[FRIAM] ill-conceived question

Sun May 3 01:21:37 EDT 2020

David, 

Basic fact of demography.  Killing men is not a particularly effective means of population control.  

You want war to serve in that capacity, you have to get women in the military.  

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2020 8:00 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

Dave -

I once taught an honors course, with Father Smith at St. Thomas on the Anthropology and Theology of War. One of the prime forces behind war — since prehistory — had been nothing more than birth control.

Do you meant literally *birth* and *control*, or rather *population* and *reduction*?

The more literal usage works well too.  Controlling Births.  I think much warfare culminates (or did before modernish times) in the victors killing the men and raping/impregnating and enslaving the women either in-place, inhabiting the conquered lands or taking them back to their homeland.  Children alternatively would have been killed or enslaved.   Thus the genetic heritage of Genghis Khan...

One step more sophisticated than the rats?

I don't think we have to go there, no matter how much the gun hoarders want their chance at being unequivocally "on top" at least for one round of the grande iterated prisoner's dilemma that is human civilization.

- Steve

Well, in a sense that’s correct.  But their method of “birth control” <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238356686_A_Utopian_perspective_on_ecology_and_development>  is not one that I am prepared to take as a model.  Just imagine the worst sort of dystopian post apocalyptic novel.  See the description of the Calhoun experiment on p 224.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels

Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2020 12:15 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group  <mailto:friam at redfish.com> <friam at redfish.com>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ill-conceived question

< You recall that I invoked as a model that experiment in which 24 rats were put in a quarter acre enclosure in Baltimore and fed and watered and protected to see how the population would develop.  They never got above two hundred.  >

Maybe the rats were right?

Marcus

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam

unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

.-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ...
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200502/80ce8574/attachment.html>