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Honor killing in Pakistan

SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
Soldiers are not trained to kill in the sense that you mean. They are taught how to use equipment and techniques that if used correctly can result in the death of a person. They are also taught controlled aggression.

How would you train a person to kill another person?

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I fail to see the difference you are making out. We agree a soldiers training to use their equipment in a manner that may result in death, like pointing a rifle at someone and firing it. They are also trained not to run a round in a panic like headless chickens.
 
Here's a question for the "Born With Morals" crowd, in the form of a real-world scenario (I like those!):

Imagine a 19 year-old boy, been in the army 6 months. He's carrying a rifle capable of fully-automatic fire; he's on his first tour of Afghanistan and is patrolling with his team through a busy marketplace full of civilians. He's scared stiff, despite all his training. Suddenly, bullets start coming in from at least three directions he can tell, and one of his friends is hit. People are screaming and running everywhere.

Who thinks - knowing this is not an unusual situation for this teenager to be in - the army would have spent more time training him to overcome his baked-in inhibition against killing, or restraining a natural urge to put bullets into anything that moved? Or something else?
 
I think you guys are talking past one another. You're talking about the fight half of a fight or flight situation which is well documented. They're talking about a natural disinclination to harm someone when you have ample time to consider it, which seems clearly indicated by various experiments on empathy etc.

I also think the "defective" they mentioned was meant to refer to straight-up psychopaths who have no particular disinclination to harm besides repercussions imposed by other people. I don't think they meant to say anyone who is capable of killing is defective. Because that would be silly.
 
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Lithrael said:
I think you guys are talking past one another. You're talking about the fight half of a fight or flight situation which is well documented. They're talking about a natural disinclination to harm someone when you have ample time to consider it, which seems clearly indicated by various experiments on empathy etc.
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I see. So how do snipers fit into that then? The few I have known were never trained to overcome an inhibition to kill. What about a deliberate ambush situation?
 
SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
I see. So how do snipers fit into that then? The few I have known were never trained to overcome an inhibition to kill. What about a deliberate ambush situation?
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OK so not trained on some sort of psychological level to kill, with specific here is how to turn yourself into a psychopath lessons. Just an expectation that their job is very likely to result in them killing and that they will have to deal with that and not back out of doing it.

Soldiers are trained, or maybe conditioned is a better word to follow orders, no matter what, even if that order means a high risk of theirs or another's death. That comes with basic training, drill and a new soldiers life being dominated by senior officers whose word is law.
 
I'm not sure where you're trying to go with those links. Of course animals in direct competition with one another will sometimes get murderous. Humans too. The strength of any innate morals possessed by any creature will, of course, have to compete with the strength of its feelings of self-interest. So it's easy to do kind things that will satisfy one's morals when one is safe and in possession of all one's needs, and gets harder and harder as satisfying moral urges bumps up against one's own health, safety, and resources.

Military snipers? Where do you get the impression that they aren't well-trained, selected and prepared to be able to deal with what they do? From what I've read, snipers are some of the soldiers most likely to confront the humanity of their targets. Their relatively high comfort with what they do comes down to their conviction that it's simply what must be done for their cause. Anyone who can't be comfortable with that generally will wash out of a sniper program.

"Here is someone whose friends love him and I am sure he is a good person because he does this out of ideology," said one sniper who watched through his scope as a family mourned the man he had just shot. "But we from our side have prevented the killing of innocents, so we are not sorry about it."
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This isn't someone with no empathy, this is someone who feels he is doing the right thing despite the humanity of his target.

ETA: I guess I left out the part where the point was: a good sniper is a rare person with a very specific way of thinking and set of comfort levels that allows them to be a good sniper. If people in general thought the way good military snipers do I wouldn't be surprised if the world would be a more humane place.
 
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Nessie said:
Soldiers are trained, or maybe conditioned is a better word to follow orders, no matter what, even if that order means a high risk of theirs or another's death. That comes with basic training, drill and a new soldiers life being dominated by senior officers whose word is law.
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Rubbish. You're completely grasping at straws now. Soldiers are indeed trained to follow basic words of command, but the days of a commander pointing at a target and saying "Kill!" with an unflinching soldier blindly doing as he's told are long since gone, and haven't even been remotely like that for at least the last 40 - 50 years. Certainly the last 30. British soldiers do not act on unlawful commands, and know one when they hear one.
 
Nessie said:
OK so not trained on some sort of psychological level to kill, with specific here is how to turn yourself into a psychopath lessons.
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I think you'll find that people have found very convincing reasons (to them) to kill for millenia. Self-defense, profit, anger, revenge, coercion, and yes, honour, to name only a few.
 
Lithrael said:
Snipers? Where do you get the impression that they aren't well-trained, selected and prepared to be able to deal with what they do? From what I've read, snipers are some of the soldiers most likely to confront the humanity of their targets. Their relatively high comfort with what they do comes down to their conviction that it's simply what must be done for their cause. Anyone who can't be comfortable with that generally will wash out of a sniper program.



This isn't someone with no empathy, this is someone who feels he is doing the right thing despite the humanity of his target.
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Exactly. Not the actions of someone treating their target as "less than human"; not the actions of someone brainwashed to overcome an inhibition to kill, but rather someone who has a job to do, and will do it for the greater good. Is he defective, you think? I'd say no, and I'd reckon you'd agree b
 
SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
Right. So nothing conclusive then? So you have nothing that proves we are all born with an aversion to killing other humans 'built in'?
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This is one reason why I have so little interest in posting citations for you. You don't understand the concepts involved. It's a waste of time to discuss this with you until you bring your neurobiology and genetic science knowledge base up to a higher level of understanding than you have.
 
Belz... said:
To be fair, though, we are social animals, so some of our behaviours are built-in. Not killing is not one of those, however.
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"Not killing" is one of those. Is it absolute? Obviously not. But if you think without a law or religious rule against killing people would have no reluctance to kill, that's a naive position.
 
SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
Exactly. Not the actions of someone treating their target as "less than human"; not the actions of someone brainwashed to overcome an inhibition to kill, but rather someone who has a job to do, and will do it for the greater good. Is he defective, you think? I'd say no, and I'd reckon you'd agree
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I would agree he is not defective, but he's certainly unusual. Looking at the numbers of washouts, I'd say most people are simply not cut out to be so pragmatic.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
This is one reason why I have so little interest in posting citations for you. You don't understand the concepts involved. It's a waste of time to discuss this with you until you bring your neurobiology and genetic science knowledge base up to a higher level of understanding than you have.
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Oh right, it's not your fault you have nothing that conclusively proves your assertion, but mine for not understanding! :rolleyes:

Science has proven that we are all born with moral values built in - they're not something that's learned - and it's too difficult to put in laymans terms for a Thicko like me? Yeah, OK...

You have failed to provide any conclusive evidence for a single claim you have made, when called on it, and that's my fault is it?
 
SatansMaleVoiceChoir said:
Rubbish. You're completely grasping at straws now. Soldiers are indeed trained to follow basic words of command, but the days of a commander pointing at a target and saying "Kill!" with an unflinching soldier blindly doing as he's told are long since gone, and haven't even been remotely like that for at least the last 40 - 50 years. Certainly the last 30. British soldiers do not act on unlawful commands, and know one when they hear one.
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You keep moving the goal posts, this time to make out I am wrong by claiming soldiers if ordered would not climb out of trench and charge towards enemy lines as they did in WWI. Do you agree if a soldier is given a lawful command to attack they have to do it?
 
Belz... said:
I think you'll find that people have found very convincing reasons (to them) to kill for millenia. Self-defense, profit, anger, revenge, coercion, and yes, honour, to name only a few.
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But these are a minority of people, it is not the norm. For millennia mentally ill people have existed. That doesn't make it the norm. Crime is not the norm, people who commit crimes believe they will get away with it. Do you really think that's the difference? The rest of us don't think we would get away with it, otherwise we be out there on pillaging murderous rampages?

Why would anyone ever return a valuable item they find? No one is going to catch them stealing.

Does that mean everyone would return it? No, but you seem to be mistaking the outliers for the norm.
 
Nessie said:
You keep moving the goal posts, this time to make out I am wrong by claiming soldiers if ordered would not climb out of trench and charge towards enemy lines as they did in WWI. Do you agree if a soldier is given a lawful command to attack they have to do it?
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Point out where I said a soldier wouldn't climb out of a trench and charge the enemy.

You do understand what a 'lawful command' is, yes?
 
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