Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide • Hacker News Board

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#501

Post by moomin » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #422

juliushuijnk wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes companies are rational actors.

If we assume: * Women can be hired for a discount relative to hiring men * Women are just as good at those jobs as men are, i.e. the lower wages are not due to worse job performance Then it follows that some company or other would be going out of its way to hire women in preference to men. Yes, not everyone is a rational actor - but even if many companies are run by raging misogynists, not all are. And the companies…

I think people underestimate how powerful market forces are. Bear in mind that they do not apply within a firm, except in fairly extreme circumstances. Instead most things are done on the basis of perception, which is where racism and patriarchy thrive.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#502

Post by lupusreal » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

hnbad wrote: post #395

lupusreal wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think cultural context can make the difference between a psychological traumatic event and another day at the office. Somebody who grew up on a farm might snap a chicken's neck without a thought, while a vegan city slicker being made to do the same might plausibly suffer severe psychological trauma. It may be the case that being from a society in which violence is glorified and made into a virtue makes people less…

Based on psychological research we know that early childhood trauma can help develop sociopathy. It's easy to see the effect of perpetual violence in terrorist hotspots like Palestine where children grow up to become terrorists because of the violence they experience in "counter-terrorism", which their existence as terrorists of course feeds into, repeating the cycle. As the saying goes "hurt people hurt people". I t…

You're talking in some absolutes here, but I don't think any of it is so set in stone. If a city vegan doesn't think about where his food comes from and isn't mentally bothered by this, then he's healthy. If a farm boy slaughters livestock casually isn't bothered by it, he too is healthy. Each are well adapted to their circumstance and is healthy so long as they remain in that condition. What other people think about either of them is the problem of those other people.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#503

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

hughesjj wrote: post #315

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unaware of any war over the last 100 years between conventional forces that didn't involve trench warfare Anything involving modern combined-arms warfare. Iraq, for example.

I'm being a bit unfair in that I'm counting hesco as a kind of trench warfare, but you're right in that that doesn't exactly apply on 'patrol' Still, I believe earthen barriers are still used to solidify the 'frontlines' if you squint a bit Afaik the Iraq Iran war was still doing straight up trench warfare (at points) and the Syrian civil war + Afghan theater were using caves (in some areas). Same with Korea and Viet…

Are you defining trench warfare as "has a trench"? Because I meant the system of long lines under fire for weeks/months and high-attrition infantry attacks across the narrow no man's land to take slivers of territory.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#504

Post by pc86 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:39 PM UTC

rwultsch wrote: post #474

pc86 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as rifles go 5.56 is about as anemic of a round as you can get and have it still be fit for purpose in a military or defense context. You can't even hunt most things with it because it's not powerful enough. They only way these rifles are causing brain damage is if you're on the wrong end of one.

They are however incredibly loud. Being close to someone shooting 556 with a brake is a really annoying experience and I would not be shocked if there were follow on effects.

I mean you'll get hearing damage for sure but I'm just saying that's a far cry from cavitating your brain tissue.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#505

Post by tsimionescu » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #435

tsimionescu wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's not a privilege. But if you're saying women aren't good at it, that women need to be protected, that's misogyny. It's like saying women can't receive the death penalty because they are not mentally sound to be held responsible for their actions, which was a real misogynistic argument at one point. Misandry would be saying men must be sent to war instead of women because they are inferior, or because th…

There's nothing misogynistic being said here. You're stretching the word to cover situations it just doesn't apply to.

Misogyny is believing women are less capable than men for certain important things (there are other ways of being misogynistic, but this is one of the most common). Warfare is a very good example.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#506

Post by erva » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 4:57 PM UTC

tamimio wrote: post #486

erva wrote: post #427

Qualifier: Former US special operations operator that served in multiple wars. My anecdotal take is there are many ways that shock and trauma can accumulate through training and war that are far beyond the minimal effects of an M4. Firearms: While the primary weapons systems are the M4 and side arm (pistol), there are many weapons systems utilized by special operations such as sniper rifles, crew serve weapons, and n…

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I think the whole point of the study is exploratory. Looking for commonality in a search of a cause or suite of factors instead of making assumptions.

Maybe it is a physical phenomenon like adrenal fatigue or brain injury, maybe it isnt; that is why people study it.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#507

Post by hinkley » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

__s wrote: post #489

tamimio wrote: post #486

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Concussion is a film about football players & suicide

Depression is a lot like being drunk. There’s a point where you wish you could puke and get it over with but it’s just not happening. As I understand it there’s a lot of ex football players in this state. Just hopelessly miserable but not on suicide watch. Or on their way to Parkinson’s.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#508

Post by relaxing » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

actionfromafar wrote: post #268

WA wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably said the same in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. "Merely weeks until victory." And as percentage of GDP, military spending was even higher back then: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...

You just have to cut the Russian supply lines, the situations are completely different.

Just bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail through Cambodia, then the North will capitulate.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#509

Post by sobriquet9 » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:22 PM UTC

alexey-salmin wrote: post #270

manuel_w wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, also modern helmets are not designed to stop bullets but rather to protect from shrapnel and hand grenades. Stopping a bullet would mean breaking the wearers neck. (The kinetic energy needs to go somewhere after all.)

Older steel helmets don't but modern IIIA-class helmets (e.g. ECH) do. Kinetic energy is not an unsolvable problem, energy can be dissipated. The momentum is in fact the problem that can't be really worked-around (except spreading it over longer period of time) but the momentum of a bullet is low. UPD replaced "impulse" with "momentum", lost in translation

Level IIIA resists penetration from .357 SIG, 9 mm, and .44 magnum. Those are handgun rounds. It may stop some intermediate rounds if you’re lucky, but certainly not full power rifle rounds.

Helmets cannot deform as much as vests before seriously injuring the wearer, limiting their capacity to dissipate kinetic energy. And if you make them too rigid, concussion becomes a problem.

Re: Pattern of brain damage is pervasive in Navy SEALs who died by suicide

#510

Post by munificent » Tue, Jul 02, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #64

munificent wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would also explain why accounts of "shell shock" and PTSD rose so dramatically during WWI but were less common in prior wars where explosions were less common.

I always wonder if it occurred more, or, in a modern society, was recorded more. Just thinking aloud.

I think it's probably both. I think the negative consequences of being in a war increased significantly after the invention of artillery, but also psychological stuff was under-reported the farther you go back in time.