From a footnote in Appendix B:
Interestingly, Genghish Khan may have been (partly) motivated by religious reasons, according to scholars like Biran (2007) and Wikipedia: “Genghis came to believe the supreme deity Tengri had ordained a great destiny for him. Initially, the bounds of this ambition were limited only to Mongolia, but as success followed success and the reach of the Mongol nation expanded, he and his followers came to believe he was embodied with suu (lit. ″divine grace″). Believing that he had an intimate connection with Heaven, anyone who did not recognise his right to world power was treated as an enemy.”
“Congratulations, you’ve prevented the next Hitler...” Seems pretty cool to me. :) And the anti-fanaticism wand might have prevented (or at least ameliorated) 8 out of the 10 worst atrocities in recent history, so that’s a decent wand.
In any case, I think the very worst future risks come from ideological fanatics (and malevolent actors) rather than “pure conquerors”. Why would the latter be intrinsically motivated to inflict extreme, eternal suffering on anyone? (See the section on fanatical retributivism.) In contrast to fanatics, pure conquerors would also in principle be open to reflection and preference idealization, and would be open to moral trade and compromise, and generally seem to pose less of a threat to long-reflection-style proposals.
Hm, doesn’t the power imbalance thesis actually get the sign wrong? When many actors have comparable power, costly wars become more likely. When one agent has overwhelming dominance, costly conflict tends to decrease, as the weaker side either submits or gets crushed quickly. The unipolar period from ~1990–2015 is a strong example: the US had the most extreme power advantage in modern history, yet it was one of the most peaceful periods for interstate war and mass atrocities.[1]
What’s most important, I think, are the values of whoever holds the power. Power imbalance + liberal democratic norms = Pax Americana. Power imbalance + fanatical ideology = genocide. And with ASI, the power imbalance might be near-infinite and the crucial question will be which values the ASIs or their principals have. That’s why fanaticism (and malevolence) matter.
On the elephant/rider point: I totally agree that “conflicts involving ideology should [not] always be blamed on ideology”, certainly not exclusively. We explicitly acknowledge this:
But it seems clear that ideological fanaticism at least contributed to many of the worst atrocities in recent history, and some atrocities like the Holocaust, the Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution, plausibly would not have happened if not for ideological fanaticism.
Of course, there were some wars during this period, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the US certainly deserves significant blame for how these were conducted, particularly in Iraq. But casualty figures were orders of magnitude lower than the great power conflicts and ideologically-driven atrocities of the 20th century. And notably, these wars were partly responses to 9/11—itself a product of ideological fanaticism—and involved regimes like Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the Taliban.