Crosspost from my blog.

Introduction

Conflict pervades the world. Conflict can come from mere mistkes, but many conflicts are not mere mistakes. We don't understand conflict. We doubly don't understand conflict because some conflicts masquerade as mistakes, and we wish that they were mere mistakes, so we are happy to buy in to that masquerade. This is a mistake on our part, haha. We should study conflict until we understand it.

This essay makes some attempt to sketch a few aspects of conflict—in large part as a hopeful gesture toward the possibility of understanding other aspects.

Synopsis

In a brewing conflict, inclinations toward escalation and deescalation are sensitive to derivatives, i.e. small changes in what the other side is doing.
Since the sides react to their mere perceptions by taking real action, escalation is also sensitive to mere perception.
There's usually plenty of fuel available for perception of escalation—it's easy to find things about the other side to worry about.
There's many ways that a side's perception can get distorted in a way that makes them mistakenly interpret the other side as escalating.
This gives cover of plausible deniability [...]