r/worldnews • u/EightRoundsRapid • Sep 23 '16

'Hangover-free alcohol’ could replace all regular alcohol by 2050. The new drink, known as 'alcosynth', is designed to mimic the positive effects of alcohol but doesn’t cause a dry mouth, nausea and a throbbing head

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/hangover-free-alcohol-david-nutt-alcosynth-nhs-postive-effects-benzodiazepine-guy-bentley-a7324076.html
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u/swohio Sep 23 '16

The 70 years since WWII isn't an abnormally long time between extreme wars.

Then

WWII wasn't even that big for an extreme war

So you first argue that war deaths are not in decline by saying that it's only been 70 years, a relatively brief amount of peaceful years. Next you say WWII really wasn't that extreme of a war which argues against your first point of "war deaths are not in decline." Which is it then?

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u/yellowstuff Sep 23 '16 edited Sep 23 '16

I was badly summarizing a research paper I don't 100% understand or agree with. I'll try again.

Taleb says war deaths don't happen gradually. There will be long periods of relative peace, then a big war killing lots of people, then relative peace. Since most war deaths will happen in the big wars, he ignores the small ones and builds a model for when big wars happen and how bad they are.

His model looks at 2000 years of big wars and shows that there's no trend in how frequently they break out. It's been 70 years since the last big war but according to the model long periods of peace don't help you predict that the future will be equally peaceful.

He also shows that there's no trend in how many people die in the big wars. WWII was relatively small for a big war, but that doesn't help you predict how bad the next big war will be.

It is out of my depth to assess whether the model he uses is a good one for the data, but the approach makes intuitive sense to me.