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Simulation of Coping to Understand Conflict Dynamics

Simulation of Coping to Understand Conflict Dynamics. George Backus, D.Engr. Policy Assessment Corporation Denver, Colorado, USA Telephone: 1-303-467-3566. CU August 19/21 2003. Peace And War. Opposites? Blends? Wrong Question?

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Simulation of Coping to Understand Conflict Dynamics

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  1. Simulation of Coping to Understand Conflict Dynamics • George Backus, D.Engr.Policy Assessment Corporation • Denver, Colorado, USA • Telephone: 1-303-467-3566 CU August 19/21 2003

  2. Peace And War • Opposites? • Blends? • Wrong Question? • You cannot understand the future if you do not understand the past. We dare not deny what the past tells us about ourselves. We cannot make up a future that violates who we are. • Belief/hope is not a valid approach. Math and science must have falsification.

  3. Math Facts and Fancy • Conclusions (given “facts) will possibly be incontrovertible. • Need to find realistic, doable, change in system to allow sustainability and stable future. • Optimization is not a valid approach; the assumptions violate what real humans can do. • Human response represents a distribution --from the individual through the global level.

  4. Two Days and then Refutation • The End of the World • History: The present • History: -30 years • History: -6M years • “Limits to Growth” and Technological Salvation • System Dynamics • Overshoot and Collapse: Pacifism Prevents Peace • The Arms Race: US and Russia • Coping with Peace • The Distribution of Nothing to Lose • Every Conflict has a Solution • United We Fall (Conflicts have No Solution)

  5. Morality is a Choice • Mathematical not philosophical statement • There is only morality if you choose • Living in affluent American neighborhood is not like living in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala etc., etc., etc. • Promoting group-hugs and singing “Give Peace a Chance” to stop war is a denial of reality. • In mathematics, you must consider all alternatives (all potential choices). • Only when you are faced with the full spectrum of possibilities does choice have a moral meaning.

  6. End of the World • A bit of “garage” engineering • A bit of history • 1996: Peace: Lithuania-Kaliningrad Border • 1974: Fuel Processing: San Diego, California • 1984: Cold War: Czechoslovakia-Austrian Border • 1971: Vietnam War: Madison, Wisconsin

  7. Waiting on an Individual Extremist

  8. Very Real Individual Choices • U239+n=Pu239 • Available to all who have a reactor. • U235 is 0.007 of Natural Uranium • Centripetal separation with vacuum cleaner would take ~ 5 years. • Fission bomb limit is ~2MT • Fusion has no limit • Realistic limit is 50MT to avoid catastrophic fracture of earth’s crust. • Requires very high tech and lots of $ • Doomsday bomb is “too easy” to make. (US has it?) • You have something to lose. You are not a threat. • But if you believed you were “right” and “they” were wrong…

  9. Learning from History • 1996: Peace: Lithuania-Kaliningrad Border • 1974: Fuel Processing: San Diego, California • 1984: Cold War: Czechoslovakia-Austria Border • 1971: Vietnam War: Madison, Wisconsin

  10. Protesting War • http://www.leemark.com/featuredcontent/sterling/sterling.html

  11. Zimbardo Experiment (1971) • Stanford University Student Pacifists • Prison Simulation: Guards and prisoners • Violence and Psychological Reality ”The Stanford Prison Experiment is a classic psychology experiment. What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph? How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” http://www.prisonexp.org/ • The John Wayne effect • Fall of Iran and the “Ayatollah”

  12. History – 6 Million Years and 6000 Peoples • Constant Battles: Steven LeBlanc (2003)Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared Diamond • Not one peaceful people in 6 Million years. • Peace is an transient accident • Mahandas Gandhi And Martin Luther King • Neville Chamberlain and Hitler • Ecological imbalance is also economics and cultural • Technology and Centralized Power • There is “peace” within a strongly-governed country…if forced. • Technology will lead to abundance for all… if only the earth were not finite.

  13. Good versus Evil MT MG NB SH ATH AH JS PP OBL? Good? Evil? AH (6-20 Million), JS(7-30M), PP(20% of Pop) 150 years ago life had no value anywhere. “Genocide” continues today.

  14. Limits to Growth and Technological Salvation • Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World: D. L. Meadows (1972) • “Discredited”… except it is still forecasting correctly. • Technology can overcome, but at the wrong time. • Technology extends the low-cost exploitation of a finite resource. It delays the hard decisions. • With even weak exponential growth, there is no time to substitute from one resource to the next. • War is the outcome. • Mathematical models can change the world.

  15. WORLD3 Model

  16. Mathematical Simulation: System Dynamics • Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling in a Complex World. John Sterman. • POP(t)=POP(t-1)+dt*(BR-DR) • d(POP)/dt=BR-DR: BR=POP*FR: DR=POP*MR • Feedback, Delays, DQ as causal language • Complete: Constant to Variable, One to Many • Fear and greed behavior (Only need fear.)

  17. Population and “Needs”

  18. Overshoot and Collapse (And War)

  19. Detailed Dynamics

  20. Resources and Population • At collapse, all die or some WILL die. It is a “war” choice. • Maya, Indus, Mesopotamia, Moche, etc. are examples of the collapse. • If factions, largest (fastest growing population) wins. • 26 members of the human family may have existed together. Only the ONE best predator survived – by destroying the others.

  21. Arms Race • The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Paul Kennedy • Uncertain Mistrust • Peace as a Darwinian Dead-End (Is that same ultimately true of war?)

  22. Unlimited Arms Race

  23. The Rise and Fall of Nations

  24. Coping With (Human) Nature

  25. Figure 1: Attention Behavior

  26. Figure 2: Response Behavior

  27. Figure 3: Net Active Behavior

  28. Figure 4: Steady State Pressure.

  29. Figure 5: Coping-Skill Atrophication

  30. Figure 6: Maximum Sustainable Growth

  31. Figure 7: Near the Limits to Growth

  32. Figure 8: Collapse

  33. Figure 9: Moderate Coping-Skill Overshoot

  34. Figure 10: Gradual Coping-Skill Overshoot

  35. Figure 11: Maximum Sustainable Growth with a Coping-Skill Limit

  36. Figure 12: Excess Repetitive Pressure

  37. Figure 13: Tolerable Repetitive Pressure

  38. Figure 14: Almost Burnout

  39. Figure 15: Burnout

  40. What is the Probability? • Any individual bilateral conflict can be accommodated via coping. • Given a distribution of incompatible (irrational?) individuals, there is no stable solution for multiple interacting parties at the extremes of the distribution. • “The End” probability goes to unity in the long-term. • Will an attempt to make all have something to lose succeed soon enough?

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