Human-caused destruction is declining as humans have grown more intelligent; current wars are less deadly than past ones.

Judged as of March 2024. The claim has two parts: (a) human-caused destruction has declined over time, and today's wars are less deadly than past ones; (b) this decline is linked to humans becoming more intelligent. True if long-run data show a decline in war and violent deaths per capita (for example data from Our World in Data, UCDP, PRIO or Pinker's compilations), with recent wars clearly less deadly than earlier major wars such as the World Wars, and if there is credible support for linking this to rising intelligence or knowledge. Mostly true if the decline in deadliness is well supported but the link to intelligence is only plausible or debated. Mostly false if the decline holds only on narrow measures, or is contradicted by recent rises (for example 2022–2023 conflict deaths reaching multi-decade highs) without being clearly wrong, or if the causal link to intelligence is put forward as established when it is unproven. False if the data show that wars or human-caused destruction have not become less deadly.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Is war declining – and why? Journal of Peace Research (Oxford Academic) · March 2013

   “It argues that contrary to the claim of some of the authors reviewed, war has not become more lethal and destructive over the past two centuries, and thus this factor cannot be the cause of war's decline. Rather, it is peace that has become more profitable.”

2. E2 Organized violence 1989–2022, and the return of conflict between states Journal of Peace Research (Oxford Academic); data from Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) · July 2023

   “In 2022, fatalities from organized violence increased by a staggering 97%, compared to the previous year, from 120,000 in 2021 to 237,000 in 2022, making 2022 the deadliest year since the Rwandan genocide in 1994.”

3. E3 www.annualreviews.org · content · journalsIs War in Decline? - Annual Reviews Annual Review of Political Science · 17 June 2025

   “It concludes that, while great power wars have declined since 1945, war in general is not necessarily in decline.”

4. E4 On the side of the angels — Harvard Gazette Harvard Gazette · 10 November 2011

   “My most surprising discovery was that the most important better angel may be reason: the cognitive faculties with which we understand the physical and social world.”

UCDP-based research [E2] reports that deaths from organized violence nearly doubled in 2022 to 237,000, the highest since 1994. That is the kind of recent rise the criteria name as grounds for mostly false. Scholarship on whether war has declined is split. [E1] accepts that war has declined and credits the decline to peace becoming more profitable; it does not address rising intelligence. Pinker [E4] does argue that reason may be the most important factor, but this remains debated rather than settled. The claim links improvement to rising intelligence, while the evidence shows a disputed long-run decline [E1, E3], a sharp rise in organized-violence deaths in 2022 [E2] and a causal link to cognition that is only proposed [E4].