Kick wrote on Feb 24^th, 2021 at 11:44am:


this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs

I'm not rewatching the video but if I remember correct it happens subconsciously. firing in a "get away from me manner."

If you see modern firefights there is a lot of area firing rather than aimed shots. reminds me the chiaraje dynamic but more deadly.

Ninety five million people were killed in the two world wars.  Apparently not everyone was shooting to miss.

the firing rate research is contentious. The people who argue that we did have something like 20% firing rate account for the deaths with 1. Attacking a fleeing enemy (same as a dog that won't charge you unless you start running, everyone will partake in attacking a routed enemy). 2. Crew served weapons allowing diminished personal responsibility (I just load it, I'm not actually killing). And also some mixture or diminished responsibility via orders and NCOs right on the ranks. And by the time you get to WWI and WWII high explosives delivered by artillery and planes account for the kills. Again, diminished responsibility (I only fly the plane, I only load the bombs etc).

People who argue against it claim the observational data from WWII specifically was badly done or even made up. The historical data though gets interesting because we had a lot of  finding multiple loads in firearms after a battle. Finding 3-8 loads in a muzzle loader. They braved fire but couldn't (or wouldn't) shoot or grab a different gun that was working (plenty lying around). This was found commonly and internationally, it even comes up in testing procedures for military procurement (Revolutionary war through Civil war). Grossman's "On Killing" is not the highest quality source but the best on this. And it wasn't his WWII research that pushed me over to his side but rather the historical argument he marshals. The kill counts are too low for what the technology and situation allowed is the heart of it.

My take is that there is a majority of humans who do have a high resistance to effective utilization of force in face to face confrontation. We have some ritualized fighting we do but less eye gouging, throat punching, fishhooking, sending the other guy to the morgue fighting. We have it but only a small minority of criminals use that.

by the time you go that far back the evidence is so sketchy it's hard to say. In my view the "favorite game" is a key part for stone age level of tech. It was group vs group but it wasn't total war, where you kick men when they are down, execute the wounded, and burn the crops.

Certainly wars of extermination are a large part of our heritage. Carthage is gone. How many stone age tribes were likewise exterminated utterly? Likely many. But the tribal wars that we saw with late-stone age tech in the Americas were (generally) not wars of extermination. The aztecs are the largest organized warfare tribe I am familiar with and their wars were very ritualized. The smaller tribes were ritualized as well, not all ritualized to the 'counted coup' level but the fighting was young men vs young men, raiding for mates, keeping territories, proving bravery for social status not wars of extermination. Part of the culture clash with the European settlers were the different rulesets. The Europeans found men tortured to death and said "barbarians with no rules!" and the indians found camps burned and women killed and likewise said "barbarians with no rules!" and it escalated into war of extermination.

Pinker wrote a terribly researched but very highly regarded  tome called "the better angels of our nature" he argues our manners our, culture, has saved us from our barbarity. He botches mathematics, fundamentally misrepresents certain sources, and is really off in his own world. He's the source for the "humans are better now" crowd. I think he's wrong if that's not clear.

We don't just land in wars of extermination. We wage them. Absolutely we have. And we will again. War unleashed has horror that is beyond what you can bear, wherever your line is. I read a collection of interviews of women soldiers on the eastern front of WWII and the story of a baby hurled down a well still haunting a witness decades later fills me with fear. It means burning houses down, torture, rape, starvation, sadism. The worst humans revel in it. And as one tribe feels backed against the wall it sheds some rules. Then the other does. And they both find themselves in horror. But if you're not mentally against the wall it's different. If you, even facing danger, are facing somebody who is more like you than different, there because you were ordered you there because a politician was a moron...well jumping to "gouge eyes out" is a big jump for your average civilized human.

Both sides have a point but the analogy that keeps coming to me now is that "wars escalate like fights" so what starts as a ritualized fight (hitting the face is ok, kneeing the crotch is not) can escalate to eye gouging and curb stomping. Some of us make that jump quickly, some of us refuse, some of us slowly get there. The vast majority of us have a point past which we embrace total war personally. Our structures to wage war professionally tend to limit the progression and end it quickly (like a bouncer or cop). But 2 tribes without their elders calming them down, settling on a weregeld, or a professional competent army which ends the fight early, the fight will spiral out to curbstomping murder even if started as an honest barfight.

Or worse...airborne prions.

Kick wrote on Feb 25^th, 2021 at 2:01pm:


Ya and Im hoping to die before any of those become an option. Ive hopefully done enough drugs in my younger years to make that happen but if not McDonalds is a sure fire bet. Nobody survives that dreaded place for long.

Judo’s right that violence gives you more options as long as violence adds to the bag of tricks instead of replacing other options. Obviously work on non-violence skills and tools too, so there are more choices for any situation.

If violence is an option you are willing to use, then you will also be willing to stand your ground in the expectation of using that option. Sometimes being willing to be violent is enough to prevent the other guy from escalating to violence because you aren’t running away or giving up ground. It’s ironic, but yes, willingness to use violence may actually reduce the total amount of violent encounters. That’s  a big part of the theory behind concealed handgun programs in the US, and the statistics suggest that it works. If criminals expect to be met with violence, they are less likely to commit some (not all) crimes. This generalization doesn’t count for crazies of course, but  even among psychopaths, virtually all of the mass shootings in the US happen at places where the perpetrator has a monopoly on violence because law abiding citizens are not allowed to carry guns there.