A New Entry into the Decline of War Debate: Yes, there has been a decline

I've just posted a new paper with Stijn van Weezel on the decline-of-war debate.  This is part of an ongoing discussion  which involves such people as Steven Pinker, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Aaron Clauset. Here is our abstract: For the past 70 years, there has been a downward trend in the size of wars, but the idea …

Decline of War Debate – Aaron Clauset Edition

Hi. This is just a quick note to draw attention to a new blog post I've done with One Earth Future. My piece is a comment on an interesting new paper by Aaron Clauset which is part of the decline-of-war debate that has featured prominently on the blog.

Pinker versus Taleb: A Non-deadly Quarrel over the Decline of Violence

As promised, I've just posted the slides of the talk I gave yesterday at York University (with some overnight modifications). You can get background with links for further background here. Somewhat bizarrely, Steven Pinker's 2011 book was rocketing to the top of the Amazon best seller list due to a Bill Gates Tweet right when I was …

Secret Data Sunday – Nassim Nicholas Taleb Edition

When data are central to scientific discussions, as is typically the case, then the relevant data should be open to all. OK, we don't have to be totally rigid about this.  People may sink a lot of effort into building a data set so it's reasonable for data builders to milk their data monopoly for …

One Last Exchange of Letters in Significance with Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Significance Magazine is now hosting its final-exchange-of-letters on the future of war.  Once again, it is Steven Pinker and I dueling with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Pasquale Cirillo.  You can judge for yourselves whether the four of us have hit a common groove. If you feel sad because you have not followed all the twists and turns of …

A New Graphical Manoeuvre (not Recommended)

Correction.  The first part of this post argues that an anomaly in a published graph is an error that has some substantive implications.  However, an alert reader, Ben Prytherch,  proposed a benign explanation for the anomaly.  I checked with the authors of the graph and it turned out that Ben is right.  So this is …

Forecasting World War III – An Exchange of Letters

I'm sure that this reminder of my article in Significance  will awaken warm memories in many of you. In it, I used an article of Pasquale Cirrilo and Nassim Nicholas Taleb to help me make my case.  I think that the Cirillo-Taleb paper is quite interesting.  However, it is not in any way a shoot-down of …

Forecasting World War III

Hello again. I apologize for going silent for so long.  I felt overwhelmed at the end of our teaching term, transitioned into family fun and obligations and then have been unconscionably slow getting out of the starting blocks since the new year began.   I'll now become active again, although I'll warm up by drawing …