On Aggression (The Instinct for Wars)
An article by Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald (April 25, 2007) “Why ‘never again’ will never work” suggested this post to me. Ross Gittins asks whether there could be a deeper, purely psychological explanation for wars and specifically for the war against Iraq (and not the supposed weapons of mass destruction etc. used as an excuse). He asks “Could it be humans are so warlike because of the way their minds work? That’s the novel thesis advanced by Professor Daniel Kahneman, of Princeton University, and Jonathan Renshon, of Harvard University….” The psychologist Kahneman is the founder of behavioural economics and a Nobel Prize winner.
In fact, the thesis is not new at all. Another Nobel Prize winner, Konrad Lorenz, one of the founders of ethology, the modern study of animal behaviour, advanced it over 40 years ago. I strongly recommend to read his popular and inspiringly written books on the subject, because they are even more relevant today than they were 40 years ago:
On Aggression (translated from the German Das Sogenannte Böse, 1963), and The Waning of Humaneness (Engl translation 1988, German 1983). In these two books, Lorenz describes how intraspecific aggression (an instinct for aggression) in various animal species can have effects that threaten the survival of a species. The same applies to humans. Humans, in their evolutionary history, have acquired aggressive instincts that may have had a survival value at the time, but are dangerous today. Nevertheless, Lorenz is (or pretends to be?) optimistic. He refers to “safety valves” that prevent negative effects due to aggression in various animal species, from which we can learn. A precondition for optimism is that mankind must be modest and realize that we are only part of nature and subject to its laws. (A note for evolutionary biologists: Lorenz bases many of the arguments on group selection, which may not be scientifically sound, but many of his conclusions concerning the survival of species are nevertheless correct).
Kahneman’s Nobel Prize winning insight was that humans do not possess the mental powers necessary for the rational calculations required by conventional economics.
Humans tend to make mental shortcuts that may lead to erroneous predictions, i.e., they are biased. When Kahneman and Renshon listed these biases, they found that all of them were on the hawkish side (one did not listen to advice given by doves, but by hawks).
These hawkish biases are of several kinds:
1) optimism bias: most people believe they are smarter than others (for politicians this means for example that they tend to take the advice of hawks who predict a favourable outcome of a war);
2) illusion of control: the amount of control people think they have over outcomes is generally exaggerated (does this ring a bell with the present war in Iraq?);
3) fundamental attribution error: other people’s motives are often misinterpreted; and it is completely ignored that other people may have the same bias towards us (does this ring a bell? Iran?);
4) reactive devaluation: something is considered worth less for the only reason that it is offered by the other side (i.e., a concession by some supposedly hostile person is devalued).
I suggest to consider these points when looking at one of the supposed rogue states, Iran. People should realize that Iran has a long history of suppression by neighbours and non-neighbours (Britain, Russia, in particular). In the seventies(?) an Iranian airliner was shot down by an American warship killing about 200 people. There was no war between the US and Iran, and (if I am correctly informed, I am open to correction) Iran did not even receive an apology from the US. Iraq’s invasion of Iran under Saddam Hussein (allegedly supported by the US) led to 2 million Iranian dead. Iran cooperated with the US in getting rid of the Taliban, but never received a “reward”. President Bush declared Iran a state on the Axis of Evil, and there has been repeated talk of “regime change” in Iran. Earlier, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mossadeq, was overthrown with the involvement of the CIA, for the simple reason that he wanted to nationalize the oil industry. This led to the rise of the Shah and finally the present political system (by the West usually depreciatively referred to as the ayatollah “regime”). The Iranian government has declared that it has never attacked a neighbour over the last centuries, and this is correct. It has also declared that it has no intention of attacking anybody, including Israel. Iran is entitled by international law to use uranium for peaceful purposes (whether it is wise to pursue this idea under the present circumstances, is a different matter).
I believe that we should try to understand the motives of “the other side”, considering its history, and make political judgements accordingly.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
‘The Iranian government has declared that it has never attacked a neighbour over the last centuries, and this is correct. ‘
Pedantically, of course, this is correct. If the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran gets people who are not directly employed by it to attack on its behalf, that is obviously not at all the same thing as attacking itself . And Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Argentina, France and the United States are not technically *neighbours* of Iran.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
I assume you refer to Hezbollah, which was established as a reaction to Israeli invasion of Lebanon many years ago, an invasion during which many Palestinians and Lebanese were killed. It was established with the support of Iran, which considers the organization as freedom fighters (with which definition I do not necessarily agree). Even the government of Lebanon is quite happy (and stated so openly) to leave the “defence” of Southern Lebanon to it, as long as Israel occupies part of Lebanon in the South. Hamas also is a doubtful case, it seems that one’s terrorist is the other’s freedom fighter. Which makes me think of Mandela’s African National Congress, considered as a terrorist organization by the US during apartheid. You are perhaps right when you mention Argentina (if I remember correctly, a bomb attack on a Jewish building attributed to Iran, I don’t know with how much evidence). I don’t know how much evidence there is for linking attacks in France, Egypt and US to Iran, but perhaps there is.
However, there is another case which we both overlooked: there was a Persian-Afghan “war”of some sort (early in the 19th century, I am not familiar with what actually happened and who was the attacker, if there was one).
Whatever may be the case, one has to see all this in perspective: 2 million dead (and I assume many wounded) in Iran, how many in the other countries you mentioned?
April 27th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
I believe that we should try to understand the motives of “the other sideâ€, considering its history, and make political judgements accordingly.
It is a little bit strange that you put this statement in. Game theory is in essence a formalised study of (a certain number of) entities understanding the motives of the other side, considering their histories (etc.) making political judgements, seeing what the other side(s) make of it, reconsider it in the historical context, and making followup political judgements (ad infinitum). Either one can make more effective conclusions by thinking this way, or one can decide that peoples judgements are random. I don’t think it is scientific to say that game theory is dangerously inaccurate, if the alternative is not even being able to stab a guess at predicting political futures. I don’t like being stuck on platitudes about what “everyone” ought to do. It’s like saying that the prisoners in the prisoners dillemma ought to just claim innocence to win.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:21 am
My point is the following: history shows, and this includes very recent history, that powerful nations have (almost) consistently misjudged their partners in the game, and always shown a bias towards greater aggressiveness. I am not suggesting that game theory is useless (it has some limited use for example in evolutionary theory), I am suggesting that much more care must be taken to evaluate the motives and possible responses of “adversaries” , taking the points made by Kahneman and Renshon (above) into consideration. After all, game theory is like computers: feed them the wrong data and you get the wrong answers. In politics, probably much more so than in evolution, where nonequilibria are common enough, nonequilibrial conditions which make forecasts practically impossible, are predominant, restricting the usefulness of simplicistic “games”.
A relevant case is the buildup of a starwar system around Russia’s borders. Was it really so difficult to foresee the reactions Russia would show to this (wrongly or correctly) perceived threat, in view of its history as the successor to the Soviet Union, which was surrounded by missile systems by which it felt threatened. Nonetheless, the US (which certainly has the technical expertise to play through all the conceivable games thought necessary to make the correct decision) apparently failed to foresee Russia’s response (or at least pretends not to have foreseen it).
Or look at how he military adventure of the US in Iraq was conducted. It seems that the Pentagon and military either played the wrong game or none at all. Here is an extract from today’s BBC News:
“A senior serving US army officer has launched a scathing attack on the US military leadership in Iraq.
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling said US generals had failed to prepare their troops properly and had misled Congress about the resources needed for the war.
Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, he said the US had repeated the mistakes of Vietnam and so faced defeat in Iraq.
Lt Col Yingling, who is deputy commander of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment and has served two tours in Iraq, said the military leadership had entirely failed to grasp what would be needed for success in Iraq.
“For reasons that are not yet clear, America’s general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces, and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of the security conditions in Iraq,” he wrote.
The generals had gone into Iraq in 2003 with too few soldiers and no coherent plan for post-war stabilisation, having spent a decade “preparing to fight the wrong war”, he said.”
April 28th, 2007 at 10:29 am
There were a number of Persian-Afghan wars in the 19th century: the last overt act of war initiated by Iran appears to have been the occupation of Herat, in a Persian-speaking area of Afghanistan, in 1856. I felt that as long as I was being pedantic 1.51 centuries counted as ‘centuries’ well enough.
‘As long as Israel occupies part of Lebanon to the South…’ is an example of the transparent lie which repeated often enough, everyone starts to believe. The ‘disputed’ Shabaa farms comprise an area of about 10 km^2 whose status is slightly muddled due to the slip of a French bureaucrat’s pen early this century. They were not raised by Lebanon as an issue from 1945-1967, when they were internationally recognised as part of Syria; they were not raised by Lebanon as an issue from 1967-1983, when Israel first occupied that part of Syria; the UN resolutions calling on Israel to withdraw from Lebanon called on Israel to withdraw to the line which it has, in fact, withdrawn to. The Shabaa farms are only a transparent excuse for Hezbollah to continue its war.
I believe the evidence linking Iran to the truck bombings of French and United States marines in Beirut in 1983, and to recent terrorist attacks at resorts in the Sinai, is at least as good as the evidence for American involvement in the overthrow of Salvador Allende…
April 28th, 2007 at 11:51 am
I do not “believe” anything in this context or many others, the situation is fairly muddled. I refer you to Noam Chomsky, the great Jewish intellectual, who has written well researched books on the problems of the NearEast (sections in Hegemony or Survival, and in Failed States, and a recent one, which I have not read yet, entirely about the Middle East). As far as the “war” of Hezbollah against Israel is concerned, it killed a few Israeli soldiers and abducted two, shortly after Palestinians in Gaza had abducted one. The obvious intention was to trade them in for some of the 9000 Palestinians and several (I don’t know how many) Lebanese in Israeli prisons, most of them abducted during illegal raids into Gaza, the Westbank and Lebanon. It seems that Hezbollah was quite surprised by the Israeli reaction, considering that prisoner swaps had been conducted before. Many well informed people have asked whether the relatively minor incident justified a war that killed many civilians and destroyed much of the infrastructure of Lebanon.
Concerning the Shabaa farm, I am well aware of the legal wrangling over it, but it is considered as Lebanese not only by the Hezbollah but by the Prime Minister of Lebanon, recognized by the West. Apparently, it sits on a water bubble which makes it of some interest to all “players” (I got this from the Press and don’t know how reliable this information is).
April 30th, 2007 at 11:42 am
The Israeli strikes on Lebanese targets seemed to catch everyone’s surprise bar Hezbollah. Hezbollah was well prepared with thousands of hidden rockets, numerous ambushes and plenty of funding and weapons from both Iran and Syria. We could argue all day about whether this was a deliberate provocation by Hezbollah with the intent to spark a war with Israel, or just a capture to use as a bargaining chip that got a disproportionate response.
This is, I believe the only possible way to analyse it : Hezbollah made a “move” (Tresspassing into Israel and capturing Soldiers). Israel made a counter “move” (Threaten to strike against Lebanon if the prisoners were not released). Hezbollah made a counter “move” (Declaring that the minimum conditions for the prisoners release was a large release of certain prisoners in Israel). Israel’s next move was to make good on it’s threat, by striking hard. Hezbollah’s next move was to retaliate with rocket launchers. At this point the fog of war comes into the game, and I am still looking to what the endgame entails. I assume it will be back to stalemate (what I believe to be a Nash equilibrium). Like with a schoolyard all-in brawl, you can argue who started it, who has the most injuries, who gave the biggest punches - but at the end of the day, we analyse how schools work, why some schools have more fights than others etc. We can punish the student who pulled the first punch if you can catch him (that works usually). Otherwise you can just pull the fighters apart as soon as you can get there and give them all detention.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
In my understanding, Nash or Cournot-Nash Equilibrium means that, when two (or more) players play a game, none of the players can gain by changing the strategy unilaterally. Nothing in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel or in the Near-East situation as a whole suggests to me that such an equilibrium exists or that we are close to it, although it may temporarily (such as just now) seem to exist. The situation rather resembles that of the feral Soya sheep on Hirta in the St.Kilda archipelago. Sheep on this small island were monitored over decades and found to fluctuate between a population size far beyond what the environment can sustain, and far less than that, as the result of severe population crashes. The equilibrium point lies somewhere between the two and the population passed through it every few years. During these short periods, the population size seemed to be at equilibrium, but it was in fact a march towards disaster, i.e., the next population crash. Since, to my knowledge, no name for this sort of “equilibrium†exists, let’s settle on false equilibrium or pseudo-equilibrium. It certainly is not a Nash Equilibrium.
A true equilibrium in the Near East, I believe, can be achieved only if the basic causes of the conflict are addressed by mutual accommodation.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:24 am
Several points:
- The “Israeli/Palestine game” needs a minimum of three players to demonstrate a Nash equilibrium that I’m talking about. A more descriptive name would be “Arab-Israeli conflict”.
- The Nash equilibrium (in this case) is not a state of peace but a range of conflict between the Arab and Israelis. This ranges between relative calm with various demands and negotiations, and military/terrorist strikes seemingly designed to prevent peaceful negotiations.
- The length of time that that the conflict has been going is indicative of various negative feedbacks ie. when peace seems to be breaking out, internal forces seem to work to scuttle it. Conversely, when outright war seems to break out, neighbouring countries seem not to escalate it with their own armies.
- The sheep population analogy is interesting, but there seems to be no analogue to the “resource” factor. What “resource” is the Israeli/palestine conflict depleting?
- The Nash equilibrium is not a “good” thing in this case, but a result of none of the players being able to gain by changing strategy unilaterally.
- The level of outside intervention required to break this equilibrium involves taking sides in a big way, and perhaps allowing the destruction of one of the parties. This is not a “good” thing either, even if it stops the conflict forever.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
The sheep example is just an “example” to illustrate the point (as you say, an analogue), it differs of course in many aspects from the conflict in the Near East. However, concerning the resources the adversaries fight over, it seems to me fairly obvious that resources are indeed at stake, namely land (and all the resources that go with it, in particular water). One main reason for the conflict, after all, is the continual expansion of Israel into the Westbank. In that respect, sheep and humans don’t differ too much.
As I said in an earlier post, Nash equilibria can only be observed when certain conditions are met, and these conditions are usually not met in daily life or in political conflicts. It is therefore dangerous too put too much emphasis on such equilibria or on “formalized” games more generally. Common sense may often be a better approach (as well as taking the “biases” listed by Kahneman and Renshon into consideration).
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Asserting that there is an aggression bias in general is one thing (I agree and the research has some merit in that sense). The conclusion that this is the case in Iraq (and potentially against Iran) is quite another. It implies that without the aggressive optimistic instincts of the US, a more common-sense approach would have prevailed there and the middle-east geopolitics situation would have better prospects at this point. This implies that the US had acted “irrationally” and that even for its own good it would have been better for them not to have acted. The pattern of aggression by the US over the last few decades appears more like making examples of selected regimes in the name of deterrence. This may or may not be helpful overall, but to me it is mainly rational self-interest and I can’t see why it couldn’t be allowed for in any game theory analogue.
Conversely with Israel, there has been numerous times where a good peace treaty was imminent. A peace treaty would be good for both the Palestinians and the Israelis. It beggars belief for me to presume that time and time again the parties would act irrationally and between the two, scupper the talks. It is clear that the only sensible explanation is a “third” entity for which peace would be a disaster. The terrorists that act independently from the Palestinian authority is one such possible entity. That the other two parties know this also gives them less incentive to come to the peace table, or unilaterally cease hostilities.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
“without the aggressive optimistic instincts of the US, a more common-sense approach would have prevailed there and the middle-east geopolitics situation would have better prospects at this point. This implies that the US had acted “irrationally†and that even for its own good it would have been better for them not to have acted.”
I believe indeed that the US acted irrationally and it would have been better for its own good to have done nothing. Iraq was no threat to anybody before the invasion, now it is an haven for instability and terrorists and the balance of power has shifted towards Shiites and Iran, clearly not in the interest of the US. At least this is what many informed people (outside and inside the US) believe .
“The pattern of aggression by the US over the last few decades appears more like making examples of selected regimes in the name of deterrence.”
You mus be kidding (read Noam Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival, Failed States on this). In Central America it was United Fruit, there was no need for deterrence (unless you want to include deterrence to prevent countries from becoming economically less dependent on the US and more socially equitable).
“Conversely with Israel, there has been numerous times where a good peace treaty was imminent. ”
Indeed, numerous times? There was perhaps one genuine chance for peace, when Rabin was murdered. The fate of the millions of Palestinian refugees living in miserable conditions in refugee camps has never been addressed. Hence, where the Israeli peace offers really that good? Arafat at the time said he would be out tomorrow if he would accept them. Let’s try to apply the reactive devaluation principle of Kahneman and Renshon: something is considered worth less for the only reason that it is offered by the other side (i.e., a concession by some supposedly hostile person is devalued), and - by implication - one’s own offers are overvalued.
“It is clear that the only sensible explanation is a “third†entity for which peace would be a disaster.”
This is not the only sensible explanation. Try to consider the fundamental attribution error of Kahneman and Renshon: other people’s motives are often misinterpreted; and it is completely ignored that other people may have the same bias towards us.
May it be possible that the very strong social component in Islam is responsible? May this be the reason why fellow Moslems went to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets (with the support of Saudi Arabia and the USA), and to Chechnya? May this be the reason why this is now happening in various Mideastern countries? Is it possible that they were and are not “proxies” for any state, but simply follow their religious beliefs (even when often excessive and counter-productive)?
.
May 2nd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Noam Chomsky is of course only one voice out of many commenting on the Israel/Palestine situation. What particular characteristics of his worldview make you select it over that of, say, Barry Rubin of the Jerusalem Post? Does it demonstrate more internal self-consistency and logic? Does it explain more features of the observable political landscape than competing worldviews?
May 2nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
I refuse to accept that either the US in its various military adventures, nor Al Queda in its terrorist strikes, nor the palestinian Authority in its decisions, nor France in its lack of action, nor Serbian warlords, nor any entity that has taken upon itself to attack another.. is acting “irrationally”. They play the game as they see it. They may or may not be overly optimistic in the use of aggression, but their goals may well be different from their stated goals. I for one do not believe that people are that stupid. Whether it is one country that seeks the destruction of another, but won’t say it out aloud lest it gives it less chance to succeed, or whatever. Aggression is meticulously calculated and deliberate.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:50 am
Chris: Noam Chomsky’s books are very well researched and documented, his arguments are convincing. This is of course not surprising, after all he his one of the world’s leading scientists. If there would be a Nobel Prize for linguistics, he would probably qualify as its first recipient (but I am not a linguist and take the word of others for it). A strong bias is unlikely (although everybody, of course, is to some degree biased in one way or the other). He was brought up in a conservative Jewish family in New York City with a strong bias towards Israel. He shed many of these views by looking at the evidence and analyzing it rationally and as a scientist. -
Having said that, I should clarify that I arrived at my views before I ever knew there was a Noam Chomsky.
I occasionally have a look at Israeli newspapers on the web, and I may have encountered Barry Rubin, but I don’t remember him.
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:57 am
Marco: “I for one do not believe that people are that stupid. Whether it is one country that seeks the destruction of another, but won’t say it out aloud lest it gives it less chance to succeed, or whatever. Aggression is meticulously calculated and deliberate.”
I wished I could share your optimism, but I can’t. History is a series of bungles. But we don’t have to go back in history. Look at what is happening in Israel at this very moment. The Israeli Prime Minister (Olmert), defense minister (Peretz) and Chief of Staff (?????), have been severely criticized by a high level Israeli commission for what amounts to stupidly sliding into a war and stupidly executing it. I have commented earlier on what high military officers in the US army think about the war in Iraq.
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I don’t have that great a familiarity with the work of Noam Chomsky, but I did skim one of his books when I was much younger and more susceptible to his sort of views and found it shallow and unconvincing.
I suggest that the hawkish biases you discuss can equally well be applied to Chomsky et al.:
1) optimism bias: most people believe they are smarter than others (for academics who have excelled in a particular field, such as linguistics, this means that they believe their views on unrelated matters are also superior);
2) illusion of control: the amount of control people think they have over outcomes is generally exaggerated (thus, a scholar expects that his or her arguments can alter the situation, when the situation persists as it is because of ‘Game Theory’ like calculations that are not altered by these arguments);
3) fundamental attribution error: other people’s motives are often misinterpreted; and it is completely ignored that other people may have the same bias towards us (for example, the motives of successive US administrations, and anyone on the so-called ‘Right’ of politics, are impugned by Chomsky, so that they become a dehumanised Other)
4) reactive devaluation: something is considered worth less for the only reason that it is offered by the other side (i.e., anything said by anyone on the so-called ‘Right’ is automatically devalued).
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I wished I could share your optimism, but I can’t. History is a series of bungles.
It isn’t optimism, people can have dark motives for selfish self-interest. If the motive was to kill Saddam Hussein and capture or kill all his henchmen no matter the cost, I would hardly think this would be advertised. I think history is full of dark motives that if you actually believe what the players have said just look like bungles. Thinking that Iraq was “just” a bungle is sheer optimism. This involves a dubious presumption that there was no dark motives. The instinct for aggression is often about punishing perceived evil at a great cost to oneself and others. Optimism is confusing these sort of motives for irrational stupidity. The difference is that irrational stupidity cannot be predicted, while, if one knows the psychology of the players well enough, peace and war can be predicted more accurately.
May 3rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Chris: This morning I came across a report in BBC News about the bomb attacks in Argentina over 10 years ago, to which you referred earlier. It seems that evidence is fairly inconclusive (see below), but I keep my mind open. Concerning the attack in the Sinai, I thought that at the time, it had “all the hallmarks of Al Quaida”.
BBC 2 May 2007
Pressure on Iran over Argentina blasts which killed many people on 18 July 1994 (some extracts)
A three-year trial of 20 Argentines ended in their acquittal in 2004.
But Judge Canicoba Corral, acting on an 800-page report of evidence prepared by two public prosecutors, has recently asked the international police organisation Interpol to issue arrest warrants for seven Iranians and one Lebanese national.
include the former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, and the foreign minister in the early 1990s, Ali Akbar Velayati.
According to prosecutor Alberto Nisman, the Iranians ordered the bombing through the Lebanese-based militant group Hezbollah.
The order came after Argentina backed out of two contracts to supply material for Iran’s nuclear industry in the late 1980s.
Judge Corral said he believed the US was pressuring Argentina
Observers in Argentina and the United States point to direct pressure from Bush administration officials for the re-opening of the case and for naming the highest levels of the Iranian Government as being directly responsible for the bombing.
The Iranians deny all involvement in the AMIA bombing.
Mr Baharvand also argues that Hezbollah has never been involved in any attacks outside the Middle East, as it sees its struggle as directly against Israel.
Others in Argentina are equally sceptical of attempts to place the responsibility for the AMIA deaths on perpetrators outside the country.
“I’m sure that the Argentine state is involved,” argues Laura Ginsberg, who lost her husband in the bombing. She says the prosecutors have offered no solid evidence for blaming Iran and Hezbollah, and points to many unresolved crimes in which the Argentine security services were allegedly involved.
Similarly, veteran reporter Joe Goldman, a US journalist who has been living in Buenos Aires for more than 20 years, doubts the official Argentine version of what took place on that morning of 18 July 1994.
“There is no evidence that the explosion was caused by a car bomb,” he says. He claims to have spoken to numerous witnesses who saw the event, none of whom made any mention of a van or other vehicle coming down the street.
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm
[...] My conclusion, then, is that attempts to analyse the present situation in the Middle East and specifically with regard to Iran using Nash equilibria, are not only without hope of success but highly dangerous, in particular also because human players are almost by definition “irrational”: they are consistently biased as discussed in my post “On Aggression“. [...]
July 9th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Chomsky, bah! How did you arrive at your views before you ever knew there was a Noam Chomsky?
July 9th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Ah, this is a much better link.
July 9th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
“How did you arrive at your views before you ever knew there was a Noam Chomsky?”
By looking at the evidence.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
My apologies! A flippant comment does, of course, only merit a flippant response.
But it was a serious question. I pretend to fanatic certainty in my pronouncements, and I seek certainty, but I have not found it-nor do I really expect to- and I am interested in how people become certain in their opinions. Mr Kerstein the Anti-Chomskyite offers quite an explicit and detailed story of how he arrived at his admittedly rather over the top loathing of Prof Chomsky.
What did you think *before* you came to arrive at the same views as Noam Chomsky? What particular pieces of evidence first convinced you? How have your ideas evolved since then? Has any evidence ever caused you to waver in your views? How old were you when you formed these views? Did you arrive at these views in the BRD, or in Australia?
July 13th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Dr. Clam
My apologies. I did not want to appear flippant, but I am extremely busy just now with some scientific enterprises. This is the reason I have not posted anything new over the last several weeks. I shall get back to your question when I have some time. In the meantime just this: I have lived for many years in South Asia and Africa, and have visited many other countries including Afghanistan (before Russian and US involvement), Iran and Israel, not as a holiday maker but looking at their historical and social backgrounds. I also had discussions with many people there. All this has contributed to the sometimes gradual and sometimes fairly sudden evolution of my views, from very pro-American (when I was young and had just escaped from East Germany), to what I consider more balanced. - Concerning application of game theory to politics just this. It is generally believed that the fields where it can be applied with hope of success are economics and evolutionary theory, and that one should be very cautious applying it to politics and international affairs. Even in evolutionary theory success is very limited. I refer you to the Cambridge University website of my book Nonequilibrium Ecology, where an appendix on this will be posted very soon. - Finally: my views are fairly complex, I do not agree with everything Chomsky says, but with a lot.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Have a look at this one
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/lieberman-lays-the-ground_b_56093.html
September 28th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
[...] the highly dangerous situation leading to a possible war with Iran in several previous posts (click here, here and [...]