Solving War with Math

In 100 years there will be no more war.

You heard me right. No. More. War.

In 100 years we will be able to use math to predict and prevent future war, genocide, and atrocities.

Most people think math isn't practical. Trust me I've been there. If you don't see how to use math in your life, then why bother, right?

I'm here to tell you that those numbers and equations you studied are going to fundamentally change our world in the next century. So buckle up.

A few centuries ago, a couple of crazy dreamers looked up at the darkness of the night sky and said, "we want to travel to that distant speck of hope, the moon."

Everyone told them it would be impossible. They would never be able to escape this implicit force called gravity that holds us down.

Over the years, the crazy dreamers developed a mathematical language to understand gravity. They developed physics to explain the world they saw before them.

In another hundred years, more dreamers again said "we really want to reach the moon". So they looked to physics and they used it to do the impossible. They counteracted the force of gravity and engineered rockets to the moon.

War is no different. There is this implicit force in the universe that constantly pushes societies to fight. War, not peace, is our equilibrium.

If we ever hope to reach that distant speck of hope in the night sky that we call peace, then first we must develop a mathematical understanding of war.

So that's what I've been working on at Caltech. For the first time in history, we have enough real-time open data to understand this force that we call human nature. And over the next two decades, we will only get more data--exponentially more actually.

War is a curable disease, so never stop fighting for the death of war.

Check out my TEDx talk, where I discuss this topic in more detail and feel free to share if you think this is an idea worth spreading: