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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

You're not going to like it, and it's not much of a solution anyway. Time. Many generations and quite possibly civil war or outright war between nation states.

Humanity does not have a very good track record when it comes to learning from the past, so we are set to repeat history a couple of more times before we get it right. Let's hope I'm wrong about this, but the rate at which all the stable parts of the world are de-stabilizing is uncanny.

People keep pointing to studies that prove that the world is becoming less violent but I'm reminded of the sailors proverb that a real storm is preceded by a sense of calm.

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No offense, but you are discounting studies for what sounds like your intuition, which I'd argue is the entire point about science, to better inform us against our biases.

I'll take what science says over what the media hype is any day.

You're more than welcome to.

But there is a ton of evidence that the foundations of many societies are shifting and not for the better. That doesn't immediately reflect in the statistics (death tolls, crime rates) until a certain critical mass has been reached.

Just like you can't tell a tsunami from a small wave visually until it reaches the shore.

There isn't a country in Europe that has not moved substantially towards nationalism in the last decade or so. The foundations of Europe are being attacked and countries that were relatively stable (Turkey, Greece, Spain, UK) are all facing internal forces strong enough to change those countries in substantial ways. Then there is Ukraine (which is far from over) and Syria.

All in all, 'science' is in this case mostly tallying up the dead a couple of years after the bodies hit the ground. It's lagging behind the curve considerably and it doesn't even log places like Iraq and Syria in those statistics because they are anomalies.

Is shifting in response to what you experience a bad thing? If you're not seeing much good coming from an external focus, then maybe it's worth pivoting and focusing on the needs of your own people for a while.

Of course, I'm an American, so I don't see nationalism as a dirty word. You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

> You're supposed to be proud of your country and support it first and foremost.

If that doesn't come at someone else's expense, then maybe yes.

But 'nationalism' to me equates with stupidity. Putting a flag and other symbols above reason, supporting the troops, even when they're committing war crimes and so on.

Nationalism is a dirty word in Europe for a reason, every time it rears its ugly head we have another war to deal with.

America is lucky in that sense, it has only had two wars on its own soil (if you count the Canadian incursion), and none of those were because of foreign invaders (if you ignore the position of the Native Americans), and none of those in recent times.

But imagine if America had been the stage of WWI and WWII, I wonder how you'd feel about nationalism if that had been the case.

War is cheap if you export it, very very expensive to import. The scars of WWI and WWII still run very deep through Europe, it doesn't take any effort at all to find them, even if all for WWI and most of those that took part in WWII are now dead.

I really think that the media is giving us an impression that emphasizes sensational stories over more mundane but relevant ones. One is far more likely to die in the US from petty gun violence than a terrorist attack, as gruesome as the recent attacks have been, nothing has changed that statistic. Moreover, I'm more likely to die from a car accident than gun violence, and probably more likely to die from heart disease than both.

If you look at most metrics normalized over the whole Earth, yes we are in an unprecedented era of peace, and we should be thankful. There are issues and there is room to grow. Daesh is an example of forces that threaten to unravel that peace, but are we going to kid ourselves into thinking that Daesh is anything like the beginning of the twentieth century? Let's not fall into recentism and forget what we learned in world history.

When it comes to values/nationalism and such, I think it sounds like your argument then is there is a potential for the reversal of such trends and I agree. But it's discussions like this that hopefully will keep us from repeating the mistakes we make in the 10's or 30's. We are live actors and we have a chance to change things for the better. You can tell that I'm pretty much an optimist.

I used to be an optimist as well.

But the last 10 years have slowly but surely made me wonder if we're really as stupid as it seems that we are.

Just some samples: A couple of days ago there was an article about Duerte here on HN, the newly minted presidente of the Philippines. Whose primary solution to everything seems to be a well placed bullet, oh, and never mind a couple of rapes, as long as he's the first one in line.

In the UK, we have a bit of a situation at the moment, with lines being drawn at the level of 'we reserve the right to kick out your citizens' or to use them as bargaining chips. Northern Ireland and Scotland may break away from the UK, or they end up leaving the EU. Either way, that's bad news for a very large number of people. As an immediate result of that violence against people of other races (even the ones that have been in the UK for many generations) or from different nationalities is up to levels unprecedented for many many years (decades).

In NL, Belgium, France and Hungary we have nationalist movements that would all love to destabilize the EU further for personal gain and never mind the consequences. Power hungry 'strong men' (and some women) are in vogue all over, and people lap it up, using their words as covert signals to engage in violence and open hostility.

Then there was a coup in Turkey, and the displacement of very large numbers of people in Syria with all the associated misery (and death toll).

Note that none of this is about 'terrorism', I fully agree that statistically it is - for now, and let's hope it stays that way - insignificant.

I think the main problem is that we have our heads contaminated by too much "news". We live in constant fear, even when statistically we are less violent than ever.

For instance, terrorism works when its actions are published for the more people to see as possible. Statistically you have more probabilities of chocking to death on your breakfast or slipping in the shower than dying from a terrorist action in Europe/US.

Rational thought is on the backseat... So hence the pessimism and thoughts that something bad is comming.

Please take a look at this: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...

> Statistically you have more probabilities of chocking to death on your breakfast or slipping in the shower than dying from a terrorist action in Europe/US.

I already acknowledged that so there is no need to make that point again and again.

I understand that is a real problem but you should know terrorism is not like the others. It's almost never about the absolute numbers of injuries or deaths.

Acts of terror (the number of them) follow an exponential curve culminating in civil conflict. The objective of terror isn't to kill large numbers of enemies, it is to stress society into dragging one faction into battling the other.

That is why you should be more worried about terrorism than slippery showers. It scales differently. Violence is a contagion.

People's intuitions about this are actually correct. Bear in mind I dislike both the media and democracy! Sometimes what the 'man in the street' thinks is more accurate than an expert opinion, and that is because intuition is more holistic than a collection of expert opinions in specific fields conjoined together.

I can't dissuade you and it's not my place to, of course, but even in the midst of darkness, I see a couple of things to hope for. From certain movements here in the US to other political decisions and developments that seem to step in the right direction even when many are not, I have hope that on net there is still hope for the future.

Also, I am 26 this year, so I will probably have to deal with the ramifications of whatever happens today for longer than many who are deciding will. One would think that would be more reason for me to be even more fearful then but the way I see it is that it pushes me even more to be optimistic for my future, because I have more to lose. Plus, the stereotype that goes with youth and over-optimism, etc.

Science only works predicatively if the sample size n > 1.

You can run counterfactuals but you can't run experiments on history.

By studying history you can discover recurring patterns but these are more like heuristics than laws of nature.

Did you know that Germany had a similar reproduction problem pre-1914?

It was also held to be the most civilized culture in Europe at the time.

Or that France was the strongest nation before the Revolution? This was before a financial crisis and failed harvests tipped the balance suddenly.

Point is that when things go tits up it is always less than obvious to the people involved. Even when you find evidence of 'cracks' developing that led up to that situation, they hold little predictive power when discovered in other situations.

Consider this prediction for example.

Right now France is receiving the brunt of attacks by Islamic extremists. Logically any public outcry and counter-reaction should start there, yes?

But I think it is actually more likely in Germany, Holland or Denmark because of national psychology. They tend to go one way, or the other, you should know the Germans don't do half measures.

Can I measure that scientifically? Hell no. I'd still put money down on it.

No, I largely agree with everything you've said in this thread.

Some answers aren't considered acceptable merely because they aren't convenient. Well, truth doesn't have to be.

Despite being NRx and other esoteric political affiliations associated with the right, I cannot call myself a nationalist for the reason you described. We lost too many of the best in the world wars and I don't think our European society has recovered even now.

I hope for an improved complex, something post-nationalism which can solve for systemic threats without the costs of meat grinder-like machine wars swallowing up the population. Nuclear weapons have solved for most inter-state conflict but internal sectarian conflict is far from solved and is in future extremely likely in my view, most obviously between Islam and westerners in the home countries.

A interesting proverb, as it fits economics just as well as meteorology.

Are you being sarcastic? I've never heard that it applies to demographic movements.

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