6 ms·

>At the same time, it seemed easier to be selfless as a teenager, probably for similar reasons for why it's easier to draft 18-year-olds than it is 28-year-olds

by criley2 10y ago

>At the same time, it seemed easier to be selfless as a teenager, probably for similar reasons for why it's easier to draft 18-year-olds than it is 28-year-olds. Given young persons willingness to sacrifice for the greater cause without realizing that life extends well past your 30s and 40s I totally agree, the biological basis of this is Pre-frontal Cortex development. "The [prefrontal cortex] isn't fully developed and won't be until the person is 25 years old or so." https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=3051 https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con... "This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behaviour. The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex I can't understand any other context for drafting 18 year olds other than taking advantage of their youth and incomplete development, but avoiding Presentism and the comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction / Pax Americana, I can understand why when the cards are on the table and your entire society is at risk, why you must call all hands, young and old, into Total War a la WW1 or WW2. As far as donations go, that's got to be a morally gray area as well for all the reasons you mention.

linkregister 10y ago
> I can't understand any other context for drafting 18 year olds other than taking advantage of their youth and incomplete development 18-year-olds have been volunteer recruited and drafted for perhaps the entire history of organized armies. Child soldiers also have (and in some countries still are) enlisted also. I suspect this is only out of extreme necessity, as the moral and practical drawbacks are overwhelming. When the United States has instituted the draft, it has encompassed 18-to-45 year-olds for immediate enlistment. 18-25 year-olds comprise the largest age group of new volunteer enlistees in the US. The largest barriers to military service qualification are health reasons and family situations. It would follow that younger enlistees would have lower likelihood of physical injuries and being the sole caretaker of a dependent. Your post made sense until your bizarre digression to armed service being linked to incomplete prefrontal cortex development. It can be appealing to find sinister motivations behind institutions you dislike, but there isn't a basis in fact here. The explanation is tradition, health, and lack of obligations.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  It's hardly bizarre, but it's not put in terms of cortical development either. It is however a bit of, "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she will be mine for life." Ignoring that reality, and why 12 year olds are more likely to pick up a machete than a 30 year old, is what's bizarre.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Is it true that 12 year olds are more likely to pick up a machete than 30 year olds?
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      In a general context, or in the context of what we're talking about here? In general, I don't know, in context... yes. You can get most kids on board with almost anything, and those you can't, you can generally abuse or otherwise force to submit. They're not set in their ways, they don't have as clear a sense of the world, and their impulse control usually stinks. There's a reason that everyone, for better or worse, wants to get to kids early, and often. Advertisers, religions, people trying to teach kids how to deal with advertisers and religions, militaries, etc... all see the value in "getting them young."
    - sidlls 10y ago
      Humans are beastly, violent primates with marginal cognitive advantages over our cousins. Empathy is learned. I don't know if a 12 year old is more likely to kill than a 30 year old, but the former certainly has had much less social normalization toward empathy than the older one, other things being equal. Also kids are easily guided to do just about anything. They're easily impressed and even the brightest lack the experience to temper their judgement of what is a good idea versus what isn't.
      - djtriptych 10y ago
        No, healthy people are born with empathy. Which is why childhood animal mutilation is a standard test for sociopathy.
louprado 10y ago
Personally, I am less likely to take risks as I age because I have invested more in myself over time. It seems natural to value that which you have dedicated money, time, and effort. Before adulthood that investment came primarily from my mother and she valued my life waaaaay more than I did. I get that this is a dissociative POV. So often these discussions are about youthful feelings of immortality, more courage, foolishness, etc., but that never rang true personally.
- vintermann 10y ago
  > Personally, I am less likely to take risks as I age because I have invested more in myself over time. It seems natural to value that which you have dedicated money, time, and effort. No no. Prefrontal cortex development. Who needs an entirely plausible rational explanation when you can point to mysterious and poorly understood brain-physical reasons?
chrisseaton 10y ago
> I can't understand any other context for drafting 18 year olds other than taking advantage of their youth and incomplete development Physical fitness surely? Isn't 18 or 19 around the physical fitness peak? I'm guessing that people are on average are significantly stronger and more robust at 18 than they are at 28. I think the British Army has 26 as the limit for joining in the first place for officers at least. Also people are married by 28. At 18 they're generally single and more able to deploy.
- vacri 10y ago
  18-year-olds are also inexperienced in the travails of supporting yourself in life, and as a result of this, are much easier to sway with ideals rather than pragmatics.
- tajen 10y ago
  I'd say the peak strength must be 22-26, because 18-years-olds are really thin and lean (source: I love men ;)) – unless they've been practising musculation, but once again, if they practice musculation at 24, they'll be much bigger. But it takes well above 2 years to train a professional, so profesional recruitment takes them earlier. However, concerning draft followed by almost-immediate use on the battlefield, given this subjective data, it makes little sense to me, physically, to draft them so young.
  - doikor 10y ago
    It kinda depends on what kind of strength. For things where the athlete is rather lightweight/small and does some kind of fast/twitchy power moves you peak out somewhere before 30. But when all you need is pure strenght you have 30 to 40 year old world champions in many sports (you still have to start training when a lot younger to make it though) for example in power lifting where you have a lot of todays world champions born in the late 70s/early 80s. One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of sending 18-20 year olds into battlefield is that if they die society spent less money/effort into teaching them some other valuable skill that would have been lost without getting the benefit out of it (due to the person being dead)
- 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cafard 10y ago
Drafting 18-year-olds: well, they are less likely to have employment in strategically important industries, they are less likely to be supporting a family, and they are seldom in mid-college, i.e. to be held aside for a commission upon graduation. Those, that I can think of, were the three big sources of deferment in the WW II draft. They are also approaching peak physical fitness, both as to capacity for difficult physical work, and to the ability to recover from severe trauma. [Edit: one should probably not exaggerate the idealism of draftees. Maybe it was there in WW I, but the accounts of WW II and since suggest that it fell off.]

by criley2 10y ago

linkregister 10y ago

> I can't understand any other context for drafting 18 year olds other than taking advantage of their youth and incomplete development 18-year-olds have been volunteer recruited and drafted for perhaps the entire history of organized armies. Child soldiers also have (and in some countries still are) enlisted also. I suspect this is only out of extreme necessity, as the moral and practical drawbacks are overwhelming. When the United States has instituted the draft, it has encompassed 18-to-45 year-olds for immediate enlistment. 18-25 year-olds comprise the largest age group of new volunteer enlistees in the US. The largest barriers to military service qualification are health reasons and family situations. It would follow that younger enlistees would have lower likelihood of physical injuries and being the sole caretaker of a dependent. Your post made sense until your bizarre digression to armed service being linked to incomplete prefrontal cortex development. It can be appealing to find sinister motivations behind institutions you dislike, but there isn't a basis in fact here. The explanation is tradition, health, and lack of obligations.

M_Grey 10y ago
It's hardly bizarre, but it's not put in terms of cortical development either. It is however a bit of, "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she will be mine for life." Ignoring that reality, and why 12 year olds are more likely to pick up a machete than a 30 year old, is what's bizarre.
- linkregister 10y ago
  Is it true that 12 year olds are more likely to pick up a machete than 30 year olds?
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    In a general context, or in the context of what we're talking about here? In general, I don't know, in context... yes. You can get most kids on board with almost anything, and those you can't, you can generally abuse or otherwise force to submit. They're not set in their ways, they don't have as clear a sense of the world, and their impulse control usually stinks. There's a reason that everyone, for better or worse, wants to get to kids early, and often. Advertisers, religions, people trying to teach kids how to deal with advertisers and religions, militaries, etc... all see the value in "getting them young."
  - sidlls 10y ago
    Humans are beastly, violent primates with marginal cognitive advantages over our cousins. Empathy is learned. I don't know if a 12 year old is more likely to kill than a 30 year old, but the former certainly has had much less social normalization toward empathy than the older one, other things being equal. Also kids are easily guided to do just about anything. They're easily impressed and even the brightest lack the experience to temper their judgement of what is a good idea versus what isn't.
    - djtriptych 10y ago
      No, healthy people are born with empathy. Which is why childhood animal mutilation is a standard test for sociopathy.

louprado 10y ago

Personally, I am less likely to take risks as I age because I have invested more in myself over time. It seems natural to value that which you have dedicated money, time, and effort. Before adulthood that investment came primarily from my mother and she valued my life waaaaay more than I did. I get that this is a dissociative POV. So often these discussions are about youthful feelings of immortality, more courage, foolishness, etc., but that never rang true personally.

vintermann 10y ago
> Personally, I am less likely to take risks as I age because I have invested more in myself over time. It seems natural to value that which you have dedicated money, time, and effort. No no. Prefrontal cortex development. Who needs an entirely plausible rational explanation when you can point to mysterious and poorly understood brain-physical reasons?

chrisseaton 10y ago

> I can't understand any other context for drafting 18 year olds other than taking advantage of their youth and incomplete development Physical fitness surely? Isn't 18 or 19 around the physical fitness peak? I'm guessing that people are on average are significantly stronger and more robust at 18 than they are at 28. I think the British Army has 26 as the limit for joining in the first place for officers at least. Also people are married by 28. At 18 they're generally single and more able to deploy.

vacri 10y ago
18-year-olds are also inexperienced in the travails of supporting yourself in life, and as a result of this, are much easier to sway with ideals rather than pragmatics.
tajen 10y ago
I'd say the peak strength must be 22-26, because 18-years-olds are really thin and lean (source: I love men ;)) – unless they've been practising musculation, but once again, if they practice musculation at 24, they'll be much bigger. But it takes well above 2 years to train a professional, so profesional recruitment takes them earlier. However, concerning draft followed by almost-immediate use on the battlefield, given this subjective data, it makes little sense to me, physically, to draft them so young.
- doikor 10y ago
  It kinda depends on what kind of strength. For things where the athlete is rather lightweight/small and does some kind of fast/twitchy power moves you peak out somewhere before 30. But when all you need is pure strenght you have 30 to 40 year old world champions in many sports (you still have to start training when a lot younger to make it though) for example in power lifting where you have a lot of todays world champions born in the late 70s/early 80s. One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of sending 18-20 year olds into battlefield is that if they die society spent less money/effort into teaching them some other valuable skill that would have been lost without getting the benefit out of it (due to the person being dead)
10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cafard 10y ago

Drafting 18-year-olds: well, they are less likely to have employment in strategically important industries, they are less likely to be supporting a family, and they are seldom in mid-college, i.e. to be held aside for a commission upon graduation. Those, that I can think of, were the three big sources of deferment in the WW II draft. They are also approaching peak physical fitness, both as to capacity for difficult physical work, and to the ability to recover from severe trauma. [Edit: one should probably not exaggerate the idealism of draftees. Maybe it was there in WW I, but the accounts of WW II and since suggest that it fell off.]