Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 29-Oct-2019 World View: Exponential increases in computing power

(10-28-2019, 10:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: > While I agree with the "fast enough computer" theory, I don't
> necessarily agree with the idea that we'll get computers fast
> enough and efficient enough.

> Here's the issue: for decades, Moore's law was driven by reduction
> in processor size. Unfortunately, within the past decade, that
> reduction reached a physical limit as circuits on the chips shrank
> to the point that inductance effects between adjacent "wires"
> became limiting.

> At this point, Moore's law is being driven by parallelism instead
> of more powerful processors: having larger numbers of the same old
> processors running in parallel. That can still result in ever more
> powerful computers - but they will also be ever larger and consume
> ever more energy. That limits their usefulness in certain
> applications, in particular mobile applications.

> In 2050, the best artists may well be computers which fill
> buildings. We may still be traveling around town in Uber and Lyft
> vehicles driven by human beings, however.

Nobody believes this. You're saying that progress in computer
technology, which has been proceeding exponentially for decades, is
now stone cold dead.

This reminds me of that guy in the 1880s who said that the US Patent
Office should be closed, because everything important had already been
invented.

Ray Kurzweil showed that the exponential growth of computer power
didn't start with transistors. He showed that if you start with the
machines used in the 1890 census, then consider new variations of card
processing machines over the decades, and then vacuum tubes, then
transistors were simply the next step. So computing power has been
doubling every 18 months at least since the 1890s.

I've been reading for years that the demise of Moore's law would
occur in the 2000s, and yet here it is in 2019, still going strong.

New technologies are coming along -- quantum computing, molecular
computing, nano computing. One or more of these technologies will
continue the exponential growth curve for computer power.

Here's one of my favorite graphs:

• Efficiency of illumination sources -- increases exponentially
  through multiple technologies

This graph shows that the efficiency of illumination sources increased
exponentially for many decades, through one technology after another.

Exponential technology trend forecasting is very mysterious,
because it happens all over the place, and no one understands why.

** Book I / Chapter 11 -- Trend Forecasting
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/w....trend.htm

That book chapter discusses the efficiency of illumination sources and
several other examples. Another example is the development of jet
planes, which became available in WW II. Most people claim that jet
planes were invented BECAUSE OF WW II, but that isn't true. Jet
planes became available at precisely the correct time to continue the
exponential growth of maximum speed of military aircraft.

I tried to explain exponential trend forecasting in my 2005 article on
the Singularity, reposted in 2015:

** Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity by 2030
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/w...151228.htm

However, the proof that I provided in that chapter has a flaw, as I
explained. So it remains mysterious.

But even though I can't always explain it, that doesn't mean it isn't
happening. Computing power will continue to grow exponentially, and
the Singularity is coming soon.

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-28-2019, 12:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > So what blinds you to the hollowness, cruelty, recklessness,
> ignorance, and dishonesty of Donald Trump?

So what blinds you to how you continually embarrass yourself by making
one completely idiotic statement after another?

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-25-2019, 11:35 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: > And a German admirer of Adolf Hitler in 1933 named a blind cave
> beetle the "Anophthalmus hitleri."

(10-29-2019, 09:25 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: > Either this admirer was pretty stupid, or he wasn't really an
> admirer. Do your research.

> And Greta's right about Climate Change.

See the following:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...32054.html

Before you make really dumb statements telling people to do their
research, you should consider following your own advice.

And I assume that your "climate science expertise" is exactly as
enormous as that of Greta.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 29-Oct-2019 World View: Frankenstein's Monster and the Singularity

John Wrote:> ** 29-Oct-2019 World View: Exponential
> increases in computing power

> Computing power will continue to grow exponentially, and the
> Singularity is coming soon.

Higgenbotham Wrote:> Here's my litmus test for when we can say AI has surpassed human
> intelligence:

> An AI team clones a human
> An AI surgical team replaces the brain in the cloned human with an
> artificial brain the AI team has built
> The cloned human then quarterbacks an NFL team to a Super Bowl
> victory

Lol! That's a great litmus test, but it looks like a recipe for
creating a new Frankenstein's monster, and I doubt that any NFL teams
would be willing to allow Frankenstein's monster on their team (or on
their opponents' teams).

As you probably know, the Turing Test was devised by Alan Turing years
ago. You ask a computer questions and get answers, and the test is
whether you can tell whether the answers you're getting are from a
human being or computer. If you can't tell the difference, then the
computer is intelligent.

I suspect that we've already surpassed the Turing Test or, if not,
then we're very close -- and in fact it was satisfied years ago by IBM
Watson's Jeopardy challenge.

A test that I used to propose was that a computer would be intelligent
if it could drive a bus down New York's Fifth Avenue, follow all the
traffic laws, pick up and drop off passengers, make change and answer
their questions. Given the recent advances in autonomous self-driven
cars, I believe that this test could be satisfied today.

The test that you're proposing is more difficult because you want the
computer to be able to run around and play football. The "run around"
part is still a few years off. But today we have plenty of examples
of automated manufacturing. A computer could use a 3-d printer to
create a humanoid, and install motors to move the feet, hands and
fingers. Then it could install a computer into the humanoid's head,
with the appropriate software, and you've got your Frankenstein's
monster. I think that this would be possible within five years or so.

None of these tests is really enough to say that the Singularity has
occurred, since they all have narrowly defined functionality.

The Singularity will truly have been reached when your computerized
humanoid can walk around and do everything that a human can do -- walk
into a grocery store and buy groceries, walk into a clothing store and
buy clothing, go into a bowling alley and bowl, perform CPR, have sex
with a human, and so forth. If the Singularity occurs in 2030, then
this kind of functionality should be possible within a few years after
that.

[pbrower2a]

(10-29-2019, 07:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(10-28-2019, 12:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   So what blinds you to the hollowness, cruelty, recklessness,
>   ignorance, and dishonesty of Donald Trump?

So what blinds you to how you continually embarrass yourself by making
one completely idiotic statement after another?

You are a reasonably intelligent fellow. I may disagree with you, perhaps because I am not as much of a pessimist on human nature except on economic elites who can get away with much that the rest of us cannot get away with. This said, I see huge gaps in the character of Donald Trump. Those gaps are not sporadic incidents; those are the norm. 

What I see wrong in Donald Trump I would see wrong in a liberal. Maybe liberalism requires more empathy than Trump has (empathy is rare among reactionaries, fascists, and revolutionary socialists); liberals are likely to be stronger on the human touch than on technical virtuosity than are conservatives. Other than that, the other vices serve no cause. 

I fully recognize that most people can get away with a lack of intellectual depth, as most economic roles (a/k/a jobs) are designed for ease of performance. Caution is a virtue that makes an occasional act of audacity all the more devastating to an enemy in war... and a daring twist of literary or musical phrase or a seemingly-unlikely brush-stroke in a painting can be a stroke of genius. If one does much of such and it does not work, then one is simply insane. Trump makes pedantic expressions of commonplace knowledge as if he were a low-elementary pupil trying to be as profound as the teacher, as in "not many know this, but (insert a piece of banal common knowledge)". This is unimpressive. Most people know that iron is a metal in common use.  

I have learned from personal experience how to detect egregious lies and stupidity. As James Randi puts it, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Statements contrary to accepted knowledge are usually false, indicating either deceit or gross error, unless one can prove such true (many thought Einstein was crazy for his theory of relativity, but he was proved right with scientific experiment, and that was difficult to do). The arrow of intellectual history has been toward greater refinement of truth. Although truth is often controversial, falsehood often shows itself as such through contradictions in the reductio ad absurdum that Euclid introduced.     

By the way... if I were to say that "not many people know this, but Euclid was an important person in the history of mathematics", then I would be saying something absurd -- not because Euclid is so important in mathematics, but instead because "not many people know..." contradicts reality. Trump says stuff like that. 

Dishonesty and folly can look much alike, but all in all, truth does not self-contradict. I could make the case that the great Euclid's method of proving geometry and number theory  work by raising the level of basic knowledge. Thus the square root of two, if rational, must be an integer between 1 and 2... and there can be no integer between 1 and 2. But consider also that people with something to hide must cover up one misdeed with a lie, and when caught on that lie must create a bigger lie to cover for the first one, and so on. 

I recognize much cause for distrust of President Trump. Smart people have fallen for horrible leaders like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.

[Hintergrund]

@Xenakis: Fuck off.

[John J. Xenakis]

(10-30-2019, 08:00 AM)Hintergrund Wrote: > @Xenakis: Fuck off.

Same to you, jackass.

You were in the Generational Dynamics forum for a while last year.
Did I say something that pissed you off? If so, you have a lot of
company.

[Warren Dew]

(10-29-2019, 06:16 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 29-Oct-2019 World View: Exponential increases in computing power

(10-28-2019, 10:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   While I agree with the "fast enough computer" theory, I don't
>   necessarily agree with the idea that we'll get computers fast
>   enough and efficient enough.

>   Here's the issue: for decades, Moore's law was driven by reduction
>   in processor size. Unfortunately, within the past decade, that
>   reduction reached a physical limit as circuits on the chips shrank
>   to the point that inductance effects between adjacent "wires"
>   became limiting.

>   At this point, Moore's law is being driven by parallelism instead
>   of more powerful processors: having larger numbers of the same old
>   processors running in parallel. That can still result in ever more
>   powerful computers - but they will also be ever larger and consume
>   ever more energy. That limits their usefulness in certain
>   applications, in particular mobile applications.

>   In 2050, the best artists may well be computers which fill
>   buildings. We may still be traveling around town in Uber and Lyft
>   vehicles driven by human beings, however.

Nobody believes this.  You're saying that progress in computer
technology, which has been proceeding exponentially for decades, is
now stone cold dead.

Not at all.  Let me try putting it in different words, since those didn't work for you.

Moore's law is a law about computing power and costs.  It is not a law about computing power and size.  Sometimes the computing power will come in the form of machines that sit on desktops.  Sometimes it will come in the form of machines that fill rooms.

In the current phase, which is likely to extend to 2030 at least, the machines get bigger as the cost of computing power goes down.  That will change if and when the trend jumps to a different technology, as it may have several times in the past, but the next such jump is more likely around 2050 than 2030.

There's also no guarantee that the next jump will go to smaller rather than larger machines.  It may turn out that quantum computing can be done much more efficiently in space with large volumes of hard vacuum, and we'll have huge quantum computers in orbit which we access over a wireless internet equivalent, as just one possibility.  They will by that time be much smarter than human beings, but they may not be able to walk around on Earth.

[David Horn]

(10-30-2019, 06:44 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-29-2019, 06:16 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: … Nobody believes this.  You're saying that progress in computer technology, which has been proceeding exponentially for decades, is now stone cold dead.

Not at all.  Let me try putting it in different words, since those didn't work for you.

Moore's law is a law about computing power and costs.  It is not a law about computing power and size.  Sometimes the computing power will come in the form of machines that sit on desktops.  Sometimes it will come in the form of machines that fill rooms.

In the current phase, which is likely to extend to 2030 at least, the machines get bigger as the cost of computing power goes down.  That will change if and when the trend jumps to a different technology, as it may have several times in the past, but the next such jump is more likely around 2050 than 2030.

There's also no guarantee that the next jump will go to smaller rather than larger machines.  It may turn out that quantum computing can be done much more efficiently in space with large volumes of hard vacuum, and we'll have huge quantum computers in orbit which we access over a wireless internet equivalent, as just one possibility.  They will by that time be much smarter than human beings, but they may not be able to walk around on Earth.

I agree, however one thing's for certain. The actually processing will be done on a tiny chip of some sort -- probably a cube or, even better, a sphere. There is still lag time in a quantum machine, though quantum physics makes this less true than it has been to date. Moving things around is the single largest time waster, and that's not likely to change dramatically.

[Hintergrund]

(10-29-2019, 10:19 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-29-2019, 07:01 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote:

(10-28-2019, 12:20 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: >   So what blinds you to the hollowness, cruelty, recklessness,
>   ignorance, and dishonesty of Donald Trump?

So what blinds you to how you continually embarrass yourself by making
one completely idiotic statement after another?

You are a reasonably intelligent fellow.

He isn't. He is reading a lot of stuff (written by other people, who are at least partly reasonably intelligent), but didn't really learn how to think by himself.

[pbrower2a]

(10-30-2019, 06:44 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(10-29-2019, 06:16 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 29-Oct-2019 World View: Exponential increases in computing power

(10-28-2019, 10:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: >   While I agree with the "fast enough computer" theory, I don't
>   necessarily agree with the idea that we'll get computers fast
>   enough and efficient enough.

>   Here's the issue: for decades, Moore's law was driven by reduction
>   in processor size. Unfortunately, within the past decade, that
>   reduction reached a physical limit as circuits on the chips shrank
>   to the point that inductance effects between adjacent "wires"
>   became limiting.

>   At this point, Moore's law is being driven by parallelism instead
>   of more powerful processors: having larger numbers of the same old
>   processors running in parallel. That can still result in ever more
>   powerful computers - but they will also be ever larger and consume
>   ever more energy. That limits their usefulness in certain
>   applications, in particular mobile applications.

>   In 2050, the best artists may well be computers which fill
>   buildings. We may still be traveling around town in Uber and Lyft
>   vehicles driven by human beings, however.

Nobody believes this.  You're saying that progress in computer
technology, which has been proceeding exponentially for decades, is
now stone cold dead.

Not at all.  Let me try putting it in different words, since those didn't work for you.

Moore's law is a law about computing power and costs.  It is not a law about computing power and size.  Sometimes the computing power will come in the form of machines that sit on desktops.  Sometimes it will come in the form of machines that fill rooms.

In the current phase, which is likely to extend to 2030 at least, the machines get bigger as the cost of computing power goes down.  That will change if and when the trend jumps to a different technology, as it may have several times in the past, but the next such jump is more likely around 2050 than 2030.

There's also no guarantee that the next jump will go to smaller rather than larger machines.  It may turn out that quantum computing can be done much more efficiently in space with large volumes of hard vacuum, and we'll have huge quantum computers in orbit which we access over a wireless internet equivalent, as just one possibility.  They will by that time be much smarter than human beings, but they may not be able to walk around on Earth.

Truth be told -- some of the reader devices give easy access to calculating power that the Apollo 11 astronauts had available -- and that was less than the typical scientific calculator that college students had in the mid-1970's. There remains a size limit on computers, and that is a minimum size: human fingers are not getting smaller. Human capacity to relate to data is not increasing beyond a certain level. 

I would guess that the most sophisticated computing now goes to cinematic CGI effects. People obviously relate to the results by attending movies that could never be made without them. People see but a tiny fraction of the computational sophistication -- and that is under human management, and then by people with much creative talent to judge the results before those can ever meet the quality necessary for the finished product.  

Creative people, unless limited to crafts and traditional media, will need more intellectual sophistication just to control machines that turn out material for mass consumption. As it has been with painting, any blockhead can toss paint onto a canvas, but editing the results requires some intellectual sophistication. Tyro as I am at the hobby, I know enough to not show incompetence through bad perspective and to avoid making images of automobile graveyards or of the interiors of slaughterhouses.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2019 World View: Global protests

The BBC has done an interesting story on the spread of global
protests.

• Top row (L-R): Barcelona/ClimateChange/Russia; Middle row:
  Bolivia/HongKong/Iraq; Bottom row: Ecuador/Chile/Lebanon
  (BBC)

The BBC noted that the number of countries with large protests has
grown dramatically in the last few months.

This is of course true. In this generational Crisis era, where
xenophobia and nationalism are occurring around the world, the growth
in the number of crises is not a surprise. Using Winston Churchill's
words, this is all "The Gathering Storm" that's leading to World War
III.

The story on global protests was triggered by the protests in Chile,
which have forced Chile to cancel plans to hold two international
conferences. One was an economic conference where Donald Trump and Xi
Jinping were supposed to attend and sign a trade deal, and the other
was a climate change conference.

The BBC report provided a one or two sentence summary for each
country. Here they are (my transcription):

• In Lebanon, it started with the introduction of new charges
  for phone calls on WhatsApp. On Tuesday after two weeks of protests,
  prime minister Saad Hariri stood down.
  
• In Chile, a 4% rise in subway fares brought a million people there
  out into the street.
  
• Ecuador's government has been forced to repeal a bill that would
  have ended fuel subsidies.
  
• In Bolivia, they've been fighting street battles since the
  election on October 20. President Morales is trying to hang on for a
  fourth term.
  
• In Hong Kong, the unrest has moved well beyond the Extradition
  Bill that sparked the protests, and is now being driven by a much
  wider set of grievances.
  
• In Iraq, thousands have defied a curfew to demand more jobs,
  better public services and an end to corruption. Some 200 people have
  died there so far.
  
• In Russia, it was the exclusion of opposition candidates from
  council elections.
  
• In Barcelona Spain, the jailing of separatist leaders from
  Catalonia.
  
• And across the world in recent week,s we've had recent climate
  change protests in more than 200 countries.

While I was typing this, I hear UK labor leader Jeremy Corbyn describe
Brexit as the greatest crisis the UK has ever faced. And just a few
minutes ago the American House of Representatives just voted to take
the impeachment carnival another step further. So we can add the US
and US to the BBC list of countries in crisis.

We should also add Syria and Yemen to the list because they're
at war. Egypt is also in crisis.

And we should also add Iran to the list, because the protests in
Iraq and Lebanon are really not Sunni vs Shia, but are actually
directed against the influence of Iran.

All of the protests are based on worsening economies, and that's
happening because the growing debt bubble days have largely ended, and
so there is much less money in the world than there used to be,
meaning that there are many more people who cannot get money to buy
food with.

The world is being held together with duct tape and rubber bands, and
at some point a rubber band will snap, and that will lead to the first
declaration of war, and an escalating cycle of wars.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Duct tape and rubber bands....interesting metaphor.

One thing that we might see confirmed-that Great Depression/World War II crisis synchronized (roughly) the cycles of most countries.

Implying that most of the world will be in Crisis at the same time.

BTW, Peter Zeihan predicted that famine will be returning to parts of the world.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2019 World View: Merging timelines

(10-31-2019, 12:09 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: > Duct tape and rubber bands....interesting metaphor.

> One thing that we might see confirmed-that Great Depression/World
> War II crisis synchronized (roughly) the cycles of most countries.

> Implying that most of the world will be in Crisis at the same
> time.

> BTW, Peter Zeihan predicted that famine will be returning to parts
> of the world.

This is the Generational Dynamics theory of "merging timelines."

If you go back 8000 years, then all the wars were between villages,
and a major war in southern Italy would be completely independent of a
major war in northern Italy, and in fact each population would not
even know about the other war. So the generational timelines of the
two areas would be completely unrelated.

As the centuries go by, the villages coalesce into larger tribes and
regions and eventually into nations. Furthermore, continuing
technology developments in communication, trade and transportation
mean that different regions are more aware of wars that are going on
in other regions. The result is that two regions that were previously
too far apart to have a war are suddenly very close, thanks to
technology. And when two separated regions have a major war, then
their timelines merge. By the 1700s, there were only five or ten
independent timelines in Europe, but those timelines would be
independent of the timelines in Africa or Asia.

By the 1900s, almost all the timelines has coalesced into two major
ones, the World War I timeline and the World War II timeline, with
African timelines being the biggest exception.

But now, those two timelines are coalescing into the grandest war of
all, a war that really will encompass the entire world, and kill four
or five billion people.

[Cynic Hero '86]

(10-31-2019, 12:50 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: By the 1900s, almost all the timelines has coalesced into two major
ones, the World War I timeline and the World War II timeline, with
African timelines being the biggest exception.

But now, those two timelines are coalescing into the grandest war of
all, a war that really will encompass the entire world, and kill four
or five billion people.

Sorry John But Most of the developing world and the third world were unaffected by WW1 and WW2. Even if The first world coalesced in to hostile blocs and went to all out war, in that case it would be the first world nations bombing and nuking each other. Nobody is going to waste time bombing neutral third world nations. Sorry But a war that begins in eastern europe, Central Asia, or east asia would have its epicenter in the Eurasian "ring of fire" conflict zone. Your Notion that the "ring of fire" zone nations would be least devastated is logically untenable. WW1 and WW2 broke out In central and Eastern Europe for example; and Central and eastern Europe suffered by far the most devastation in the wars. You are underestimating "national" nationalism and overestimating "pan" nationalism. For example in any modern ww3 scenario if one bet whether for example Asia or South America would be more devastated in a global world war III, any thinking man would bet that Asia would suffer far more destruction than south america. A US, Russian or chinese nuclear forces would be given orders to nuke Russia and China (in the case of the US), nuke the US and Russia (in the case of China), or Nuke China and the US (in the case of Russia). No one is going to say "lets nuke Brazil and Argentina or Nigeria in africa" even in an all out nuclear war. Because those countries have not presented to existential threat to the countries with the nukes or had anything to do with what caused the war to begin. Not everyone is Kim.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2019 Turing Test

zzazz Wrote:> No, that is the freshman caricature of the Turing test. Anyone
> wanting to find out about the real Turing test can read all about
> it at Wikipedia.

As it turns out, in grad school at MIT I specialized in mathematical
logic, recursive function theory, and philosophy of mathematics, and I
spent a very great deal of time studying the mathematics of Turing
Machines and their significance, as well as related subjects. So
there's a tiny but real possibility that I know a great deal more
about this subject than you do.

It's good that you've been practicing your internet skills, and you've
been learning how to use Wikipedia. However, the Wikipedia
description of Turing Test is extremely long and convoluted, much
longer than I would want to give in a one-sentence summary. I often
try to write things so that people can actually understand them, but
of course I never realized that they would be read by a genius like
yourself. Thank you as usual for deigning to visit us, and provide us
with your infinite wisdom, as you do oh so frequently.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-Oct-2019 World View: WW 1 and 2

(10-31-2019, 09:45 PM)Cynic Hero 86 Wrote: > Sorry John But Most of the developing world and the third world
> were unaffected by WW1 and WW2.

This of course is silly as written. Tell that to the Chinese who
were slaughtered in the rape of Nanking, or to those who died
in the Bengal famine.

However, there is a grain of truth in the sense that most developing
and third world countries were on a different generational timeline,
so they were Awakening or Unraveling era wars for these countries.
The people in these countries would behave quite differently than
Crisis era countries, but they wouldn't be unaffected.

[pbrower2a]

(10-31-2019, 09:45 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote:

(10-31-2019, 12:50 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: By the 1900s, almost all the timelines has coalesced into two major
ones, the World War I timeline and the World War II timeline, with
African timelines being the biggest exception.

But now, those two timelines are coalescing into the grandest war of
all, a war that really will encompass the entire world, and kill four
or five billion people.

Sorry John But Most of the developing world and the third world were unaffected by WW1 and WW2. Even if The first world coalesced in to hostile blocs and went to all out war, in that case it would be the first world nations bombing and nuking each other. Nobody is going to waste time bombing neutral third world nations. Sorry But a war that begins in eastern europe, Central Asia, or east asia would have its epicenter in the Eurasian "ring of fire" conflict zone. Your Notion that the "ring of fire" zone nations would be least devastated is logically untenable. WW1 and WW2 broke out In central and Eastern Europe for example; and Central and eastern Europe suffered by far the most devastation in the wars. You are underestimating "national" nationalism and overestimating "pan" nationalism. For example in any modern ww3 scenario if one bet whether for example Asia or South America would be more devastated in a global world war III, any thinking man would bet that Asia would suffer far more destruction than south america. A US, Russian or chinese nuclear forces would be given orders to nuke Russia and China (in the case of the US), nuke the US and Russia (in the case of China), or Nuke China and the US (in the case of Russia). No one is going to say "lets nuke Brazil and Argentina or Nigeria in africa" even in an all out nuclear war. Because those countries have not presented to existential threat to the countries with the nukes or had anything to do with what caused the war to begin. Not everyone is Kim.

Sorry, Cynic. There was war over the German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific during WWI.  In World War II -- practicaly the entire zone of war in the Pacific theater was in the Third World. Japan was Third World going into World War II. The Italian Empire, cosisting of what are now Ethiopia, Eritrea, and most of Somaliland as "Italian East Africa", Libya and the short-lived Italian possession of Tunisia were theaters of war -- important ones. The second battle of El Alamein was one of several turning points in the Second World War. 

If I am to ascribe anything to the start of wars, then it is thug rulers and thug political systems -- societies in which the political leadership is little better than gangsters. Like Nicolas II of Russia they can be weak and ineffective leaders, but they stand for horrid social orders in which people have little value. The Iran-Iraq war exemplifies the principle that dictatorial leaders with opposing ideologies are particularly susceptible to war -- and with the gas warfare and human-wave attacks on front lines, the Iran-Iraq war proved very similar in such respects to World War I.

If I am to pick the political system most likely to find itself at war, then it is North Korea, whose impetuous leader is full of himself and can kill at will. Should Kim Jong-Un decide that he wants war with the USA, he will get it. Nobody in North Korea will stop him, and all that can will be a foreign army that obliterates his regime.

[John J. Xenakis]

** 01-Nov-2019 North Korea

(10-31-2019, 11:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > If I am to pick the political system most likely to find itself at
> war, then it is North Korea, whose impetuous leader is full of
> himself and can kill at will. Should Kim Jong-Un decide that he
> wants war with the USA, he will get it. Nobody in North Korea will
> stop him, and all that can will be a foreign army that obliterates
> his regime.

I believe that, like China, what North Korea really want is war with Japan.

[pbrower2a]

North Korea loses a war against Japan, let alone against China.

I would advise the Japanese to repudiate the crimes of the thug regime that has been overthrown for 74 years and is never coming back. A political system that gives the world the Bataan Death March and operates germ warfare against innocent people is exactly the sort that can expect the harshest retribution available. The only reason that Japanese cities underwent nuclear obliteration and German ones didn't was that Germany was defeated before the US had atom bombs ready. The Holocaust would have been the pretext for nuking a German city had the European war dragged on into the summer of 1945.