The problem isn't always getting them to fire, it's getting them to actively try to kill people.
From "Behavioral Economics: Lessons from the Military" (Alexander J. Field), mostly quoting On Killing by LTC Grossman:
A well trained solider could expect to get off 4 or 5 shots a minute. In drills soldiers spent five percent of their time firing; the remainder was consumed by the loading process. As Grossman notes, if most soldiers were attempting to load and fire as fast as they could, then 19 times out of 20 they should have fallen with a weapon not ready to be fired. Moreover, a fallen comradeâ(TM)s loaded, cocked, and primed weapon would have been taken up by a survivor and fired (Grossman, 1995, p. 22). In light of this, the number of unfired weapons recovered from the battlefield is truly surprising. The thousands of rifles with multiple charges indicate that many, many soldiers went through the drill of loading, then neglected or chose not to fire, and then commenced again with the reloading process.
In the eighteenth century, the Prussian army conducted experiments in which a battalion of infantry fired smoothbore muskets at a target 100' by 6', designed to simulate an opposing infantry battalion (smoothbore muskets were less accurate than the rifled Springfields or Enfields used in the Civil War). At 225 yards, one out of four shots fired by the Prussian soldiers hit their mark. At 150 yards this rose to 40 percent, and at 75 yards to 60 percent.
The Prussian studies indicate a 60 percent hit rate at 75 yards. Facing off against a 200 man battalion at 75 yards, 120 men on each side should have been hit in the first volley. Since it is generally agreed that the effectiveness of a combat unit often distintegrates at the 50 percent casualty rate, such withering fire should have ended battles quickly. And yet the historical evidence indicates both that these battles typically went on for several hours and sometimes days and that typically only one or two men per minute died in exchanges between battalion strength units (Griffith, 1989). High casualty rates were apparently the result not of intense and effectively aimed fire, but of the fact that battles persisted for a long time (the introduction of artillery fire could also raise the fatality rate). Obviously, even at a kill rate of 1-2 per minute, hundreds or even thousands of men could die over the course of such a battle.
For example, the battle of Antietam in 1862 during the American Civil War killed almost 6,000 soldiers (US Army Field Manual 7-21-13, 2003, ch. 2). But the battle lasted 12 hours, which means men were dying at a rate of "only" about 8 per minute. The battle was certainly bloody, but the casualties resulted from the length of the battle, not a potential rate of killing using rifled muskets at close range that was much higher. Estimates of casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg vary, but again, it appears that total deaths over the three day period were in the range of 6,000. Assuming 12 hours of fighting per day, this works out to under 3 men per minute killed (four or five times as many men experienced wounds, of varying severity.)
GP: "the injunction stopping the friend from carrying out the murder grows successively weaker with each ultra-realistic simulated murder"
P: "No it does not, because a simulation is still a simulation"...
Me: Yes it does. Simulation is exactly how we reduce that "injunction".
I didn't say it creates a predisposition. Check out "On Killing" by LTC (Ret.) Grossman.
Normal person, placed into a situation whereby he might kill someone, is held back several things. One of which is the natural human aversion to murder. That's why soldiers purposely missed eachother, while using individual weapons, up until recently.
A person conditioned to kill (conditioned...not taught) in the same situation, has one less reason not to kill.
Repetitive, realistic, simulated scenarios whereby you must kill opponents and are rewarded for doing so, is the definition of combat conditioning...and some video games it turns out.
Why don't soldiers kill everyone all the time? They are also conditioned to be controllable. Firing only at what they are told to, when they are told to. Go ahead and be that guy that fires at the range before the range tower tells you to.
In Iraq, I was faced with plenty of scenarios to pull a trigger. But only when Positively ID'd insurgents presented themselves in my sector of fire did I do it...and you'd be surprised how easy felt.
Actually, yes it does. Repetitive conditioning to lower natural resistance to killing is how we train soldiers...it's why we switched to pop-up targets. I know the/. crowd will won't like it, but the truth is that violence conditioning DOES reduced most people's aversion to murder.
I worked on a system for the Utah DNR once. Data about sensitive species, species of concern, and endangered species have security requirements. If someone finds out how many Woundfin we are down to...the terrorist win.
I tend to believe that it is impossible to burn THIS much fuel and have no effect on a balanced system. I pretty much believe Climate Change(tm) is possible.
My problem is that some of this has become the flat-earth dogma that science is supposed to rise above.
My wife is a wildlife biologist. Has a degree in Zoology and Conservation Ecology. Working on her masters. Her office consists of wildlife tech's working their way thru the "tree-hugger circuit" as I call it: taking several years worth of seasonal wildlife technician jobs before finding a permanent one. So I've hung out with, rock climbed with, had BBQ's with many more "hackysack-playing, bluegrass-listening, quickdry-and-plaid-wearing 20-something's" with ecological bachelors and masters degrees than you are ever likely to meet.
So take me as something of an educated witness that an ecological degree caries with it a certain indoctrinated mindset about things. A sort of "don't question global warming" mentality. I thought science questioned everything.
Broad brush? Unfairly stereo-typing? Mostly true? Yep. I put more faith behind the physics degree in explaining physical natural phenomena.
Except a ecological degree guarantees that you are fully indoctrinated in the environmental dogma of the day...not necessarily that you understand the nature of natural phenomena.
Will comcast unveil a "tiered plan" whereby you only get the first 5 groups of four hexadecimal digits at the base price, with prices increasing up to 8?
I guess you've never been to combat. The "ROE" states no such thing. If you find the enemy, you kill them. An enemy soldier can be eating lunch, he's still fair game.
In a war, the necessary designation is PID or positive identification. A soldier has PID if he sees someone who is 1: committing a hostile act or 2: exhibits hostile intent. The guy watching your convoy with binoculars is not a direct threat, but he has proven thru action to be the enemy. Road-side digging without approval can be designated by the commander to be hostile. Certain clothings (uniforms, et al.) can be designated as PID.
By your logic, logistical services (convoys, supply depots) couldn't be targeted. Of course, they can be.
There is no requirement to let the enemy prove their resolve first.
that is a very good question... I haven't looked for any books about this. part of the problem is that no single person knows the whole story...I can only tell about the parts I know (as an enlisted grunt, my slice of pie is pretty small). Hopefully some S2/G2/J2 officer kept a good journal. the morning reports read like a soap opera some times...it was hard to keep track of it all. it really was and is very complicated.
when i was in ramadi (05-06), AQI shot themselves in the foot by trying to muscle out the local boys. started a war-within-a-war between themselves and groups like 1920 Revolution Brigades and MML...at times there was more "red on red" violence than anything else. we (people above my pay grade...WAY above) saw the opportunity to play nice (read: pay nice)...and it worked out pretty well... probably not forever, but those suni's can be a pragmatic bunch. sons of anbar, awakening counsils, desert patrol...all started thanks to AQI being voilent and stupid.
case in point: at one point, while we were recruiting locals for the Iraqi police and army...all the local insurgents declared no attacks on the recruitment: they wanted to get people in...to influence, grab power, spy, whatever. well AQI said fuck that...and sent a suicide-vest-wearing dude who proceeded to kill several iraqis and a guy in my battalion. AQI never learned that there was no I in retard...
no matter how good he thinks factory-made is, chances are good that the cables get punched-down somewhere. And that is by hand, and never as pimp-tight as a well-done rj45 job. what glass dick has that guy been smoking?
Slashdot Mirror
It's like a collage of my favorite porn sites.
...are the laser-lines legally binding? What will the local constabulary think of people re-writing the road lanes ad hoc? And does it run line-x?
The problem isn't always getting them to fire, it's getting them to actively try to kill people.
From "Behavioral Economics: Lessons from the Military" (Alexander J. Field), mostly quoting On Killing by LTC Grossman:
A well trained solider could expect to get off 4 or 5 shots a minute. In drills soldiers spent five percent of their time firing; the remainder was consumed by the loading process. As Grossman notes, if most soldiers were attempting to load and fire as fast as they could, then 19 times out of 20 they should have fallen with a weapon not ready to be fired. Moreover, a fallen comradeâ(TM)s loaded, cocked, and primed weapon would have been taken up by a survivor and fired (Grossman, 1995, p. 22). In light of this, the number of unfired weapons recovered from the battlefield is truly surprising. The thousands of rifles with multiple charges indicate that many, many soldiers went through the drill of loading, then neglected or chose not to fire, and then commenced again with the reloading process.
In the eighteenth century, the Prussian army conducted experiments in which a battalion of infantry fired smoothbore muskets at a target 100' by 6', designed to simulate an opposing infantry battalion (smoothbore muskets were less accurate than the rifled Springfields or Enfields used in the Civil War). At 225 yards, one out of four shots fired by the Prussian soldiers hit their mark. At 150 yards this rose to 40 percent, and at 75 yards to 60 percent. The Prussian studies indicate a 60 percent hit rate at 75 yards. Facing off against a 200 man battalion at 75 yards, 120 men on each side should have been hit in the first volley. Since it is generally agreed that the effectiveness of a combat unit often distintegrates at the 50 percent casualty rate, such withering fire should have ended battles quickly. And yet the historical evidence indicates both that these battles typically went on for several hours and sometimes days and that typically only one or two men per minute died in exchanges between battalion strength units (Griffith, 1989). High casualty rates were apparently the result not of intense and effectively aimed fire, but of the fact that battles persisted for a long time (the introduction of artillery fire could also raise the fatality rate). Obviously, even at a kill rate of 1-2 per minute, hundreds or even thousands of men could die over the course of such a battle.
For example, the battle of Antietam in 1862 during the American Civil War killed almost 6,000 soldiers (US Army Field Manual 7-21-13, 2003, ch. 2). But the battle lasted 12 hours, which means men were dying at a rate of "only" about 8 per minute. The battle was certainly bloody, but the casualties resulted from the length of the battle, not a potential rate of killing using rifled muskets at close range that was much higher. Estimates of casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg vary, but again, it appears that total deaths over the three day period were in the range of 6,000. Assuming 12 hours of fighting per day, this works out to under 3 men per minute killed (four or five times as many men experienced wounds, of varying severity.)
GP: "the injunction stopping the friend from carrying out the murder grows successively weaker with each ultra-realistic simulated murder"
P: "No it does not, because a simulation is still a simulation"...
Me: Yes it does. Simulation is exactly how we reduce that "injunction".
I didn't say it creates a predisposition. Check out "On Killing" by LTC (Ret.) Grossman.
Normal person, placed into a situation whereby he might kill someone, is held back several things. One of which is the natural human aversion to murder. That's why soldiers purposely missed eachother, while using individual weapons, up until recently.
A person conditioned to kill (conditioned...not taught) in the same situation, has one less reason not to kill.
Repetitive, realistic, simulated scenarios whereby you must kill opponents and are rewarded for doing so, is the definition of combat conditioning...and some video games it turns out.
Why don't soldiers kill everyone all the time? They are also conditioned to be controllable. Firing only at what they are told to, when they are told to. Go ahead and be that guy that fires at the range before the range tower tells you to.
In Iraq, I was faced with plenty of scenarios to pull a trigger. But only when Positively ID'd insurgents presented themselves in my sector of fire did I do it...and you'd be surprised how easy felt.
Actually, yes it does. Repetitive conditioning to lower natural resistance to killing is how we train soldiers...it's why we switched to pop-up targets. I know the /. crowd will won't like it, but the truth is that violence conditioning DOES reduced most people's aversion to murder.
Kermit protocol. Reminds me of downloading grainy .gif porn in the BBS days. Only 15 minutes left for vanna_white.gif!
I worked on a system for the Utah DNR once. Data about sensitive species, species of concern, and endangered species have security requirements. If someone finds out how many Woundfin we are down to...the terrorist win.
I tend to believe that it is impossible to burn THIS much fuel and have no effect on a balanced system. I pretty much believe Climate Change(tm) is possible.
My problem is that some of this has become the flat-earth dogma that science is supposed to rise above.
My wife is a wildlife biologist. Has a degree in Zoology and Conservation Ecology. Working on her masters. Her office consists of wildlife tech's working their way thru the "tree-hugger circuit" as I call it: taking several years worth of seasonal wildlife technician jobs before finding a permanent one. So I've hung out with, rock climbed with, had BBQ's with many more "hackysack-playing, bluegrass-listening, quickdry-and-plaid-wearing 20-something's" with ecological bachelors and masters degrees than you are ever likely to meet.
So take me as something of an educated witness that an ecological degree caries with it a certain indoctrinated mindset about things. A sort of "don't question global warming" mentality. I thought science questioned everything.
Broad brush? Unfairly stereo-typing? Mostly true? Yep. I put more faith behind the physics degree in explaining physical natural phenomena.
Except a ecological degree guarantees that you are fully indoctrinated in the environmental dogma of the day...not necessarily that you understand the nature of natural phenomena.
Like government secrecy started and ended with Bush?
Sincerely,
Both Political Parties.
...pants shitting.
I stopped fighting supply and demand a while ago... ):
Where a BS in CS or CIT makes 9 bucks an hour and an illegal migrant housing framer makes 30.
Will comcast unveil a "tiered plan" whereby you only get the first 5 groups of four hexadecimal digits at the base price, with prices increasing up to 8?
...for all the HIV-analogous-positive monkeys.
Google Earth browser
browser-based game
are we forking the meaning of "browser" now?
finally a game that SHOULD account for piracy.
as in British nannies are using all your internets for porn.
omfg...after that video I think British baby monitors should have a claymore option. and i thought "a clockwork orange" was fucked up.
an alternative universe
(in comic book guy voice) Ah yes. A precedence set forth in Star Trek, Season 2, Episode 33: "Mirror Mirror". Worst. Episode. Ever.
I guess you've never been to combat. The "ROE" states no such thing. If you find the enemy, you kill them. An enemy soldier can be eating lunch, he's still fair game.
In a war, the necessary designation is PID or positive identification. A soldier has PID if he sees someone who is 1: committing a hostile act or 2: exhibits hostile intent. The guy watching your convoy with binoculars is not a direct threat, but he has proven thru action to be the enemy. Road-side digging without approval can be designated by the commander to be hostile. Certain clothings (uniforms, et al.) can be designated as PID.
By your logic, logistical services (convoys, supply depots) couldn't be targeted. Of course, they can be.
There is no requirement to let the enemy prove their resolve first.
that is a very good question... I haven't looked for any books about this. part of the problem is that no single person knows the whole story...I can only tell about the parts I know (as an enlisted grunt, my slice of pie is pretty small). Hopefully some S2/G2/J2 officer kept a good journal. the morning reports read like a soap opera some times...it was hard to keep track of it all. it really was and is very complicated.
when i was in ramadi (05-06), AQI shot themselves in the foot by trying to muscle out the local boys. started a war-within-a-war between themselves and groups like 1920 Revolution Brigades and MML...at times there was more "red on red" violence than anything else. we (people above my pay grade...WAY above) saw the opportunity to play nice (read: pay nice)...and it worked out pretty well... probably not forever, but those suni's can be a pragmatic bunch. sons of anbar, awakening counsils, desert patrol...all started thanks to AQI being voilent and stupid.
case in point: at one point, while we were recruiting locals for the Iraqi police and army...all the local insurgents declared no attacks on the recruitment: they wanted to get people in...to influence, grab power, spy, whatever. well AQI said fuck that...and sent a suicide-vest-wearing dude who proceeded to kill several iraqis and a guy in my battalion. AQI never learned that there was no I in retard...
little story behind that story for ya.
no matter how good he thinks factory-made is, chances are good that the cables get punched-down somewhere. And that is by hand, and never as pimp-tight as a well-done rj45 job. what glass dick has that guy been smoking?