Video Game Rape Fest

[gumboot]

An interesting question might be this: if many American soldiers never fired a shot at enemy soldiers during WWII, as Grossman's book claims (if I'm understanding it correctly), did many American fighter pilots similarly not shoot at enemy fighters or enemy ground personnel? Was there any difference in the rate of willingness to fire upon an enemy between the ground troops and the aerial combatants?

What about more elite units during WWII? Did they exhibit any of these supposed difficulties in firing upon the enemy? Did the 1st Special Service Force or the 101st Airborne have significant numbers of its members not fire their weapons at the enemy? If not, why?

This is actually a great question. The answer to these questions really starts to open up how extensive and complex an issue this whole thing is, and what makes On Killing such a fascinating read.

Grossman provides a lot of diagrams to explain some of this stuff because none of it's clear cut.

At the simple level, the resistance to killing varies based on the physical and emotional separation between the killer and their target. Or put another way, the separation makes it harder or easier to overcome the resistance.

Physical distance is pretty straight forward. The closer the target is, the harder it is to kill them.

Emotional distance is a little more complex. Grossman identifies four different factors which together influence emotional distance;
Cultural
Moral
Social
Mechanical

The last one addresses the question about fighter pilots. Obviously, to begin with a fighter pilot is engaging the enemy at much greater physical range. Secondly, the presence of two machines - the two aircraft - puts a mechanical disconnection into the formula that allows the killer to rationalise away their personal responsibility. For fighter pilots the classic rationalisation is that they're not trying to kill a pilot, but to shoot down a machine.

The mechanical can also serve to distance the killer in other ways - for example the mechanical presence of a telescopic sight distances a sniper emotionally from their target.

Socially, this is crucial for increasing emotional distance as well. In direct fire engagements the one type of combat soldier that consistently fires their weapon at the enemy is one manning a crewed weapon. This includes artillery, heavy machine guns, and so forth. This is because the soldier can again rationalise away personal responsibility by saying "we killed them" rather than "I killed them". This is why it was common practise in firing squads to load only one of the weapons with a live round. That way each member of the squad could rationalise that they didn't actually kill anyone.

An important piece of evidence that supports this notion is occurrences of psychological trauma. Inherent in Grossman's theory is that violating the resistance to killing has a consequence which is a backlash of psychological trauma. Grossman identifies a typical sequence of emotions and experiences that the killer feels upon killing, much like the cycle of grief. The greater the resistance to killing, the more psychological force is required to overcome it and the greater the resulting trauma.

What Grossman found was the the classic trauma felt by soldiers was not a result of being in a stressful environment in which people were trying to kill them, but rather, a result of being expected to kill. In particular, those who had killed, suffered the most trauma.

Except, in instances where the various factors such as emotional distance had made killing easier, the levels of psychological trauma were also lower. So while infantry experienced high rates of trauma (constantly being expected to kill at close range), fighter pilots and bomber crews and gunners on ships and artillery men and other combat soldiers, who actually did far more killing, experienced less trauma.

And that, Grossman argues, is why psychological trauma rates for Vietnam War veterans was so much higher than for WW2. Because, put simply, more of them had killed at close personal range.

What's particularly tragic about this is that group absolution is one of the more crucial factors in mitigating the psychological trauma. WW2 veterans, who had done less close-quarter killing and were less psychological traumatised, got a huge amount of absolution from their fellow citizens; they were given parades and generally viewed as heroes who saved the world.

In contrast, Vietnam War veterans, who had done more close-quarter killing and were far more psychologically traumatised got far less absolution from their fellow citizens, and often the exact opposite. Worse still, some people opposed to the war then used the higher rates of psychological stress seen amongst Vietnam War veterans as proof that the war was wrong, thus even further reducing the absolution that the veterans so desperately needed.

The second question you've asked relates to special forces, and you'd be right if you thought that higher firing rates were seen in special forces units. With any sort of biological function, it's never absolute. Grossman argues that an estimated 2% of people naturally do not have this resistance to killing. He identifies these as those that have psychopathic tendencies.

Generally, and historically, these 2% are the soldiers who have ended up in Special Forces or elite units, and that's why these particular units see higher firing rates.

Having said that, there's also factors about the nature of Special Forces soldiers that are often misrepresented. The typical WW2 Special Forces soldier was engaged in behind-enemy-lines sabotage, doing things like blowing up infrastructure. They didn't go around slaughtering hundreds of enemy - in fact they usually went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being spotted by the enemy at all. The perfect Special Forces soldiers would have got through the entire war and dozens of missions without ever getting into combat with the enemy.

These units would not have included, say, the 101st Airborne Division, who were a regular infantry unit, but air-deployed. They're not Special Forces (although they're often portrayed that way).

Anyway... since we're on the topic of influencing factors, I want to also just add that it doesn't end at physical and emotional distance.

Grossman identifies five separate bodies of factors that influence a killer's ability to overcome the resistance to kill:

1. Target attractiveness of victim
2. Total distance from victim
3. Predisposition of killer
4. Demands of authority
5. Group absolution

He then breaks these groups down into different factors, for example the factors in the "Demands of authority" group are:
1. Proximity of Authority
2. Respect for Authority
3. Intensity of Demand for Kill
4. Legitimacy of Authority

The Milgram experiment and real-world examples like the Holocaust have shown just how powerful an influencing factor the demands of authority can be, and indeed Marshall's studies from WW2 - which found 80-85% of infantry would not fire at the enemy - also found that almost all soldiers would fire when under the direct and immediate demands of a commander. And in Grossman's book he talks to officers and NCOs who recall having to walk along the lines of their men berating them to fire, only to have the men stop firing the moment the commander moves away.

 

[gumboot]

I got into this a lot when dealing with mass communication study. While I have read Grossman I believe he fails to address this, and it presents a problem with his work.

I agree with this as far as Grossman's arguments for desensitisation. I certainly wouldn't use his work for that point.

This approaches the reason why we do not see a rise in the type of murders seen in movies like Saw, and Hostel. Most people have the ability to play through, read, listen or watch fake scenarios without the desire to act them out.

I don't think that's really a very robust argument. The sort of murders in movies like that just don't happen, at all. Even the most depraved tiny percentage of mentally deranged people who actually commit horrific crime for pleasure don't generally come up with crimes as extreme as those films. Partly because a lot of the ways people die in those films are so ridiculously convoluted they're either actually impossible, or would require insane amounts of effort.

The problem is that some people will engage in such behavior regardless, and will gravitate to such media because of an existing predisposition; no causation has ever been shown. All we know is that if you love the idea of killing people you will love media that deals with killing. It has more to do with the reaction people have to that media.

Do you accept that studies do exist that indicate that violent media, and specifically violent computer games can result in desensitisation to real-world violence?

I am just curious, because I've linked to two such studies in this thread and thus far no one has even acknowledge them, let alone explained why their findings are wrong.

It's a strawman to make some sort of leap that in order to be desensitised to real violence by fake violence, you have to be unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy. There's no justification for that assumption.

Honestly I have been playing violent mature games for almost a decade and haven't murdered yet. I also watched Terminator, First Blood, etc as a child and haven't murdered; hell I am anti-war so that calls into question ideas of desensitization.

Can't you see that you're arguing strawmen here? If we assume for a moment that playing computer games does lead to desensitisation to real world violence, and does make a person more aggressive, why is there this immediate ridiculous assumption that this must mean if you play violent games you're going to kill people?

Murder is not an uncontrolled impulse behaviour. By definition it requires conscious motivation. Regardless of whether any of us are conditioned to kill or desensitised to violence, the overwhelming majority of human beings will never in their lives find themselves in a situation where those factors are going to be the decider in if they kill or not. Particularly illegal killing because adherence to the law functions as a separate factor once again. As an obvious example, we've got thousand and thousands and thousands of soldier who have gone through military training and who have been conditioned to kill and are desensitised to violence, and yet also aren't killing anyone.

You guys are looking at this and saying "if X is true I'll go out and kill". That's not really the argument. The argument is "if you're put in a situation where you might kill (situation A), and X is true, you're more likely to kill".

Even if X is true, you're still no more likely to get in situation A (and arguably less likely).

Indeed, given there's two types of situation A (where killing is a good thing - such as self defence, and where killing is a bad thing - such as murder) it may be that the good instances of A are more likely, in which case being conditioned to kill and desensitised to violence is on balance a good thing.

Personally I feel that a parent has the responsibility to control what their children see, and not work to change the market in such a way as to prevent adults from accessing content.

Then again I hate children, and feel that I am forced to bow to their whims by parents who feel like I should sacrifice my comfort and free expression so little junior can go out with mom and dad to a sports bar or wander around a store free from my adult conversation.

...

Very true. I should not have to pay for the failure of a parent not reading and learning the material.

...

It is an entitlement mindset of lazy parents wanting me to me to give up my freedoms so their children don't have to deal with things because they don't want to take the time to actually care and be a parent.

I think this is a really great point you've raised here. I have personally found the ideal way of determining whether an "anti-game" person is actually interested in honest discourse about the potential effects of violent media.

Simply ask them what their goal is. What they'd like to have happen.

If they respond by talking of banning such content, you know you can dismiss them, because actually what they're doing is pushing a morality agenda, and just trying to exploit the old "think of the children" canard to gain emotional support for their cause.

If, on the other hard, they're more interested in trying to limit access to this sort of media to young people (say by pushing for parent education programmes, or mandatory content filtering features on media, or legally enforced rating systems) it may be they're actually approaching the issue rationally and honestly.

And don't kid yourself to think that if video games are regulated by the government that movies and music won't be. Once the genie is out of the bottle it will be a pain to find anything beyond the Disney Princess and family movies. Entertainment companies will not make media that is going to face so many legal loopholes.

Um. No. Many, in fact most countries around the world have government regulatory bodies that classify and censor media. ALL media. In my country it's illegal to distribute any media that has not got a classification sticker on it, and violating the conditions of a particular classification can result in hefty fines or a prison sentence.

Has this crushed my country's ability to make media with violent content in it? Well we invented the "splatstick" film genre and we make the TV series "Spartacus" so I'll let you decide.

To say that allowing government-enforced classification and censorship systems will result in this content not being made is nothing but baseless fear-mongering. I know for a fact you can't back it up, and I know for a fact I can practically drown you in examples of just this sort of content being made in countries that have government-enforced classification systems.

I dare say many of the organizations pushing for video game legislation would love nothing more than to prevent people from access to materials that they consider objectionable.

This I agree with 100%.

I dare say that they have given up on actually raising their own children and expect the greater society to do it for them. Personally I refuse and hope other adults do so as well.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Corsair 115]

The last one addresses the question about fighter pilots. Obviously, to begin with a fighter pilot is engaging the enemy at much greater physical range. Secondly, the presence of two machines - the two aircraft - puts a mechanical disconnection into the formula that allows the killer to rationalise away their personal responsibility. For fighter pilots the classic rationalisation is that they're not trying to kill a pilot, but to shoot down a machine.

And what about when ordered to attack ground units? Strafing enemy columns, for example.

Also, another arms branch comes to mind: What about tankers? Did the armour crews show any reluctance to use their cannon and machine guns on enemy troops?

WW2 veterans, who had done less close-quarter killing and were less psychological traumatised...

A key question arises from the above:

Might the fact that combat in WWII was less often at close-quarters explain why (a) fewer men shot at the enemy (if there's no visible target to shoot at, why bother shooting?), and (b) why much of the fire never hit an enemy (there was no one visible to shoot at then naturally hit rates are going to be low).

The second question you've asked relates to special forces, and you'd be right if you thought that higher firing rates were seen in special forces units. With any sort of biological function, it's never absolute. Grossman argues that an estimated 2% of people naturally do not have this resistance to killing. He identifies these as those that have psychopathic tendencies.

And the fact that such elite units and special units often had different and more intense training than regular units? Did Grossman factor that into their better performance? Might it be more the case that special and elite units performed better because they had better training? It's certainly the case in aerial warfare that better trained pilots will perform better—why wouldn't that be true for soldiers as well?

Having said that, there's also factors about the nature of Special Forces soldiers that are often misrepresented. The typical WW2 Special Forces soldier was engaged in behind-enemy-lines sabotage, doing things like blowing up infrastructure. They didn't go around slaughtering hundreds of enemy - in fact they usually went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being spotted by the enemy at all. The perfect Special Forces soldiers would have got through the entire war and dozens of missions without ever getting into combat with the enemy.

That's why I said 'elite' units originally.

In regards to special forces units, the nature of their mission would have often involved personal, up close, hand-to-hand combat. Did they flinch from doing that in the way an ordinary soldier would supposedly refrain from firing his weapon?

...and indeed Marshall's studies from WW2 - which found 80-85% of infantry would not fire at the enemy...

The trouble I'm having with such numbers is this: How did they account for the myriad of different combat situations which soldiers found themselves in? Was this reluctance to fire the case when an enemy infantry unit was clearly advancing on their position? When they knew that not to fire meant risking being overrun and quite possibly killed by the enemy? Was it a reluctance to fire at a retreating enemy, one who is no longer seen as a threat? Was it a reluctance to fire at an enemy that couldn't be seen clearly (or at all) due to the terrain?

How was the particular tactical circumstances and conditions of each combat action taken into account?

EDIT: An addendum to the above. Were there any differences between theatres? Did U.S. troops in the Pacific, for example, have the same alleged degree of difficulty firing against the enemy as the troops in Europe? What about the troops of other nations? How did, say, Canadians, British, German, and Russian troops compare in terms of their willingness to fire?

EDIT 2: What about snipers? Did they have trouble pulling the trigger? Given the nature of their mode of operation, it would seem a contradiction if they did.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

I actually went and tracked down some of Grossman's stuff. He's got imaginary statistics, bogus facts, scare quotes, accounts that differ greatly from the concensus view, and a lot of folks who've actually been in the places he references, done the things he writes about, and who completely disagree with him. I think he did an ass-pull and wrote an interesting but poorly researched book.

Gumboot; if this is your only source, have you considered that the author might be lying or otherwise have an agenda? Have you done any research to confirm or deny his statistics? Have you read any of the numerous sources that vocally disagree with him and show their research?

Here's just one I found, with just a few moments of google.

http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/Main-R.htm

 

[gumboot]

And what about when ordered to attack ground units? Strafing enemy columns, for example.

I can't, from memory remember if Grossman addresses this. I would imagine, however, that instances of fighter pilots strafing personnel at low enough altitude and slow enough speed to really emotionally connect with their victims would be exceedingly rare.

I do recall that the book interviewed a number of fighter pilots who had suffered some trauma from a particular kill, and in every instance it was because something happened that forced the pilot to confront the reality that they'd actually killed another human being (such as being close enough to see the pilot slumped in the cockpit, etc).

Also, another arms branch comes to mind: What about tankers? Did the armour crews show any reluctance to use their cannon and machine guns on enemy troops?

These would fall under the group of soldiers where social distance and mechanical distance allowed them to rationalise personal responsibility. Also a tank crew member is always going to be in immediate proximity to an authority figure (the tank commander) so that factor comes into play.

Might the fact that combat in WWII was less often at close-quarters explain why (a) fewer men shot at the enemy (if there's no visible target to shoot at, why bother shooting?), and (b) why much of the fire never hit an enemy (there was no one visible to shoot at then naturally hit rates are going to be low).

The study allows for this. In order to have counted as a "non-fire" the enemy has to be a viable target, and the soldier has to not fire. Interestingly, some people actually responded to Grossman's findings with the exact opposite argument - refuting the high firing rates in Vietnam. When the methodology was pointed out to them they realised that while combat occurred at closer range in Vietnam, often far fewer soldiers could actually see the enemy, and that's why they weren't firing. Soldiers that were in a position to engage visible targets were more likely to do so, however.

Having said that, I'm not sure I'd agree that WW2 engagements were less often at close-quarters. 72% of WW2 infantry engagements were at ranges of 200 yards or less, and ever since WW2 300 yards has been seen pretty much as the maximum range for infantry combat. Beyond that, you call in range weapon support. Indeed, a major issue the US Army has found itself facing in Afghanistan is that 50% of combat engagements are at ranges of 500m or more, and their weapons and training are just not suited to such engagements. Often as much as 81% of an infantry company's combatants are rendered incapable of engaging in combat due to being out of effective range. (The Soviets found the same problem when they were in Afghanistan).

And the fact that such elite units and special units often had different and more intense training than regular units? Did Grossman factor that into their better performance? Might it be more the case that special and elite units performed better because they had better training? It's certainly the case in aerial warfare that better trained pilots will perform better—why wouldn't that be true for soldiers as well?

No, I don't think this is really a factor at all, because the soldiers refusing to fire weren't showing any other signs of poor training. It goes back to the US Civil War example; the soldiers who weren't firing were performing all of their loading drill perfectly. They did everything right, except shoot the enemy.

The sort of "extra training" that Special Forces soldiers got historically wasn't actually that great anyway, and didn't revolve around killing. It tended to be things like how to avoid getting into fire fights, how to blow up bridges, how to map enemy troop positions, how to identify enemy weaponry, that kind of thing.

Indeed, when Grossman goes into the different proximity of killing, he points out that even Special Forces soldiers seem to display the resistance to killing:

The US Army, along with armies in many other nations, trains its Rangers and Green Berets to execute a knife kill from the rear by plunging the knife through the lower back and into the kidney. Such a blow is so remarkably painful that its effect is to completely paralyze the victim as he quickly dies, resulting in an extremely silent kill.
This kidney strike is contrary to the natural inclination of most soldiers, who - if they have thought about the matter at all - would prefer to slit the throat while holding a hand over the victim's mouth. This option, though psychologically and culturally more desirable (it is a slashing rather than a thrusting blow), has far less potential for silence, since an improperly slit throat is capable of making considerable noise and holding a hand over someone's mouth is not always an easy thing to do. The victim also has a capacity to bite, and a marine gunnery sergeant who is the USMC's proponent agent for hand-to-hand combat tells me that several individuals have told him of cutting their own hand while trying to cut the enemy's throat in the dark. But here again we see the natural preference for a slashing blow over a more effective thrusting or penetrating blow.

Grossman, D. On Killing, pg 129-30

That's why I said 'elite' units originally.

In regards to special forces units, the nature of their mission would have often involved personal, up close, hand-to-hand combat. Did they flinch from doing that in the way an ordinary soldier would supposedly refrain from firing his weapon?

Yeah but as you'll see, I pointed out that no, for special forces units the nature of their mission didn't often involve personal, up close, hand-to-hand combat. In fact for special forces units the nature of their mission typically didn't involve combat at all. If it did, something had gone terribly wrong.


If you mean just "elite combat units", say like the US Rangers of WW2, or Paratroopers, or the ANZAC forces of WWI, no, their firing rates were no different to any other unit.

The trouble I'm having with such numbers is this: How did they account for the myriad of different combat situations which soldiers found themselves in?

By making it really simple and determining only a single set of facts. "Were they in a position to engage the enemy, and did they?"

Was this reluctance to fire the case when an enemy infantry unit was clearly advancing on their position? When they knew that not to fire meant risking being overrun and quite possibly killed by the enemy?

Doesn't appear to have made a difference.

Was it a reluctance to fire at a retreating enemy, one who is no longer seen as a threat?

Actually this is an interesting point. A soldier is more likely to shoot at an enemy that is retreating. As soon as the enemy breaks, the entire psychological situation totally changes. Many studies have come to the conclusion that all through human history the overwhelming majority of deaths in battle have occurred during a rout, after the battle has essentially been won. Grossman proposes two (perhaps complimentary) theories to explain this.

1. humans have a natural chase instinct, just like any other predator
2. a big part of the physical distance spectrum of resistance is to do with being able to see the enemy's face (the entire resistance to killing is based on empathy). We note that the Nazis and Communists performed executions by shooting the back of the head, and all through human history it was normal to cover or hide a person's face before executing them. Studies of people kidnapped have found that if a victim is hooded the odds of them being killed increase dramatically. It may (and probably is) simply that once the enemy turns their back on you it dramatically reduces your resistance to killing them because you can't see their face.

Studies of Alexander the Great's battles concluded that the main reason he lost so few men in battle (a stunningly small total of around 700) was because he never lost a battle, and so his forces never experienced the widespread slaughter that follows a retreat.

Was it a reluctance to fire at an enemy that couldn't be seen clearly (or at all) due to the terrain?

If an enemy couldn't be seen clearly or at all, they would be discounted from the study all together as it only looked at rates of firing amongst soldiers who were in a position to directly engage the enemy. It doesn't for example, include suppressing fire - something which most, if not all, soldiers seemed perfectly happy to do.

How was the particular tactical circumstances and conditions of each combat action taken into account?

I think the value of the study is in the fact that they weren't at all. They were completely eliminated from the equation but simplifying it right down to the basics; were you in a position to engage the enemy, and did you? Note that these were all for infantry engagements, so typically at ranges of 200 yards or less.

That's only one aspect of the data, of course. The Blackpowder battlefield data is derived not from surveys but from battlefield reconstructions, known casualties, and theoretical kill rates based on known training performance. The specific circumstances of those engagements played a big part, and the same results came up.

They looked at the rate that soldiers should have been killed on the battlefield (given a specific combat circumstance), and compared it to the rate that soldiers were killed. If the latter was lower than the former, men weren't killing when they should have been. When the latter rate was dramatically lower (which it was), there was some sort of widespread resistance going on.

And this goes back thousands of years. It's not even unique to firearms. I've mentioned Alexander the Great. The Romans primarily performed so much better militarily than their enemies because of two reasons:

1. They had far more commanders. Proximity to authority plays a huge role in willingness to kill, and the Romans were the first army to break their forces down into varying levels of unit, each with its own commanders. It had obvious tactical advantages (a sub-level commander could exploit an advantage must faster than an overall commander could) but it also had enormous psychological benefits. Because Roman commanders well also full-time professional soldiers their men held them in far more respect as an authority figure.

The second was that the Romans stabbed, while all of their enemies slashed and hacked. A thrusting blow, being the most intimate, has enormous resistance (see the quote above about stabbing versus slashing with a knife). Roman generals wrote of having great trouble getting their soldiers to thrust instead of slashing and hacking, and the Romans built an entire culture around mocking and belittling any one who slashed and hacked as inferior and weak. Real men would thrust. (You can easily imagine they would have bound this behaviour tightly to sexual potency, reinforcing the "manliness" of stabbing an enemy). Again, not only does a thrusting blow have a practical advantage (a stab is more likely to kill than a slash), but it has huge psychological advantage because your enemy will be far more traumatised by the prospect of being stabbed to death than being slashed to death, while meanwhile your soldiers will become desensitized and conditioned to kill far more rapidly.

 

[gumboot]

I actually went and tracked down some of Grossman's stuff.

What, specifically?

He's got imaginary statistics, bogus facts, scare quotes, accounts that differ greatly from the concensus view, and a lot of folks who've actually been in the places he references, done the things he writes about, and who completely disagree with him.

Can you be a bit more specific? I've been quite specific in my posts. You can't respond to that by just going "oh it's all not true". Are you, for example, refuting the statistic that 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield after Gettysburg, and that nearly 90% were loaded and roughly 50% of the loaded muskets were loaded more than once and roughly 50% of those loaded more than once were loaded three or more times? Which of Grossman's statistics are "imaginary"? Did he make them up, or did the sources he's citing from make them up?

Are the "accounts that differ greatly from the consensus view" the experiences from hundreds of soldiers that he quotes in his book?

I just want to be clear here exactly what you're dismissing. Are you dismissing his entire body of work wholesale? Specific conclusions? Particular key points?

I think he did an ass-pull and wrote an interesting but poorly researched book.

Have you read it? And by "it" I specifically mean On Killing. He's written a few books. It was the psychology of killing in warfare that actually interested me, not the civilian society stuff, so for example I haven't read Please Stop Teaching Our Children To Kill or whatever it is (silly title).

Gumboot; if this is your only source, have you considered that the author might be lying or otherwise have an agenda?

I'm absolutely positive he's got an agenda when it comes to video games and youth violence. And I don't agree with his conclusions and find some of his arguments incredibly weak. The one that leaps out at me is his argument that the youth of today associate with "immoral role models" via characters in horror films and so forth (like Michael in the Halloween films). (Although ironically enough his argument is probably slightly more accurate today than it was at the time he made it)

But I've already pointed this out in this thread. I think some of his work is wrong and some is right. I've been discussing the stuff I think is right. Or trying to. Most of my posts have involved dodging legions of strawmen, hungering for my flesh.

Have you done any research to confirm or deny his statistics?

Yes, I have. Linked to quite a bit on this thread.

Have you read any of the numerous sources that vocally disagree with him and show their research?

Here's just one I found, with just a few moments of google.

http://www.theppsc.org/Grossman/Main-R.htm

I've read some, but I haven't found them particularly compelling. The page you've linked to seems to mostly be focused on aspects of Grossman's work that aren't really relevant to what I'm discussing, or which I have already said I agree are weak.

There are, however, a few points in that page that do refute arguments he's made that I think are pretty solid. To be honest Tom Aveni's counter-argument to those points seem pretty weak. Some are nothing more than personal incredulity. Like his speculation on why Argentine soldiers didn't fire as often during the Falklands War; Never mind the research of military experts, we've got a Cop here who has a gut feeling! (This is a particularly hypocritcal response from Aveni as he accusing Grossman of much the same thing repeatedly)

Others are outright lies. For example while Grossman certainly references Marshall's work a lot in his book, he cites an extensive array of studies across many periods of military history that come to the same general conclusions.

Aveni comments on criticism of Marshall's findings and remarks:

"If Dave Grossman has based most of his foundational beliefs (i.e., that men must be conditioned to fire at human targets) upon Marshall's dramatic views of soldier firing rates, then everything that Grossman has built his "On Killing" thesis upon is literally a house of cards."

Aveni's problem here is that
A) Grossman acknowledges and addresses the criticisms of Marshall's work in his book and
B) Doesn't remotely base most of his foundation beliefs on Marshall's work (and indeed what Aveni identifies here as a "foundation belief" isn't a foundation belief at all). Now granted, all of the other studies conducted, that come to the same general conclusion as Marshall's work could also be fundamentally flawed, and could have produced the same wrong end result. Alternatively, if Grossman has an agenda he could have deliberately misrepresented all of those studies. But neither seems likely, and the studies do seem to say what Grossman claims they say. And as Grossman points out, there's very obvious and very understandable reasons why people might object to the conclusion that throughout history most soldiers haven't fired at the enemy on emotional grounds. Interestingly, Marshall's own grandson, who despised him, remarked that most of what he wrong "still stands, while much of the way he lived deserves criticism."

I get the impression, from that site, that Grossman has said some inflammatory stuff about law enforcement officers, which Aveni has taken issue with, and has used that as a basis for launching an attack on Grossman's entire body of work.

I can't speak for that. For all I know Aveni's right about that law enforcement stuff. The only real mention of law enforcement data in On Killing is reference to FBI studies on non-firing rates amongst law enforcement officers before and after conditioning techniques were introduced.

Aveni doesn't appear to reference those studies at all - the focus seems to be on the NYPD, the time frame seems to be totally different too (revolving around the 1990s).

There's other points I've addressed already independently of Grossman in this thread. For example Aveni argues:

Our staff MD, Fabrice Czarnecki, couldn't find anything to support your claim about the reduction in trauma-related fatalities. Interestingly, Fabrice is an emergency room physician, and a TAC-MED specialist. One would suspect that any major advance in trauma medicine would be known to him.
You can view Dr. Czarnecki's response HERE.
Even if your data were found, and corroborated.......
....................... IT IS ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS!

It does absolutely nothing to support your assertion that there are currently more assaults and shootings, and that only through the efforts of modern medical science, saving more lives, do we have murder rates going down.

I've linked to a study from (I think?) 2002 which reflects exactly what Grossman is arguing; that the US murder rate is being artificially depressed by advances in medical technology. Indeed as I've already pointed out that particular study suggests without that technology the USA's homicide rate could be amongst the very worst in the world. To argue that this data, if true, is "absolutely meaningless" (he wrote it in capitals so it must be true!) seems a bit... well... wrong, to be honest.

But... I think Grossman's slightly off on some of his points here. To me, his argument about conditioning makes it clear there's a distinct difference between killing and other violent crime, enough that they basically need to be treated completely differently. He never really says that, but I think it's an inevitable conclusion if his work is correct.

It reads like Grossman is trying to have it a bit both ways, by trying to use the "artificially depressed murder stats" argument to say that more Americans are able to kill, while simultaneously trying to argue people are becoming more violent in general.

But his own work indicates they're distinctly separate mechanisms, and if a large chunk of assaults and so forth are actually failed murder attempts (as the study I cited seems to imply) that actually means there's even less assaults of the normal "violent behaviour" kind happening.

What I think the data indicates is that people are killing more, but becoming less generally violent. And I've already explained what I mean by that. It's a weird concept, for sure, but it makes sense if you look at Grossman's work as arguing that killing as a psychological act is distinctly separate to "being violent".

(And indeed basic animal behaviour studies already argue this with distinctions between the fight-flight (killing) and dominate-submit (violence) responses, which Grossman himself references)

 

[Irony]

That's not a particularly useful little graph. I note it lists 1 homicide for 2009.

here's a more comprehensive list.

According to this list, in 2009 there were 37 shootings incidents at schools in the USA in 2009. Of those, I've eliminated 19 in which the shooter was not a student, or the shooting was suicide only (although in one instance there's clear evidence the shooter intended to kill others), or in which the shooting was accidental, and one instance in which the firearm was discharged as a "warning shot".

That leaves 18 instances in 2009.

In total, twelve victims were wounded, four people were murdered, two gunmen subsequently killed themselves, one gunman survived their attempted suicide, and one gunman was shot and wounded by police (for a total of six dead and 14 wounded). In all instances except one (the police shooting) the gunman fired at at least one other person in an apparent effort to kill them, and in 13 instances they hit at least one person.

In two instances the age of the shooter was unknown. In three instances the gunmen were adult students (20, 28 and 35), in the remaining 15 instances the mean age of the gunman was 16 and a half and the median age was 16. All shooters were male. The youngest was 14 and the oldest 18.

So, there are more incidents of gun violence than actual murders, surprise surprise. I notice what you didn't mention. That is, any evidence that these incidents represent a trend of increasing violence. The last couple of years do seem a bit worse than previous, but nothing like 1993. Feel free to make a graph if you thing this evidence would show a clear trend.

You don't seem particularly aware of the situation inside the USA either.

I'm aware that the constant talk of the recent "rise in crime" is a flat-out lie. Something you seem to be in denial of.

I'm not sure what the significance of this is.

None. One non sequitur to counter another.

I think you missed the point. Grossman's kill conditioning argument makes a clear distinction between the psychology of killing, and the psychology of violence. I know that might be hard to grasp, because killing is an inherently violent act, but the normal response to inter-human conflict is the dominate-submit response in which one seeks to establish themself as the stronger, tougher, superior individual.

That can lead to violence and injury and even accidental death quite easily, but it's distinctly separate from murder where the intention is to kill, which is not a normal inter-human response.

Therefore, in order to assess the validity of Grossman's conditioning argument, you're better off looking at the average age of murderers, not those committing violent crime in general.

"Average age" depends on the background. If there are fewer murders being committed by juveniles but the rate by adults decreases faster, that does not make the juveniles more murderous.

(As a side note, Grossman (and most other anti-game types) makes a separate desensitisation argument which is unrelated to the conditioning argument, and which I feel isn't as compelling. General violent crime rates could legitimately be used to assess the validity of that argument)

If youth are less violent in general, yet are simultaneously killing more often, that indicates they're being conditioned to kill, based on Grossman's theory.

"IF" they were. IF.

Now, it's not a complete picture. I've read quite a few arguments that while the USA's murder rate has levelled out from much higher historic levels, the reason for this is primarily due to improved medical treatment - in other words more victims are surviving. Some have argued the murder rate, based on earlier medical technology.

For example this 2002 study concluded:



To illustrate, since 1999 the US homicide rate has sat fairly constant around the 5.5 mark.

If this study's estimates are correct, absent the life-saving medical technology, the US homicide rate in 2002 would have been at least 17 - putting it neatly between Mexico and the Congo. If their higher figure were accurate, the homicide rate in the US would be 34 which would almost put the USA in the top ten.

I suppose it's actually a good thing that my chart showed serious violent crimes then, making this point totally moot. The study does point out something that's quite obvious to anyone who's looked at historical statistics though. Homicide rates rose dramatically in the late 60's and early 70's. Did video games do that too?

Here's what it boils down to. You made a claim that youth murder/attempted murder has dramatically increased. You have provided lots of speculation and insults, but have yet to actually show that claim to be true.

 

[sadhatter]

"Pro-gamers refuse to even contemplate the notion that violent content might desensitise them to violence"

Gumbot, Grossman, and you IMHO mistake violence in video game and think it desensitise because it remotely resemble military training (shooting a human form). Well fine then do a study and demonstrate it. So far as I can see no study really showed such desentivitasation, all they showed at best is that if you take children , they get very excited while playing violent video game and immediately after but much less if they play a little poney simulator. But none demonstrated long term effect whatsoever (none demonstrated that there weren't any).

Until something is shown to exists, I will give "pro" gamer the nod. After all the freaking argument about violence was given by the same insane family based group on comic book, film, song, game, internet game / porn. Sure they could be right like a broken clock , 1 time a day, but then show us the evidence, and not the "my gut feeling is that it is right because you are shooting a target" type of evidence.

You know, if the more like real killing it is the worse off , i should be a raging lunatic of epic proportions.

I own a full size cabinet of the game " Zombie raid" now the main distinction between zombie raid and other light gun games of its time was that it did not use a " Light gun" per sae.

The game was designed right when arcade games were starting to get a bit of blood going for them. The problem was, they all really, really sucked.

Now, instead of using your standard light gun, which tends to be brightly colored, light, and plastic. Zombie raid uses a full sized solid steel apparatus, designed to look like a real gun , in reality it is a modified joystick, and done in this way, specifically to emulate the feel of a real weapon. ( even though it is anchored by steel, you get a real sense of weight from the thing due to its balance. )

But again, even this does nothing to make me think killing is an appropriate option, nor does anything to improve my combat abilities.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

Are you, for example, refuting the statistic that 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield after Gettysburg, and that nearly 90% were loaded and roughly 50% of the loaded muskets were loaded more than once and roughly 50% of those loaded more than once were loaded three or more times? Which of Grossman's statistics are "imaginary"? Did he make them up, or did the sources he's citing from make them up?

This one's easy. I'm not claiming he's making it up. I'm claiming, on the basis of personal expert knowlege, that he's either never handled a musket of this type in combat or he's hoping his reader is ignorant enough to buy the load of bull he's fully aware he's giving them.

I may have mentioned this previously in other threads or alluded to it, but I do historical reenactement and interpretation. I've stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of folks armed with accurate reproductions of these muskets, and fired them in simulated combat. I'm not saying there weren't differences between what reenactors do and what happened at gettysberg; we're using wads instead of bullets, plenty of people pretend to die, but no one actually does, and in the end, we all go out and have a drink together. The point is that I've seen what causes the multiple load and failure to fire, and it has nothing to do with failing to point the weapon at the opponent and pull the trigger.

In order to rapidly fire a musket, you have to do a lot of practice. It's a process of forming muscle memory through repeated drill. These drills are actually available in old books on military training if you feel like looking for them. The soldier is going through a set series of motions to get the weapon loaded, firing it, then doing it again, till they run out of cartridges, they realize they have a weapon malfunction, or the engagement ends. There's some important information hidden here that either grossman doesn't know, or knows and is hoping you miss so you'll buy his explanation.

The key here is 'realize they have a weapon malfunction'. When you're standing on the range, calmly practicing, with just a few other guys, each taking their own turn to fire, when a gun doesn't go off you hold it pointed downrange in case it's a hangfire, you reprime your pan, you recock the hammer, and try again. If you have a blocked touchhole, you try your touchhole pick to clear it. If it still doesn't go off, you give it some time while the rest of the shooters have their fun, then get out your bullet pulling kit, pull the load, and try to figure out what went wrong.

In combat, or simulated combat, with lots of people firing at the same time, you load, prime, cock, fire. The spark ignites the priming, which goes off in a cloud of smoke. The gun doesn't kick much; it's pretty low powered even with an actual bullet. In the meantime all the folks around you are firing too. Their guns are banging away. Maybe you're advancing as a line and firing. So you have a malfunction. Your musket doesn't fire. The priming still went off. You still heard lots of bangs. Some of them probably coincided pretty closely with you pulling the trigger; remember that these guns fire not as 'clickbang' but as 'clickwhooshpausebang'.

So what do you do? You load your gun. If you're really observant, you notice that when you push the ramrod down the barrel, it goes about an inch less deeply than it should. If you're not horribly observant, you finish ramming the load, prime the pan, cock the hammer, find someone to aim at, and fire. It didn't go off last time; it's not likely to go off this time either. Whatever was clogging the process up is still there. There are still people firing all around you. There's still a good chance that you'll think your gun went off. You start to load again. This time your ramrod stops two inches too soon. You've got a slightly greater chance to notice it. If you do, and you're in real combat, what do you do?

You know from your training that you need to pull the charge. You've probably had to do it dozens if not hundreds of times in practice. It's not hard, but it's slow. If you're in a reenactment, you find a soldier who's aiming at you, and when he fires you put on a good show for the audience. If it's real, you know you'll never fix it on the battlefield. You also know your musket was issued to you, and there are plenty just like it on the field. Some of them are in the hands of folks who will never fire them again. You throw yours down and grab another. A brief check with the ramrod shows you if it's clogged up like yours was. If it's working, you're back in business. If it isn't, you grab another one. There is no shortage, and the former owners are in no shape to argue. Maybe they've still got some cartridges left too; they won't be needing them.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is a common, well known malfunction, that isn't correctible on the battlefield. The muskets that experience it aren't fixed on the battlefield. They're discarded, and recovered after the battle. The fact that they're loaded, and that some of them are loaded multiple times is proof that the soldier who held that weapon fired at the enemy, and fired over and over again.

The fact that 27,574 muskets were found, and half those were loaded more than once tells me and anyone else with actual experience in this area that there were at least 13787 soldiers who were firing their weapons. Given that some of those soldiers would realize that their weapon had malfunctioned, discard it immediately, and pick up another, some of the guns loaded only once would be discarded malfunctions. Nothing about having a loaded weapon prevents a soldier from being shot either; some of these would have been loaded and functional, but in the hands of someone who died before firing their current shot. These numbers are impossible to quantify, but we're still left with the proof that half of these weapons were loaded with the intent to fire. It does not in any way indicate that those soldiers chose not to fire their weapons. Anyone who represents the data in this way is either ignorant or lying. Grossman is either ignorant or lying. Which would you prefer?

I also take issue with Grossman's claims that before a certain arbitrary time, IIRC vietnam, soldiers never trained by shooting at human shaped targets, but only at bullseyes. The link I posted above has some material it references that directly contradicts this. In this case, I think that Grossman has, as a man of military training who speaks as an expert, a professsional obligation to be aware of this material, and to do research before he makes a claim. If he's repeating an anecdote of the 'some guy in the pub told me' variety and trying to give it his professional stamp of approval, he's way outside the bounds of professional conduct. If he believes it in the face of evidence, he's delusional. If he knows it's not true but says it anyway and hopes that the contradictory evidence is obscure enough that no one will find it (a reasonable assumption given that his stuff predates google) he's a liar. Again, which would you prefer? I think he's a liar, by the way. I think he takes his position as a soldier in groups that have mythology associated with them, like the rangers and airborne, to write some entertaining books, stoke up the mythology, and make some money.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

To clarify, before you jump on it and claim it invalidates the entire post, I read back and realized I didn't clarify the slightly different procedures in the case of cap fired vs. flintlock muskets. I am aware that the most common civil war guns were cap fired. If it pleases you, replace anywhere I say 'prime the pan' with 'put a cap on the nipple'. The rest stands as written.

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

I reread Grossman's position on the gettysburg rifles, and thought of some more facts that prove his interpretation wrong.

He's used to weapons that use nitrocellulose. Smokeless powder. He's blowing smoke, so to speak, about weapons that use black powder, which is not smokeless. As soon as the engagement begins, the quantity of smoke generated by the musket fire becomes a significant factor in the tactics of the day. These things make their own smokescreen. It's a dramatic effect, and one he's either never seen, or thinks it likely his audience has never seen. It would be painfully obvious from anywhere on the battlefield if a group of soldiers was just going through the motions of repeatedly loading their guns over and over again without ever pulling the trigger; they'd be the soldiers standing out in the open without any smoke coming from their position.

If the soldiers were just going through the motions, repeatedly loading but not firing their muskets, there would be a very short time that they could keep up the facade. A musket can be fired three times a minute with loose powder and ball, faster with cartridge. I was able at one point when I did more practice to fire five shots a minute with cartridge. Four is typical for trained troops with cartridge, firing at will. Depending on load, the load takes up an inch or more of barrel. Just powder and a wad, as reenactors do, maybe an inch. The cartridges I made for target practice took an inch and a half; they were a light load with a round ball. A military load with a minie ball would take more, near two inches. The usable length of the barrel is about forty inches or so at maximum. That means the absolute maximum number of rounds a soldier could stuff into the barrel would be around 20, and he'd take five minutes to do it. That's assuming that no one noticed that he's having trouble ramming the last 15 or so down, as he runs out of space to use his ramrod. In any engagement lasting more than five minutes, it would be impossible to fake it this way. Also, I'm familiar with the actual research Grossman is citing, and while he is correct that many were loaded, and half were loaded more than once, only a small number were loaded with more than three, which leads to a conclusion of weapon malfunction, not soldiers pretending.

Oh, and by the way, Amongst the 160,000 soldiers who fought at Gettysburg, there were something like 50,000 causalties. Who shot them, if no one was shooting?

Grossman wrote his first book with these claims when this was something you'd learn in passing in history class and retain only if you were a serious civil war buff. If you weren't, you'd have to go to the library and dig it out. He could count on most of his target audience not going to the trouble to dig out the facts that would prove him wrong, and the folks who could prove him wrong without needing to go to the library to be few and far between. These days, it's a matter of a few moments to find these facts. He either isn't aware of these facts, which as a self-professed expert he should be, or more damning, he thinks his audience is ignorant and that he can get away with lying to them. Is he ignorant or lying? Which one would you prefer?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Yesterday I played a wonderful game called "Naughty Bear". The player controls a cute stuffed bear as he wreaks havoc upon the other stuffed bears. It's hilarious. "Oh, look! A gun! A gun is very naughty indeed! I wonder what you can do with it?" And when you beat on the other bears enough with the various weapons, you get the option to "Ultrakill" them with a special finishing move. It's adorable! Stuffing flies everywhere!

Except I don't think I'm desensitized exactly, because the object of the game is to be naughty by destroying things and hurting other bears, and I kept thinking of things much naughtier than the game permits. You cannot desecrate the corpses of the bears, for instance, but you can set bear traps next to them to trap the next bear that comes to examine the body. You don't have to kill all the bears, of course. You can just terrify them until they're driven insane, then they usually wind up beating themselves to death with something.

I laughed so much I have a sore throat today.

 

[Cuddles]

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.

I really don't know why you do. After all, you've already admitted you're promoting a completely non-skeptical claim:

So there really isn't a way to test his theory

Exactly.

Since you've explicitly admitted you're promoting woo that has no support and that you don't think is even possible to ever get support for, why bother arguing any further? It's not like you're going to convince anyone with that level of argument.

 

[Sledge]

If video games really are such effective murder training tools, why aren't we all dead?

 

[Stray Cat]

If video games really are such effective murder training tools, why aren't we all dead?

Because we all got far enough in the game to be awarded an extra life?

 

[Corsair 115]

I do recall that the book interviewed a number of fighter pilots who had suffered some trauma from a particular kill, and in every instance it was because something happened that forced the pilot to confront the reality that they'd actually killed another human being (such as being close enough to see the pilot slumped in the cockpit, etc).

And did these pilots refrain from shooting at an enemy aircraft in their next mission? That's the key question. From the accounts I've read, while a given fight might have been unpleasant, they nonetheless went back to their job.

No, I don't think this is really a factor at all, because the soldiers refusing to fire weren't showing any other signs of poor training.

Wait, so the quality of the training makes little to no difference in the performance of a unit?

The sort of "extra training" that Special Forces soldiers got historically wasn't actually that great anyway, and didn't revolve around killing.

That wasn't the case for the 1st Special Service Force. They had considerable training in hand-to-hand combat, and were taught to be especially violent and brutal with it—that is, there wais no such thing as a 'fair fight' in such a situation; you disable or kill the enemy as quickly as possible.

By making it really simple and determining only a single set of facts. "Were they in a position to engage the enemy, and did they?"

That strikes me as a rather vague definition, given the variety of situations which could unfold. Engaging an enemy who suddenly appears in front of you while fighting house-to-house is not the same thing as engaging an enemy whose machine gun is sweeping your lines is not the same thing as engaging an enemy whose lines your side's machine gun is sweeping. And so on.

2. a big part of the physical distance spectrum of resistance is to do with being able to see the enemy's face (the entire resistance to killing is based on empathy).

This seems a flimsy justification, and it raises a huge contradiction: How much of a person's face can you make out from 200 yards away? While characters in a movie who are many yards apart have no difficulty in recognizing each other's faces, reality is a little different. So, apparently, stabbing an enemy in the back from a foot away is not difficult for a soldier to do but shooting at an enemy when he's 200 yards away and little more than a shape in the distance is difficult to do. In the former, all manner of blood and viscera spill out onto the ground and cover your sword while in the latter a shape simply drops to the ground. Yet the former is, apparently, easier to commit than the latter.

Am I the only one who finds that just a little hard to accept?

They looked at the rate that soldiers should have been killed on the battlefield...

And how on earth did they determine that with any reliability? That's like saying you can predict with certainty what Roy Halladay's ERA should be in the 2011 MLB season, or how many home runs Jose Bautista should hit, or what batting average Josh Hamilton should have in the coming season.

Since the Japanese 'should' have won at the Battle of Midway, it means they were resistant to fighting the Americans. Or something.

The second was that the Romans stabbed, while all of their enemies slashed and hacked. A thrusting blow, being the most intimate, has enormous resistance (see the quote above about stabbing versus slashing with a knife). Roman generals wrote of having great trouble getting their soldiers to thrust instead of slashing and hacking, and the Romans built an entire culture around mocking and belittling any one who slashed and hacked as inferior and weak. Real men would thrust. (You can easily imagine they would have bound this behaviour tightly to sexual potency, reinforcing the "manliness" of stabbing an enemy). Again, not only does a thrusting blow have a practical advantage (a stab is more likely to kill than a slash), but it has huge psychological advantage because your enemy will be far more traumatised by the prospect of being stabbed to death than being slashed to death, while meanwhile your soldiers will become desensitized and conditioned to kill far more rapidly.

Again, a contradiction appears to present itself. If Grossman's point is correct, then many of the Roman soldiers should have failed to stab at all when facing the enemy. Remember this?

2. a big part of the physical distance spectrum of resistance is to do with being able to see the enemy's face (the entire resistance to killing is based on empathy).

 

[gumboot]

And did these pilots refrain from shooting at an enemy aircraft in their next mission? That's the key question. From the accounts I've read, while a given fight might have been unpleasant, they nonetheless went back to their job.

It supposedly gets easier each time... The first is the hardest. A crucial factor in atrocity (most groups engaging in atrocity have an active mechanism for forcing new recruits to immediately join in the killing).

Wait, so the quality of the training makes little to no difference in the performance of a unit?

No, I didn't say that.

That wasn't the case for the 1st Special Service Force. They had considerable training in hand-to-hand combat, and were taught to be especially violent and brutal with it—that is, there wais no such thing as a 'fair fight' in such a situation; you disable or kill the enemy as quickly as possible.

I gather they used the same training techniques as British commandos.

David Lee, in his book Up Close and Personal looks into close quarters fighting in WW2 and his findings seem to support the thrust of Grossman's theory. In particular he manages to illustrate instances of forces with the two comparative types of training meeting in combat.

Units of the Waffen SS, for example, appear to have used these training techniques, and when they initially encountered other units trained in the traditional method they annihilated them. The British went on to adopt those training methods for their Commandos.

That strikes me as a rather vague definition, given the variety of situations which could unfold. Engaging an enemy who suddenly appears in front of you while fighting house-to-house is not the same thing as engaging an enemy whose machine gun is sweeping your lines is not the same thing as engaging an enemy whose lines your side's machine gun is sweeping. And so on.

Soldiers are expected to engage the enemy regardless of the situation. If you used data from a single engagement I can understand why it might possibly be an issue, but if you gathered data from large numbers of engagements with large numbers of soldiers, I don't see why it's going to be an issue. It's all about signal to noise ratio. I am sure you can think up some individual instances in which a soldier might validly not fire at an exposed target, but how often are those individual instances? Enough to invalidate the general thrust of Marshall's findings? Unlikely.

And again, the same findings are backed up by other research. It's not like Marshall's findings were an anomaly that were rejected by the military (after all, the military would know, wouldn't they?). The opposite is true. Other studies from various times point to the same general pattern, and the very military that Marshall's findings were about accepted his findings and investigated measures to address them.

Why would combat veterans, who must know that Marshall's findings were nonsense, invest effort in trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist?

It's even become the subject of law with a US Federal Circuit Court decision ruling that it's compulsory for law enforcement training to include the realistic techniques Grossman talks about.

Have they all been fooled? For sixty years has the entire US military been tricked into believing a problem exists that doesn't, and expended enormous effort addressing this invented problem?

That just doesn't even make sense, at all.

This seems a flimsy justification, and it raises a huge contradiction: How much of a person's face can you make out from 200 yards away?

Enough. Evidently. Grossman's book is full of recollections from combat soldiers who recall incredibly detail about the enemy at these sorts of ranges. Maybe it's a whole "hyper awareness" thing, I don't know.

While characters in a movie who are many yards apart have no difficulty in recognizing each other's faces, reality is a little different.

I'm pretty confident I could recognise a human face at 100 yards, which is a more realistic range for infantry engagement.

So, apparently, stabbing an enemy in the back from a foot away is not difficult for a soldier to do

I don't think this has been suggested. In fact I think I might have mentioned that stabbing a soldier from a foot away is so difficult it's practically unheard of in combat. There's literally screeds and screeds of evidence that soldiers fighting with a bayonet will use their weapon in practically any way imaginable except the way it was designed to be used (to thrust).

but shooting at an enemy when he's 200 yards away and little more than a shape in the distance is difficult to do. In the former, all manner of blood and viscera spill out onto the ground and cover your sword while in the latter a shape simply drops to the ground. Yet the former is, apparently, easier to commit than the latter.

Am I the only one who finds that just a little hard to accept?

No, you're not. But since that's not an argument that I think anyone has made...

And how on earth did they determine that with any reliability? That's like saying you can predict with certainty what Roy Halladay's ERA should be in the 2011 MLB season, or how many home runs Jose Bautista should hit, or what batting average Josh Hamilton should have in the coming season.

All of those involve predicting an unknown future outcome, not assessing a past event.

Since the Japanese 'should' have won at the Battle of Midway, it means they were resistant to fighting the Americans. Or something.

"Should" indicates what they should have done had they been operating the way a soldier is supposed to operate. If a soldier is engaged in combat with the enemy and he sees an exposed target he's supposed to shoot at it. If, in 80% of instances across WW2, soldiers didn't shoot at exposed targets in combat, something is going drastically wrong, wouldn't you agree? Even if in 10% of instances they had a legitimate reason for not firing (though I can't imagine how that might be) you've still got a substantial problem to address.

Again, a contradiction appears to present itself. If Grossman's point is correct, then many of the Roman soldiers should have failed to stab at all when facing the enemy. Remember this?

The killing resistance isn't impossible to overcome, otherwise no one would have ever killed anyone prior to these conditioning techniques being invented.

The other thing is, regardless of what Grossman's view is (he doesn't really raise it in his book), we can't really rule out the possibility of past cultures discovering these conditioning techniques for themselves, either through careful study, trial and error, or sheer accident.

David Lee's book seems to indicate that some units in WW2 had been trained on these techniques, and their performance reflects its effectiveness. Whether the trainers knew what they were actually doing or not is another question entirely. If you don't understand the psychology of killing you're just going to know your soldiers are "better".

There are ways of getting over this safeguard, and the one employed by modern armies isn't really the only one. In fact probably the most effective method for conditioning a soldier to kill is to just make them kill someone as part of their training or "indoctrination", exploiting the compulsion factors like proximity to authority which we know from the Milgram experiment are highly effective. Obviously this option is not open to a modern army, but it was a common practice historically (and is still prevalent today in groups like gangs).

The other thing that Grossman, I think, misses, is society's attitude to the soldier. As society has developed and become more sophisticated there has been a general and fairly constant trend towards viewing soldiers negatively. And today, even in circles were soldiering is highly respected, it's typically considered bad taste to discuss killing with any sort of relish. WW1 and WW2 veterans were regarded as heroes but I've talked to enough and read the memoirs and thoughts of enough to know that most of them felt like society accepted they had a job to do, but didn't want to know about the grim details. I know personally of many veterans who wanted to talk about their experiences to cope with them, but felt like no one wanted to listen, because it was unpleasant.

Today, of course, you have large portions of society who actively despise the military and categorically reject their actions.

That's a far cry from ancient days when being a warrior who killed in battle was seen as the ultimate achievement; the very definition of manhood. We find such notions today distasteful, but that "Cult of the Warrior" would have served a vital function; it made it psychologically easier for soldiers to kill.

The Roman culture towards thrusting with the sword and its connection with sexual prowess and manliness is a perfect example. It was created as a powerful psychological weapon that made it easier for soldiers to kill. It was institutionalized into their culture in a big way, and yet Roman commanders still complained about soldiers who, when it came to facing the enemy, found their training and all the pressures of their culture couldn't completely overcome their resistance to killing.

These are soldier who are always in the immediate vicinity of a commanding officer during combat (and we've discussed the effect that has on killing), who lived in a culture where death was so much more a part of every day life (thus more desensitised to death), and where their comrades were literally shoulder to shoulder with them.

The resistance to engaging an enemy at sword range is indeed enormous, but equally so is the compulsion to kill when in the context of a Roman legion, and the effect a cultural attitude to violence can have. And once you've done it once and been absolved of your act by a culture that not only accepts it but exalts it, the killing only gets easier and easier.

The Roman example isn't a contradiction, it's entirely consistent with the theory.






Look, I think I'm going to bow out of this discussion. I've taken this entire thread off on a massive tangent and it's not serving any real purpose. I can't sum up a 350pg book in forum posts.

If the topic interests anyone I really recommend reading the first half of On Killing and if you're not sold on the notion after that so be it. There's nothing I can really bring to the table and I have no real interest in trying to convince anyone "I'm right" and "you're wrong".

I've already discussed this subject on these forums previously when I'd first read the book and created a thread on it, so I don't really have a particular investment in furthering this discussion, and it just feels like I'm alternatively addressing arguments I haven't made or addressing objections that are covered in the book but which I haven't yet mentioned.

At this rate eventually I'm going to end up posting the entire book up here in bits and pieces.

If we go back to my first post in this thread (actually my second; my first post was about the enjoyment of murdering millions of people in DEFCON) I think it's clear that I'm on the "pro-game" side of things and don't buy into the "if you play computer games you'll kill people" argument.

Arcade22; my apologies for derailing your thread, it wasn't my intention.

To Corsair and the others I've been engaging with, thank you for the discussion it's been very interesting and enjoyable (although at times frustrating).

 

[CplFerro]

Yes.

 

[aviolet4u]

What interesting times for this generation..growing up with internet, itouch, iphone and these wholesome video games.

Yes my teenage brother plays them with strangers and friends online as they curse along with the characters on the game. He's pretty used to the blood splatter on the screen. My mother constantly yells at him and says not to act it out in real life. Poor mom

 

[Andrew Wiggin]

I just wonder how many times one's primary source has to be shown either to be ignorant , lying, or assuming gullibility in his audience before they stop being a good source. It's sort of like the thread that asks how many times a coin would have to come up heads before you conclude it's being influenced somehow. Here's a clue; it's not a high number.