Simplifying Complexity The Mathematics of War: Part 1
Nov 27, 2023
The podcast explores the mathematical perspective of war and conflict, analyzing casualty numbers and patterns in wars. It discusses the feedback process of height and its potential impact on extreme heights. The concept of all wars being a collection of battles is challenged, highlighting the importance of understanding the underlying mechanism of casualties. The relationship between border length and wars is explored through the study of insurgencies and data collection within conflicts.
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Richardson's War Casualty Data Quest
- Lewis Fry Richardson was a pacifist and conscientious objector in WWI who collected war casualty data.
- He gathered decades of war death estimates to understand patterns and possibly avoid future wars.
War Casualties Follow Power Law
- War casualty counts form a power law distribution with a fat tail instead of a normal bell curve.
- This means very large wars happen less frequently but are still possible and significant.
Feedback Creates Fat Tails
- Feedback and interactions between individuals create distributions with fat tails instead of bell curves.
- This interaction-driven feedback explains why war casualties follow power laws rather than normal distributions.