[pdonis]

> Battle deaths - in absolute terms and per capita - dropped like a stone after 1945.

After rising like a rocket when WW II started. If you leave out WW I and WW II, it's not clear that post-1945 was more peaceful than pre-1914.

[FredPret]

My original and subsequent posts were that the nuke made the world safer. Post-1945 battle deaths dropped to near-zero by comparison to pre-1945.

Even one battle death is too many but having them go down overall is very good.

[pdonis]

> My original and subsequent posts were that the nuke made the world safer. Post-1945 battle deaths dropped to near-zero by comparison to pre-1945.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a well known logical fallacy. That is what you are doing here.

Also, the relevant comparison, as I said before, is not post-1945 vs. pre-1945. It is something like post-1945 vs. pre-1914, so that the comparison involves peacetime conditions on both sides.

[FredPret]

I’m claiming a direct causality between how terrible the nukes were and how peaceful the subsequent decades have been.

The cold war was cold because of M.A.D.

And I will compare any periods I want. The nukes fell in 1945, so I compare all of human history before that and after that. There’s a clear and massive decline even if you only look at pre-1914 rates.

[pdonis]

> I’m claiming a direct causality

You are inferring direct causality based on one event following another. That is the logical fallacy I referred to.

> There’s a clear and massive decline even if you only look at pre-1914 rates.

That's not what I see, so I guess we'll just have to disagree.