On the avoidance of small wars

[Dayuhan]

When a monkey hits a key and gets an electric shock in response, he's not going to repeat that often. He's not going to try to do it better often. (S)He'll finally settle with the understanding that this key is bad.

Could someone please tell my why humans have so much trouble learning that war isn't profitable and cannot really be done 'right', so it should be avoided unless forced on you?
It can't possibly be a lack of memory, for I see people discussing here in the general tone of 'do small wars right / wrong', and these people are still trembling due to recent electroshocks.

What Ken said... plus all too often the monkeys hitting the keys aren't the ones getting the shocks, which messes up the feedback loop a bit.