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A violently true depiction of what war really is

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Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#71

Post by gizmo »

spindritf wrote: post #65
gizmo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I present to you: Ghengis Kahn. 40 million people died as a result of his campaigns. Civilized society? Not at all. Just organized tribal warfare. > Actually, poor kids seem to be enlisting at lower rates (relatively) to richer kids Huh. I stand corrected.

> Civilized society? Yes, of course. It came to existence when Ghengis Khan united nomadic tribes but so did the countries in Europe -- Franks were a confederation of tribes, Poland was founded by a tribe subduing its neighbours, etc, etc. That is how civilization is born. If it wasn't for that they wouldn't be able to reach Europe. That is why we call them the Mongol Empire.

Oh c'mon. If you define civilized society that broadly than anything capable of organized warfare is by definition a civilized society. It would be a pointless tautology. In that context my response that systematic murder is uncivilized (and that therefore a society that engages in systematic murder is an uncivilized society) becomes a direct contradiction in terms. So that's obviously not what I meant.

When I speak of a civilized society it is in comparison to other societies. Not all countries violate human rights on the same scale, and therefore, not all countries are equally civilized.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#72

Post by orbitingpluto »

[deleted] wrote: post #60
orbitingpluto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have empathy issues. Plain and simple. :P I find the source of most of the fun is the initial hit of adrenaline that lasts for about 10 minutes when playing multiplayer. It gets pretty old after that so I rarely play them. I have a large stack of shrinkwrapped freebies including war fps that I haven't yet touched dating back to 2009. Usually I just give them away. I prefer the fps games where complete suspension…

[deleted]

You didn't follow the train of thought there.

I was ascribing (in a tongue-in-cheek manner) empathy issues to the person who was against these games. Not the people who play these games.

Thank you for playing.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#73

Post by Homunculiheaded »

Cushman wrote: post #13

Reminds me of my father (who was in the Airborne) looking over my shoulder playing the training in America's Army. "That's pretty realistic. Do they have a level where you have to go knock on somebody's door and tell them their son was killed in a training exercise?" That said, I feel like this article, like the censors, gives video games much too much credit. Glorification of violence is everywhere in our culture an…

I actually think a bigger problem is not the fear of violence leaving the screen and coming into daily life, but that we increasingly see violence as 'that things that happens behind a screen, its pretty entertaining'. I have no data to back this up, but the general population certainly seems to be more 'meh' about US military actions abroad. I think your father's reaction was responding to the issue that you've trivialized and turned into a game something that should be horrific, or at least unpleasant.

It reminds me of a piece on NPR about family members of the victims of homicide. One person pointed out that it's common fun to host "murder mystery parties" but nobody would ever think of hosting a "rape mystery party". Similarly Grand Theft Auto is fine, but Rapelay is highly controversial. Obviously part of the reason we're less sensitive to some types of violence is because we have less violence (I think many people have a friend that was raped, but very few have a friend who was murdered). However, even if this detachment comes from an increase in non-violence there are still effects of increasingly conflating violence with entertainment.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#74

Post by scott_s »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #40
stcredzero wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is a part of society. If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. I usually like most of your contributions, but reasoning like this bugs me. "Society" in your reasoning is being treated something like a mathematical set. Society isn't so cleanly defined. Even for that, one could still have psychopathic tendencies, be told to by society to go and kill, but go and kill for comple…

I must be missing what ticked you off here. We set up a system where society approves of the use of lethal force. (In fact, many believe the true defining characteristic of a government is the monopoly in the use of force) People are instructed by this system to go kill people. As long as that's all the information we have, there's nothing to indicate that these people care nothing about societal norms. In fact, they…

You may be interested in Dave Grossman's "On Killing": http://www.amazon.com/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-Soci...

Grossman is a Psychology professor at West Point (or was when he wrote this), and a former Army Ranger, although he never saw combat. His conclusion is actually similar to the author of this piece. First, he argues, with evidence, that humans have a pretty high disposition to not kill each other unless there is an immediate threat to themselves or loved ones. The evidence he uses to support that claim are the no-fire rates among front line soldiers in World War I and II. I think the stat he found was only about 20% of infantry in trenches shot their weapons. The fire rate among infantry by the Vietnam era was about 95%, and it had steadily increased up to that point. He claims that modern infantry training are responsible for this firing rate, that one of main points of modern infantry training is to get a solider to fire their weapon when instructed.

He also talks about PTSD, and that the amount of people who do not get some form of PTSD from front-line combat is about the same amount of people who have sociopathic tendencies. He then posits that these are the same people who tend to seek out special forces. And the author of the linked piece was, I think, talking mostly about special forces.

In the end, Grossman makes some extrapolations to media, and causation between violent media and actual violence. I don't think he supports that claim well. But if you've ever heard his name before, it was because of those claims. He was a whipping boy in the videogame press because of it, but I think his other work is interesting.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#75

Post by chrischen »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

I am very tempted to flag this. the sociopath thing really rubs me the wrong way -- there are logical flaws with using that label. War is a part of society. If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath. Having said that, it's a great first-person account of what real combat is like, at least for this one guy. I am concerned the effect on HN discussion will be negative. Hopefully I'm w…

> If society tells you to go kill somebody and you do, you can't be a sociopath.

That doesn't make sense. If society asked for volunteers to torture someone, the first to step up would very likely be a sociopath.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#77

Post by anigbrowl »

phaus wrote: post #19
mattdeboard wrote: post #6

As a former Marine infantryman, and a former Marine PR idiot, I think his numbers are off but a lot of the concepts are right, with a caveat. It's not sociopathy of the organic sort. It's the kind of detachment from prolonged exposure to extreme, unmitigated stress. So don't take this article as justification to feel like there's something mentally wrong with people who join a combat arms unit.

I understand very well that you yourself don't think that one has to be a sociopath to become an infantryman, but that is exactly what the author is claiming in this article. That's why so many former military guys (such as myself) think that this article is idiotic. There are definitely a disproportionate amount of people who return from war with psychological issues, but sociopaths are pretty rare. Many people who…

There are probably a few people who choose to become military contractors because they are sick individuals that enjoy killing their fellow man

'Sociopath' has become unfortunately loaded word. I certainly don't think of a serial killer or sadist when I see that term, but rather someone who is emotionally and socially detached from their surroundings, out of ongoing necessity as much as anything else. It's callous indifference as opposed to cruelty, just as people who work on industrial farms and in slaughterhouses are acclimatized to their rather unpleasant jobs, as opposed to hating animals or glorifying in their suffering. The sociopathy described here is the mindset of 'nothing personal/just business' taken to its logical conclusion: one might say that the US has a comparative economic advantage in the projection of military power, this military contractor is essentially one of many service workers to whom we (as society) have outsourced some of our morally unpleasant tasks.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#79

Post by pavel_lishin »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #61
angrycoder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the problem with painting the martial arts with such a broad brush. Many styles have techniques specifically designed to deal with knife/gun/weapon attacks, and some styles are designed mostly around dealing with such things. A broken bottle is probably not as dangerous as you may think. A knife, you are probably going to get cut but your attacker will fair far worse. A gun becomes less useful the closer an a…

I did a martial art for a while where we trained against bottle/knife attacks etc. I think that training was mostly useless, some nerd in a dojo attacking you in a predetermined way with a plastic bottle while you do "hip throw #3" is going to be very different to a real fight.

The idea is to build up reflexes. When someone comes at you with a beer bottle, you're not thinking "Ok, this is Attack Pattern Delta, therefore I execute Hip Throw #3." You simply react.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#80

Post by spindritf »

gizmo wrote: post #71
spindritf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Civilized society? Yes, of course. It came to existence when Ghengis Khan united nomadic tribes but so did the countries in Europe -- Franks were a confederation of tribes, Poland was founded by a tribe subduing its neighbours, etc, etc. That is how civilization is born. If it wasn't for that they wouldn't be able to reach Europe. That is why we call them the Mongol Empire.

Oh c'mon. If you define civilized society that broadly than anything capable of organized warfare is by definition a civilized society. It would be a pointless tautology. In that context my response that systematic murder is uncivilized (and that therefore a society that engages in systematic murder is an uncivilized society) becomes a direct contradiction in terms. So that's obviously not what I meant. When I speak…

> When I speak of a civilized society it is in comparison to other societies.

That's exactly what I did, I compared the Mongol empire to early medieval countries in Europe (Franks and Poland) which I definitely consider civilized, though as you mention not all are equally civilized. There is no tautology here.

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