Re: Bad Trend in War

From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2000 - 09:38:15 MDT


 hal@finney.org (hal@finney.org) writes:
>Robin writes:
>> The chart: http://abcnews.go.com/media/world/images/peacechart_990531_t.gif
>> in http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/peace_warbiology990602.html
>> shows a bad long term trend. I sure hope it has changed lately.
>
>That is a sobering figure. War related deaths in the 20th century running
>about 110 million, almost three times the per-capita figures of the 17th,
>18th, and 19th centuries.
>
>The authors show a correlation between countries with high percentages
>of young men and countries with a warlike record today. This probably
>doesn't work too well across the centuries, as I am assuming that the
>shorter lifespans of the past would have put more people in the young
>demographics.

 I'll bet that you will find a better correlation if you use the ratio
of single men to available women.
 The harder it is for the average man to find a sexual partner, the more
risks his genes should want him to take to acheive a good reputation
among the women in his tribe, or to capture women from other tribes.
 Note that China has recently developed an unusually large ratio of young
men to young women. I'm going to avoid investing in Taiwanese companies
for a few years.

-- 
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Peter McCluskey          | The US Idea Futures Exchange: speculate on
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