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Ender's Game Influences US Army Training

Posted by chrisd on from the and-demosthenes-for-our-foreign-policy dept.

PortWineBoy writes "Although we've been bombarded in the last few weeks with techno tales of the U.S. Army, I found this story in the NY Times (FRRYYY) to be quite interesting. The director of the Army's simulation technology center said that Ender's game influenced how and what they will build for future training." Begin Mazer Rackham Analogies...

18 of 493 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Didn't Ender's tactics involve genocide?

    1. Re:Hmm by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Interesting
      True, in the book, the adults set Ender up. They told him not to shot planets, and told him it was a game. Then in the final round, when he was going to lose anyway, he broke the rules. They knew that Ender would bend or break the rules to win from all the battle room drills.

      Ender at least didn't try to evade responsibility for his actions. They were done in ignorance, but he admits he did them.

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    2. Re:Hmm by LordLucless · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, the point they made in Ender's Game was that his advantage came in being able to "submerge himself in someone else's will" (ie: empathy). The essential paradox of the perfect general is someone who is able to empathize with his opponent perfectly, but at the same time, is able to destroy them.



      ** Spoiler Alert **
      (Though if you RTFA its already spoilt it)

      That's why they had to resort to deception at the end of the novel. Because if Ender had known that he was actually killing the Buggers, his natural empathy, which made him a brilliant general, wouldn't be allow him to kill them.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  2. military leaders all under 15? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ender's Game and the following books are all great. But I'm not sure that we need a bunch of army commanders who haven't hit puberty yet who are lied to and told that they are really playing a top-secret version of C&C Generals, that just happens to play out in real time and not have a pause?

    Also, the whole book is basicaly about child abuse sponsored by the governemnt. Interesting reading, but maybe not the ideal way to create well-adjusted officers.

    1. Re:military leaders all under 15? by iq+in+binary · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Also, the whole book is basicaly about child abuse sponsored by the governemnt. Interesting reading, but maybe not the ideal way to create well-adjusted officers.

      I strongly disagree. Orson Scott Card did not ever have the intention of portraying a world where child abuse is sponsored by the government. It portrays a world focused on one thing: survival of the species. As much as it may be understood as child abuse, that's not the case. Orson Scott Card did a very innovative thing with Ender's Game, he put the survival of our race as a whole in the hands of a good-hearted pre-pubescent with a wit to match any debate team leader out there.

      The way I see it, I'd much rather have an officer trained to ensure the survival of his fellows rather than his own. This is exactly what Ender was trained to do (albeit in an extremely subtle yet very blunt matter).

      Yes, what Card prosed to be done to Ender was wrong morally. What you need to realize is that it's what needs to be done to ensure the lives of countless more children his age.

      Sacrifice is needed for gain, my friend. As horrible as it may be, sometimes these sacrifices are tragic. Beauty of it? Martyrdom is easily gained by those with even the smallest amount of selflesness ;)

      --
      Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last ;)
  3. Orson Scott Card rules! by nikkelitous · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Orson Scott Card is one of the best writers in todays time. Ender's game had brilliant military strategies. Ignoring the Xenocide and child millitaries it has some wonderful concepts. Ender had few advantages over other 'armies' but he always pulled out ahead. Why? Because he kept the enemies guessing. They had no clue what was comming next. I think this is a good idea for our future millitary. Just so long as we keep ourselves controled.

  4. Commander by Bullet-Dodger · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I remember reading (here it is) that the army had made Ender's Game required reading.

    When the Marine University at Quantico required students in one class to read Ender's Game, it wasn't for the strategy -- tactics in 3D space aren't really a big deal for the Marines. Rather, it was because Ender's Game is virtually a textbook in how to develop a strong relationship between a commander and his troops -- with plenty of examples also in how to fail as a commander.
    In Ender's Shadow it's said that Bean is actually more technically gifted then Ender but Ender is the perfect commander.
  5. Actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in the US Army, and the US Marine Corp, we use various computer simulations and "games" to train for combat. Helo pilots use these fancy simulators, as do the mechanized armor guys. Not only do we use graphics simulation, but also there are computer generated missions/scenarios (not like video games) that adapt to how you chose to execute a mission. For instance, you are given a situation, and you have several choices you can make, and then the system responds to your decisions (sometimes increasing the difficulty if you make a stupid decision) and presents you with a changed situation. I'm sorry, the Army psychologists do a better job at describing these new tools.

    Anyway, these are in their infancy, but the Army plans to expand upon this to help soldiers expand their ability to make sound decisions. I.E., think about the consequences before you do something. The goal here is that if you can become comfortable with making logical, thought-through choices at the computer, then in battle or what-have-you, you will fall back on this "naturalized" ability.

  6. is ruthless efficiency the answer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What happens when the lines between simulation and reality are blurred to the point where it IS Ender's game. Where are battalion of super soldiers swoop down and decimate their opponents with no though to reaction to it all. Like in Ender's game, where what seemed like another game was war, genocide.

    While I think it would be absurd to be less efficient than possible, the spirit of American warfare must be upheld. We are not interested in conquest. After WW2, America could have taken over the world. McArthur was about to! If we are truly interested in liberation, freedom, and the plight of all men then these ideals should be a the forefront of the military's thinking. Not saying they aren't, but it certainly is not a part of "tactical simulations" like Counter Strike or Unreal Tournament.

  7. Others by gailwynand · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Marine Corps also encourages the reading of Sun Tzu's Art of War - centuries old and still a great set of military insights. Also encouraged is Starship Troopers - which is best read as an ode to the infantry, and exemplifies the esprit de corps that the Marines strive for.

    --
    A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.-Mark Twain
  8. Re:What I remember of Ender's Game. by Bicoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not quite. At first, the Buggers didn't realize that humans are individuals rather than a Hive Mind. The Buggers finally got it after the second Bugger War. Humans didn't know that the Buggers had figured that out and were going to leave them alone, so they sent in a preemptive strike to wipe them all out.

    Point is, the Buggers weren't always ramen, they were originally quite dangerous, in the same way a kindergardner with a shotgun is dangerous. They didn't know they were going to cause harm by doing what they did and didn't fully comprehend what it was that they had done until quite a long time later.

    Though I really don't think that has a whole lot to do with the present military situation...

    --
    If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
  9. "We aint a gonna study war no more" by RalphTWaP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As unsettling as I find this, I also find it appropriate.

    History has always demarked a division between civilians and military, both in the traditions of service, and deeper, in the psyche. Plato demarked the guardian's education as beginning with fiction [337a]. And it was a key to this education that it twisted the basic nature of those who would be guardians, demarking them mentally from the populace. This is a key concept in the training of warriors that has survived in literature and drama through the ages (in our time, you need only see the unifying concepts behind group-identity put forward in studies of the German troops of WWII, or Card's work, let alone the psych studies that _do_ point out a greater tendancy to follow orders and act cohesively with a rigorous group-constructed identity).

    Is it any wonder that a society adept at mass production would find ways to mass produce those things that still must be men and not machines?

    Is this a criticism of the men and women who serve? By no means. The psychological conditioning they receive is no less responsible for their survival and success than their physical training.

    Is it grounds for a critique of an immature, and childlike race (mankind) who still finds war regrettably necessary? Perhaps. At least, however, it's highly unlikely that the children of those so trained will value war as highly as we do today.

  10. Re:MacArthur's gotten a bad rap by AndroidCat · · Score: 2, Interesting
    an example of [Western] imperialism streching out through history .. That said, we lucked out with Japan.

    Indeed. Here's what happens when it goes wrong. Looks/sounds sadly familiar, don't it? (Start with the top item.) Right down to bickering over who gets the spoils of war.

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  11. Americas Army by Vengeance_au · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm surprised there was no mention of Americas Army in that article - I'm aware that the games primary focus is as a PR tool, however I would have thought it could also be used as an effective tool for training and simulation. Hell, even better on the PR angle, let the players who clock up 10+ hrs of AA per week that they can continue playing the game when they join up and it counts towards their training time, and watch them line up......

  12. Not new to use video games: BattleZone by oaklybonn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I once worked with a guy that worked for Atari; the army commissioned a custom version of BattleZone for their tank trainers. I've been trying to find a better link, but for now, this site discussing battlezone: dadgum.com:
    What's the story behind the U.S. Army version of "Battlezone"?
    There was a group of consultants for the Army--a bunch of retired generals and such--that approached Atari with the idea that the technology for "Battlezone" could be used to make a training simulator for the then new Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The idea was that such a simulator could be made into a game that would encourage the soldiers to use it. They would learn not only the basic operation of the IFV technology, but would also learn to distinguish between the friendly and enemy vehicle silhouettes.
    They approached us with this in December of 1980 and found a champion in the company in Rick Moncrief. They wanted a prototype to be finished in time for a worldwide TRADOC conference, being held via satellite, in March 1981.
    and more...visit the site
  13. I used to think that, until I read this: by Idou · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
    ----------

    Samuel P. Huntington

    Ever been to Japan lately? Besides the occasional McDonalds, you will find that things are really quite different there. People's notions of freedom are very different, and they have very different motivations than Americans.

    Bombs only change the landscape. If the world were to agree on the main virtue of its American ruler, it would be the accuracy of which its bombs land.

    Nothing more, nothing less.

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
  14. Leaders or Sociopaths? by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is there anyone else that is good at getting people to do what they want but no longer does so for moral reasons? People aren't toys to manipulate to your own game. I used to be a major sociopath that sort of viewed humans as toys or pets. Controlling the majority of people is really easy.

    Life is much MUCH harder now that I've decide it's wrong to behave that way. It seems you can't really advance much in life unless you are an asshole. (I can say that about sociopaths since I am one.)

    The main reason I decided being manipulative was wrong ss that it's very easy to have less and less respect for the people you manipulate. It becomes easy to abuse them in other ways. You tend to think of people as belonging to you as livestock might. It's easy to get into brutality and sexual abuse and things such as that.

    When I see somebody that seems to have a lot of power or be some great leader I have to wonder how they got there.

    http://home.datawest.net/esn-recovery/artcls/soc io .htm

    --
    At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  15. Orson Scott Card's genocide connection by geoswan · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There is a small town in Southern Alberta called Cardston. I lived there for a while, when I worked on the neighbouring Reserve(*). I didn't realized there was a connection with Orson Scott Card.

    Maybe I should have. I knew Card was a Mormon. So was the founder of Cardston, one Joseph Ora Card. His little homestead is preserverd at the southern end of town. There is a little plaque there, saying he was the first Mormon to leave Utah and settle in Canada.

    Orson Scott Card's book "Seventh Son" takes place around 200 years ago in a parallel universe where magic works -- little magic -- not world-shaking magic. In the sequel his little hero spends some time learning native magic.

    And Scott dedicates that book to an ancestor of his, whose life was saved by natives on the Canadian frontier.

    Well, I heard the native's version of this story too.

    First a little context. The Blood Reserve is about 600 square miles. Their own name for themselves is Kainai, which translates as "Many Cheifs". They were part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. They were one of the Plains Nations which had depended on the Buffalo.

    Well, their version is that Joseph Ora Card arrived on the land Treaty Seven had granted them, and threw himself on their mercy. His wives and children were ill. Would the natives feed them? Would the natives let them stay, over the winter, in this little valley?

    The elders were compassionate. They let Card, and his sick family, stay over for the winter.

    That winter they were struck by a horrible smallpox epidemic. Two thirds of the natives died that winter. They had more serious problems to deal with than to wonder why the Card family had not left, as they had promised.

    In their version Card wrote to Utah, and invited all his friends to come join him.

    The Oldman River forks just upstream from Lethbridge. The natives oral tradition is that Treaty Seven granted them all the land between the two branches of the Oldman River, to the border with the USA. There is a Blackfoot Reservation just the other side of the border there. Is possession 90% of the law? Mormons settled all the land south of Cardston, to the US border.

    The natives believe that Card stole a big strip of their land.

    Personally I think Orson Scott Card was extremely insensitive to write that dedication, given the animosity between the natives and the Mormons in that part of the world.

    What is the genocide connection? Where did the natives get smallpox? Might it have been from Card's family? His wives and children were sick. That would certainly be tragic. In fairness, there are other theories of how the natives came to become infected. Still Joseph Ora Card doesn't seem to have hesitated to take advantage of the natives who had been kind to him.

    (*) The Canadian government calls them "reserves". The American government calls them "reservations".