Even given my lack of the curriculum, I'm going to have to endeavor to imagine a future when genetic alteration holds sway over the convenience of “therapeutic abortion.” Alteration seems much more socially acceptable than elevating abortion to that of beneficial selection. Maybe I'm being too optimistic.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

“Even given my lack of the curriculum, I'm going to have to endeavor to imagine a future when genetic alteration holds sway over the convenience of “therapeutic abortion.”

Ultimately, both are a form of distributed eugenics, and both will create an even more artificial [1], even faster evolving [2] world — at least in those countries that can afford it and tolerate it.

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/12/16/an-artificial-world.html
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/12/14/what-if-evolution-works-15-000-times-faster-than-we-imagined.html

War might be 'deselected' through evolution, but I don't think it will be a conscious effort of genetic alteration or therapeutic abortion. xGW provides the framework to understand how war evolves in an international system of states as these states struggle to survive. Ideas about war change when the usefulness of those ideas change. It's more of cultural selection given a specific structural context, or conditions in the system that make certain ideas about war most successful in ensuring survival. People and states learn from that context, and that might be how they 'choose' a form of war to wage, if they had to at all.

So I think I would disagree with Jay on the possibilities of change without physical evolution. Margaret Mead would say war is simply a human invention, a social activity that can be learned and unlearned. If conditions are right, then we can 'unlearn' war if there is no stimulus to using it as a tool of survival for in the world.

0GW is indistinguishable from genocide, while 5GW is indistinguishable (by design!) from no war at all. In between, each generation is caused by a scarcity of men that can be sacrificed in battle, so violence is more tactically and carefully applied as g increases. (1GW requires concentration of labor, unlike 0GW, 2GW requires concentration of firepower, unlike 1GW, etc.)

Jay,

A genetic contribution is relatively clear [1,2,3,4,5,6], though I'd imagine there'd be a good deal of self-selection.. Just as those with a genetic predisposition to support abortion are doing a good job politically weakening their next generation by acting on their beliefs, it seems that once embriotic screening is cheap enough, “therapeutic abortion” (not for designer babies, mind you — just babies without serious flaws — that is what they will say) will be non-trivial.

[1] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zVXSYtzO7uYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA81&dq=heritability+of+criminality&ots=jVTWLezMfo&sig=tHY8XafO2d63KBXZKV-FD2ha2LU
[2] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zVXSYtzO7uYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA81&dq=heritability+of+criminality&ots=jVTWLezMfo&sig=tHY8XafO2d63KBXZKV-FD2ha2LU
[3] http://www.haworthpress.com/store/ArticleAbstract.asp?sid=MWWMTL7DQLEE9M9VU3NCKP23WCSX8EK4&ID=45271
[4] http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=298966
[5] http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1997.tb00874.x
[6] http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=n4Xd-8iZVJQC&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq=is+criminality+heritable&ots=eoolEthQs_&sig=nWQUjWtFE9oziZZ8bdXxZhU-qZ4

Chimpanzees engage in war, both in field exercises and terrorist attacks (involving stealth insertions, ambush attacks, and disabling while not killing the victims). Wolves do the same, as do dogs (because wolves do it) and humans (because chimps do it).

http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2006/09/08/where-does-war-come-from.html

While I don't know of Mead inventing data, there is evidence of external environments conditioning an animal's propensity to engage in physical conflict. In the Foreign Affairs article below, Sapolsky reports that even baboon 'troops' have their own cultural milieus that do not necessitate warfare among males, even males that are transferred from other, more warlike troops into the peace-loving Forest Troop (of course, Sapolsky notes that much of this has to do with females who make themselves available to all of the males in the troop) In the end, the piece speaks to how the practice of warfare itself is vulnerable to socialization. If chimps can socialize themselves not to make war, why can't humans?

-Robert Sapolsky, “A Natural History of Peace.” Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 2006
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060101faessay85110/robert-m-sapolsky/a-natural-history-of-peace.html?mode=print

In other words the entire idea of “ownership” would have to suddenly dissolve. This is what I'm talking about when I assert the fallacy of social evolution changing or accelerating the basic cognition of human kind. You can change the environment and the environment might well influence behavior but the human blueprint will eventually hold sway. We need to physically evolve before we can even begin to entertain such a notion as “World Peace.”

How fast might that happen?

Relatedly, how long before therapeutic abortion for propensity toward violence/criminality makes the news?

I'm not sure I agree with the premise that (x+1)GW leads to diminished violence — particularly with the regimental structure (and better training) that accompanied 0GW to 1GW, as well as the increased mass of firepower that marked 1GW to 2GW. Only the post-3GW modes have favored “intellectual” energy for kinetic.

Soob,

I would be delighted to have you stroll in and take my empty whiskey bottles — I presume you're going to deposit them in an appropriate recycling bin?