REPLY UN Development Goal Dynamics (SD6322)

[SDMAIL Alan Graham]

Posted by  "Alan Graham" <Alan.Graham at paconsulting.com>

Hi Luis,

About religious roots of prehistoric warfare:

Have a look at John Keegan's A History of Warfare.  My reading is that
he pretty well captures the dynamics of prehistoric warfare as an
institutionalized extension of handling conflicts among groups, possibly
involving religious institutions, but often not.  That is, religion may
be a convenient tag-line, but hardly a root cause.  And European history
from the "fall" of Rome to the Reformation demonstrates that one can
have numerous major wars, among parties all acknowledging the same
religion and religious leaders.

The dynamics of conflict (and for that matter, probably enduring gender
biases, too) lie somewhere between system dynamics and dynamic game
theory, in terms of evidence supporting beliefs about social norms and
appropriate means for obtaining them, between different contiguous
groups, a variability in intensity of beliefs, and expecially
perceptions of what kind of means are appropriate to effectively further
the beliefs.  Certainly there are many conflicts and issues today that
fall into something like that framework.

My PhD Thesis (MIT 1977) shows a goal-seeking structure with floating
goals where the actual time constant of change is far larger than any of
the explicit and apparent time constants in the system.  I would expect
that similar dynamics lie at the core of the persistence of statistical
stereotyping, be it on the basis of gender, race, or whatever.
Everybody believes that something is so, acts on that basis, it
continues to be so, and so people factually believe it.  This despite
everybody's true general willingness to change.  "Complex systems are
counterintuitive."

Cheers,

Alan


Alan K. Graham, PhD
Federal and Defense Services
PA Consulting Group
Posted by  "Alan Graham" <Alan.Graham at paconsulting.com>
posting date  Wed, 7 Mar 2007 22:16:02 -0500