[FRIAM] ill-conceived question

[Prof David West]

Father Smith was a "liberation theologian," pacifist, and activist as well as a Catholic priest. On the population-war issue we had some fun conversations about whether or not contraception should be used as war/violence preventative measure.

He and I traveled to Cuba in the 90s and tried very very hard to get arrested upon our return (to protest the US embargo), but the immigration and customs personnel at the Minneapolis airport refused to cooperate. Although it was legal (barely) for US citizens to go to Cuba, it was illegal to spend money there. I brought back, and declared, several hundred dollars in Cuban cigars, rum, and art goods. Both immigration and customs personnel looked at the form and my luggage, visibly sighed and waived us through instead of arresting us.

Fun times.
davew


On Sun, May 3, 2020, at 7:43 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> Nick,
> 
> No one made any claim about effectiveness. Just an observation that if you do year-by-year plot of birthrate in a given population you will see an annual increase leading to the onset of a war, an obvious decrease during the war, and a surge immediately after the war ends. The surge more than compensates for the drop during the war years, so effectiveness is out the window.
> 
> I think — haven't checked recently — that there was a gradual increase in birth rate between WWI and the onset of WWII, a 2-4 percent decrease during the war years, and a huge baby boom immediately after. Father Smith had similar statistical measures for dozens of other conflicts.
> 
> Population pressure / "birth control" are but one of a multitude of factors that lead to war. All kinds of arguments can be made about the "validity" of Father Smith's statistics — few pre-modern peoples kept comprehensive public health records, ...
> 
> davew
> 
> 
> On Sat, May 2, 2020, at 11:21 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>> 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

>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

>> 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

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

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> 

>>>> *From:* Friam <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 <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

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>>> 

>>> 

>>> 
>>> 

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