
Peace.facebook.com - greg
http://peace.facebook.com/
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jimmybot
The assumption here is that peace between nations can somehow be resolved by
just communication among private citizens and individual friendships; that
conflicts are just misunderstandings or that we are too prejudiced or don't
have enough sympathy. I can see how that is sometimes the case, but I don't
see how that is always or even commonly the case. In many conflicts, there are
very real underlying issues that need to be resolved and unless those
fundamental imbalances are addressed, then there will not be peace.

For example, it looks like China is on a possible collision course with India
and Southeast Asian nations over water rights. China's north is heavily
populated, rapidly growing, and severely short of water. Tibet on the other
hand is very rich in water resources that are upstream of major rivers in
India, Laos, Vietnam, etc. As we speak there are gigantic projects diverting
water from China's south to the north. It's likely not to be enough, and if
China moves on to divert and dam rivers that cross international borders,
there will likely be war.

This is just one example, but my guess would be that a resource-driven
conflict that incites national pride on both sides will break those
friendships rather than the other way around. If the fundamental reasons
driving a conflict are not resolved, it's hard to see why friendships will be
able to prevent war.

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chaosprophet
I agree. In fact the China has already initiated the process of building a dam
over one of the major rivers to flow into India (Tsangpo-Brahmaputra), and
India has asked China to put a hold to this.

It is also to be noted that among the few Chinese people I have met, most seem
to have a liking towards Indians and vice-versa. Also, you would not believe
the extent to which Indians and Pakistanis would go to demonstrate their love
for each other. A few years ago (2005, I think), when there was a bilateral
cricket tournament between Pakistan and India in India (and the next year in
Pakistan), Indians would literally drag Pakistanis to their homes as guests.
This was repeated by the Pakistanis the next year.

Looking at the news reports and the way the Indian and Pakistani governments
accuse each other, you would never guess such stuff could happen.

~~~
krolley
They would "literally" drag Pakistanis back to their homes? Seems quite harsh.

~~~
chaosprophet
Well the Pakistanis certainly weren't complaining. They were expecting to be
greeted by armed policemen scrutinizing their every move (or atleast that's
how one of them put it in an interview to a newspaper).

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alexandros
Being Greek, what I despise is being framed as one half of the world's 'mortal
enemy pairs' that facebook is helping fix. For one thing, we haven't fought a
direct war with Turkey for nearly 90 years. Having cultural animosity between
two nations is one thing, being paraded as an example of 'warring tribes' on a
worldwide forum is quite another. I fear this initiative crystalises
stereotypes rather than helping break them down.

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numair
The funny thing about this is that Facebook leads to the exact opposite of
peace among groups of people. There's massive amounts of social anxiety
associated with your virtual prominence amongst your friends, even if you see
them in-person on a regular basis.

Since I've quit using Facebook, etc I have noticed a massive improvement in
the quality of my interactions with friends. They actually bother asking how
I'm doing / what I'm up to, and I'm genuinely curious about their recent
experiences.

I'm actually convinced that this global obsession with social networks could
lead to more wars than peace -- the current generation of Internet trolls seem
like a mere precursor of what's to come. People really take this virtual shit
seriously -- doesn't that seem just the slightest bit scary, when coupled with
natural youthful aggression?

~~~
unalone
I get the opposite reaction. I talk to people I'd never talk to otherwise. It
doesn't hurt that I unfriend people I don't like talking to that much.

The problem is that Facebook is a constant communication. When you interact
with people after talking to them on Facebook, there's less to talk about,
because it's already been said. If you consider Facebook to be a part of
interaction, as I do, the net conversation swells; if not, it shrinks.

> I'm actually convinced that this global obsession with social networks could
> lead to more wars than peace -- the current generation of Internet trolls
> seem like a mere precursor of what's to come. People really take this
> virtual shit seriously -- doesn't that seem just the slightest bit scary,
> when coupled with natural youthful aggression?

Yes and no. The good thing about the Internet is that to take it seriously,
_you_ have to make the choice yourself. It's not like a war, in which
nationalism can sweep a lot of good people into doing bad things. Rather, it's
a bunch of smaller, decentralized, isolated incidents, and I like that. The
more isolationist ( _not_ isolated) the world is, the healthier it is. If a
thousand nutjobs kill a thousand people over Internet bullshit, that's a lot
healthier than that thousand nutjobs congregating over
political/religious/economic bullshit and attempting to kill a lot more.
There'll be _more_ incidents, in other words, but each one will be vastly less
harmful.

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tsally
1.) Was engaging and interesting at startup school? Check.

2.) Cool company initiative that I can respect? Check.

I think Zuckerberg might finally be growing into his own. :)

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theli0nheart
As amohr posted, this is actually a Stanford initiative, not something that
Facebook started. Regardless, I think it's a great idea, but we should be
giving credit where it's due.

<http://peace.stanford.edu/>

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jfarmer
<http://peace.imvu.com/> is hilarious.

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buugs
In other facebook news everyone in my freshman level class spends the whole
lecture on facebook on their computer and is very surprising to me that the
teacher doesnt ban computers from the classroom. ( When I started 2 years ago
no one even pulled out computers during lectures unless they were at the back
of the room. )

Maybe facebook is planning world peace through extended computer use.

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hyperbovine
We can't fight any more wars if we're all too busy circlejerking on each
others' walls.

~~~
novum
Maybe, but we can still fight plenty of _mob wars_ that way.

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utku_karatas2
Yeah nice, how about stats for USA-Afghanistan and USA-Iraq.

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iterationx
war is created by the minority in power. not by the majority that uses
facebook.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the
country who determine the policy..." Herman Goering

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kurtosis
Isn't it also possible that facebook could be used for the promotion of hate?
An obvious and outstanding recent example was the recent quiz about whether
the U.S. president should be killed. If you read about the balkans, (and more
recently iraq) what is shocking is how quickly cultures with cross-
ethnic/religous connections - even those as strong as intermarriage can
quickly become polarized into bitter enemies. Which makes me wonder what these
graphs of israel/palestine friendships will look like when tensions again
escalate between these two groups. What did the india/pakistan graph look like
after the Mumbai bombings?

~~~
unalone
Looking at it from a broader perspective, Facebook is the promotion of
_communication_ manifest. It strives very hard, in fact, to be a neutral
medium, in which no one type of conversation is favored over another, so
conversation ranges from flirting to intense debate.

The question is, does prolonged communication lead to more peace or more hate?
My bet: In the short term, more hate, because there'll be a lot of people
getting in fights over issues they didn't know existed. (I lost a _lot_ of
Palin-supporting friends last year.) In the long run, however, more open
communication leads to us understanding each other better, and only good can
come of that.

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kurtosis
Yeah I agree - without any evidence I would expect it to be neutral. But I
think that there is a pretty well documented tendency for people to be much
more aggressive and extreme on online forums than there are in real life.
(Similar to road rage) Back in the day I remember reading littlegreenfootballs
and being shocked at some of the hateful rhetoric which was in the comments
(of course left leaning sites have this too)

~~~
unalone
That's what I mean by short-term rage. As much as you think people accept you
for who you are and what you think, when you express yourself online you
realize that most people are awful and immature in a handful of ways. But past
that point you develop some self-consciousness and, more often than not, come
out of the social parts of the Internet a lot smarter, wittier, and more savvy
than you used to be. I can't wait to see that happen on a mass scale.

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n-named
After seeing MZ at startup school, it was apparent that he is a big thinker. I
didn't think _this_ big though. Brilliant!

~~~
madh
"The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts
today."

~~~
unalone
And he was right. Facebook's policy of uniquely targeted ads is unlike
anything else on the market, and it _will_ be the future of advertising. It's
killer.

Advertising doesn't _just_ change every hundred years, but if you don't think
Facebook is one of the two Great Advertisers of the decade, along with Google,
then you weren't paying attention.

~~~
madh
I agree with you. The kid thinks big.

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amohr
Also, <http://peace.stanford.edu/> launched about 30 seconds ago. It has a
list of all the other participating Peace Innovation sites.

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toadstone
I'd rather see a campaign for equality. That's not so bland and gets more to
the heart of the matter.

~~~
unalone
Define equality. There're a lot of versions of the word that I don't support.
Peace, now, there's an idea I can get behind, impossible as it might seem.

~~~
toadstone
Equal in rights and opportunity, ok? I'm not proposing the kind of enforced
universal mediocrity that I know you hacker news ubermensch are paranoid of.
Of course everyone wants peace. The oppressed want a peace that is an end to
injustice. The oppressor wants a peace where the oppressed will just shut up
and take it.

~~~
unalone
I wasn't talking about that. I also didn't know there was a Hacker News
ubermensch.

"Equal in rights and opportunity" still doesn't mean much. How can Facebook
enforce equal opportunities? And everybody on Facebook _is_ equal. So you're
still dealing with a nebulous term.

~~~
toadstone
Well, they aren't campaigning for peace ON Facebook, so I don't see why you
think this is about equality in facebook itself. I don't see why equal in
rights and opportunity is nebulous either. If you look at one of the contrasts
on peace.facebook.com, Israel and Palestine, it's pretty obvious that the two
populations are not equal in rights or opportunities and that this is the
reason for the current strife in that region.

~~~
unalone
But if Facebook were to speak out actively in favor of either side, it would
alienate the other side, which goes actively AGAINST Facebook's mission.

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ErrantX
I've never been convinced that opages like this really have much effect.

Also it's worth pointing out that the graphs are immaterial; the people with
real animosity wont be making those connections - and Facebook don't seem to
be doing anything to encourage them......

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mitko
Hm... anybody can think of a reason why the adding cross country connections
seems correlated for various pairs of countries.

For example the local max on Sep 19, or the local min at Aug 21 seem to hold
for most pairs of countries.

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joeythibault
radiolab (part of nyc's public radio) had a great news piece about this very
topic. Back during the cold war like 1 in 3 people thought war was inevitable.
It says a lot about our culture that 1 in 10 think that we can achieve PEACE.
66% peace lovers to 10% is pretty sad.

Great listen if you have an hour commute:
<http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2009/10/19/new-normal/>

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lupin_sansei
Wanting peace and thinking we will get peace are 2 different things aren't
they? I want peace, but I'm not so naive to think that humans will change
their nature and we'll get it, so do I show up as a peace lover or not?

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joeythibault
According to the question ask "do you think war is inevitable?" you'd be
included in 9 of 10 think war is inevitable. What we want was not part of the
question (and I don't think it is on peace.facebook.com either. Their question
is "is world peace possible?", based on your response above your answer to
facebook would be "no").

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johnnybgoode
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the reaction to this, but I was.
Honestly, I'm disappointed by it.

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Coax
Why?

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Alex3917
Do they actually have a "theory of peace" that they are using to design the
site, or are they just posting statistics?

edit: Here's my take. "War is a failure of the imagination." Once you
understand that quote, you've just 'gotten' about half of history.

~~~
symptic
Less a theory and more an observation.

