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The most off-topic WCDT discussion ever

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GarandMarine:

--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 16 May 2013, 09:00 ---I believe it was Paul Fussel's writings about WWI where I read about people frequently just neglecting to shoot, and I can't remember where I read about the US Army in the 20th century needing to upgrade training so that people would actually aim at the other side.

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Ooooh! I wrote a paper on this!

To quote from said paper which is published on my pretty much defunct blog here: http://northstarguide.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/dehumanization-and-the-psychology-of-killing/


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So far in this discussion of the process and function of dehumanization we haven’t really touched on the focus of what dehumanization is aimed at, allowing a functioning normal human being to kill easily and with minimal moral difficulty. Killing other humans is not something that comes naturally to people. Even for men and women raised around firearms who have been hunting for years the skill to successfully kill someone is there but the heart and intent are for the most part not.

Consider the average person who can take a human life in modern American society, there are people who have dehumanized through conditioning to be able to kill such as a gang member who grew up in that environment and lifestyle where killing was normalized and even encouraged. A soldier or a police officer who has been conditioned to be able to shoot and kill also falls in this category albeit through a very different process. Removing that type of individual we have crimes of rage and passion, these are very dissimilar from the soldier’s task or the conditioned criminal, with a crime of passion it’s all on chemicals, many people don’t actually go forth with the thought of killing someone according to the interviews after the fact.

There is only one category of person who has the ability to kill others of their species with out concern, we call these people sociopaths. They have a variety of critical mental illnesses that result in them dehumanizing everything and everyone, there is no emotion to the act of killing, no more then a normal human being does washing their hands. Thankfully these individuals are few and far between and this level of dehumanization is the last thing one would want in a soldier. That’s the point where soldiers lose their sense of who the enemy is and civilians go from people to be defended to just more targets.

The warrior and the conditioned criminal for the most part must do their killing in cold blood, going forth with the intent to kill. Situations can arise to change that, the wounding of a close friend or comrade for example but for the most part the soldier must go about his business as a competent professional in the arts of warfare, this detached coolness is literally the difference between life and death in many cases. Which returns us to that same dehumanization of the enemy, the soldier cannot be worried about if the man shooting at him has a wife or child, he is merely the enemy and must be eliminated so the soldier may be himself preserved and the mission accomplished.

Even in an environment with high dehumanization of the enemy like in WW2 that doesn’t mean the soldiers in question are conditioned to killing the enemy. After World War 2 Brigadier General S.L.A Marshall discovered that in the European theater of operations that individual riflemen only took shots against exposed enemy soldiers 15-20% of the time. (7) Firing rates increased when ordered to by a superior or when firing from a crew served/key weapons system like a machine gun or flamethrower but for the individual combatant they appeared to be unable or willing to kill. This research was correlated by numerous other studies of foreign armed forces and by FBI studies of firing rates amongst Law Enforcement Officers. (7)

The US military and indeed armed forces world wide responded by introducing conditioning techniques to their marksmanship programs. This condition exists to this day, when Marines learn rifle marksmanship the basic target at the 200 yard line for the known distance course of fire is a standard bulls eye, but all the other targets are human silhouettes, as are all the targets provided during combat marksmanship training, where coaches also provided pinpoint instruction on these same human silhouettes on where to aim for chest, head and “mobility” (the hips and pelvis) shots. LtCol Grossman in his article “On Killing II” that the Army system where silhouette reactive targets are used, that is targets that fall down when you hit them are actually a perfect model of what is called “operant” psychological conditioning. (7)

This new method of conditioning lead to increased firing rates in Korea and even higher in Vietnam, Other countries such as England has similar results in their own conflicts. (12) Considering the methods for conditioning are still being used by the US armed forces today to condition and prepare troops for combat, I’d say the effectiveness of the methodology and the psychology behind it can’t be questioned as far as an increase of combat efficiency is concerned.
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Mr_Rose:

--- Quote from: Masterpiece on 15 May 2013, 11:44 ---His Dark Materials <3

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Indeed. Pullman for President etc. and so forth. A pity the films will never be up to scratch as long as they're being funded by religious conservatives.


--- Quote from: Loki on 15 May 2013, 11:52 ---
--- Quote from: Mr_Rose on 15 May 2013, 11:15 ---All this talk of smart children in novels reminds me that only one author that I've come across has ever made their smart children actually childlike.

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Hermione? She is a somewhat insecure child.
(click to show/hide)Particularly I think of how she is deeply hurt by Ron insulting her in the first book, which leads her to hide in the bathroom which gets attacked by the troll on Halloween. She is also shaken after the experience.Personally, I think one Mister Yudkowsky caught her personality in his Harry Potter fanfic pretty well:

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--- Quote ---No one had asked for help, that was the problem. They'd just gone around talking, eating, or staring into the air while their parents exchanged gossip. For whatever odd reason, no one had been sitting down reading a book, which meant she couldn't just sit down next to them and take out her own book. And even when she'd boldly taken the initiative by sitting down and continuing her third read-through of Hogwarts: A History, no one had seemed inclined to sit down next to her.

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you."
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One childlike moment does not excuse the rest of the seven books. OTOH, Rowling does make most of her adults behave like spiteful playground bullies so I guess it evens out in the end?

That said, I am not even slightly surprised fanficcers have been able to better characterise the HP crew; Rowling is, honestly, just not that good of an author. Not terrible but not amazing either, just popular (and the most 'fic'd), so raw statistics means that theres a good chance someone who happens to be better but isn't being paid will come along and outdo the original.

Also, if OSC's politics off-page can get the books criticised as being mouthpieces despite not showing any actual signs of same, then surely Rowling's tacit support of the use of "date rape drugs" on-page is worth some heat? I refer, of course, to the several mentions of "love potions", including one powerful enough to actually circumvent free will entirely, that pass without further comment on the morality of same. Truth serum is a government licensed and controlled substance with hefty penalties for abuse but, apparently, something far more effective and specific than rohypnol and alcohol together doesn't even merit a stern warning from the teachers?

Method of Madness:
Which is interesting, because the Imperius Curse, a spell which does something similar (albeit turned up to 11) earns someone an automatic life sentence.

Carl-E:
GarandMarine, it's not just conditioning to the kill - you mention the ugly aspect of dehumanising the enemy, and that's an interesting psychological process of its own.  My god daughter served recently (Iraq was still on) as a weapons tech in HI and came back from basic talking about "Hadjis", an attempt at a derogatory nickname for Iraqi's rather like Vietnam's "Gooks". 

Or even WWI's "Huns". 

I won't mention what the Nazi's called their enemies...

Dehumanising takes place on many levels, and she was back for two or three years before she was even able to think of a person with "Hadji" characteristics as human.  It was a major breakthrough for her - with a good bit of tears involved. 

Method of Madness:
Wait, "Hun" is derogatory? I honestly didn't know :psyduck:

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