Celebrity advice (was: Advice to a Junior in High School?)

Andrew Dalke adalke at mindspring.com
Wed Aug 27 13:33:28 EDT 2003


Peter Hansen
> Were there "100s of millions of murders" in the 20th century, assuming
> commonplace definitions of "murder" (killing humans), "million"
> (10 to the 6th power), and "20th century" (period beginning roughly
> January 1, 1900 and ending on or one year before December 31, 2000)?
>
> That's a lot of people getting themselves killed, whatever the cause...

I think Terry means deaths related to war, genocide, and various
internal purges.  Here's one source
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm
which totals 155 million.

Not all were deaths from arms.  Bombs, knives, disease, famine all
played a role.  I read one account of the Armenian massacre which said
that people were just forced over a cliff.  (Though the people doing the
forcing were armed.)  Figure, what, 1/2 of the people died directly as
a consequence of an "armed govern-man"? gives 77 million.

US homicide rates are 9.2 +/- 1.0 per 100,000 claims
 http://www.sumeria.net/politics/homrate1.html

Given a population of 4 billion (roughly, over the century) and assuming
the US rate is average for the world, that's

>>> 4000000000 / 100000. * 9.2
368000.0
>>>

or roughly 0.5% of the deaths attributed to murders in the cause of
war.  Roughly in line with Terry's claims.

Only we don't normally call those murder.  "killing humans"
because you want to do it is usually considered bad.  "killing humans"
because enough other people also want them dead is usually
considered okay.

                    Andrew
                    dalke at dalkescientific.com






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