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A follow-up interview by the same author with Sam Harris on the techniques of unarmed combat against armed attackers: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archi

A follow-up interview by the same author with Sam Harris on the techniques of unarmed combat against armed attackers: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what-martial-arts-have-to-do-with-atheism/275273/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/what-mar...

gadders 14y ago
This: Most martial artists have done knife-defense drills where their partners attack in a very stereotyped way--lunging forward with a single thrust and leaving their arm out there so that you can perform the technique. This is just a pantomime of combat, and it is dangerously misleading. This was why I found traditional martial arts like karate to be daft. They only seemed to teach you defence against someone else who punches like a karateka.
- krapp 14y ago
  Any decent martial art will take pains point out the difference between art and science though. I practice kenpo for instance and my sensei is crystal clear about how stupid it would be to use anything in a kata in real life. It's more to build muscle memory, self awareness of the body and a knowledge of the mechanics of combat. For the most part, I think traditional martial arts can be seen as a form of dance. It's not something to be applied as much as interpreted. Many of these disciplines were used to train actual soldiers, warriors, and peasants after all. I think their real value comes in not taking them at face value though. Obviously ymmv in regards to any particular art.
  - kevinskii 14y ago
    Your sensei has common sense. A lot of them don't. Years ago, one of my college philosophy professors brought in her sensei to give the class a demonstration in kung fu. At one point he lightly pinched his opponent (a fellow black belt) on the chest, and the man collapsed to the ground in agony. "Pressure points are very real," said the sensei. "Anyone who doesn't believe it can come up for a demonstration afterwards." The class laughed nervously. Afterwards I approached him and said I was skeptical, and asked if he could demonstrate on me while I stood there and did nothing. The class gathered around us in a circle. I really thought he'd make a believer out of me, and just hoped I could refrain from peeing myself in front of everyone. It was all bullshit. No matter which nerves he tried to poke or prod, it just wasn't that painful. He then tried to deflect attention from his failure by showing some cool way he could put me in an arm lock, which would only work as long as I didn't jerk my arm away while he was doing it. I think he honestly believed that he was a lethal killing machine. The problem with idiots like him is they tend to convince too many students that they're actually learning self-defense.
    - krapp 14y ago
      Nerve strikes sometimes work and sometimes don't, which is an annoying detail martial artists seem rarely to mention. There is some science to some of it, buried deep deep under the mysticism and bs. Unfortunately, people expect "five palm exploding heart" when the best they can hope for is probably "make someone's arm go numb if you're lucky and they're arranged right." Arm locks are the same way... they can work on the right person for like a second or two (i've been the dummy for that) but after that you're supposed to do something. Put the cuffs on them or step on their neck or break their arm or something. Punching them in the throat always works though.
      - scott_s 14y ago
        Arm locks can work for much more than "a second or two." Watch Brazilian jiu jitsu, submission grappling, or even MMA competitions. But, in order to maintain the control of an arm lock, you often have to go to the ground. When standing, people have too much freedom of movement.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      I was at the rules meeting for an amateur MMA competition one time. (Someone I trained with was fighting, not me.) Someone asked if pressure points were legal, and the entire room rolled their eyes. The official paused for a second and said, yes, you can use "pressure points." I don't remember what happened to that fighter, but I know he didn't win through pressure points.
- bluedino 14y ago
  > They only seemed to teach you defence against someone else who punches like a karateka. Good thing the lower-level students show very little technique during sparring.
- mattvanhorn 14y ago
  I was listening to Robson Moura (BJJ black belt) talk about why he loves the art so much. He said something like: when you walk out of a karate class, after a lot of sparring, you feel like a tough-guy who's ready to kick some ass, but when you walk out of a BJJ class, where people smaller than you have just repeatedly demonstrated that they could kill you with their bare hands, you feel very humbled. The effects on ego tend to weed out a lot of assholes, and between this and the mental challenges of the sport, it is one of the reasons I've come to love it. (Ryron & Rener also do a pretty good job of distinguishing between self-defense and sport jiu jitsu, at least in the videos I've seen from them.)
gojomo 14y ago
I'm not familiar with the full range of Harris' writings, but I found it interesting that as an explicit and unapologetic 'atheist', Harris actually says at one point: ...we don't know what happens after death. It is in the context of discussing death with a child, but still... the hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens: nothing, the total cessation of experience. To say "we don't know" seems to allow for some tiny shred of religious mystery, which I didn't expect from Harris.
- icebraining 14y ago
  the hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens: nothing, the total cessation of experience. Why do you think so?
  - gojomo 14y ago
    To be firmly and insistently ('hardcore') atheist suggests to me ruling out the idea that there is anything diety-like, because there is no good evidence for it. The question of experience after death seems to me very similar to the question of the existence of dieties. The fact that beliefs about dieties and about the afterlife are usually linked in the same belief structure increases my confidence that the two subjects are often reasoned about the same way. I would therefore expect someone who thinks, after considering all evidence (or the lack thereof), that there are no dieties to also believe, based on similar evidence (or lack thereof) that there is no experience after death. Harris has not (as far as I know) said that "we don't know" if there are dieties. Indeed, here's an old interview where Harris criticizes agnosticism as "not an intellectually honest position": http://web.archive.org/web/20100313075830/http://www.truthdig.com/report/page4/20060403_sam_harris_interview/?/interview/page4/20060403_sam_harris_interview/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100313075830/http://www.truthdi...
    - dragonwriter 14y ago
      > To be firmly and insistently ('hardcore') atheist suggests to me ruling out the idea that there is anything diety-like, because there is no good evidence for it. This assumes that a hardcore atheist must arrive at that position by being a hardcore positivist/empiricist. This is an unwarranted assumption.

gadders 14y ago

This: Most martial artists have done knife-defense drills where their partners attack in a very stereotyped way--lunging forward with a single thrust and leaving their arm out there so that you can perform the technique. This is just a pantomime of combat, and it is dangerously misleading. This was why I found traditional martial arts like karate to be daft. They only seemed to teach you defence against someone else who punches like a karateka.

krapp 14y ago
Any decent martial art will take pains point out the difference between art and science though. I practice kenpo for instance and my sensei is crystal clear about how stupid it would be to use anything in a kata in real life. It's more to build muscle memory, self awareness of the body and a knowledge of the mechanics of combat. For the most part, I think traditional martial arts can be seen as a form of dance. It's not something to be applied as much as interpreted. Many of these disciplines were used to train actual soldiers, warriors, and peasants after all. I think their real value comes in not taking them at face value though. Obviously ymmv in regards to any particular art.
- kevinskii 14y ago
  Your sensei has common sense. A lot of them don't. Years ago, one of my college philosophy professors brought in her sensei to give the class a demonstration in kung fu. At one point he lightly pinched his opponent (a fellow black belt) on the chest, and the man collapsed to the ground in agony. "Pressure points are very real," said the sensei. "Anyone who doesn't believe it can come up for a demonstration afterwards." The class laughed nervously. Afterwards I approached him and said I was skeptical, and asked if he could demonstrate on me while I stood there and did nothing. The class gathered around us in a circle. I really thought he'd make a believer out of me, and just hoped I could refrain from peeing myself in front of everyone. It was all bullshit. No matter which nerves he tried to poke or prod, it just wasn't that painful. He then tried to deflect attention from his failure by showing some cool way he could put me in an arm lock, which would only work as long as I didn't jerk my arm away while he was doing it. I think he honestly believed that he was a lethal killing machine. The problem with idiots like him is they tend to convince too many students that they're actually learning self-defense.
  - krapp 14y ago
    Nerve strikes sometimes work and sometimes don't, which is an annoying detail martial artists seem rarely to mention. There is some science to some of it, buried deep deep under the mysticism and bs. Unfortunately, people expect "five palm exploding heart" when the best they can hope for is probably "make someone's arm go numb if you're lucky and they're arranged right." Arm locks are the same way... they can work on the right person for like a second or two (i've been the dummy for that) but after that you're supposed to do something. Put the cuffs on them or step on their neck or break their arm or something. Punching them in the throat always works though.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Arm locks can work for much more than "a second or two." Watch Brazilian jiu jitsu, submission grappling, or even MMA competitions. But, in order to maintain the control of an arm lock, you often have to go to the ground. When standing, people have too much freedom of movement.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I was at the rules meeting for an amateur MMA competition one time. (Someone I trained with was fighting, not me.) Someone asked if pressure points were legal, and the entire room rolled their eyes. The official paused for a second and said, yes, you can use "pressure points." I don't remember what happened to that fighter, but I know he didn't win through pressure points.
bluedino 14y ago
> They only seemed to teach you defence against someone else who punches like a karateka. Good thing the lower-level students show very little technique during sparring.
mattvanhorn 14y ago
I was listening to Robson Moura (BJJ black belt) talk about why he loves the art so much. He said something like: when you walk out of a karate class, after a lot of sparring, you feel like a tough-guy who's ready to kick some ass, but when you walk out of a BJJ class, where people smaller than you have just repeatedly demonstrated that they could kill you with their bare hands, you feel very humbled. The effects on ego tend to weed out a lot of assholes, and between this and the mental challenges of the sport, it is one of the reasons I've come to love it. (Ryron & Rener also do a pretty good job of distinguishing between self-defense and sport jiu jitsu, at least in the videos I've seen from them.)

gojomo 14y ago

I'm not familiar with the full range of Harris' writings, but I found it interesting that as an explicit and unapologetic 'atheist', Harris actually says at one point: ...we don't know what happens after death. It is in the context of discussing death with a child, but still... the hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens: nothing, the total cessation of experience. To say "we don't know" seems to allow for some tiny shred of religious mystery, which I didn't expect from Harris.

icebraining 14y ago
the hardcore atheist position would seem to be that we do know what happens: nothing, the total cessation of experience. Why do you think so?
- gojomo 14y ago
  To be firmly and insistently ('hardcore') atheist suggests to me ruling out the idea that there is anything diety-like, because there is no good evidence for it. The question of experience after death seems to me very similar to the question of the existence of dieties. The fact that beliefs about dieties and about the afterlife are usually linked in the same belief structure increases my confidence that the two subjects are often reasoned about the same way. I would therefore expect someone who thinks, after considering all evidence (or the lack thereof), that there are no dieties to also believe, based on similar evidence (or lack thereof) that there is no experience after death. Harris has not (as far as I know) said that "we don't know" if there are dieties. Indeed, here's an old interview where Harris criticizes agnosticism as "not an intellectually honest position": http://web.archive.org/web/20100313075830/http://www.truthdig.com/report/page4/20060403_sam_harris_interview/?/interview/page4/20060403_sam_harris_interview/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100313075830/http://www.truthdi...
  - dragonwriter 14y ago
    > To be firmly and insistently ('hardcore') atheist suggests to me ruling out the idea that there is anything diety-like, because there is no good evidence for it. This assumes that a hardcore atheist must arrive at that position by being a hardcore positivist/empiricist. This is an unwarranted assumption.