19 ms·

I wonder whether the benefits are for those being trained or those doing the training. It seems to me the greatest trick of waging war is to convince people to

by dejb 18y ago

I wonder whether the benefits are for those being trained or those doing the training. It seems to me the greatest trick of waging war is to convince people to put their lives at risk against an enemy that did not originally threaten them. Some people might refer to this phenomena as brain washing.

gaius 18y ago
Cops, paramedics and firefighters all put their lives at risk going into situations that did not originally threaten them. Yet no-one would describe them as "brainwashed".
- dejb 18y ago
  There is a certain threshold of dangerous and selfless action that defies ordinary logic. In the cases of direct and unambiguous help to others it is called heroism. In cases where the action causes harm to some parties the definition is less clear. In the worst cases it is referred to as terrorism. Either way the readiness to face mortal danger can be used for both good and evil. Whether it represents brainwashing however is a different question.
  - greyboy 18y ago
    That makes it sound rather subjective, then.
    - Tangurena 18y ago
      Not subjective. It boils down more to feel the fear, but do it anyway. Which is the point of stress innoculation in basic training, police academy, the more advanced stuff of special forces, or even SERE. Grossman's books describe the physiological effects of stress and combat. Some of the responses are also caused by folks not understanding just what has happened to them, and why is their body acting like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_a... High speed driving tends to drive adrenaline levels way up. Police brutality complaints are much higher in the aftermath of high speed pursuits. Yet the tunnel vision and other responses of that kind of driving also affects non-police drivers. We had an incident here in Denver where an ambulance driver t-boned a light rail train. How the heck could someone not see something that's 15 feet tall and 200 feet long? Adrenaline poisoning will do it to you. And I contend that could have been anyone who did that, as well. It takes "innoculation" to learn how your body behaves in these situations, and to do the "right" thing despite what your body wants to do (which in my case is usually puke and soil myself).
  - run4yourlives 18y ago
    dejb, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you haven't actually been exposed to any form of military training, have you? While you may feel this to be irrelevant, I can assure you that you aren't quite able to grasp the nuances and evolved thinking behind this type of "performance under stress" training unless you have experienced it firsthand. Being an observer isn't good enough. It's "brainwashing" only in as much as all other forms of teaching are brainwashing. Which is to say that it is not.
    - dejb 18y ago
      > While you may feel this to be irrelevant I actually think it is quite relevant. If I'm right then you have been to some extent brainwashed into the thinking that the training is reasonable. Your response makes sense if you had been brainwashed or if you hadn't. Of course this doesn't prove anything either way. The point is that the proper identification of brainwashing is always going to come from an external observer. To me the process I have heard described of 'breaking someone down and then building them up again' is the definition of brainwashing.
      - run4yourlives 18y ago
        You make a valid point. I think where we differ is in our definition of what constitutes "brainwashing".
scott_s 18y ago
Actually, the greatest trick of waging war is to convince people to kill other people, and that's done with plain ol' operant conditioning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning Read "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." The author, Dave Grossman, is an Army Ranger and a Psychology professor at West Point. He lays down an argument that most people have a strong, instinctual resistance to killing. In WWI, only about 20% on the front lines even fired their weapons. That rose during WWII and Korea until during Vietnam, it was closer to 95%. He attributes the change to modern training methods which are basically operant conditioning. (He also has fascinating interviews with veterans about their experiences. But the book sometimes feels like someone's dissertation, and at the end, he tries to make the same claim with violent media, which I don't think holds. Watching something is very different from doing something.)
- qazwsxedc 18y ago
  It improved with attempts to dehumanise the enemy (Germans -> krauts -> Gooks) and the distance with which you face them (hand-hand in a trench -> carpet bombing of jungle) It has swung back the other way with soldiers have a live view of the target in a sight/TV picture - the proportion of willing to kill has reduced.
  - scott_s 18y ago
    Grossman covers this in his book. He covers much more than I can summarize in a HN post, so check it out if the subject interests you.
  - gaius 18y ago
    the proportion of willing to kill has reduced Citation?
- Radix 18y ago
  I think it holds to a point. Watching something allows you to think it, and thinking something can take you about half way. Many people couldn't couldn't surgically cut someone open, too squemish, but after watching it done they could at least think it.

by dejb 18y ago

gaius 18y ago

Cops, paramedics and firefighters all put their lives at risk going into situations that did not originally threaten them. Yet no-one would describe them as "brainwashed".

dejb 18y ago
There is a certain threshold of dangerous and selfless action that defies ordinary logic. In the cases of direct and unambiguous help to others it is called heroism. In cases where the action causes harm to some parties the definition is less clear. In the worst cases it is referred to as terrorism. Either way the readiness to face mortal danger can be used for both good and evil. Whether it represents brainwashing however is a different question.
- greyboy 18y ago
  That makes it sound rather subjective, then.
  - Tangurena 18y ago
    Not subjective. It boils down more to feel the fear, but do it anyway. Which is the point of stress innoculation in basic training, police academy, the more advanced stuff of special forces, or even SERE. Grossman's books describe the physiological effects of stress and combat. Some of the responses are also caused by folks not understanding just what has happened to them, and why is their body acting like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_a... High speed driving tends to drive adrenaline levels way up. Police brutality complaints are much higher in the aftermath of high speed pursuits. Yet the tunnel vision and other responses of that kind of driving also affects non-police drivers. We had an incident here in Denver where an ambulance driver t-boned a light rail train. How the heck could someone not see something that's 15 feet tall and 200 feet long? Adrenaline poisoning will do it to you. And I contend that could have been anyone who did that, as well. It takes "innoculation" to learn how your body behaves in these situations, and to do the "right" thing despite what your body wants to do (which in my case is usually puke and soil myself).
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  dejb, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you haven't actually been exposed to any form of military training, have you? While you may feel this to be irrelevant, I can assure you that you aren't quite able to grasp the nuances and evolved thinking behind this type of "performance under stress" training unless you have experienced it firsthand. Being an observer isn't good enough. It's "brainwashing" only in as much as all other forms of teaching are brainwashing. Which is to say that it is not.
  - dejb 18y ago
    > While you may feel this to be irrelevant I actually think it is quite relevant. If I'm right then you have been to some extent brainwashed into the thinking that the training is reasonable. Your response makes sense if you had been brainwashed or if you hadn't. Of course this doesn't prove anything either way. The point is that the proper identification of brainwashing is always going to come from an external observer. To me the process I have heard described of 'breaking someone down and then building them up again' is the definition of brainwashing.
    - run4yourlives 18y ago
      You make a valid point. I think where we differ is in our definition of what constitutes "brainwashing".

scott_s 18y ago

Actually, the greatest trick of waging war is to convince people to kill other people, and that's done with plain ol' operant conditioning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning Read "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." The author, Dave Grossman, is an Army Ranger and a Psychology professor at West Point. He lays down an argument that most people have a strong, instinctual resistance to killing. In WWI, only about 20% on the front lines even fired their weapons. That rose during WWII and Korea until during Vietnam, it was closer to 95%. He attributes the change to modern training methods which are basically operant conditioning. (He also has fascinating interviews with veterans about their experiences. But the book sometimes feels like someone's dissertation, and at the end, he tries to make the same claim with violent media, which I don't think holds. Watching something is very different from doing something.)

qazwsxedc 18y ago
It improved with attempts to dehumanise the enemy (Germans -> krauts -> Gooks) and the distance with which you face them (hand-hand in a trench -> carpet bombing of jungle) It has swung back the other way with soldiers have a live view of the target in a sight/TV picture - the proportion of willing to kill has reduced.
- scott_s 18y ago
  Grossman covers this in his book. He covers much more than I can summarize in a HN post, so check it out if the subject interests you.
- gaius 18y ago
  the proportion of willing to kill has reduced Citation?
Radix 18y ago
I think it holds to a point. Watching something allows you to think it, and thinking something can take you about half way. Many people couldn't couldn't surgically cut someone open, too squemish, but after watching it done they could at least think it.