Neil Halloran
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2020–2025
18:31 · 15M views · Oct 26, 2016
Neil Halloran's animated, data-driven documentary visualizes the human cost of World War II and compares it with other wars and the trend toward fewer war deaths in recent decades.
HN cites it for a sense of the scale of WWII casualties by country and the long decline in violence.
11 comments from Hacker News
Well, it's complicated. I think Putin's understanding of a "Nazi" is deeply connected to the Russian trauma of WWII that the West still doesn't get. Russians believe that due to the sheer number of lives lost, the USSR (and so Russia as its successor state) played _the_ central role in WWII. I encourage you to watch this video this video (the relevant parts start at about 4:40 and 9:40) I personally think that it makes no sense to talk about "who made the victory" because it was an allied effort and none of the allies could have done it alone. But at the same time, I think that westerners just don't get how personal and traumatic this was for the people of Russia. So, Putin is very sensitive to any view on WWII that differs from his. Things like "this was just two dictators (Stalin and Hitler) fighting". Or the view of some Ukrainian nationalists that the communists and the nazis were just both occupants (same view exists in Poland), or even that the nazis were liberators from communism. There's history of collaborationism in the Ukraine, as is everywhere, but not everywhere the collaborationists are viewed by a lot of people as national heroes, not as traitors who joined the aggressor (the nazis). I personally understand why this view exists, but for Putin and most Russians it's just outrageous. So, for Putin a nazi is mostly someone who disagrees with the Russian view on the role of the USSR in WWII. That includes nationalists from countries that Putin views as satellites/buff
There's something so emotional and compelling about the spectacle of shared tragedy (even smaller ones like oceangate). However there's always a reminder in the back of my mind that this sense of what makes our heart leap is very poorly correlated with what things ought to scare us. I don't know if it's possible to "Reprogram" one's heart to worry less about very high-visibility low risk things (like air travel, or terrorism in the US) and care more about statistically probable ones that SHOULD scare us (heart disease and such), but I wish it were. this video does a great job of giving a sense of what the proportions are of relative tragedies in terms of loss of life.
It is an odd claim, the largest. I just did a cursory search and found several notable atrocities with larger numbers. Most occurred from over several days to over several months. I guess an argument could be that specifies in a single day or in a single hour but that kind of specificity trivializes the scale of atrocities committed against Poles, Serbs, and Jews. Large scale massacres includes: Palmiry, Liepaja, Katyn, Bubanj, and Borki This video is widely viewed and worth the time this video
There is really something to the idea that despite the daily news and political doomsaying that goes on every day, it's hard for people to remember or celebrate the long progression that we've experienced towards living in the most peaceful, materially prosperous, and positive trajectory time in the history of humanity. (I think there was a podcast on Hidden Brain about this. Also video like this this video ). It's really good to periodically think about how much we benefit from, say, the miracles of air conditioning, available infrastructure and cheap travel beyond your town, clean water and air, medicine, vaccines, public health -- and reset what you're grateful for. And stop making every little transgression of modern life feel like a disastrous setback. But of course it's very unfashionable to point this out when someone's <xyz> cause is being neglected, or is in the news and everyone is outraged. Of course when you make such comparisons you get hissed out of a room for being so callous, because anyone's relative suffering is supposed to be treated with utmost respect. And the short, acute, headline making problems are always louder than the long progression of gradual improvement. But taken in perspective, by intelligent people who can discuss such things, we've really reached the age of 1% problems. (which are being exposed because our huge disastrous human-generated conflicts, etc. are decreased compared to 100 years ago). Health, social issues, etc. are such luxuries to
When I look at the cryptocurrency economy vs a regulated economy, it's almost night and day in terms of criminal activity. The crypto world is rife with scams, schemes, extortion, fraud, etc. Why do crinimals choose to use cryptocurrency if AML/KYC is so ineffective? I also think this is an extremely dangerous thing to be wrong about. Look at how international war is waged these days: it's primarily economic. Consider the carnage that defined human existence before WWII[1]. I would argue that a big part of the reason all of our lives are so violence-free now is that nation-states fight over abstractions for power rather than physical power. If it becomes impossible for countries to sanction each other because we've torn down the AML/KYC apparatus, will the world plunge back into physical warfare? Unfortunately, I believe this idea has really taken hold lately because owners of crypto are incentivized to believe it. It's pretty hard to convince someone of the dangers of something they're benefiting from financially. I don't think this is an exception. [1] this video