So empirically, of those cases, are older countries, are they actually empirically less likely to go to war? Or are those outliers, those two examples?

Right.

So, again, the hypothesis I tested in the book was, does capabilities diminish and do preferences change for whether or not does a war, you know, is a country likely to go to war or not in a particular short period of time? I left that to some of the statistical analysis because major wars are rare.

And so to attribute... war nowhere war to individual countries over a short period of time it's hard to really judge causality but let's talk about russia for example obviously russia is aged but it started a number of wars and it's of course started the largest land war in europe since world war ii So it doesn't seem to fit at all.

And so one way to look at it is just say, OK, this is an anomaly.

And I don't claim that aging creates an absolute barrier to conflict.

It just shapes probabilities.

So the question is, is the world becoming more peaceful as it gets older? Or is it just shifting the nature of where the rivalries are and who has the advantages?

Those are always fun.

Well, it's great that you guys are back.

We've missed you the last month.

I do.

So the last time I was on was like, I think, December.

Right.

And I told the story about the guy at the gym who spotted settle the score on my phone.

nice yeah well suck it you two it didn't happen i'm not a predictable asshole uh that's always good to insult the guests nice enough to take time out of their day to join us but anyway uh well moose is is champ you have the floor first to say whatever you like man go ahead and take it away