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> 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
by 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 agoIt'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 agoIs it true that 12 year olds are more likely to pick up a machete than 30 year olds?
- M_Grey 10y agoIn 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 agoHumans 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 agoNo, healthy people are born with empathy. Which is why childhood animal mutilation is a standard test for sociopathy.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> No, healthy people are born with empathy. Most of the reading I've done seems to suggest that that's something that's developed at a very young age, and very sensitive to early childhood environment, rather something people are born with.
- djtriptych 10y agoIt's a normal part of childhood development. The original comment suggests that hate is inborn and empathy is learned - no real evidence for that.
- Retric 10y agoEmpathy is a far more complex emotion.
- djtriptych 10y agoDogs have empathy.
- sidlls 10y ago
- frandroid 10y agoWell, trigger warning: discussion of child soldier recruitment, and deadly violence. Recruitment of child soldiers usually involves drugging the targets. 12 year olds are probably less susceptible to be able to realize that they're being drugged and to have the mental fortitude to retain their self through the grooming process. I suspect that even when drugged, a 30 year old will have a better sense of being drugged and is less likely to be brainwashed. There are also other shock-inducing factors that have a greater dislocating impact on 12 year olds, such as killing their parents (both it happening in front of them, and/or in some cases, them being forced to do it as part of the indoctrination process). I suspect that a 30 year old would be more likely to channel their anger at the "recruiter" than a 12 year old would.
- infinite8s 10y agoThat is atrocious. Do you have any citations to back those up?
- M_Grey 10y agohttp://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/understanding-recruitment-child-soldiers-africa/ http://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/understanding-recru... https://www.hrw.org/news/2000/05/31/sierra-leone-rebels-forcefully-recruit-child-soldiers https://www.hrw.org/news/2000/05/31/sierra-leone-rebels-forc... https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/root-causes-of-child-soldiering/ https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/... http://www.unicef.org/sowc96/2csoldrs.htm http://www.unicef.org/sowc96/2csoldrs.htm https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/six-grave-violations/child-soldiers/ https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/effects-of-conflict/...