Week 5: Bittersweet Endings

Interestingly, I really like the later chapters of this book. They are not prescriptive but descriptive; in the latter chapters the authors focus on describing the political and social issues that disrupt peace and threaten security while simultaneously providing evolutionary explanations for these phenomena. However, they seldom attempt to suggest black and white answers tied to natural selection and evolution.

My favorite chapter: 

In Chapter 9: The Power of Moral Belief, Scott Atran explains how economic decision making  based on cost-benefit analyses is very different from behavior motivated by morals and sacred values. He states that current conflict resolution strategies assume that adversaries make rational choices but that his research indicates that what is considered to be rational behavior changes from one cultural framework to another and that some of the values and motivations intrinsic to a deep-rooted cultural framework cannot be translated or understood in the framework of other cultures. His team also found that "emotional outrage and support for violent opposition to compromise over sacred values is (1) not mitigated by offering material incentives to compromise but (2) is decreased when the adversary makes materially irrelevant compromises over his own sacred values" (pp.142) and that when people (for whom a terrorist group claims to be working for the sake of) foresaw the loss of a sacred value in exchange for materialistic gains they were less supportive of violence and were less likely to feel joy if they heard of suicide attacks. 

I am shocked by these findings. They are intuitive and make sense but at the same time, I never thought that the whole "dealing with terrorists" dynamic could be synthesized so relatively simply and accurately. 

I think the transition from prescriptive analyses to descriptive depictions is exemplified in the fourteen rules that Daniel T. Blumstein identifies in his essay Fourteen Security Lessons from Antipredator Behavior, i.e. Chapter 10. These rules also summarize the ideological evolution of the essays as the book progresses.

1) Avoiding all risk is impossible.

2) Overestimating risk is a good strategy in many circumstances.

3) It is possible to reduce risk by limiting exposure or by being very careful when in risky areas.

4) Detection signaling is a good idea and may, in some circumstances, reduce predation risk by encouraging the predator to select another target.

5) Individuals should signal when they are in a relatively safe position: flee to safety  then signal.

6) Exaptations are common.

7) It is very important to assess signaler reliability and to behave accordingly

8) There can be qualitatively different responses to the same situation or problems

9) Reducing uncertainty by predator inspection is an important way to reduce costly response.

10) Reduce defenses when risk decreases

11) Have generalizable defenses that work against more than a single threat. 

12) Unless there are great costs to maintaining a defense in the absence of a specific predator, it may be a good idea to maintain all defenses. 

13) We should often expect habituation when there are many false alarms.

14) Maintaining flexible responses is often a good idea. 

 Although a few of these rules are definite, most of them leave room to develop variations of the ideal strategies provided in earlier chapters. I think that these generalizable rules are more feasible for policy makers to implement and for governments to improve on their national security management. 

I would definitely recommend this book to a friend but I would warn them that enjoying this book is similar to consciously working on developing an acquired taste.