Thank you for the reply!

My reservation is that I am kind of against the internet as an ideal forum for these sorts of discussions, because it makes reaching an understanding much more difficult.

That having been said, however, I do feel that in this case there is mostly agreement going on, since we both seem to feel that the dude did not or could not even have hoped to show that peeps are naturally vicious, at least not definitively.

The most educational thing I read in your reply was when you reminded me of the value, from an evolutionary psychology point of view, of studying hunters and gatherers. That hadn't occurred to me when I was talking about the dude's approach generally.

The issue you raised that I would probably be most willing to compromise on is when you talked about what anthropology is supposed to be. I mean, that is your turf. If you say that disrupting their lives with heavenly booty would throw all subsequent observations into question, I would not be stubborn about such an issue.

The issue I might be slightly more stubborn on is the sort of compound issue of who bears the burden of proof that war and murder are different or the same, me, you, or Napoleon Chagnon. My point was that you should be the one to explain the substantial difference, and you seem to be saying that I should be the one to explain why they're the same...

I haven't read the dude's book, so if you say he talks about it in a misleading way, I would agree with you that misleading people is not good. However, I hope we can agree that war is a tricky thing to define, even in a political context. I think I will slightly stubbornly stick to the point that, hypothetically, as long as the guy was clear about what he was doing (which apparently he was not), it would be okay to talk about murder and war somewhat interchangeably. They both involve killin peeps! Although that was not your primary point so it does not matter so much, I suppose.

Anyways, thanks again for the reply!

The definition is predicated upon who is doing the defining. For example, the IRA would most likely define themselves as "Freedom Fighters" while the English call them "terrorists" The label is apt to stick based on the power of the "definer" If the US calls the Contra rebels Freedom Fighters then that's what they are, regardless whether the Salvadoreno government considers them terrorists. I am sure the Al Queda folks consider what they do as acts of war while we define it as murder.