29 Sep 07
Originally posted by RagnorakAnd further to my last post and related to the above.
[b]Do you wish to claim that the number of famines has NOT reduced dramatically?
I would think so, yes. I haven't looked at specific weather patterns, but I would assume that if there were droughts/plagues, then a nomadic hunter gathering people who rely on hundreds of different foods would be less hard hit than a settled people who are reliant on one ...[text shortened]... ce. Will this lead to more or less violence, IYHO?
I could keep going.
D[/b]
(As an example) One thing the British did bring to NZ besides some nasty diseases that inadvertently took their toll on the early Maori, was the concept of property rights. Maori civilisation had plateaued one reason was that there was no advantage in owning anything good because the neighbours would be over to take it all away, you were better off setting up camp in the swamp.
29 Sep 07
Originally posted by RagnorakI haven't looked at specific weather patterns, but I would assume that if there were droughts/plagues, then a nomadic hunter gathering people who rely on hundreds of different foods would be less hard hit than a settled people who are reliant on one or two crops.
[b]Do you wish to claim that the number of famines has NOT reduced dramatically?
I would think so, yes. I haven't looked at specific weather patterns, but I would assume that if there were droughts/plagues, then a nomadic hunter gathering people who rely on hundreds of different foods would be less hard hit than a settled people who are reliant on one ...[text shortened]... ce. Will this lead to more or less violence, IYHO?
I could keep going.
D[/b]
Maybe you should look at the numbers instead. You see, there's this little thing called trade that reduced them dramatically.
29 Sep 07
Originally posted by RagnorakRemains found conclusively to have died at human hand (D)/ Total Remains (T) * Ponderation factor (P)
How can he reach this figure?
D/T is obviously a minimum, so the exact figure is necessarily higher. What you seem to be advocating is nothing else than choosing P as 1, which is not only equally arbitrary, it is necessarily false.
Where's the source where you found that he multiplies it by 2? Did he argue why 2? The question about choosing a correct P is indeed important, and his justification is essential. However, no matter what justification you provide, we know that choosing P as 1 will ALWAYS underestimate the figure. Which means that it can never be a good choice.
29 Sep 07
Originally posted by RagnorakSo, in my narrow subset, the jewish "tribe" of Germany had a 100% chance of meeting a violent death.
[b]Do you wish to claim that the number of famines has NOT reduced dramatically?
I would think so, yes. I haven't looked at specific weather patterns, but I would assume that if there were droughts/plagues, then a nomadic hunter gathering people who rely on hundreds of different foods would be less hard hit than a settled people who are reliant on one ...[text shortened]... ce. Will this lead to more or less violence, IYHO?
I could keep going.
D[/b]
Pure demagogy, obviously. It is you restraining the samplea, not the available data. Pinker may be constrained by the number of skeletal remains found, but he does not remove information for the sake of argument, which is what you are doing.
29 Sep 07
Violence in pre-historic times would have bee borne of necessity
And you know this...how? Whim, pre-emptive strikes, massacres, rapes, torture...do you exclude them? Are they all necessity? Again, your idyllic mental images betray you. Men was as good and as evil as it is now. If anything, we see a pattern of reduction in recorded violence.
Pinker may work on limited data, but you have...none.
29 Sep 07
Originally posted by RagnorakIn percentage less, obviously.
Will this lead to more or less violence, IYHO?
Before agriculture, the one who picked the berries first survived, the other didn't. Agriculture allowed the multiplication of the tribes that did it, and allowed those tribes to grow in numbers.
Smaller tribes were dominated and probably subject to violence, but they were already a smaller fraction of the whole. When bigger tribes met bigger tribes, organized warfare allowed the battle to be conducted mostly between armies with the occasional massacre and mass rape. Yes, things were pretty bad when compared to today, but the fact is that a large army of 50k is a very small percentage of the whole population. Large armies can control populations significantly larger than their numbers, so the need for massacres was decreased.
Less violence.
29 Sep 07
Originally posted by PalynkaMaybe you should look at the numbers instead. You see, there's this little thing called trade that reduced them dramatically.
[b] I haven't looked at specific weather patterns, but I would assume that if there were droughts/plagues, then a nomadic hunter gathering people who rely on hundreds of different foods would be less hard hit than a settled people who are reliant on one or two crops.
Maybe you should look at the numbers instead. You see, there's this little thing called trade that reduced them dramatically.[/b]
I can't find any evidence of major famines in prehistoric times (ignoring the ice ages of course) . I can read of plenty of famines during civilised times here though...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Historical_famine.2C_by_region
I'd be interested to see what historic facts you are relying on to say that there were more famines precivilisation on the scale of ...
Ireland 1846-48 (12% of pop dead in 3 years)
India 1866-68 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India), 1876-78 (5 million dead)
China 1876-79, 1920-21, 1943-44, 1958-59
Russia 1891-92, 1920-21, 1932-33
Ethiopia 1972-87
Somalia 1993
You're "right". Trade is a great way to prevent famines. Now, let's look at some facts...
Ireland was a net exporter of food during the potato famine.
what did trade do to India under British rule.
"the British Raj, as the British governing body was known after 1857, had instituted a widespread series of mercantilist economic rules intended to foster a favourable balance of trade for Britain relative to the Subcontinent as well as other colonies, which had a dramatic impact on the economic milieu within India. Because of these effects and the Raj's role as the supreme governing body within India, contemporary scholars such as Romesh Dutt in 1900—who had himself witnessed the famines first-hand—and present-day scholars such as Amartya Sen agree, that the famines were a product both of uneven rainfall and British economic and administrative policies. These policies had, since 1857, led to the seizure and conversion of local farmland to foreign-owned plantations, restrictions on internal trade, heavy taxation of Indians to support unsuccessful British expeditions in Afghanistan like the Second Anglo-Afghan War, inflationary measures that increased the price of food, and substantial exports of staple crops from India to Britain."
What about the great famine in China?
"Since the 1980s there has been greater official Chinese recognition of the importance of policy mistakes in causing the disaster, claiming that the disaster was 35% due to natural causes and 65% by mismanagement."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Years_of_Natural_Disasters
Russian famine of 1921...
"The famine resulted from the combined effect of the disruption of the agricultural production, which already started during World War I and continued through the disturbances of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War with its policy of War Communism. One of Russia's intermittent droughts that happened in 1921 aggravated the situation to the level of the national catastrophe. In many cases recklessness of local administration, which recognized the problems only too late, contributed to the tragedy."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921
What about Cambodia under Pol Pot? Famine due to export of rice for purchase of weapons. Another example of your beloved trade causing famine.
Famine is now no longer solely caused by a natural disaster. It can be caused by bad management, failure of market to get food to people who need it, greedy colonists, ideological war, radical reforms, poor distribution, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Now tell me, are natural disasters going to be more or less prevalent where there have been massive attacks on the environment, ie: huge levels of local deforestation, which can help lead to flooding? What about when the great civilised man diverts whole rivers to irrigate olives in Israel, leading to the drying up of ancient lakes and lack of water in whole regions?
You accuse me of relying on no facts for my position in this debate. It seems to me that you are the one completely ignoring the reality with your position.
You refer to numbers. Please support your assertions in future posts, as it's a bit pointless debating if you continue making unfounded assertions.
D
30 Sep 07
Originally posted by WajomaAnd so we reach the greatest myth of them all. "You have 2 choices, you can live as you do now (in an unsustainable manner), or you can live as an unwashed caveman".
Well that's just the point I made before, the caveman had no choice, he couldn't go to a dentist or live in a house with heating and running water, or even decent warm clothes. You, Davisss, do have that choice, if you find modern life so miserable you can opt out, try going without a bath for a month and maybe when your own stench becomes to great even for you, you can risk hypothermia by taking a 2 minute dip in some freshly melted snow.
Well done on completing your indoctrination, Waj.
D
30 Sep 07
Originally posted by WajomaYou're right. Maoris entranced by trinkets and gun powder with no real exposure to civilised life ARE the best judges on the sustainablitity of that civilisation. 🙄
many early Maori in New Zealand went to great effort to emmulate the english colonisers, could it be they were sick of wearing grass skirts and eating fern roots?
D
30 Sep 07
Originally posted by PalynkaD/T is obviously a minimum, so the exact figure is necessarily higher.
Remains found conclusively to have died at human hand (D)/ Total Remains (T) * Ponderation factor (P)
D/T is obviously a minimum, so the exact figure is necessarily higher. What you seem to be advocating is nothing else than choosing P as 1, which is not only equally arbitrary, it is necessarily false.
Where's the source where you found that he multipl ...[text shortened]... ng P as 1 will ALWAYS underestimate the figure. Which means that it can never be a good choice.
This is the kind of junk science I thought was going on.
So the assumption that both you and Pinker are making is that not all of D has been found, but you're certain that all of T have been found.
The factor of 2 I mentioned was because I read an article (which I can no longer find) by a Harvard scientist who stated that the most violent people ever lived in the South East of America. 30% of the remains found had died as a result of violence.
Excuse me for being skeptical of the figures which you claim are "myth-busting" "historical facts". I'm sure there were occasional events which lead to the high figures quoted, but I don't see this as a continuous trend, as Pinker and you seem to be claiming, backed by your self-serving science.
D
30 Sep 07
Originally posted by PalynkaLOL!
[b]So, in my narrow subset, the jewish "tribe" of Germany had a 100% chance of meeting a violent death.
Pure demagogy, obviously. It is you restraining the samplea, not the available data. Pinker may be constrained by the number of skeletal remains found, but he does not remove information for the sake of argument, which is what you are doing.[/b]
Palynka, it's disappointing just how much you take Pinker's thoughts as gospel truths. You seem totally blinded by his assertions, which suit your comforting beliefs.
Pinker didn't restrain the sample set? Come on! He listed 6 or 7 of the most violent prehistoric peoples he could, after doubling the actual figures. Would he have reached the same conclusion if he had chosen the Bushmen of the Kalahari as his sample group? The categorical answer to that is NO! So he limited his sample set to those very few which would give him figures he wanted. Even then he manipulated the figures arbitrarily to further emphasize his point.
He refers to Moses speech before the attack on the Midianites as normal behaviour in that time. How is this any different to what I did with the Jews of WW2? I think the method is completely bullony, which you do to, if you actually thought about his assertions with any form of critical thought.
D
30 Sep 07
Originally posted by PalynkaUmmm, I assumed that you knew this, but I guess not... we are still surrounded by "prehistoric" men, who haven't yet been either converted or killed off by civilised man.
[b]Violence in pre-historic times would have bee borne of necessity
And you know this...how? Whim, pre-emptive strikes, massacres, rapes, torture...do you exclude them? Are they all necessity? Again, your idyllic mental images betray you. Men was as good and as evil as it is now. If anything, we see a pattern of reduction in recorded violence.
Pinker may work on limited data, but you have...none.[/b]
I base my statements on their actions. I don't just make stuff up so that the gullible like your good self can feel better about themselves, like Pinker does.
D
01 Oct 07
Originally posted by RagnorakThat's another mistake. The less agressive tribes (certainly NOT prehistoric) that you see nowadays are not butchered because the dominant ones have less and less inclination for violence, through culture.
Ummm, I assumed that you knew this, but I guess not... we are still surrounded by "prehistoric" men, who haven't yet been either converted or killed off by civilised man.
I base my statements on their actions. I don't just make stuff up so that the gullible like your good self can feel better about themselves, like Pinker does.
D
The biological nature of mankind is essentially the same since the beginning of civilisation. If anything, nurture has been suppressing (albeit still imperfectly) the instinct for violence.
01 Oct 07
1 edit
Originally posted by RagnorakHaven't time to comment much here, but yes, this discussion has been a battle between two strawmen--the noble savage versus the murderous troglodyte.
And so we reach the greatest myth of them all. "You have 2 choices, you can live as you do now (in an unsustainable manner), or you can live as an unwashed caveman".
Well done on completing your indoctrination, Waj.
D
Regarding reduced violence over time (Palynka)--do those figures apply to the whole world or just the First World? Since the entire world is now "civilised".
Further--why focus on death at the hands of other people to the exclusion of all other forms of violence? An example--suppose the entire population of Portugual were locked up in a massive high-tech security Gulag--for their own safety (invent a pretext)--they'd be guaranteed to live 80 years at least, with zero physical violence, but subject to total surveillance and control--would you go for it?
Finally, I wonder what the comparative statistics for suicide are over time. That strikes me as another way to measure the relative "happiness" of a population.
Bearing in mind that statistical extrapolations bear as much relation to reality as the mythical average American family, with it's 2.3--or is it 2.2?--children and white-picket fence. Personally, violence being the irrational beast that it is, I'd favour a pataphysical approach to it.