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Why Men Love War (1984)

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Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#151

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

tim333 wrote: post #129
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinkers theory about how we have become more peaceful are apparently not backed by sufficient statistical evidence. I always take NNT’s statements with a grain of salt, but the pure stats/math stuff seems solid.

Taleb seems to be criticising stuff Pinker didn't really say. Pinker's arguments are mostly look at this graph / dataset, haven't the numbers gone down, maybe this is why and he isn't really trying to do sophisticated statistical analysis generally. Taleb then attacks and says he hasn't done sophisticated statistical analysis but that's not really Pinker's point.

But isn't Taleb's core criticism precisely the lack of rigorous statistics backing Pinker's claims? I mean you can't just write a book with claims in it backed by pretty graphs and data and then go "sorry, was never meant to be hard science lol". Because then we're in bullshitting territory, unless I missed your point?

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#152

Post by pryce »

baruchthescribe wrote: post #91
pryce wrote: post #59

This writer circles poignant issues but I don't feel like he has enough insight to shed any real illumination on them. I'm actually pretty alarmed that he seems to think society no longer glamourises war and in almost the same breath describes how our cultural depictions are transmuted from showing outright psychopathy to evoking glamour (Wagner being played for the US invasion of Granada in 1983, 4 years after Apoca…

He fought in Vietnam. He has more than enough insight by definition.

Insight and personal experience are not synonyms: as an example, poor coders may possess a great deal of experience, but little insight.

This author certainly has thought about this a great deal - I love how he intentionally weaves a kind of incoherence into his own writing while showing why attempting to 'telling it straight' could never communicate what it was like on the ground. I absolutely love Tim O'Brien's writing for this.

But deciding 'he fought in Vietnam, therefore his analysis of what War means for Men In General are beyond critique' seems a warped view to have; is this any different from the kind of childish thought-terminating cliches that we see when people defer to the 'Founding Fathers'? the idea that the matter at hand is to be settled by nominating a Person Who Is Always Right?

I think it would more more of an insult to him to declare his experiences immune from criticism than it would be to engage with them and try to figure out what does or doesn't stick.

And for me the incoherence of claiming that the romantic notion of war died with Verdun and Passchendaele and then demonstrating that this is an outright lie with the Grenada story might even amount to a neat trick if it was done deftly. And deftly would mean not later glamourising it himself towards the end of the same article as the great and eternal Crucible of Manhood.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#153

Post by SigmundA »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #104

This article resonated with me. I was a Marine (no combat), didn't like it, but knew and respected the hell out of people who made a career out of it. I learned several lessons in the service, many of which people don't want to talk about. It takes only a few armed and motivated men to dominate hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. So disarmament and pacifism is not a workable strategy until the day we start program…

Statehood and by extension society is pretty much defined by the "monopoly on violence" [1]. As much as I dislike it, it is a pretty much a law of physics, if you you don't have a monopoly on violence someone else will, some one must wield it, power vacuums will be filled.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#154

Post by [deleted] »

fapjacks wrote: post #134
whatshisface wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a man can get used to anything. If this were true PSTD would not actually happen. Wouldn't the cure just be more exposure, if you could get used to it? > War is a call to power and a purpose. We're a long time past when the raiding hordes would actually be profiting from their own raiding. Like it or not we live in a country so rich that we have essentially nothing significant to gain by pillaging: the cost for…

Now this is something which is misunderstood quite a lot. Almost nobody gets it, though, sometimes not even the doc at the VA. But how could he? He's never been over there. And even if he was over there, he was a desk jockey, a fobbit (you can google that one). Maybe it's best to think of it -- PTSD -- like a switch. And the switch gets turned on when you deploy: The switch that activates the soldier on the battlefie…

[deleted]

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#155

Post by rdl »

mmsimanga wrote: post #149
Bombthecat wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes only a few armed and motivated men to dominate hundreds, perhaps thousands of people. So disarmament and pacifism is not a workable strategy until the day we start programming people as if they were machines This is was a lot people don't see. How easy it is to create a dictator ship with a "system" like that

The same phrase you quoted resonated with me. South Africa does have some violent crime. I don't know how it relates to other countries. We are fourth on the list when it comes to expenditure on private security per capita[1]. That's not all we spend money on. Next week a contractor is coming to fit an electric fence around our block of flats. Most homes now have high walls, alarms, sensor of all sorts. I grew up in…

Why don’t vigilantes solve this, assuming the State refuses to do so? It would certainly be cheaper to redirect some of the passive and defensive security expenditure to intelligence and targeted killing.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#156

Post by forkLding »

Guy sounds like an asshole, I'm pretty sure theres plenty Vietnamese during the Vietnam War who didn't love the "war".

War sounds sexy from afar because theres relief to soldiers with guns who can later on just leave that life and rest with their actual kids while Vietnamese civilians wander around trying to survive and not die from bombings, shootings or to be played around by soldiers from any side. One can ask any Syrian refugee about how much they love the Syrian Civil War to understand this.

My consensus is basically if you have some kind of power or can be relieved later on, war is a great experience. If its your actual life, then you dread walking outside to gather supplies and food to survive. War is only fun when you actually have some decent control over it.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#157

Post by microcolonel »

forkLding wrote: post #156

Guy sounds like an asshole, I'm pretty sure theres plenty Vietnamese during the Vietnam War who didn't love the "war". War sounds sexy from afar because theres relief to soldiers with guns who can later on just leave that life and rest with their actual kids while Vietnamese civilians wander around trying to survive and not die from bombings, shootings or to be played around by soldiers from any side. One can ask any…

I think unfortunately no distinction has been drawn between combat and war. War sucks, but apparently combat is very compelling.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#158

Post by JackCh »

fapjacks wrote: post #125
JackCh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you wager Ernst Jünger fabricated his memoir? I strongly suspect there are exceptions to this rule. At the very least we know there exist people in prisons today who enjoy murder. Arguably that's very different since (I assume) 'enjoying killing' and 'enjoying getting shot back at' are worlds apart. But, would it surprise you if there was a small minority of drone operators who genuinely enjoyed their work? Then a…

I'm not talking about whether or not people enjoy the act of taking another person's life. Obviously, some people do. I am talking about bragging about it. If you ever hear someone making these kinds of claims loudly at a bar, you can bet your next paycheck they never left the FOB.

I don't doubt that betting against it is a good bet. But I do doubt there is zero intersection between braggart and people who enjoy killing.

Re: Why Men Love War (1984)

#159

Post by dba7dba »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #141
dba7dba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of young folks (many in HN) know history from what they watch/read/hear in daily news, which is a terrible source. So that may be why. Major nations of modern era (since end of WW2) have not gone to total wars simply because of the availability of nukes. Not because people suddenly became enlightened and refused to fight a war.

Do you think telecommunications networks have had a smaller effect than the nuclear threat? Those networks have grown exponentially since the wars.

US did not use all of its arsenals (including nukes) against Chinese troops in the Korean War, despite serious setbacks.

I think this was due to Russia also having the nukes. Or maybe US govt thought it should never use nukes ever again after seeing the horrible effect after using them in Japan.

Either way, before telecomm network connected populace of different nations as closely as it has, US faced certain instances where some generals requested using nukes but ultimately didn't happen. Most likely because the other side (Soviets) also had them...

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