Yeah, you do whatever is reasonable to ensure that your sample isn't contaminated, and forensics personnel do the same thing. Crime scene contamination is often enough to get a case dismissed entirely. At this point I REALLY have no clue what your complaint is. What exactly is it that you want them to do?
I've searched around for genuine studies of it, but have always been convinced the tests weren't effective. Most studies do what you have done, and simply show how estimation and guesswork without controls can get a skewed perspective; no 'magic'* required.
That's the point: before we can determine HOW something works, we have to determine WHETHER it works. These tests are designed to tell us if there is a real phenomenon in play. Thousands of people have taken such tests, and no-one has been able to show a positive effect. Ergo, the most likely explanation is that dowsing is just typical human folly, no different than hundreds of other silly claims/beliefs.
On a side note, if there were ever actual evidence of dowsing being effective I'd be looking for an effect of physics not magic
Absolutely. However, you'd probably have to completely change the laws of physics in order to do it:) That's another reason why we reject dowsing - not only has the effect never been reproduced under controlled conditions, but there's no plausible mechanism by which it could possibly work.
Now you have me thinking whether knowing about the placebo effect lowers its effectiveness.
That's a tough one, but I'd say it doesn't necessarily have to. For instance, now that I know how the placebo effect works I've been able to decrease my own sense of pain, as well as relieve flu symptoms, without using any pills. Sometimes you can relieve symptoms just by convincing yourself that your condition isn't all that bad. Sometimes using a "prop" helps, such as telling yourself that a cup of tea will help you feel better.
Of course, those are just my subjective interpretations - I haven't seen any real data on how the efficacy of placebos is affected by belief.
Yes, of course, there are many ways in which the experiment could be refined, but my explanation was already long enough and if I designed it to be absolutely foolproof I would have written at least three times as much.
If you're going to get people used to thinking scientifically/skeptically, you have to start off with fairly simple experiments. The fact that it's not 100% foolproof isn't important since, even if some small segment of the population ends up getting a false positive, we'd have to conduct much more stringent followup tests before the claims could be given any credibility.
Nonsense. You don't apply a control when sampling a specific data set. If you want to do radiometric dating on a particular specimen, you don't test 50 other specimens simultaneously. The accuracy of the procedure has already been determined, so you can use it without having to re-test it's reliability. Ditto for fingerprinting - we know roughly how accurate it is, so we can assign error bars to every test without having to conduct a full series of trials.
It's a ludicrous proposition anyway; how exactly would you propose that every single variable be accounted for in a criminal investigation? Like with any scientific endeavor, the best we can do is gather all the available evidence and then examine it to see whether it confirms or falsifies our hypothesis. Your ideas about how science works are completely unrealistic.
The fact that you had to make up a number here is the most damning evidence of all. Especially when your number isn't even close to test results:
Heh. You wikipedia scholars are funny. Fine, let's run the figures:
156 people times 7 latents = 1,092 total tests.
48 incorrect assessments divided by 1,092 total tests = 4.39% failure rate.
Ergo, the test was accurate 95.61% of the time. Meaning the number I pulled out of my ass was only off by 3.39 percentage points.
Want to try and explain how I'm not even close? Or did you just misread the wikipedia article, and not bother doing any math?
I should add that these were all latent prints - pretty much the hardest kind of fingerprint to properly analyze. If they'd included patent and plastic prints, I can guarantee that the accuracy would have been quite a bit higher.
Prosecutors use this evidence by first hypothesizing about the guilty party and then using the forensic evidence to link them to the crime. If they gather enough evidence to make a case, they move forward with it.
Yeah, I totally hear ya! It's like when those goofy "geologists" take a wild guess and say "well, we might find a transitional fossil in this strata", and then if they find some weird half-fish thing, they try to call it science!! The nerve!
Seriously, do you really want to argue that coming up with a hypothesis and then analyzing the evidence is not a scientific approach? Take a good long minute here and re-examine your position, because you're coming across as a rather silly individual at the moment...
Well, I haven't become a firm believer but I can't think for the life of me how I found those pipes consistently.
You didn't. Or at least no more consistently than before, on average.
I'll probably never figure it out, maybe it just placebo/memory tricks.
Yep, people remember the hits and forget the misses. Having your friends egging you on and telling you how great you're doing also tends to contribute to the perception of greater success.
About five years back a buddy of mine had me completely convinced that I was psychic. We were playing a card game, and I kept predicting the cards that would come up. Both of us were awed and amazed by it, and couldn't figure out any way how it could happen other than by magic. Then I started learning about skepticism and science, and I now look back on that incident with more than a little embarrassment. Understanding statistics certainly helps explain what was going on, but the real eye-opener was becoming familiar with, as James Randi would say, "How people are fooled, and how they fool themselves". Understanding the weaknesses in human perception really lets you see a universe which is quite different from how most people perceive it.
I for one am not quite so quick to dismiss it, until I can work out a better explanation.
That's a great attitude. The problem is that you haven't really bothered to test it. Here's what you do:
1. Get 10 solid containers with lids. Ensure that they are not even slightly translucent (hold them up to a light-bulb).
2. Number the cups 1-10. Get a deck of cards and get rid of all the jokers and face cards (ie. keep only numbers 1-10, all suits).
3. Set the cups up in a row, in a room with 2 separate exists which are closed off by opaque doors.
4. Get an assistant, give him a clipboard and a pencil (keeping a second clipboard for yourself), and instruct him as such:
When I leave the room, you will shuffle the deck and pull one card out at random. You will write down the number on this clipboard. You will then fill the corresponding cup with water, place it back beside the other cups, and move them all slightly. Once you have done this, you will re-shuffle the cards and put them back on the table, leave the room by the back door (taking the clipboard with you), close the door, and yell out "READY!".
5. Once your assistant has left the room and called for you, you may enter the room (through the opposite door), dowse for your cup, and write down your guess on your own clipboard (the one from step 3). You will then leave the room, taking your clipboard with you, close the door, and yell for your assistant to repeat the process.
There's your setup for a double blind experiment. You and your assistant can perform the procedure as many times as you wish, but it should be done at least 10 times if you expect any reasonable results (100 or 1,000 would be better, but might be a bit of a pain). Once you have conducted enough trials, simply take both clipboards to a third party and have him/her compare the results.
If you're getting 1 or 2 out of 10, you're doing no better than guesswork. If you're getting 0 out of 10, you have really shitty luck:) If you're getting 3 or more out of 10 it's probably a fluke and you should do some more trials to see if the trend continues.
If, however, after further trials you continue to get a statistically significant result, you should apply for the JREF million dollar prize! Just call me to arrange a meeting - I'll help you plan our travel arrangements (at your expense), and only take 5% off the top;)
The prosecutor's fallacy doesn't apply here. We're talking about overall effectiveness, not the likelihood of finding one match in a given database. Even if we were, though, it would make dowsing even more ridiculous in comparison.
Yeah, I hear these things work on the same principle:
"Of course it works! Abdul was only using it for 5 minutes before he stepped on that IED! Ahmed was manning the checkpoint for just 7 minutes before he got sent to Paradise! It's been one success after another!"
Also, a ministry insider told me that they'd get quadruple their money back if any of the operators survived. Hasn't been a problem so far.
Yeah, despite all that, let's make a big deal about what the people in Iraq are doing. After all, they are primitive foreigners. There's no way good, right-thinking Americans would act that way.
No, doofus, it's not a nationality issue. Everyone expects stupid people to do stupid things. What we don't expect (or condone) is government departments using magic wands to keep us safe (or to do anything else, for that matter). If the DHS were using these things to look for suspects at airports, you bet your ass there would be a massive fucking uproar.
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Checkpoints are designed to minimize damage from a... erm... "premature detonation". The guy with the wand might get splattered pretty good if he's right up close, but everyone else makes it out just fine. It still sucks for the guy who's swinging that thing, but it's a loss in the bad-guys book because they can't afford to trade men on a 1 to 1 basis. There's only so many crazy people who'll strap a bomb to themselves.
Also, suicide bombers have been known to change their minds when confronted with such a situation. It's one thing to kill dozens of your enemies (even if they're civilians shopping for groceries) for the Glory of Allah - quite another thing to kill yourself and, if you're lucky, only take out one poor $2-per-hour rent a cop.
It's Iraq, they're not going to wander for long without finding a bomb. Magic rod or no magic rod.
Interestingly enough, that's also how water-dowsing works. In most countries you can pick any random point and start digging, and you'll hit water. One of my friends was just commenting the other day on how amazing it was that their neighbors (at their cottage) managed to find water by hiring a water dower. They were thinking of hiring one when they dig their own well next year. I told him he could walk around swinging a dildo and have just as much luck. Even offered to pay for the digging if they don't hit water, as long as he lets me film his 'dowsing' attempt:)
much of modern forensics "science" is in a similar state in this country. Do you really believe they can match a smudged fingerprint to a single person with 100% accuracy
Ah, so the fingerprint process with, say 99% accuracy, is equivalent to the Iraqi M50/50 Bomb Divining Device. Right.
So until we are in a place where everyone has a basic understanding of scientific principles...
I'd suggest you start with your own education. You clearly missed the entire section on probability and statistics.
Oh, you're that "electric universe" tool, aren't you? Yeah, I skimmed through your stuff yesterday. Sorry - if I had realized who you were I wouldn't have bothered responding. My bad.
If you would study the history of science, especially in modern times, say the last few hundred years, you would know that the majority of scientists at any given time were often proven wrong by a lone voice crying in the wilderness as it were.
What utter nonsense. First of all, the word "often" doesn't belong in that sentence. Second of all, the implied suggestion is utterly ludicrous; using your "logic" we'd have to accept that, because individuality sometimes trumps consensus, we should give equal credibility to every lunatic with a wacky idea as we do to the top minds in science. It's this kind of idiotic rationalization which leads people to buy perpetual motion machines and homeopathic medicine.
It means I believe it whether or not others need to disagree or even ridicule me for it. I believe that this is one of those polarizing things where you either see it for yourself or you don't and bickering about it is infinitesimally unlikely to change anyone's mind.
In other words you have no evidence for your beliefs and are unable to provide a rationale for them - you believe it despite the lack of evidence and the contravening evidence, and you take pride in your ignorance which you dub "faith". You think that your "opinion" is more reliable than the research conducted by hundreds of individuals who have a vastly better understanding of the subject, and you are more than happy to ignore the evidence presented by them simply because you think you know better.
Like I said, you're a typical creationist. Whether or not you share their views doesn't interest me; I'm just commenting on the fact that you share the same mindset. Or, if you want a more secular comparison, you're the astrophysics equivalent of Jenny McCarthy. Without the tits.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth
If you would accept a suggestion from me: never confuse your emotional attachment to a viewpoint with data.
So what you're saying is that you don't actually believe the nonsense you're spouting - you're simply trolling? Fun. Does that make you feel like a big man?
Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas?
Because every other scientist will laugh at you?
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
Yeah, creationists say the same thing. It seems to be amazingly common for dimwitted people to confuse their ignorance with "problems with science".
you decided to ignore "shitty" armies in your calculations
Yes, because shitty armies are unlikely to have access to high-tech swarm-drones (or at least they won't have more than, like, FIVE, tops!), which is what the original discussion was about.
As for your statistics... your sources contradict each other, and during my cursory check I was unable to locate any hard, credible data to confirm these claims. The numbers seem inflated at best.
Even if accurate, though, 9,600 deaths per year on a planet with 6 billion people is pretty much insignificant. To put that in perspective, more than 28,000 people are murdered every year in Russia alone. Another 16,000 are murdered in the US every year.
It looks like this:
Landmines: 1.6 per 1,000,000 per year Murder US: 53 per 1,000,000 per year Murder RU: 200 per 1,000,000 per year
So, no, I wouldn't consider landmines a huge problem. They suck, yeah, but are little more than a nuisance.
Um, no, they're not an issue if the force gets overrun either, since maps are shared with higher, and, failing that, the boundaries of the minefield are still clearly marked on the ground.
In a situation where the mine-user doesn't have overwhelming superiority and the breathing room to accurately document their locations, ensure that that documentation is kept, and remove them after the war, it's not that simple.
Yah, like I said, guerrilla forces and shitty armies.
The US didn't have tank superiority since, apart form Soviet armor, Allied armor uniformly sucked a**.
You're joking, right? The T-34 was based on a rejected American design. Soviet armor was decent at best, and they didn't have enough of it. The US gave thousands of Shermans to the russian around '43.
Even the nastiest warlords in history were limited in their engagement in atrocities by their ability to get their soldiers marching in their desired direction.
Really? That's news to me. I mean, yeah, they were sometimes limited by the logistical needs (ie. food, water, clothing, equipment, fuel) of their armies. Even that was often not an issue since the really bad ones would just let the weak soldiers die. But, anyway, if that's what you're talking about then ok. Otherwise, I think a citation is in order.
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Yeah, you do whatever is reasonable to ensure that your sample isn't contaminated, and forensics personnel do the same thing. Crime scene contamination is often enough to get a case dismissed entirely. At this point I REALLY have no clue what your complaint is. What exactly is it that you want them to do?
I've searched around for genuine studies of it, but have always been convinced the tests weren't effective. Most studies do what you have done, and simply show how estimation and guesswork without controls can get a skewed perspective; no 'magic'* required.
That's the point: before we can determine HOW something works, we have to determine WHETHER it works. These tests are designed to tell us if there is a real phenomenon in play. Thousands of people have taken such tests, and no-one has been able to show a positive effect. Ergo, the most likely explanation is that dowsing is just typical human folly, no different than hundreds of other silly claims/beliefs.
On a side note, if there were ever actual evidence of dowsing being effective I'd be looking for an effect of physics not magic
Absolutely. However, you'd probably have to completely change the laws of physics in order to do it :) That's another reason why we reject dowsing - not only has the effect never been reproduced under controlled conditions, but there's no plausible mechanism by which it could possibly work.
Now you have me thinking whether knowing about the placebo effect lowers its effectiveness.
That's a tough one, but I'd say it doesn't necessarily have to. For instance, now that I know how the placebo effect works I've been able to decrease my own sense of pain, as well as relieve flu symptoms, without using any pills. Sometimes you can relieve symptoms just by convincing yourself that your condition isn't all that bad. Sometimes using a "prop" helps, such as telling yourself that a cup of tea will help you feel better.
Of course, those are just my subjective interpretations - I haven't seen any real data on how the efficacy of placebos is affected by belief.
Yes, of course, there are many ways in which the experiment could be refined, but my explanation was already long enough and if I designed it to be absolutely foolproof I would have written at least three times as much.
If you're going to get people used to thinking scientifically/skeptically, you have to start off with fairly simple experiments. The fact that it's not 100% foolproof isn't important since, even if some small segment of the population ends up getting a false positive, we'd have to conduct much more stringent followup tests before the claims could be given any credibility.
Nonsense. You don't apply a control when sampling a specific data set. If you want to do radiometric dating on a particular specimen, you don't test 50 other specimens simultaneously. The accuracy of the procedure has already been determined, so you can use it without having to re-test it's reliability. Ditto for fingerprinting - we know roughly how accurate it is, so we can assign error bars to every test without having to conduct a full series of trials.
It's a ludicrous proposition anyway; how exactly would you propose that every single variable be accounted for in a criminal investigation? Like with any scientific endeavor, the best we can do is gather all the available evidence and then examine it to see whether it confirms or falsifies our hypothesis. Your ideas about how science works are completely unrealistic.
The fact that you had to make up a number here is the most damning evidence of all. Especially when your number isn't even close to test results:
Heh. You wikipedia scholars are funny. Fine, let's run the figures:
156 people times 7 latents = 1,092 total tests.
48 incorrect assessments divided by 1,092 total tests = 4.39% failure rate.
Ergo, the test was accurate 95.61% of the time. Meaning the number I pulled out of my ass was only off by 3.39 percentage points.
Want to try and explain how I'm not even close? Or did you just misread the wikipedia article, and not bother doing any math?
I should add that these were all latent prints - pretty much the hardest kind of fingerprint to properly analyze. If they'd included patent and plastic prints, I can guarantee that the accuracy would have been quite a bit higher.
Prosecutors use this evidence by first hypothesizing about the guilty party and then using the forensic evidence to link them to the crime. If they gather enough evidence to make a case, they move forward with it.
Yeah, I totally hear ya! It's like when those goofy "geologists" take a wild guess and say "well, we might find a transitional fossil in this strata", and then if they find some weird half-fish thing, they try to call it science!! The nerve!
Seriously, do you really want to argue that coming up with a hypothesis and then analyzing the evidence is not a scientific approach? Take a good long minute here and re-examine your position, because you're coming across as a rather silly individual at the moment ...
Well, I haven't become a firm believer but I can't think for the life of me how I found those pipes consistently.
You didn't. Or at least no more consistently than before, on average.
I'll probably never figure it out, maybe it just placebo/memory tricks.
Yep, people remember the hits and forget the misses. Having your friends egging you on and telling you how great you're doing also tends to contribute to the perception of greater success.
About five years back a buddy of mine had me completely convinced that I was psychic. We were playing a card game, and I kept predicting the cards that would come up. Both of us were awed and amazed by it, and couldn't figure out any way how it could happen other than by magic. Then I started learning about skepticism and science, and I now look back on that incident with more than a little embarrassment. Understanding statistics certainly helps explain what was going on, but the real eye-opener was becoming familiar with, as James Randi would say, "How people are fooled, and how they fool themselves". Understanding the weaknesses in human perception really lets you see a universe which is quite different from how most people perceive it.
I for one am not quite so quick to dismiss it, until I can work out a better explanation.
That's a great attitude. The problem is that you haven't really bothered to test it. Here's what you do:
1. Get 10 solid containers with lids. Ensure that they are not even slightly translucent (hold them up to a light-bulb).
2. Number the cups 1-10. Get a deck of cards and get rid of all the jokers and face cards (ie. keep only numbers 1-10, all suits).
3. Set the cups up in a row, in a room with 2 separate exists which are closed off by opaque doors.
4. Get an assistant, give him a clipboard and a pencil (keeping a second clipboard for yourself), and instruct him as such:
When I leave the room, you will shuffle the deck and pull one card out at random. You will write down the number on this clipboard. You will then fill the corresponding cup with water, place it back beside the other cups, and move them all slightly. Once you have done this, you will re-shuffle the cards and put them back on the table, leave the room by the back door (taking the clipboard with you), close the door, and yell out "READY!".
5. Once your assistant has left the room and called for you, you may enter the room (through the opposite door), dowse for your cup, and write down your guess on your own clipboard (the one from step 3). You will then leave the room, taking your clipboard with you, close the door, and yell for your assistant to repeat the process.
There's your setup for a double blind experiment. You and your assistant can perform the procedure as many times as you wish, but it should be done at least 10 times if you expect any reasonable results (100 or 1,000 would be better, but might be a bit of a pain). Once you have conducted enough trials, simply take both clipboards to a third party and have him/her compare the results.
If you're getting 1 or 2 out of 10, you're doing no better than guesswork. :)
If you're getting 0 out of 10, you have really shitty luck
If you're getting 3 or more out of 10 it's probably a fluke and you should do some more trials to see if the trend continues.
If, however, after further trials you continue to get a statistically significant result, you should apply for the JREF million dollar prize! Just call me to arrange a meeting - I'll help you plan our travel arrangements (at your expense), and only take 5% off the top ;)
The prosecutor's fallacy doesn't apply here. We're talking about overall effectiveness, not the likelihood of finding one match in a given database. Even if we were, though, it would make dowsing even more ridiculous in comparison.
Yeah, I hear these things work on the same principle:
"Of course it works! Abdul was only using it for 5 minutes before he stepped on that IED! Ahmed was manning the checkpoint for just 7 minutes before he got sent to Paradise! It's been one success after another!"
Also, a ministry insider told me that they'd get quadruple their money back if any of the operators survived. Hasn't been a problem so far.
Yeah, despite all that, let's make a big deal about what the people in Iraq are doing. After all, they are primitive foreigners. There's no way good, right-thinking Americans would act that way.
No, doofus, it's not a nationality issue. Everyone expects stupid people to do stupid things. What we don't expect (or condone) is government departments using magic wands to keep us safe (or to do anything else, for that matter). If the DHS were using these things to look for suspects at airports, you bet your ass there would be a massive fucking uproar.
I guess if your divining rod detects a suicide bomber... then what? They detonate? I guess it is 100% effective in that case. Bomb detected.
Checkpoints are designed to minimize damage from a ... erm ... "premature detonation". The guy with the wand might get splattered pretty good if he's right up close, but everyone else makes it out just fine. It still sucks for the guy who's swinging that thing, but it's a loss in the bad-guys book because they can't afford to trade men on a 1 to 1 basis. There's only so many crazy people who'll strap a bomb to themselves.
Also, suicide bombers have been known to change their minds when confronted with such a situation. It's one thing to kill dozens of your enemies (even if they're civilians shopping for groceries) for the Glory of Allah - quite another thing to kill yourself and, if you're lucky, only take out one poor $2-per-hour rent a cop.
It's Iraq, they're not going to wander for long without finding a bomb. Magic rod or no magic rod.
Interestingly enough, that's also how water-dowsing works. In most countries you can pick any random point and start digging, and you'll hit water. One of my friends was just commenting the other day on how amazing it was that their neighbors (at their cottage) managed to find water by hiring a water dower. They were thinking of hiring one when they dig their own well next year. I told him he could walk around swinging a dildo and have just as much luck. Even offered to pay for the digging if they don't hit water, as long as he lets me film his 'dowsing' attempt :)
much of modern forensics "science" is in a similar state in this country. Do you really believe they can match a smudged fingerprint to a single person with 100% accuracy
Ah, so the fingerprint process with, say 99% accuracy, is equivalent to the Iraqi M50/50 Bomb Divining Device. Right.
So until we are in a place where everyone has a basic understanding of scientific principles ...
I'd suggest you start with your own education. You clearly missed the entire section on probability and statistics.
Oh, you're that "electric universe" tool, aren't you? Yeah, I skimmed through your stuff yesterday. Sorry - if I had realized who you were I wouldn't have bothered responding. My bad.
If you would study the history of science, especially in modern times, say the last few hundred years, you would know that the majority of scientists at any given time were often proven wrong by a lone voice crying in the wilderness as it were.
What utter nonsense. First of all, the word "often" doesn't belong in that sentence. Second of all, the implied suggestion is utterly ludicrous; using your "logic" we'd have to accept that, because individuality sometimes trumps consensus, we should give equal credibility to every lunatic with a wacky idea as we do to the top minds in science. It's this kind of idiotic rationalization which leads people to buy perpetual motion machines and homeopathic medicine.
It means I believe it whether or not others need to disagree or even ridicule me for it. I believe that this is one of those polarizing things where you either see it for yourself or you don't and bickering about it is infinitesimally unlikely to change anyone's mind.
In other words you have no evidence for your beliefs and are unable to provide a rationale for them - you believe it despite the lack of evidence and the contravening evidence, and you take pride in your ignorance which you dub "faith". You think that your "opinion" is more reliable than the research conducted by hundreds of individuals who have a vastly better understanding of the subject, and you are more than happy to ignore the evidence presented by them simply because you think you know better.
Like I said, you're a typical creationist. Whether or not you share their views doesn't interest me; I'm just commenting on the fact that you share the same mindset. Or, if you want a more secular comparison, you're the astrophysics equivalent of Jenny McCarthy. Without the tits.
If you would accept a suggestion from me, never confuse consensus agreement with truth
If you would accept a suggestion from me: never confuse your emotional attachment to a viewpoint with data.
So what you're saying is that you don't actually believe the nonsense you're spouting - you're simply trolling? Fun. Does that make you feel like a big man?
You seem as if you could benefit from a bit of Asimov.
Anytime your theory doesn't add up, or fails to predict the results of a new observation, why go through all the trouble of considering your theory falsified, questioning your premises, and coming up with new ideas?
Because every other scientist will laugh at you?
The more I see this kind of thing, the more I believe that mainstream science did not eliminate the priesthood. It merely replaced it with a more rational one to fit the changing needs of the people.
Yeah, creationists say the same thing. It seems to be amazingly common for dimwitted people to confuse their ignorance with "problems with science".
Suppose the side using the mines *gasp* loses the war?
In that case, here's what the winners should do:
1. Scroll up to my previous comment. ....
2. Read the part that you clearly decided to skip.
3.
4. Profit!
Pity the Soviets got it to work and it became a Panzer-killer, and the US/Britain didn't then.
Heh. That's rather like saying "Pity those Indians got the Bow and Arrow to work, while the colonials didn't".
Shermans took on T-34's in Korea. It didn't turn out too well for the North.
you decided to ignore "shitty" armies in your calculations
Yes, because shitty armies are unlikely to have access to high-tech swarm-drones (or at least they won't have more than, like, FIVE, tops!), which is what the original discussion was about.
As for your statistics ... your sources contradict each other, and during my cursory check I was unable to locate any hard, credible data to confirm these claims. The numbers seem inflated at best.
Even if accurate, though, 9,600 deaths per year on a planet with 6 billion people is pretty much insignificant. To put that in perspective, more than 28,000 people are murdered every year in Russia alone. Another 16,000 are murdered in the US every year.
It looks like this:
Landmines: 1.6 per 1,000,000 per year
Murder US: 53 per 1,000,000 per year
Murder RU: 200 per 1,000,000 per year
So, no, I wouldn't consider landmines a huge problem. They suck, yeah, but are little more than a nuisance.
Um, no, they're not an issue if the force gets overrun either, since maps are shared with higher, and, failing that, the boundaries of the minefield are still clearly marked on the ground.
In a situation where the mine-user doesn't have overwhelming superiority and the breathing room to accurately document their locations, ensure that that documentation is kept, and remove them after the war, it's not that simple.
Yah, like I said, guerrilla forces and shitty armies.
The US didn't have tank superiority since, apart form Soviet armor, Allied armor uniformly sucked a**.
You're joking, right? The T-34 was based on a rejected American design. Soviet armor was decent at best, and they didn't have enough of it. The US gave thousands of Shermans to the russian around '43.
Even the nastiest warlords in history were limited in their engagement in atrocities by their ability to get their soldiers marching in their desired direction.
Really? That's news to me. I mean, yeah, they were sometimes limited by the logistical needs (ie. food, water, clothing, equipment, fuel) of their armies. Even that was often not an issue since the really bad ones would just let the weak soldiers die. But, anyway, if that's what you're talking about then ok. Otherwise, I think a citation is in order.