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Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Blockchain is like the Aikido of technology.

by tr0ut 8y ago

CyberDildonics 8y ago
Aikido is a fantasy, but 'a blockchain' or 'the blockchain' can be used to create a working currency obviously.
RHSeeger 8y ago
I'm curious as to your opinion of Aikido. While it's certainly purely defensive in nature, it's always seemed very effective at that goal to me.
- nabla9 8y ago
  Here is good Aikido in combat story from Terry Dobson who studied directly under the Morihei Ueshiba: "Aikido In Action - Doing combat with the essence of love" By Terry Dobson https://www.context.org/iclib/ic04/dobson/ https://www.context.org/iclib/ic04/dobson/
- MikkoFinell 8y ago
  There is a reason why Aikido is not used in MMA: Because it's completely ineffectual in a real fight.
  - rusk 8y ago
    It's not great for entertainment value either. I mean it's an art that has at its very essence the eschewance of conflict. I can't speak for the efficacy of Aikido against an actual trained fighter in some other code, but if it worked the way it was meant to you'd pretty much be watching one guy dodging another guys attacks until eventually he pins him in an arm lock. Fight over.
    - MikkoFinell 8y ago
      I had a feeling someone was gonna post this argument: that Aikido is in actually too effective to be used in MMA. It's in fact so good defensively that there is no point in even using it :^)
      - rusk 8y ago
        It's not that it's too effective for MMA, it's that it's wholly ineffective as a sport ... It's like using a slipper to bang a nail into a wall. Yeah it kind of works but that's not what it's for ...
  - YorickPeterse 8y ago
    Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go. If my memory serves me right, Jiu-Jitsu wasn't used in the professional (western) fighting scene for quite a while. Today it's pretty much a must-have for MMA. The same goes the other way around. Being an expert in Jiu-Jitsu means squat when your opponent is holding a gun, and standing 10m away from you. In other words: different flavours of martial arts/self-defence have different applications, though I would certainly consider some to be very ineffective in most situations.
    - MikkoFinell 8y ago
      > Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go. We agree about that. The thing is, if Aikido could deliver what it promises, namely that you are able to effortlessly throw people to the ground when they try to strike you, then you could be sure fighters would use those techniques.
      - rusk 8y ago
        This is a good point. Again I think it speaks more to the cosy contrived environment of the Octagon vs a real world situation. You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up. This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise. You want to gain control and retain it for the full 5 minutes.
        MikkoFinell 8y ago
        > You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up. > This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise. I'm sorry, but are you joking? I don't think you have even watched 5 minutes of MMA (and I'm certain you've never trained) if you actually believe that.
- ncphillips 8y ago
  The complaints are usually made against the training methods not the moves. Aikido moves are hard, the training partners response is usually rehearsed, and there’s much less focus on competitive sparring. It’s hard to learn something for real when the reactions are rehearsed. Other self defence focussed martial arts (Judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu) have a lot more emphasis on live sparring. I’ve done all three at different points in my life. Only as a jiujitsu practitioner am I confident that I could handle myself without injuring the other party.
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    What's even better is that there is no longer the need to theorize about which of the martial arts work and which don't, because we already ran that experiment (UFC). Turns out that what actually works is a combination of kickboxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu. Everything else is just basically hollywood acrobatics.
    - rusk 8y ago
      UFC is a contrived scenario as well. A "real" environment is rarely so uniform or open. Jiujitsu is the best approach for the Octagon because most fights in this kind of environment end up on the ground, and ground-based grappling is what this art is optimised for.
      - MikkoFinell 8y ago
        I agree, most fights end up on the ground, and that is what jiujitsu is optimized for.
        rusk 8y ago
        Most fights where it's two guys going at it while bunch of other guys stand around yeah ... In the real world, if you want something really effective without any pretensions to being a sport or an art or anything, do Krav Maga.
robaato 8y ago
Aikido covers a rather wide spectrum of practitioners/practices - with widely varying levels of "effectiveness in real life". The key is to understand what you want and then work out if the way you are studying it (and/or with whom) will give you that.
- YorickPeterse 8y ago
  The key is to also understand that it will never help you in a fight of any kind.
  - rusk 8y ago
    I used it to great effect in a bar brawl once. I was working security, some guy swung at me and I went straight into an arm lock pinning him to the ground. Nobody hurt, no problem and I was able to restrain him with a minimal amount of effort til the other guys came and escorted him out. Aikido is great in self-defence situations where someone is coming at you. Of course the drills are contrived, their purpose is to train your muscle memory not actually to prepare you for combat. It's not great for performance really. The whole "come at me bro, but no not like that" thing is really something that only new practitioners will do because they're amazed by the power of these techniques. The real weakness of Aikido is the pressure on the joints. I'd love to do it still but my knees can't take it any more.
    - ajro 8y ago
      "I used it to great effect in a bar brawl once." My opinion is - you were lucky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUXTC8g_pk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUXTC8g_pk I don't know the guy from the video but I think his assessment is very honest and balanced.
      - rusk 8y ago
        I thought I was kind of "unlucky" to have a guy swing at me in the first place ... lucky that I'd had some kind of preparation at all! I'm a wuss I should never have been doing security ever ...
PetitPrince 8y ago
That a martial arts is "working" or "not working" is irrelevant to some of the parallels the author tries to highlight. From p9 : > The question of adequacy in martial arts is equally nonsensical — although a frequently asked question. Is such or such martial art adequate (efficient) in a real fight? You trained bare hands so what do you do in front of a knife? You train with a knife, but then what do you do in front of a gun, or an atomic bomb? Back in the middle ages, martial techniques could be considered adequate or not in such or such situation, but today, the point is different. In the modern sense, the purpose is education and self-development through martial techniques. This is what led Japan in the transition from martial techniques (Bu Jutsu) to martial arts (Budo) during the Meiji era. So just as a piece of music is adequate as soon as there is one person to enjoy it, a Budo is adequate as soon as there is one person to enjoy it for personal development
- tr0ut 8y ago
  I'll except that statement in the sense that it reduces Aikido down to interpretive dance and not (applicable) combat practices.
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    Just like all the others!
- gaius 8y ago
  The question of adequacy in martial arts is equally nonsensical Well, it is nonsensical since MMA proved beyond a shadow of doubt that BJJ beat everything else... We haven't yet settled on what programming language beats everything else however... But it is not LISP!
  - foobarrio 8y ago
    MMA showed the BJJ is a requirement to win but it's no longer sufficient. The sport has evolved. Plenty of non-BJJ guys win. Demian Maia is one of the best BJJ guys (and has been super successful) and he's gotten KO'd by strikes and had his BJJ neutralized by guys like Woodley. Back when tournaments like UFC started, ground fighting and grappling were not part of the standard repertoire of tournament fighters so those guys won. Now it is. Back in the heyday of Pride, champions like Mirko CroCop were definitely not BJJ guys. Of course they trained BJJ but it's not their only tool.
kalekold 8y ago
> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. This is the biggest fallacy people spout when evaluating Akido because they only see it being used in practise situations. Your partner has to be 'in on the ruse' so they don't get hurt! Aikido is full of extremely damaging techniques and if your partner doesn't go where you're leading them or if they don't flip and fall as you want, they would end up with a broken wrist or neck. Find your nearest dojo, have a go and see.
- kod 8y ago
  Studied Aikido for many years. Can confirm it is "that fantasy martial art". Your partner has to be in on it because otherwise you'd never have the opportunity to apply the technique; no one's going to let you e.g. just grab a wristlock off of their punch. This is all down to how it is trained, training with no resistance leads to fantasy land bullshit. Watch black belt level Aikido randori. Contrast with judo, wrestling, bjj sparring. The difference is obvious, one group is dancing in response to choreographed zombie attacks, the other is learning how to really apply techniques against resisting opponents.
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    Have done judo, and it’s just as fictitious. It just operates by a different contrived set of rules. And yes, of course aikido is choreographed. That choreography is hard as hell. On the other hand I’m pretty fearless about getting thrown. I’ve been to judo dojos and traditional jujitsu dojos where my training partners had breakthroughs because I was willing to commit completely to my attack rather than hedge my attack for fear of “losing.” Aikido is metal, because the curriculum is sprawling and deep, the ukemi is far and away the hardest part of the practice (harder than applying the techniques), and the psychology of the practice is often inscrutable to people who are fixated on an incompatible model of instrumental utility.
  - formula1 8y ago
    Jeet kune do teaches speed and improvision. If you can react to your opponent, your at an advantage. If your opponent cannot react to you, you are at an advantage. Simple and true. While knockout/stamina/appearence of futility/tap out may be a path to a win condition, there is nuance to when you have multiple opponents, are in grab/hold positions, when you want to be in a location and/or keep your opponent(s) in a location. Aikido offers a way to use momentum and joints against your opponents allowing you to have more control over space and situation you normally would. This is also helpful for transitioning into submissions or broken limbs more elligently than punch, tackle and look for an opportunity. My experience is that aikido is often taught with a delicateness and with less importance on competition/hunger. While I certainly enjoy adrenaline, winning i believe favors the adaptable which aikido seems to provide
laxd 8y ago
> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Agree to a good extent. But less so after going to a few sessions and sparring with the sensei. Had to throw myself around in all kinds of spectactular ways to avoid the pain as he put pressure on my joints. For a spectator, it may have looked like he was throwing me around and I was playing along and exaggerating.
- rusk 8y ago
  This was something I enjoyed about practising Aikido. As a 15 stone man you don't get an opportunity to be thrown around like a rag doll very often. Sensei I suspect picked on me for just that very reason :)
cujo 8y ago
I'm always fascinated how the mention of aikido brings out the venom of the "real" martial artists. Always it is the same tired arguments of how "it'll never work in a fight", "mma yada yada". I can only assume these people are somehow threatened by super mean aikidoka, or they're worried that there will be a mass slaughtering of aikidoka when they go defending justice in the night.
- keithnz 8y ago
  it's just the same reaction as when flat earthers or anti vaxxers come out of the woodwork, they seem super serious about their convictions, but it's just ridiculous. It's the same tired arguments that get used because they still remain true.
- stefantheard 8y ago
  I have also noticed a particular venom toward aikido in particular from people who train modern martial arts. I think this comes from the high level of arrogance associated with aikidoka (true or not, it is associated). It's frustrating when you encounter someone who does not spar or test themselves in any meaningful way yet is still completely convinced that they can defend themselves against trained or untrained opponents and is willing to share that belief in an arrogant way.
osteele 8y ago
> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Similarly Lisp only works when used with a cooperative compiler. And jazz is most effective when played with fellow jazz musicians, and/or for an audience that appreciates jazz. Your claim, if true, would only strengthen the analogy. > Blockchain is like the Aikido of technology. This is the owl of analogies.
- keithnz 8y ago
  I don't think comparing it to lisp is meaningful. But if you were going to compare, it's not if it had a cooperative compiler, it would be as if it had a cooperative problem. A problem that was super simple, that caused no errors or exception cases, or complicated special cases. Didn't have to be solved real time.
vorpalhex 8y ago
The goal of many modern martial arts is to bring the discipline and training to a civilian population. These are fighting techniques that were made more kind, then taught to the population as a mix of exercise, discipline and training. Not all martial arts follow this, but many do. The goal isn't to teach you how to win a street fight (take krav maga if you want to learn that), but to keep you active and help instill discipline through a fighting art. A good test is this - if there are competitions, it's probably a civilian-ized fighting form. If you used serious fighting moves on someone in a competition, it would be unsafe and you would hurt your partner.
glangdale 8y ago
The best explanation I had for the existence of the (on the surface of it preposterous) martial art of Aikido was that it was a kind of post-graduate martial art for tough guys who already knew a bunch of other stuff. Frankly most Aikido guys seriously have no clue about how to handle any real situation. Whining that real fights aren't like the UFC is ridiculous, as being ineffective in a civilized gym fight (i.e. 1:1, no weapons, etc) is not some magic predictor of being effective in a real fight unless your training is markedly more like the real situations somehow. Aikido's defenses against blows are contingent on highly telegraphic, committed lunge punches and the like, and their technique against even unsophisticated grappling is wildly overoptimistic unless the Aikidoka in question has a really serious background in other martial arts. I've met some guys with savage wrist locks and some nasty tricks from Aikido and generally good movement, but these guys were serious cross trainers and knew what a real attack looked like (non-telegraphic and semi-competent). As for the bogus versions of Aikido: Generally the process seems like a process of mutual hypnosis. Uke is taught - by pain compliance - to go along with ineffective techniques (rather than go completely off script and win), and gradually becomes more and more hypnotized. Thus those ridiculous videos of super-senior people 'throwing' Aikido people by sketching out the barest minimum of a throw in front of them. The other thing that gripes me about the bogus type of Aikido - aside from the fact that is has been the single greatest source of overconfident people convinced they could "take care of themselves" - is the number of people I've met with Aikido injuries. "OK, so you separated your shoulder when someone did a shoulder lock on you that wouldn't even work against a resisting opponent". Sigh.
- scbrg 8y ago
  Having trained Aikido for a while (and stopped, for reasons not relevant to this discussion), I have met zero people who trained it in order to be good in a fight - be it "civilized gym fight" or "real fight". I also never encountered anybody who actually had Aikido related injuries (with the possible exception of scraped feet among beginners, from poor shiko walking technique). Reading the discussion here, I get the feeling that many seem to think that practitioners of Aikido somehow think that it's for fighting. Given the demographic of Hacker News, I'm honestly beginning to suspect that this is an American mindset. Do you also rant like this about basketball, tennis, or golf? The most efficient way to win a tennis match would obviously be to shoot the opponent with a handgun and win by walkover. Yet, nobody complains that this never happens during tournaments, but, astonishingly, are happy that the tennis players... well, play tennis. Why, then, complain about Aikido being Aikido?
arca_vorago 8y ago
In defense of Akido, I know some very good martial artists (I'm talking military trained) who have been using Akido to focus their muscle memory on less violent methods, primarily for it's control techniques. It was interesting to hear the conversation go over time from removed disdain for being non-combat... to respectful admiration of how technique properly applied could control but not permanently damage an opponent... because that's not always what you want to do.
madhadron 8y ago
I assume you are drawing your opinions from practitioners in random dojos in strip malls and from the Internet. But the same can be said about most karate and tai chi studios. Yet no one disputes that there are karate and tai chi practitioners who are very proficient fighters. System matters less than practitioner. When people ask me who to study with in my area, I send them to a goju ryu practitioner I know. Does it matter than my core mechanics come from pa kua zhang? Not in the slightest. He's an amazing practitioner and teacher. If you have rolled with Didier Verna or have examples of problems in stuff he has written or otherwise posted about martial its, then point those out. Discussion of systems is never helpful.
peatmoss 8y ago
All martial arts are fantasy. Is BJJ not fantasy? Give me my aikido-whackin’-sticks and I’ll reckon I could bludgeon most any BJJ practitioner within an inch of his / her life. Is judo not fantasy? What good is your throw when someone punches you in the face or pops on a wrist lock? Is krav maga not fantasy? When do you really get to practice your eye gouging for real? Is MMA not fantasy? I find it aesthetically distasteful, but what little I’ve seen, there were clear opportunities to kill the other person, which would have expediently ended the match. All martial arts are fantasy, and if you think one is “better” than another, that’s your problem, as you haven’t even figured out the rules of the game. I train aikido 6-10 hours a week. It’s my third martial art. Why do I train aikido? It’s not because I intend to use it for self-defense. I train it because it’s wickedly good aerobic exercise that allows me to push my own body and mind harder than anything else I’ve done. I never in my life thought I'd be able to respond to as wide a range of physical attacks—not necessarily martially, but certainly athletically and safely! I jokingly refer to my own aikido practice as “fight cult” and “samurai LARPing.” All martial arts is LARPing, and people who say otherwise just haven’t figured out what they’re doing yet.
- mr_overalls 8y ago
  I think the hate for aikido is mostly due to the delusions of many aikidoka that their martial art does effectively address self-defense. I trained in aikido long enough to get a shodan, and what made me leave the art was seeing my instructor trying to teach some utterly ridiculous knife defenses to a prison guard. The guard didn't stay in the class long (thank God), and my gentle questioning of the instructor (had he actually practiced these techniques against a resisting opponent?) fell on deaf ears. Indoctrinating students with the belief that they are learning effective self-defense when they are not is morally indefensible. It gets people hurt and possibly killed. No martial art can perfectly recreate the real-world conditions under which it be used - not without compromising student safety - but some disciplines do a better job than others. To claim that aikido has flaws that are equivalent to many other more realistically-taught ones (krav maga, some schools of systema, judo, bjj, etc.) is to indulge in false equivalence. There is simply no substitute for a resisting opponent, even if the resistance takes place under sport-like rules. In science, no models are perfect, but that doesn't mean that the historical geocentric model of the earth is equivalent to the modern heliocentric one.

Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Blockchain is like the Aikido of technology.

by tr0ut 8y ago

Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Blockchain is like the Aikido of technology.

CyberDildonics 8y ago

Aikido is a fantasy, but 'a blockchain' or 'the blockchain' can be used to create a working currency obviously.

RHSeeger 8y ago

I'm curious as to your opinion of Aikido. While it's certainly purely defensive in nature, it's always seemed very effective at that goal to me.

nabla9 8y ago
Here is good Aikido in combat story from Terry Dobson who studied directly under the Morihei Ueshiba: "Aikido In Action - Doing combat with the essence of love" By Terry Dobson https://www.context.org/iclib/ic04/dobson/ https://www.context.org/iclib/ic04/dobson/
MikkoFinell 8y ago
There is a reason why Aikido is not used in MMA: Because it's completely ineffectual in a real fight.
- rusk 8y ago
  It's not great for entertainment value either. I mean it's an art that has at its very essence the eschewance of conflict. I can't speak for the efficacy of Aikido against an actual trained fighter in some other code, but if it worked the way it was meant to you'd pretty much be watching one guy dodging another guys attacks until eventually he pins him in an arm lock. Fight over.
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    I had a feeling someone was gonna post this argument: that Aikido is in actually too effective to be used in MMA. It's in fact so good defensively that there is no point in even using it :^)
    - rusk 8y ago
      It's not that it's too effective for MMA, it's that it's wholly ineffective as a sport ... It's like using a slipper to bang a nail into a wall. Yeah it kind of works but that's not what it's for ...
- YorickPeterse 8y ago
  Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go. If my memory serves me right, Jiu-Jitsu wasn't used in the professional (western) fighting scene for quite a while. Today it's pretty much a must-have for MMA. The same goes the other way around. Being an expert in Jiu-Jitsu means squat when your opponent is holding a gun, and standing 10m away from you. In other words: different flavours of martial arts/self-defence have different applications, though I would certainly consider some to be very ineffective in most situations.
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    > Something not being used in MMA doesn't necessarily mean it's completely useless, it just means it doesn't fit MMA. The sport isn't static, instead it changes as new ideas and techniques come and go. We agree about that. The thing is, if Aikido could deliver what it promises, namely that you are able to effortlessly throw people to the ground when they try to strike you, then you could be sure fighters would use those techniques.
    - rusk 8y ago
      This is a good point. Again I think it speaks more to the cosy contrived environment of the Octagon vs a real world situation. You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up. This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise. You want to gain control and retain it for the full 5 minutes.
      - MikkoFinell 8y ago
        > You throw a hardened fighter through the air and he'll hit the fence or the canvas and bounce back up. > This is precisely what you don't want to do, Aikidoka or otherwise. I'm sorry, but are you joking? I don't think you have even watched 5 minutes of MMA (and I'm certain you've never trained) if you actually believe that.
ncphillips 8y ago
The complaints are usually made against the training methods not the moves. Aikido moves are hard, the training partners response is usually rehearsed, and there’s much less focus on competitive sparring. It’s hard to learn something for real when the reactions are rehearsed. Other self defence focussed martial arts (Judo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu) have a lot more emphasis on live sparring. I’ve done all three at different points in my life. Only as a jiujitsu practitioner am I confident that I could handle myself without injuring the other party.
- MikkoFinell 8y ago
  What's even better is that there is no longer the need to theorize about which of the martial arts work and which don't, because we already ran that experiment (UFC). Turns out that what actually works is a combination of kickboxing, wrestling, and jiujitsu. Everything else is just basically hollywood acrobatics.
  - rusk 8y ago
    UFC is a contrived scenario as well. A "real" environment is rarely so uniform or open. Jiujitsu is the best approach for the Octagon because most fights in this kind of environment end up on the ground, and ground-based grappling is what this art is optimised for.
    - MikkoFinell 8y ago
      I agree, most fights end up on the ground, and that is what jiujitsu is optimized for.
      - rusk 8y ago
        Most fights where it's two guys going at it while bunch of other guys stand around yeah ... In the real world, if you want something really effective without any pretensions to being a sport or an art or anything, do Krav Maga.

robaato 8y ago

Aikido covers a rather wide spectrum of practitioners/practices - with widely varying levels of "effectiveness in real life". The key is to understand what you want and then work out if the way you are studying it (and/or with whom) will give you that.

YorickPeterse 8y ago
The key is to also understand that it will never help you in a fight of any kind.
- rusk 8y ago
  I used it to great effect in a bar brawl once. I was working security, some guy swung at me and I went straight into an arm lock pinning him to the ground. Nobody hurt, no problem and I was able to restrain him with a minimal amount of effort til the other guys came and escorted him out. Aikido is great in self-defence situations where someone is coming at you. Of course the drills are contrived, their purpose is to train your muscle memory not actually to prepare you for combat. It's not great for performance really. The whole "come at me bro, but no not like that" thing is really something that only new practitioners will do because they're amazed by the power of these techniques. The real weakness of Aikido is the pressure on the joints. I'd love to do it still but my knees can't take it any more.
  - ajro 8y ago
    "I used it to great effect in a bar brawl once." My opinion is - you were lucky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUXTC8g_pk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUXTC8g_pk I don't know the guy from the video but I think his assessment is very honest and balanced.
    - rusk 8y ago
      I thought I was kind of "unlucky" to have a guy swing at me in the first place ... lucky that I'd had some kind of preparation at all! I'm a wuss I should never have been doing security ever ...

PetitPrince 8y ago

That a martial arts is "working" or "not working" is irrelevant to some of the parallels the author tries to highlight. From p9 : > The question of adequacy in martial arts is equally nonsensical — although a frequently asked question. Is such or such martial art adequate (efficient) in a real fight? You trained bare hands so what do you do in front of a knife? You train with a knife, but then what do you do in front of a gun, or an atomic bomb? Back in the middle ages, martial techniques could be considered adequate or not in such or such situation, but today, the point is different. In the modern sense, the purpose is education and self-development through martial techniques. This is what led Japan in the transition from martial techniques (Bu Jutsu) to martial arts (Budo) during the Meiji era. So just as a piece of music is adequate as soon as there is one person to enjoy it, a Budo is adequate as soon as there is one person to enjoy it for personal development

tr0ut 8y ago
I'll except that statement in the sense that it reduces Aikido down to interpretive dance and not (applicable) combat practices.
- peatmoss 8y ago
  Just like all the others!
gaius 8y ago
The question of adequacy in martial arts is equally nonsensical Well, it is nonsensical since MMA proved beyond a shadow of doubt that BJJ beat everything else... We haven't yet settled on what programming language beats everything else however... But it is not LISP!
- foobarrio 8y ago
  MMA showed the BJJ is a requirement to win but it's no longer sufficient. The sport has evolved. Plenty of non-BJJ guys win. Demian Maia is one of the best BJJ guys (and has been super successful) and he's gotten KO'd by strikes and had his BJJ neutralized by guys like Woodley. Back when tournaments like UFC started, ground fighting and grappling were not part of the standard repertoire of tournament fighters so those guys won. Now it is. Back in the heyday of Pride, champions like Mirko CroCop were definitely not BJJ guys. Of course they trained BJJ but it's not their only tool.

kalekold 8y ago

> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. This is the biggest fallacy people spout when evaluating Akido because they only see it being used in practise situations. Your partner has to be 'in on the ruse' so they don't get hurt! Aikido is full of extremely damaging techniques and if your partner doesn't go where you're leading them or if they don't flip and fall as you want, they would end up with a broken wrist or neck. Find your nearest dojo, have a go and see.

kod 8y ago
Studied Aikido for many years. Can confirm it is "that fantasy martial art". Your partner has to be in on it because otherwise you'd never have the opportunity to apply the technique; no one's going to let you e.g. just grab a wristlock off of their punch. This is all down to how it is trained, training with no resistance leads to fantasy land bullshit. Watch black belt level Aikido randori. Contrast with judo, wrestling, bjj sparring. The difference is obvious, one group is dancing in response to choreographed zombie attacks, the other is learning how to really apply techniques against resisting opponents.
- peatmoss 8y ago
  Have done judo, and it’s just as fictitious. It just operates by a different contrived set of rules. And yes, of course aikido is choreographed. That choreography is hard as hell. On the other hand I’m pretty fearless about getting thrown. I’ve been to judo dojos and traditional jujitsu dojos where my training partners had breakthroughs because I was willing to commit completely to my attack rather than hedge my attack for fear of “losing.” Aikido is metal, because the curriculum is sprawling and deep, the ukemi is far and away the hardest part of the practice (harder than applying the techniques), and the psychology of the practice is often inscrutable to people who are fixated on an incompatible model of instrumental utility.
- formula1 8y ago
  Jeet kune do teaches speed and improvision. If you can react to your opponent, your at an advantage. If your opponent cannot react to you, you are at an advantage. Simple and true. While knockout/stamina/appearence of futility/tap out may be a path to a win condition, there is nuance to when you have multiple opponents, are in grab/hold positions, when you want to be in a location and/or keep your opponent(s) in a location. Aikido offers a way to use momentum and joints against your opponents allowing you to have more control over space and situation you normally would. This is also helpful for transitioning into submissions or broken limbs more elligently than punch, tackle and look for an opportunity. My experience is that aikido is often taught with a delicateness and with less importance on competition/hunger. While I certainly enjoy adrenaline, winning i believe favors the adaptable which aikido seems to provide

laxd 8y ago

> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Agree to a good extent. But less so after going to a few sessions and sparring with the sensei. Had to throw myself around in all kinds of spectactular ways to avoid the pain as he put pressure on my joints. For a spectator, it may have looked like he was throwing me around and I was playing along and exaggerating.

rusk 8y ago
This was something I enjoyed about practising Aikido. As a 15 stone man you don't get an opportunity to be thrown around like a rag doll very often. Sensei I suspect picked on me for just that very reason :)

cujo 8y ago

I'm always fascinated how the mention of aikido brings out the venom of the "real" martial artists. Always it is the same tired arguments of how "it'll never work in a fight", "mma yada yada". I can only assume these people are somehow threatened by super mean aikidoka, or they're worried that there will be a mass slaughtering of aikidoka when they go defending justice in the night.

keithnz 8y ago
it's just the same reaction as when flat earthers or anti vaxxers come out of the woodwork, they seem super serious about their convictions, but it's just ridiculous. It's the same tired arguments that get used because they still remain true.
stefantheard 8y ago
I have also noticed a particular venom toward aikido in particular from people who train modern martial arts. I think this comes from the high level of arrogance associated with aikidoka (true or not, it is associated). It's frustrating when you encounter someone who does not spar or test themselves in any meaningful way yet is still completely convinced that they can defend themselves against trained or untrained opponents and is willing to share that belief in an arrogant way.

osteele 8y ago

> Aikido is that fantasy martial arts. The kind that only works when the opponents are in on the ruse. Similarly Lisp only works when used with a cooperative compiler. And jazz is most effective when played with fellow jazz musicians, and/or for an audience that appreciates jazz. Your claim, if true, would only strengthen the analogy. > Blockchain is like the Aikido of technology. This is the owl of analogies.

keithnz 8y ago
I don't think comparing it to lisp is meaningful. But if you were going to compare, it's not if it had a cooperative compiler, it would be as if it had a cooperative problem. A problem that was super simple, that caused no errors or exception cases, or complicated special cases. Didn't have to be solved real time.

vorpalhex 8y ago

The goal of many modern martial arts is to bring the discipline and training to a civilian population. These are fighting techniques that were made more kind, then taught to the population as a mix of exercise, discipline and training. Not all martial arts follow this, but many do. The goal isn't to teach you how to win a street fight (take krav maga if you want to learn that), but to keep you active and help instill discipline through a fighting art. A good test is this - if there are competitions, it's probably a civilian-ized fighting form. If you used serious fighting moves on someone in a competition, it would be unsafe and you would hurt your partner.

glangdale 8y ago

The best explanation I had for the existence of the (on the surface of it preposterous) martial art of Aikido was that it was a kind of post-graduate martial art for tough guys who already knew a bunch of other stuff. Frankly most Aikido guys seriously have no clue about how to handle any real situation. Whining that real fights aren't like the UFC is ridiculous, as being ineffective in a civilized gym fight (i.e. 1:1, no weapons, etc) is not some magic predictor of being effective in a real fight unless your training is markedly more like the real situations somehow. Aikido's defenses against blows are contingent on highly telegraphic, committed lunge punches and the like, and their technique against even unsophisticated grappling is wildly overoptimistic unless the Aikidoka in question has a really serious background in other martial arts. I've met some guys with savage wrist locks and some nasty tricks from Aikido and generally good movement, but these guys were serious cross trainers and knew what a real attack looked like (non-telegraphic and semi-competent). As for the bogus versions of Aikido: Generally the process seems like a process of mutual hypnosis. Uke is taught - by pain compliance - to go along with ineffective techniques (rather than go completely off script and win), and gradually becomes more and more hypnotized. Thus those ridiculous videos of super-senior people 'throwing' Aikido people by sketching out the barest minimum of a throw in front of them. The other thing that gripes me about the bogus type of Aikido - aside from the fact that is has been the single greatest source of overconfident people convinced they could "take care of themselves" - is the number of people I've met with Aikido injuries. "OK, so you separated your shoulder when someone did a shoulder lock on you that wouldn't even work against a resisting opponent". Sigh.

scbrg 8y ago
Having trained Aikido for a while (and stopped, for reasons not relevant to this discussion), I have met zero people who trained it in order to be good in a fight - be it "civilized gym fight" or "real fight". I also never encountered anybody who actually had Aikido related injuries (with the possible exception of scraped feet among beginners, from poor shiko walking technique). Reading the discussion here, I get the feeling that many seem to think that practitioners of Aikido somehow think that it's for fighting. Given the demographic of Hacker News, I'm honestly beginning to suspect that this is an American mindset. Do you also rant like this about basketball, tennis, or golf? The most efficient way to win a tennis match would obviously be to shoot the opponent with a handgun and win by walkover. Yet, nobody complains that this never happens during tournaments, but, astonishingly, are happy that the tennis players... well, play tennis. Why, then, complain about Aikido being Aikido?

arca_vorago 8y ago

In defense of Akido, I know some very good martial artists (I'm talking military trained) who have been using Akido to focus their muscle memory on less violent methods, primarily for it's control techniques. It was interesting to hear the conversation go over time from removed disdain for being non-combat... to respectful admiration of how technique properly applied could control but not permanently damage an opponent... because that's not always what you want to do.

madhadron 8y ago

I assume you are drawing your opinions from practitioners in random dojos in strip malls and from the Internet. But the same can be said about most karate and tai chi studios. Yet no one disputes that there are karate and tai chi practitioners who are very proficient fighters. System matters less than practitioner. When people ask me who to study with in my area, I send them to a goju ryu practitioner I know. Does it matter than my core mechanics come from pa kua zhang? Not in the slightest. He's an amazing practitioner and teacher. If you have rolled with Didier Verna or have examples of problems in stuff he has written or otherwise posted about martial its, then point those out. Discussion of systems is never helpful.

peatmoss 8y ago

All martial arts are fantasy. Is BJJ not fantasy? Give me my aikido-whackin’-sticks and I’ll reckon I could bludgeon most any BJJ practitioner within an inch of his / her life. Is judo not fantasy? What good is your throw when someone punches you in the face or pops on a wrist lock? Is krav maga not fantasy? When do you really get to practice your eye gouging for real? Is MMA not fantasy? I find it aesthetically distasteful, but what little I’ve seen, there were clear opportunities to kill the other person, which would have expediently ended the match. All martial arts are fantasy, and if you think one is “better” than another, that’s your problem, as you haven’t even figured out the rules of the game. I train aikido 6-10 hours a week. It’s my third martial art. Why do I train aikido? It’s not because I intend to use it for self-defense. I train it because it’s wickedly good aerobic exercise that allows me to push my own body and mind harder than anything else I’ve done. I never in my life thought I'd be able to respond to as wide a range of physical attacks—not necessarily martially, but certainly athletically and safely! I jokingly refer to my own aikido practice as “fight cult” and “samurai LARPing.” All martial arts is LARPing, and people who say otherwise just haven’t figured out what they’re doing yet.

mr_overalls 8y ago
I think the hate for aikido is mostly due to the delusions of many aikidoka that their martial art does effectively address self-defense. I trained in aikido long enough to get a shodan, and what made me leave the art was seeing my instructor trying to teach some utterly ridiculous knife defenses to a prison guard. The guard didn't stay in the class long (thank God), and my gentle questioning of the instructor (had he actually practiced these techniques against a resisting opponent?) fell on deaf ears. Indoctrinating students with the belief that they are learning effective self-defense when they are not is morally indefensible. It gets people hurt and possibly killed. No martial art can perfectly recreate the real-world conditions under which it be used - not without compromising student safety - but some disciplines do a better job than others. To claim that aikido has flaws that are equivalent to many other more realistically-taught ones (krav maga, some schools of systema, judo, bjj, etc.) is to indulge in false equivalence. There is simply no substitute for a resisting opponent, even if the resistance takes place under sport-like rules. In science, no models are perfect, but that doesn't mean that the historical geocentric model of the earth is equivalent to the modern heliocentric one.