, presumably, but how bad?
Kind of a dark thought, but: there’s always a baby boom after a war, fertility shoots way up. Putin has tried to prop up the Russian birth rate for many years to no avail...
A shot in the dark, but the Malthusian theory of population suggests war is beneficial to local officials and leaders when they think the younger generation is growing at a sufficiently rapid pace that they are about to be replaced (‘vent the testosterone’, so to speak). The absence of such a growth spike is a mark against this explanation.
More generously: if the birth rate is below replacement, losing young people in a war has drastic consequences for the population ~20 years from now, since it will at least for a while drop far below replacement. If the birth rate is higher the consequences of losing a fraction of your youngest people are, in the long run, less severe.
At this moment in time >99% of humans are not at Malthusian limits and majority of wars of the past 100-200 years have been fought between societies not at Malthusian limits.
The simple story that wars are started by a small group of elite insiders driven by ideological commitments, perhaps fanned by larger nationalistic/jingoistic/militaristic/etc sentiments in the larger populace seems far more plausible.
I still don’t get the logic here. It’s not like modern wars cost millions of lives (unless it goes nuclear, in which case nothing matters); how can birth rates ever be a factor.
From what I’ve read, Russia’s stockpile of precision guided munitions is low, so this war may not look very “modern” past the initial stages. If Russia ends up adopting the same tactics it used in the Second Chechen War and causes the same amount of casualties on a per capita basis, Ukraine would end up suffering 2.5 million deaths.
Armies today are mechanized and professionalized. Individual soldiers are more expensive and more capable. Per capita conventional battlefield combat deaths should be relatively small (as a fraction of total population) compared to historical values because of smaller per capita army sizes. If I lived in Eastern Ukraine I would be more afraid of an insurgency and counter-insurgency than Russia’s initial blitz.
This is probably the first time that a major war has been fought between two countries that are both well below replacement birth rate, which seems totally bonkers. What does it imply about human values?
What are the implications for international cooperation on AI risk and other x-risks? Bad news, presumably, but how bad?
Kind of a dark thought, but: there’s always a baby boom after a war, fertility shoots way up. Putin has tried to prop up the Russian birth rate for many years to no avail...
What does the birth rate have to do with war?
A shot in the dark, but the Malthusian theory of population suggests war is beneficial to local officials and leaders when they think the younger generation is growing at a sufficiently rapid pace that they are about to be replaced (‘vent the testosterone’, so to speak). The absence of such a growth spike is a mark against this explanation.
More generously: if the birth rate is below replacement, losing young people in a war has drastic consequences for the population ~20 years from now, since it will at least for a while drop far below replacement. If the birth rate is higher the consequences of losing a fraction of your youngest people are, in the long run, less severe.
At this moment in time >99% of humans are not at Malthusian limits and majority of wars of the past 100-200 years have been fought between societies not at Malthusian limits.
The simple story that wars are started by a small group of elite insiders driven by ideological commitments, perhaps fanned by larger nationalistic/jingoistic/militaristic/etc sentiments in the larger populace seems far more plausible.
I still don’t get the logic here. It’s not like modern wars cost millions of lives (unless it goes nuclear, in which case nothing matters); how can birth rates ever be a factor.
From what I’ve read, Russia’s stockpile of precision guided munitions is low, so this war may not look very “modern” past the initial stages. If Russia ends up adopting the same tactics it used in the Second Chechen War and causes the same amount of casualties on a per capita basis, Ukraine would end up suffering 2.5 million deaths.
This war will be done fast and comparatively take a lot less casualties than any other war of countries that size.
Armies today are mechanized and professionalized. Individual soldiers are more expensive and more capable. Per capita conventional battlefield combat deaths should be relatively small (as a fraction of total population) compared to historical values because of smaller per capita army sizes. If I lived in Eastern Ukraine I would be more afraid of an insurgency and counter-insurgency than Russia’s initial blitz.