6 ms·

That Israeli soldier had balls to take on a guy with a knife. I thought it was kinda funny and ironic that he used that situation as an analogy for intelligence

• AngryParsley 17y ago
  It probably depends on the culture. IIRC in the US you only have a 20% chance of being seriously injured if you cooperate with a robber. I wouldn't be surprised if the odds were different in other countries.
  • encoderer 17y ago
    Even if it's 50%... that's the risk.. what's the reward? Saving whatever cash you have on you? He could've taken those odds and handed over the money. And then, if the assailant attacked, he could've sparred with him as he did. This is a silly point to argue, though, because i'd be surprised if the story wasn't tweaked--even just a little--to the authors purposes.
    • ErrantX 17y ago
      What if the odd's of disarming the guy are 95%?
      • yummyfajitas 17y ago
        P( fight | takes wallet ) = 50%. P( no injury | fight ) = 95%. P( injury | hand over wallet ) = P(injury | fight) P(fight | hand over wallet) = 0.05 x 0.5 = 0.025 So P(no injury | hand over wallet) = 97.5%.
        • ErrantX 17y ago
          good point :) However it makes a slight assumption that you still have 95% chance of winning if you hand over the wallet and are then attacked. This is probably not the case as the attacker gains a reasonable advantage by being first (maybe only 2 or 3% in this case) I also assumed the 50% was referring to the percentage chance of being actually harmed rather than having to fight. In which case your stats do break down.
    • dmm 17y ago
      > what's the reward? Living life as something other than a coward.
      • daleharvey 17y ago
        while I dont know what I would do in this situation, I know I wouldnt ever call someone who handed money over to someone who threatened them with a knife a "coward"
        • dmm 17y ago
          I agree with you. I'm not calling anyone a coward, but I would certainly feel like one after being robbed. It's a very intrusive, violating event.
      • coryl 17y ago
        So handing your money over to an aggravated knife wielding robber, shouting at you in Portugese, makes you a coward. Bravo.
      • Enra2 17y ago
        The machismo from behind the keyboard is priceless.
      • JoeAltmaier 17y ago
        There's more here than the calculus of survival. Consider your right to life and liberty. To surrender that is to become a victim. Some would honestly rather risk it than enter into that class. Its a personal choice. Americans used to be famous for their backbone. This thread leaves me wondering.
        • mos1 17y ago
          I was robbed at knifepoint many years ago. I gave up my wallet willingly. I did so because I cared far more about being present for my wife and children than I cared about the fact that some assholes would enjoy the contents of my wallet. At the time I was practicing both boxing and karate on a daily basis, so I probably had decent odds in a fight... but why bother? I can get another wallet and some more cash. I can't get my daughter a new dad. If this makes you think I have no backbone... well I suppose we simply have different principles.
  • tjic 17y ago
    FBI crime studies show that, no matter how the attacker is armed, your are LESS likely to be harmed if you fight back.
    • tome 17y ago
      I find this very interesting. Could you please cite a reference?
      • mos1 17y ago
        Criminology by Larry J. Siegel disagrees, asserting that while it decreases your chance of being robbed, it increases your chances of being injured or killed. edit: Zimring and Zuehl's study shows that robberies with "active noncooperation" (refusal to hand over money, attempt to flee, resistence with force) had a death rate fourteen higher than those where the victims cooperated, and that victims who simply denied having money (but did not otherwise resist) had a death rate twice as high as those who cooperate.
        • GFischer 17y ago
          I found your quote, said book is on Google Books: http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=9nH0kSUMwGIC&lpg=PA306&ots=6gBiJu1Sq7&dq=Criminology%20by%20Larry%20J.%20Siegel%20fighting%20back&hl=en&pg=PA80#v=onepage&q=fight&f=false http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=9nH0kSUMwGIC&lpg=PA3... However, in the same paragraph it cites Gary Kleck on the use of guns, and it says that potential victims should be encouraged to fight back, and that resistance with a gun is significantly better than the other forms of resistance (and a conclusion that it is better to fight than to flee). It's a surprising conclusion for me (I'm mostly anti-guns, though I'd prefer some other option like, say, tasers, to be available for self-defense)
          • mos1 17y ago
            Kleck's advice is for rape victims, not robbery victims. The first citations I can find in google scholar indicate that the odds of being killed during/after rape is roughly two orders of magnitude higher than the odds of being killed during/after a "cooperative" robbery, thus the differing calculus.
• ErrantX 17y ago
  > The intelligent thing to do would have been to hand over the money and NOT risk being sliced open lol. Not for the Israeli soldier. Consider: he must have been confident in his ability to disarm the guy (based on his assessment that he did not know how to handle the knife). The other option of co-operation gives control to the thief, that's not a good thing if you can avoid it.
  • coryl 17y ago
    All the training in the world still doesn't make it a smart decision. You only have to make a mistake once, or be a split second slow, to pay the ultimate price. Consider the thief's motivator is obviously money. Once he has it, anything else is just extra work for him (assuming mental stability). In that case, then the Israeli soldier has no choice but to engage.
    • ErrantX 17y ago
      > You only have to make a mistake once, or be a split second slow, to pay the ultimate price. The difference in skill is so important though. My best mate is into Aikido - some of the masters he's trained with wouldn't flinch if threatened with a gun. It's no threat to them. There is the famous story of the Aikido founder who claimed to be able to dodge bullets - and did so, once dodging an entire firing squad. One of his students invited a game hunter to come and try hit him: the master accepted the challenge and stood opposite the hunter. Hunter stands there holding rifle, swings it up to shoot and the Master dives to the ground shouting "stop stop". When they asked him why he'd given up he said: "that man does not aim" He'd met his match and bowed out. The same lesson applies. The smart move may be to hand over the money - but if you assess the smarter move is to disarm him then you should do so. Also; waiting for an attack or more stress is the worst thing to do. If you have the element of surprise it is a big advantage. > Consider the thief's motivator is obviously money. Often this is not the case - especially in South America. If your mugger has a gun your probably dead. A knife? Depends where you are. > You only have to make a mistake once, or be a split second slow, to pay the ultimate price. Again: if your confident and the odds stack up just go for it. Disarming a knife holder is pretty easy and unless they are really good with it then your unlikely to get badly hurt if your on the offensive.
• xcombinator 17y ago
  Yeah, the intelligent thing is to surrender and give more power and money to the robber. If people with weapons assault you in Somalia, give them millions of dollars and make it stronger, so they can kill more and assault more people. If someone kidnaps someone of your family, give all the money you earned all your life to them, so they can buy more weapons, and kidnap more people, and make society better. Your ego will boost as you acknowledge that you are not able to fight against other men under any circumstances, that you could always surrender and let them sodomize you if necessary.
  • coryl 17y ago
    Yeah, the intelligent thing is to surrender and give more power and money to the robber. How are you giving power to a robber? If people with weapons assault you in Somalia, give them millions of dollars and make it stronger, so they can kill more and assault more people. If people with weapons assault you, your dead. I'm not sure why you're trying to link this situation to the political one in Somalia, they're quite different. If someone kidnaps someone of your family, give all the money you earned all your life to them, so they can buy more weapons, and kidnap more people, and make society better. Tough talk, lets see what you'd do if your family got kidnapped for ransom.
    • Daniel_Newby 17y ago
      "How are you giving power to a robber?" By rewarding them with confidence and money, two of the most powerful factors in behavioral conditioning. "I'm not sure why you're trying to link this situation to the political one in Somalia, they're quite different." They are the same. Coastal Somalia's de facto government is barbarian raiders, funded entirely by people who choose to pay millions for appeasement but not one penny for defense. Hopefully the problem can be solved by arming the merchant fleets with modern weapons (now being tried), otherwise the standard solution will be needed: plow the coastal towns under as fertilizer.
      • coryl 17y ago
        Well organized, well armed Somali pirates hijacking commercial vessels does not equal a guy with a knife robbing you. Did you know the pirates actually have a code of ethics (ironic as that may sound)? Why have they never raped or killed any of their hostages? Because all they want is money. Pay up, and the hostages get let go. Thats how their operation works. Don't even try to compare that to a back alley robbery.
• kls 17y ago
  I disagree with you assessment, the individual could have intelligently reasoned that disarming the man would make him think twice before confronting another individual. If more individuals took that tack robbers would give more though to what used to be an easy crime. No to mention in certain parts of South America the punishment for robbery can be as sever as murder so if you are going to do it you might as well not leave witnesses. There are a lot of variables that go into the decision to fight and making the decision to do so does not necessarily mean that you have made a foolish or less intelligent choice.
  • euroclydon 17y ago
    Solzhenitsyn discusses this attitude extensively in The Gulag Archipelago, both from the perspective of standing up to government thugs that come in the middle of the night to arrest dissidents and when he notes the irony of how military officers recently pulled from the front lines were cowed by common criminals in jail.
    • dgordon 17y ago
      I'm reading The Gulag Archipelago now -- I'm around 530 pages in, so I just read the part about the common criminals beating up and robbing the political prisoners. It undoubtedly helped the thieves a lot that the political prisoners wouldn't stand up for each other, but if for some reason one did stand up to a criminal, his friends would take revenge later. The criminals were effectively united; the political prisoners could not have been more divided. It's a heavy book, both in weight (1800 pages) and ideas, but everyone should read it.
  • coryl 17y ago
    Its nice to think that people factor benevolent principles into situations like this. However, when people fight back under high stress situations like a robbery, it is probable that the moment is not about defending society; its about survival. Statistics say if you cooperate, you're less likely to be harmed. If you decide to push a physical confrontation, then you're more likely to be harmed. If you measure the cost/benefit ratio to each action, its a no brainer.
• endtime 17y ago
  You completely missed the point. The soldier was using the knife as an analogy for intelligence, not his dodging/punching. The robber had the knife, which gave him a false sense of superiority, but he didn't know how to use the knife, so he ended up losing the fight.