The Rise of Secularism

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91, your comment on LKL's argument was ridiculous. LKL was only putting emphasis on proportion, not arguing anything about retrospective probability.

This entire thread is ridiculous, as it has ceased to be about secularism, and now is entirely about how 91 is clearly wrong, and his mental problems in that any reasonable human being can see that he is wrong, except he cannot. In most ways it is actually quite disturbing.

@AG

Not like you have a bias or anything? Now go buy yourself a copy of 'The Short Century' and Niall Furguson's 100 years war, read them and maybe somewhere inside their pages you will get a clue.

The issue is just that you are clearly and undeniably engaged in evasions. Period. I am not even denying bias, but this bias is rational because you DO THIS CRAP ALL THE FREAKING TIME!! !! That's why I consistently call you intellectually dishonest, and feel nothing wrong about insulting you.

No, it isn't. You are counting people who died as a proportion of those who were alive in 1913, when a very large number of the WWII dead had not yet been born in 1913. You really don't see the problem with that?


Well, what you are seeing there is simply a reflection of how peaceful the post-WWII world has been.


For the time being, I'm going to ignore the fact that your number is wrong. (The rate from WWI should be closer to 2%)

The overall level of violence over the course of a century has to account in some way for the long peaceful stretches when hardly anyone died in combat. Even if we restrict ourselves to the first half of the 20th century, we don't get 10% casualty rates from warfare. You have to consider the number of people who lived in that time span, compared to the number of people who died from warfare in that timespan. I don't know how to explain it any more simply than I already have, as this is already something that I would expect most children and some household pets to be able to follow.


No. There are several possible ways to deal with the "skewed" nature of the results:
1) Note that they simply reflect the relative peace that we have enjoyed post-WWII
2) Use some form of a weighted average which would basically end up over-emphasizing the violent parts of the century.
3) Break the century up into certain-sized "bins," whether you define those bins by time period (eg by decade) or a bin for every major conflict, and compare the casualty rate in each bin.


That number literally does not mean anything at all. And that's not even a correct restatement of what your source did.

If you want to do an individual's chance of getting through each war without dying in the war (for which you would do war casualties divided by population at the beginning of that specific war), and then average those numbers, you would have a start at a reasonable approach, although you would be completely ignoring the stretches of peace.


No, it's meaningless nonsense, and it doesn't separate anything from the change in population, rather it takes larger casualty numbers that were very much the result of a larger population and arbitrarily divides that by a smaller population.


Incorrect.


I've put forward several. The most obvious one is "What is the chance that any given individual will die in war, rather than of some other cause?" That number, for the 20th century, is going to be incredibly small.


He didn't show the charts for that, but he did state verbally that death from warfare has been declining throughout history, and noted that there was a very significant change around the time of the Age of Reason.


Yeah, I noticed that too. I don't know if he misspoke, was stating his own belief that a democratic institution works well as a Leviathan, or just didn't read Hobbes. But that doesn't affect the rest of the points.

Either I explained myself poorly, or you have misinterpreted what I said.
An individual in the past was more important to his community because there were fewer people in that past community who could have replaced him.

@Orwell

I will make three points

1. The use of the full population from the 20th Century radically skews the figures in favor of the population growth and at the expense of the proportion of dead during the individual wars. The same would be true of any century where such a shift occurred.

2. If you can complain the the sheer numbers must be contextualized to the population level during the first half of the century then it is only fair that you understand the first point. It is only an extent ion of your original complaint being applied to your own argument. You desire to make an argument from proportion stems from your desire to contextualized the full number of dead.

3. Therefor some mechanism, like my own, must be true for an argument from proportion to work, otherwise you are just attempting to hide the numbers.

As Ace has said, we count the murder rate based on the population from the year. This is true. We do not count the murder rate based on the total number of people who have lived in the city over the century. We take the individual years and from that establish a trend.

I find you inability to grasp these three points to boarder on dishonesty.

Therefore if you cannot make a decent argument from proportion, that takes into account those three points, I will consider your objection a moot point.

And he believes the same.


/and the cycle continues on and on and on....

Yes, except that 91 ACTUALLY IS crazy. At some point, I've gotta say that the guy who hears voices isn't my epistemic equal. And the fact that 91 has now started trying to call Orwell dishonest for CALLING HIM OUT ON A CLEAR AND OBVIOUS FALSEHOOD/DECEPTION(I don't even care which of those two it is), is just ridiculous.

If you're going to make the argument that 'x century was bloodier,' then it makes sense to count the total population of x century vs the total bloody deaths of x century. Murder rates of cities are counted for a different purpose.

@LKL

If one's complaint against using the absolute dead is the fact that the number of people in the 20th Century is so much higher and that this obscures the figures. How then would it be appropriate to use a proportional sum that seeks to do exactly the opposite? The reason the proportion argument is being invoked to deal with the population disparity, is not solving the problem, merely conscripting it.

And they will all be wrong. Unsurprising.


No, it wouldn't. It would merely cause the figure to accurately reflect that the overall rate of violence was incredibly low during the 20th century. Any other representation is either going to be addressing a different claim, or be completely dishonest. The fact that so many people went through their lives without dying in warfare is a testament to the peace of the last century.


I already said you can break it up into bins and count it war-by-war. Or you can consider only the first half of the 20th century, since the latter half had virtually negligible violence in many parts of the world.


Your first point is based on you having a foregone conclusion and rejecting obvious, established, empirical facts because they don't agree with you.


That is obviously the only sane way to determine the level of violence.


No, your mechanism is flat wrong. And who is hiding the numbers? You were the one trying to assign meaningless "scores" to wars, and naively summing them up.

I have already suggested using some form of weighted average or using binning to account for the change in population over the century. This is much more honest than anything you have attempted to do.


His point was that we count the murder rate by proportion of the population. When you make a claim that X century was the bloodiest, then a simple proportion makes sense as a check of accuracy. I have already stated, repeatedly, that you can break the century up into bins if you like. Go decade-by-decade (makes more sense for war than yearly figures) or even go with yearly figures, if you can find reasonable estimates. You will find the trend going down, especially over the latter half of the century.

This is a pathetic attempt to weasel yet again.


91, I am not the dishonest one here. My claim was correct, and literally everyone in this thread aside from you acknowledges that basic fact. There isn't any controversy: you are wrong, it is completely obvious to any sane or reasonable individual that you are wrong, and you are completely mental in your continued denial that you were wrong.


I already did, you are just semi-illiterate and suck at math.


And I will continue to consider you a basket case.

AG is right; you are completely unreasonable. I don't know what your problem is; at this point I no longer care if it is profound dishonesty or a super-human level of stupidity. I have never encountered anyone as ridiculous as you, and that includes Inuyasha, snake321, mikeh the vegetable conspiracy guy, and the Venus Project loons.

'conscripting' the problem? Interesting use of words. How does one 'conscript,' trap, recruit, imprison, or draft a problem?

What it sounds like, though, is that you're saying that using proportions shows that your supposition is bogus, wheras if you use some 'creative accounting' (bordering on numerology), you can pretend that the numbers you want are still there.

The overall rate of violence has nothing but tangential importance with respect to my original statement that the 20th Century was the bloodiest in history. We are talking about OVER 167 Million DEAD. Never before in history have so many people been killed. In no century before has even HALF that number been killed.

Open shut, it is the most bloody. The history books say it, the statistics say it the only one making the argument from proportion outside of this forum is a psychologist with ZERO credibility in the topic you are citing him in relation to.

Even AG has expressed a lack of support for your position; he will support you now, more out of a desire to oppose me though.



I will also note here that you are using local statistics, not century wide statistics (which is something you have criticized me for).... your dishonesty is astounding... maybe it is time to stop watching TED and start actually reading the textbooks.



You are opposing my point. Make your own argument from proportion that accounts for the change in population.



Sorry, I do not care. I have the academic consensus on my side, you can have some chap who likes to call himself awesomelyglorious on your side... somehow I feel secure in my position....



Sorry, LKL there is no way to hide millions of dead, some have tried, it does not work. Orwell's stated reason for invoking an argument from proportion is to a compensate for the number of people. If his state reason is such, then making an argument that fails to account for the change in population is to fail in his very reason for making it. He seems to be prepared to live with that, but that is just an attempt to have a separate set of rules for himself.

Holy crap, that is insane!! !! !! !! ! What I've supported is the position that there are 2 interpretations of what you said: Interpretation 1) You are factually wrong. Interpretation 2) You are behaving deceptively and dishonestly. Given that Orwell is basically promoting criticism of you, I think that he and I are in basic agreement, as he's just giving you more credit. It doesn't matter whether one sides more with you being factually wrong or you being deceptive, you're still wrong either way, and I've been very clear that you are wrong either way. I've even agreed with Orwell's reasoning on the matter, such as his example on medicine, even further, Orwell and I have talked on the matter outside of this thread, where we've expressed basic agreement and even hypothesized on why your behavior is so bizarre.... so, really???? This behavior is crazy, and your view of the situation is utterly disconnected with reality.

I mean, let's be honest here, your big line "167 Million dead" is small compared to the population that has grown to 6 billion. It's less than 1% of that. It's even only a bit over 10% of the population in 1900, as the total was 1.65 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population Given that the total numbers of those living in the 20th century is going to be OVER the 6 billion living today(it is all people during that time period), your point both dies and looks stupid, JUST MATHEMATICALLY. There isn't a need for more advanced reasoning here, as the proportions are clear, and even if you want a non-proportional measure, that will fail to rebut the point by Skafather, as if proportions drop, that's a clear sign that secularism is successful at reducing the damaging effects of war on most people's lives, which was his entire freaking point. Either way we want to look at it, you're screwed. Orwell's just dismisses the latter as a possible interpretation, and I see it as just an interpretation that says HORRIBLE THINGS about your character that I am not afraid to attribute to you.

Finally, your point on the psychologist is a) An appeal to authority, which you have rejected in the past rather openly, even in matters where there was no real problem. Showing once again that you are grossly dishonest. And you are grossly dishonest. b) Irrelevant, as the nature of the claim has to do with arguments, and our psychologist here is dealing in arguments and facts, and c) Irrelevant again as you actually have no real grasp of the statistics. Probably not even the history. I mean.... seriously, if I had to trust someone on either, I'd trust Orwell with both, as he's studied math and history on an academic level, and even though I don't like some of his positions, I know that he's somewhat of a fair player.


91, everything you've said is insane. Literally, jaw-droppingly insane. Was Orwell dishonest in comparing two major wars between the two centuries? No, because bloodiness has to do with proportions dead and major wars are a source of that. Showing that our bloodiest conflict is small compared to a past bloody conflict helps get a better grip on his point. Is he dishonest? No, he's been here for quite some time, with all sorts of disagreements with other people, but YOU'RE the one who continually receives comments on your dishonesty. Now, there are two basic theories one can have:
1) You are actually dishonest.
2) There is a conspiracy by all of us old-timers, to express hatred towards the young blood here.

I think most of the evidence favors 1), as you CLEARLY engage in behavior that could be considered dishonest. Also, out of all of the new people, you're the only one who really tends to get this criticism often. I wouldn't be surprised if you thought 2) was true or something else like that, as you somehow think that the reason I militate against you is just always entirely personal, it has NOTHING to do with the fact that we disagree a lot, and even that your behavior CONTINUALLY strikes me as dishonest.


One: You've never shown that.
Two: That's an appeal to authority ANYWAY, and you have gotten quite upset in the past about this. (which kind of makes everybody think you are dishonest, and you are...)
Three: If Pinker's point is right, and it seems very clear that it is, as Orwell has shown that past war was "bloodier" and Pinker that past war was more common, and Pinker that cruel punishment was more common, then Orwell has nothing more he needs to say. Given that Pinker just refers to facts and studies and actual authorities, we have a lot of reason, all else equal, to think Pinker is right.

In any case, I know Orwell isn't being dishonest. It isn't as if the person has given relatively honest(even if blunt) arguments for a long time, and now wants to go "dishonest" in dealing with you, I am sorry, that just makes no sense, and it isn't what we see when we look at the actual dispute. In the actual dispute, we see quite clearly that you are not being honest.

The substance of this issue is settled, and has been for some time... I merely want to point out the most transparent and indisputable dishonesty.

This is false. At no point in this thread did AG disagree with my position; and his very first post on this disagreement was to state that your way of counting was "ridiculous."


You call me dishonest?! You disgusting piece of crap. That is not what AG wrote! Ever! You are putting words into his mouth that he never typed. That cannot possibly be anything other than a deliberate snipping and pasting of quotes with the direct intent to deceive.


I already did.


No you don't. You're a f*****g moron who can't even manage to correctly restate what your "sources" say.


My argument does not have that problem. It is not my fault that you are a complete and total idiot, and now a proven liar to boot.

It could be a misattribution.... however, I don't know where he'd get the "AG" from if it were an accident, as usually such accidents only occur if one is quoting someone who is quoting someone... which doesn't make a lot of sense.