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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

#131

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

Cushman wrote: post #121
ilaksh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A bit of a violence problem in our culture" Fighting games are incredibly realistic and advanced. Games like Battlefield, with the right mix of realism and "fun", are the greatest possible war propaganda instruments ever created. The "Department of Defense" and other agencies have too many smart people working in them and too much recruiting pressure not to be funneling money into these "video game" projects. Iran i…

There is certainly a propaganda campaign being run to encourage Americans to support war. It is being run by powerful people with vested political and financial interests who spend millions of dollars to project their message across all forms of news media. If you think video games are anything more than a sideshow to this, you're delusional.

I don't think it's delusional at all. It is long known that if you can indoctrinate children at an early age (bonus points if you make it fun) that their beliefs will often have been shaped without them knowing it.

For instance, framing Iran as bad guys without giving it much thought--it just seems "self-evident" somehow...

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#132

Post by zeteo »

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…

>I am very tempted to flag this. the sociopath thing really rubs me the wrong way

Geeze Louise. I don't think flagging, on this site, is meant as a downvote for articles where you disagree with some terms' definitions.

>The United States made a huge mistake in moving to an all-volunteer army in the 1970s. With a draft and mandatory conscription, everybody had the common experience of serving and perhaps doing really bad things in the line of duty.

Are you seriously proposing that, instead of sending in a few thousand well trained guys who can do the job, it's preferable to send a few million who can barely fire a rifle - just because it may make for effective anti-war propaganda? If you are truly serious, you should at least know that it doesn't work. Only Vietnam turned a significant proportion of its veterans into anti-war activists. Korea, the World Wars and the Civil War had no such effect.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#133

Post by run4yourlives »

scott_s wrote: post #112
run4yourlives wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Killing DOES NOT agree with the premise that soldiers are sociopaths. It makes the exact opposite claim. He says that tools that have been employed to increase firing rates have themselves increased the PTSD rate to astronomical levels. PTSD's existence itself (at levels since Vietnam) proves that W's thesis is incorrect. Grossman's allowance for sociopathic behaviour is a demonstrated, consistent 2%.

Yes, I agree with what you said. However, Grossman also talks about the soldiers who do not experience PTSD. And he posits that those soldiers have sociopathic tendencies. And he further posits that those soldiers tend to self-select into the special forces. W says up front that he is talking about infantry and special forces: When I say soldier, let me be clear that I am talking about the Infantryman and the Special…

Like I said, 2%. This is the allowance that Grossman and his research support as being "sociopathic/psychopathic". Infantry units on average would make up close to 10-30% of an Army, depending on the force. The whole book is about the factors that can increase/decrease PTSD occurrences, but his basic point is that killing is so unnatural that PTSD is the normal part of the human reaction to killing. (IOW, everyone gets it to a degree).

He also does not say this 2% is pre-disposed to joining SF units. He does, interestingly enough, suggest that the data does point to this 2% being pre-disposed to mercenary work.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#134

Post by heretohelp »

cobrausn wrote: post #20
roboneal wrote: post #7

Being ex-military and not a sociopath -- he lost me when he said that the "vast majority of us are straight up sociopaths" We constantly made decisions that increased the risk to ourselves while trying to minimize the risk to civilians. That is not a mindset of a sociopath.

From what I could tell from my time in the service, your view of your situation is highly dependent upon who you are serving with. I'm willing to bet it is highly likely that the group this supposed sociopath served with had no such compulsions. Without proper oversight, I could easily see a group mindset of this kind developing. As such, I'm willing to bet he thinks all soldiers are like him, when the reality is tha…

com·punc·tion/kəmˈpəNG(k)SHən/

Noun:

A feeling of guilt or moral scruple that follows the doing of something bad: "spend the money without compunction". A pricking of the conscience.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#135

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

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…

"As it is now, the vast majority of civilians have absolutely no idea what military service is like. In this lack of context everybody becomes really impressionable."

When you vote, you are exercising political authority. You are using force. And force, my friends, is violence, the supreme authority from which all other authority derives. Whether it is exerted by ten or ten billion, political authority is violence by degree. The people we call "citizens" have earned the right to wield it. Naked force has settled more issues in history than any other factor. The contrary opinion "violence never solves anything" is wishful thinking at its worst. People who forget that always pay. They pay with their lives and their freedom.

- Lieutenant Jean Rasczak

- http://imsdb.com/scripts/Starship-Troopers.html

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#136

Post by arctangent »

ilaksh wrote: post #117
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…

"A bit of a violence problem in our culture" Fighting games are incredibly realistic and advanced. Games like Battlefield, with the right mix of realism and "fun", are the greatest possible war propaganda instruments ever created. The "Department of Defense" and other agencies have too many smart people working in them and too much recruiting pressure not to be funneling money into these "video game" projects. Iran i…

> Games like Battlefield, with the right mix of realism and "fun", are the greatest possible war propaganda instruments ever created.

Example of a popular computer game developed by the US Army as a recruitment tool:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas_Army

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#138

Post by lotharbot »

philwelch wrote: post #125
skeltoac wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people will like this, too, including myself, but the truth is that as long as they aren't "our" women and children... I'm kissing my hard-earned 198 away here by speaking truth. Hate the truth, not the speaker.

One thing I vividly remember from the Iraq war was how much everyone seemed to care about a couple thousand US casualties, and how little everyone seemed to care about a hundred thousand Iraqi casualties.

One thing I remember is how accurate the US casualty number was -- we had names and hometowns for every US casualty, and usually a cause of death. In some sense, this is to be expected, as we have records of everyone who gets shipped out, and most have at least some family or friends who awaited their return.

We weren't even sure how many Iraqis had died, nor how they died. Some of the more common estimates of Iraqi deaths vary by a factor of ten or more. Records in Iraq are spotty, at best. Most Iraqis don't have a great deal of family and friends in the US, so we don't feel their loss in quite the same way.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#139

Post by BadassFractal »

yason wrote: post #68
angrycoder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>martial arts won't help This is patently false and completely ridiculous. Someone who is trained to take and give a hit will always have a significantly better chance in a fight.

The thing with 99,999% of martial arts is that they're practicing the wrong thing. At best they're practicing for competitions and some are even trying to pose as street-cred martial artists but yet that's a whole another universe away from survival . And survival isn't about fighting—at all. The thing is, it wouldn't be legal to teach survival in a dojo. Fighting is about winning but survival is about... surviving,…

This sounds a lot like what Krav Maga claims about its teachings. They certainly have a point when they say that fighting in the ring and fighting against gangs with guns and knives on the street is a very different situation that traditional martial arts do not do much about.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#140

Post by [deleted] »

Tossrock wrote: post #129
staunch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Kimbo was a street brawler who went MMA not the other way around. That he did so well against well trained fighters says a lot.

I don't understand this comment. The parent was saying that he was a street brawler who went MMA; why are you repeating it? And he by no means "did so well". He did not do well at all.

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