OnTheBounce
Still Mildly Glowing
welsh said:
I agree with your position here. However, it's a simple political issue. While human factors may not be beyond human control we may simply not have the resources to make it a reality.
Since I'm up to my gills in the Master Gunner course, I'm going to a parallel from it, and hopefully the example will be clear. You see, one of the (many) things Master Gunner candidates are taught is how to set up ranges for conducting training. I can sit here and list all sorts of training aides, classes that can be taught, etc., etc., ad nauseum that would make for some spectacularly realistic, challenging training. Will I be able to make these things happen when I return to Schweinfurt? Probably not, since there are limits on the amount of equipment available, land, etc., etc. There is also the fact that there are other priorities that my unit has to devote time, energy and other resources to. Everything from ensuring that our equipment is running -- quite a challenge in itself sometimes, considering most of the Bradleys we have are older than their drivers -- to making sure our Sexual Harassment Training is up-to-date.
See where I'm going with this? While the factors that influence the equation may be very human and therefore open to human control they may be beyond or resources to control. If putting more police officers on the street keeps crime down you're still going to have to contend with the fact that when your president launches an invasion of a sovereign nation many of your police are going to get called away because they are members of the Army Reserves or National Guard. Not to mention that if you want your numbers to increase you are going to have to contend with lowered standards.
So basically, it's very likely that we could end up stumbling over that hurdle between possibility and actuality. That hurdle is always a motherfucker...
Bradylama said:
You should pick up S.L.A. Marshall's Men Against Fire: The
Problem of Battle Command in Future Warfare. That will introduce you to the issue that the US Army faced in WWII, that only something like 10-15% of its soldiers were actually engaging the enemy in a given engagement. That will then set the stage for the Army's response to the issue, which was sweeping changes in training that included things like the use of pop-up human sillhouettes as opposed to the traditional bulls-eye targets and a host of other things. The end result was that by Vietnam US troops had a 90% firing rate.
So desensitization does play a role in that it makes that trigger easier to pull. Does it automatically override those myriads of moral messages that you've received since you became conscious? No, which is why there's something known variously as Shell Shock, Battle Fatigue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Which arises partly out of conflicts between two ethical systems and partly because people don't react well when the world turns out to be not quite as Disney-esque as they thought.
Bradylama said:
If you understand what you're doing is "wrong" -- and I enclose that in quotes to denote that its use is suspicious -- and yet you do it anyway the I'd say that youre training has done a great job of overriding your moral sense. Nicht wahr?
Bradylama said:
Someone commited to the act is indeed hard to dissuade. However, you're overlooking the fact that we may very well be able to dissuade someone from becoming commited to the act in the first place, probably by controlling/removing whatever it was that caused that person to become commited. People don't simply wake up one morning and come to the conclusion ex nihilo that they ought to murder someone. Even psychopaths have reason for why they do what they do.
Bradylama said:
I've often considered that parents should be licensed. However, there's always one, huge fucking problem with that assertion: what exactlly constitutes a "shitty parent". There are no absolute Virtues, nor any absolute Vices, only what allows something to succeed/fail in given circumstances -- and success and failure are also context-dependent. Then you'll always have that whole issue of "who will keep the keepers" that rears it ugly head in these debates.
John Uskglass said:
Leave the Strawman at the gates of the Emerald City, okay? He has no place in this thread...
I've never maintained that the media controlled people like some overbearing puppet-master. However, I do maintain that it has an impact. Its influence depends largely on individual character traits and its pervasion of one's environment, but to discount its influence is to discount a large part of what human beings are: gregarious animals.
No matter how old I get I never stop being amazed at what people will do simply for the approval of their peers. Returning to the issue of soldiers' firing rates, it has been shown that soldiers operating crew-served weapons (large guns, machineguns, etc.) having a higher firing rate than those using individual weapons. The reason is pretty simple: they are in close proximity to their peers and there is therefore more pressure not to go against the group's aims -- perceived or real -- not to mention that their higher killing potential means they get more attention from their leaders. (A squad leader is less likely to notice a single rifle that is not firing than the absense of the barking of his "most casualty producing weapon.")
John Uskglass said:
I would think that the inclusion of the winking smiley would indicate the tongue-in-cheek nature of that comment. Back when I was in college one my philosophy professors and I used to joke about how anyone to the right of Leon Trotsky/Karl Marx/etc. was a fascist bastard. I'm not serious when I say it, but I think there's something to it...
SuAside said:
That, and see my comment above about the Reserves/National Guard.
