The Quaker Keeps Fighting…Correlation vs. Causation and War

In the continuation of the discussion on Richardson’s Theory of War, we are going to start with the distinction between Correlation and Causation. This distinction is necessary when applied with a healthy amount of skepticism can help know fact from fiction when bold claims come out preceded by “studies show…”.

15 Insane Things That Correlate With Each Other

The link above shows some ridiculous correlations that clearly have no relationship, but the data share a relationship. For example, there is a correlation between the number of drownings by falling into a pool and the number of nick cage movies. These two things have zero relationships, so you cannot call it causation. Causation indicates that one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event. Correlation is a statistical measure, between -1 and 1, that describes the size and direction of a relationship between two or more variables.
So causation is a direct cause and effect, I stub my toe and I feel pain. A correlation is like smokers are more likely to drink. Smoking does not make you drink, but the data shows that there is that tendency. Knowing the difference between these two, along with a healthy amount of skepticism is the easiest way to avoid being misled by news stories that start with “Studies now show…”.

Pacifiers of War:

Richardson looked at the data of the most common notions that may pacify war. These are only correlations, and most of them are weak correlations.

1. Sports — the idea here is that with more distractions and fewer media outlets putting out content about the war the less the people will want to be at war. There
2. Deflecting hate out — extending the blame to another group would just transfer the aggression. So it would pacify a deadly quarrel, but not by ending it, rather by repositioning the aggression.
3. Deflecting hate inward — this was suggested by psychologist Carl Jung. However, in testing, it showed that it led to more aggression being lashed outward.
4. Armed Strength — this is how the U.S decides to deter future wars. The idea is that if you visibly have the largest military force then others will be less likely to go to war with you. Or if they fell out armed then the war will stop early. However, there is no clear correlation that this actually works.
5. Collective help — This idea is that if a war begins as one vs one, and one side has allies that help, turning it into many vs one then the conflict will end. However, there is no evidence that this works, because there is rarely just one aggressor. It is almost always many vs many.
6. Fewer Frontiers — The idea here is that the more uncharted land in a country the more external wars there will be. This had a 0.77 correlation.
7. Intermarriage — Richardson was big on this one, on faith only. There is no data because it is hard to test. Very difficult to have a control group and then marry someone off and see if that changes anything.
8. Common Language and Common Religion — inconsistent. In China, this worked very well, allowing for a unified China. However, in Latin America, it had the opposite effect. Most countries in Latin America are Roman Catholic with Spanish being the common language. Yet there is conflict between neighboring countries and no indication of a U.S.S.A.

However, Richardson found that international trade and loyalty to a common government are the number one pacifying factors.

Potential Causations:

In his time there was the belief that armament caused war. There was the argument that armament was not the cause, rather than a symptom. The true cause is the grief and the justice-seeking that happens after a bombing, leading you to arm yourself in case of another attack. Richardson took another approach. He saw that mass behavior does not follow conservation laws that all other natural occurrences do (mass, energy, etc…). Mass behavior acts more like a disease. If I spread a rumor, I don’t lose the knowledge of the rumor. If I have a cold, and someone else gets it from me, I don’t get better when they get sick. So Richardson’s question is, can an increase in war-talk cause war, is conflict a mood? He looked at data on WWI, how much saber rattling was present in the UK and Germany before, during and after WWI.

UK| Before — very little, and the kind of conversations about war was negative.
During — increases dramatically immediately after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and continues to increase.
After — an equally dramatic decrease, and it reverted to the kind of conversation before the war.

Germany|Before — in terms of volume, it was small and equal to that of the UK. But the conversation that was there was in the praise of war as an institution.
During — increases dramatically immediately after the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and continues to increase.
After — decreased but there was resentment that lingered.

From this and more data he developed a 5 mood model that leads to a deadly quarrel. It was conscious: sub-conscious. You could be consciously friendly but in your subconscious, you were hostile to a group of people.

There is a power of mathematics to model these complex things. “What is the cause of war?”, grammatically reads like a question with one answer. However, this is something that is multi-faceted and too complicated for a one-word answer. But the ability of mathematics to have a system of equations, where each equation describes the relationships of certain variables and how they interact with other equations who represent other variables.