From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 05 2001 - 07:13:12 MST
hal@finney.org wrote:
> > http://hanson.gmu.edu/worldpeace.html War casualties may
> > fall by a factor of three per decade for the next few decades,
> > because there will be fewer young men relative to old men.
>
> The data seems to be non "longitudinal", that is, it compares different
> countries within a specific time period. We know from epidemiology and
> other disciplines that crosswise comparisons like this don't always work
> when turned into longitudinal predictions.
Agreed. It would be better to have data that varied by time as well to seeif
there is a time trend independent of the other trends.
> I'd like to know whether the formula works when extrapolated backwards
> in time. What were MAR levels in the early 20th and late 19th centuries?
> How did they compare to war deaths? I suspect that the correlation
> is going to break down, because I believe more of the population was
> youthful in the 19th century, but war deaths were lower.
I would love to see such data as well. I know where to find data on MAR
levels,but I haven't yet found any summary data on global war deaths. Which
seems
strange as this is a clearly important number to track.
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