Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady View Post
If Gourley's result is exciting, it's in that in confirms that some part of the behavior of war conforms to an elegant model like a power law. As it stands, you probably couldn't expect a great deal of accuracy in its boundary points--whatever shapes alpha, or however alpha evolves isn't well understood enough as evidenced by the bunch of "I don't knows" Gourley spat out when examining the Iraq insurgency in the context of this model.
The idea that War or conflict might conform to an elegant model is pretty much a nail in the coffin of the concept. War simply does not work that way. What if he included data from WW1, or the Crimea? The data he uses is from 21st century insurgencies and civil wars - which are characterised by single murders and shootings. The whole thing fails the "so what" test.

I bet you'll find that the number of people killed per domestic hand-gun attacks is 0.75 world wide and has been for 100 years. - so what?

Science is rigor, but more importantly it's estimation. An explanation that's useful doesn't simply fall to the way side because it can't predict all phenomena in its domain.
- see my signature.