The Second Step: Do (Small) Wars Save Lives?
Taleb argues that judging an event by immediate losses alone can miss later consequences. He draws analogies with pruning and vaccination to question the effects of enforced stability; those analogies do not establish that small wars prevent larger ones.
THE IDEA
The Second Step: Do (Small) Wars Save Lives?
The anti-Enlightenment political philosopher Joseph de Maistre remarked that conflicts strengthen countries. This is highly debatable—war is not a good thing, and, as the victim of a brutal civil war, I can attest to its horrors. But what I find interesting—and elegant—in his reasoning is his pointing out the mistake of analyzing losses from a given event and ignoring the rest of the story. It is also interesting that people tend to grasp the opposite more easily, that is, spot the error of analyzing immediate gains without taking into account the long-term side effects. For we look at casualties as losses without taking into account the second step, what happens later—unlike gardeners, who understand rather well that pruning trees strengthens them.
Likewise peace—some kind of forced, constrained, non-natural peace—may be costly in lives: just consider the great complacency that led to the Great War after almost a century of relative peace in Europe, coupled with the rise of the heavily armed nation-state.
Again, we all love peace and we all love economic and emotional stability—but do not want to be suckers in the long term. We seek vaccination at every new school year (injecting ourselves with a bit of harm to build immunity) but fail to transfer the mechanism to political and economic domains.
When to use it
When deciding whether to intervene in a small conflict, consider the long-term effects of non-intervention.
Applying the concept to personal health: small stresses (exercise) build resilience.
In business, deliberately introducing small failures to test systems and prevent large catastrophes.
In policy, comparing the immediate and longer-term effects of a protective measure, including the risks of removing it.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Vaccination analogy
Taleb uses vaccination as an analogy for accepting a limited immediate cost to reduce a later risk. Applying the idea to political conflict requires evidence about that conflict and its alternatives; the analogy does not establish the result.
Pruning trees
Pruning illustrates a case in which a limited intervention can support later growth. Whether a particular conflict has any comparable effect is a separate question.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
In what areas of your life might you be ignoring the second step by only focusing on immediate losses?
What would have to be established before a vaccination analogy could inform a political decision? Where might it fail?
For a claim that enforced peace caused greater harm later, what evidence would distinguish that explanation from alternatives?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)