Not for the first time, someone on LW links a West Hunter page that isn’t content to make a reasonable point, but has to exaggerate that point and present it with sneering.
Cochran’s post is short, but to make it even shorter:
Some people claim that it is really, really difficult for humans to psych themselves up to kill another human. They often cite a claim by S. L. A. Marshall that only a small fraction – less than 25% – of WWII American combat infantrymen fired their weapons in battle.
[...] it’s all bullshit. S.L.A Marshall’s ‘data’ is vapor; there was and is nothing to it. He made shit up, not just on this topic. There’s every to reason to think that the vast majority of infantrymen throughout history did their level best to kill those on the other side [...]
You have to wonder about a universal human instinct that apparently misfired in every battle in recorded history.
It’s true that Marshall’s claim about WWII soldiers isn’t trustworthy. (I haven’t spent enough time with the literature to go further and confirm the claim’s made-up bullshit vapour. But it wouldn’t surprise me.) Unfortunately Cochran has to have his cherry on top; he writes off not only Marshall but the general idea of soldiers, and people in general, finding it hard to kill other people.
Now, I first read about that idea, and about Marshall’s dodgy WWII work, in (I’m fairly sure) Randall Collins’s Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory, which quotes Marshall at length and cites him for various (alleged) results, among them the WWII statistic. According to Collins, the famous statistic “has been controversial”, though he also writes “Marshall is not presenting a statistical argument, but was summarizing his judgment”.
That’s not really good enough. But Collins doesn’t rely exclusively on Marshall — the chapter where Collins goes on & on about Marshall cites many other sources which contradict Cochran’s sarcasm & scepticism. They include five citations to affirm that a nontrivial number of soldiers soil themselves in battle, with one of those five mentioning soldiers trying to hide on the ground or under “blankets or sleeping bags”; Marshall’s predecessor Colonel Charles Ardant du Picq, who gave “questionnaires to French army officers in the 1860s, who reported a tendency for soldiers to fire wildly in the air”; John Keegan’s Face of Battle, which reveals that “eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century massed firing formations” often included NCOs pressing their swords against soldiers’ backs “to force them to hold their position”; Paddy Griffith on a “pervasiveness of fear and firing incompetence” in the US Civil War; Richard Holmes and Dave Grossman on the same “pervasiveness” “for twentieth-century wars”; a conclusion “that the level of non-firing was similar [in WWII] in all armies” from Dyer’s 1985 edition of War; Ulysses S. Grant’s description of newly equipped troops fleeing in panic on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh; and Martin Gilbert’s First World War to show that “[m]utinies in World War I occurred among all the armies that had been long in action, or had taken accumulated casualties [on the order of 100%]”.
Collins also tabulates observations from a collection of combat photographs and from Russell W. Glenn’s Reading Athena’s Dance Card, finding that more US infantry in Vietnam reported firing “Rarely” or “Sometimes” (54% in total) than “Virtually always” (46%) in “life-threatening enemy confrontations”, and that most of his photos show no troops firing at all.
I could go on. This is just the first half of chapter 2. Some of the evidence is anecdotal and could be cherry-picked, but the broad drift seems really very clear, and the rest of the book compiles further evidence that people tend to experience “confrontational tension and fear” in the face of potential violence, which leads them to back down or fumble — though competent violence can still occur when people overcome that tension & fear.
Cochran is probably right about Marshall, but probably wrong about the ease with which people kill each other. Perhaps Cochran should be less keen to call others idiots in the future.
Failing to shoot someone out of fear is just as much a failure to shoot someone as failing to shoot someone out of concern for their life. And most of those examples are evidence of soldiers failing/refusing to fire competently at the enemy, or needing to be coerced to try to attack the enemy.
Edit: surprised that within 30 minutes the parent’s at +3 and this is at −1, especially at this time of day. How is the parent comment responsive to the claim that consistently shooting at people is hard for soldiers to do? All alienist is doing is disputing why soldiers don’t manage it, not that they don’t.
If you read through the comments in the linked article (which of course you were under no obligation to do before commenting here) you see that Cochran’s main point was that it’s silly to think that soldiers avoid killing because they have some basic aversion to doing so, although Cochran agrees that fear might cause them to not put themselves in a position where they can shoot.
Not for the first time, someone on LW links a West Hunter page that isn’t content to make a reasonable point, but has to exaggerate that point and present it with sneering.
I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective, or that map blue tribe ‘what-we-want-to-be’ back to the historical past. Take this comparable aside (that I expect is more agreeable) from The Germ of Laziness:
After giving one talk, two M.D.s wondered if actually getting rid of hookworm, curing the disease – wouldn’t that cut into their practice? And while he didn’t kill them on the spot, I guarantee he considered it.
I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective, or that map blue tribe ‘what-we-want-to-be’ back to the historical past.
Sounds plausible, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such sneering. I do ask, though, that the sneering be reserved for obviously wrong claims, and that the sneerer not simultaneously make a sneer-worthy claim of their own.
Yeah, screw those fools who think homosexuality exists.
In case you aren’t aware, Cochran is one of the names behind the ‘gay germ’ hypothesis, which is basically the claim that homosexuality’s most likely cause is a pathogen of some sort, given how common it is and the negative impact it has on fertility. (An index of his posts on the subject.)
I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective
So in practice, this means you will sneer at anyone disagreeing with an idea you consider “obvious”, ie clever. The point of the Jonathan Swift link was that your prior is bad and you should feel bad:
We get to see Harry fail once in Ch. 22, because I felt like I had to make the point about clever ideas not always working. A more realistic story with eight more failed ideas passing before Harry’s first original discovery in Ch. 28 would not have been fun to read, or write.
So in practice, this means you will sneer at anyone disagreeing with an idea you consider “obvious”, ie clever.
Consider this quote:
The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
--Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
That there is some idea that you think is fundamental, and as a result it is overwhelmingly likely that anyone who goes up against will end in defeat, does not mean you extend that privilege to all ideas or that you lock in your current sense of obviousness.
I wouldn’t put evolution at second law status, but it seems like it should be more shameful to propose ideas that fail on basic evolutionary principles.
And if you can prove mathematically that some idea goes against evolutionary principles—rather than making an informal argument of exactly the type that Swift seems to believe rules out homosexual behavior in other animals—this would be relevant.
How is “someone denying it exists” relevant to this debate? Is that “someone” Cochran? I haven’t seen his name in the debate you linked. I don’t understand what exactly are you trying to say by posting that link.
Not for the first time, someone on LW links a West Hunter page that isn’t content to make a reasonable point, but has to exaggerate that point and present it with sneering.
Cochran’s post is short, but to make it even shorter:
It’s true that Marshall’s claim about WWII soldiers isn’t trustworthy. (I haven’t spent enough time with the literature to go further and confirm the claim’s made-up bullshit vapour. But it wouldn’t surprise me.) Unfortunately Cochran has to have his cherry on top; he writes off not only Marshall but the general idea of soldiers, and people in general, finding it hard to kill other people.
Now, I first read about that idea, and about Marshall’s dodgy WWII work, in (I’m fairly sure) Randall Collins’s Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory, which quotes Marshall at length and cites him for various (alleged) results, among them the WWII statistic. According to Collins, the famous statistic “has been controversial”, though he also writes “Marshall is not presenting a statistical argument, but was summarizing his judgment”.
That’s not really good enough. But Collins doesn’t rely exclusively on Marshall — the chapter where Collins goes on & on about Marshall cites many other sources which contradict Cochran’s sarcasm & scepticism. They include five citations to affirm that a nontrivial number of soldiers soil themselves in battle, with one of those five mentioning soldiers trying to hide on the ground or under “blankets or sleeping bags”; Marshall’s predecessor Colonel Charles Ardant du Picq, who gave “questionnaires to French army officers in the 1860s, who reported a tendency for soldiers to fire wildly in the air”; John Keegan’s Face of Battle, which reveals that “eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century massed firing formations” often included NCOs pressing their swords against soldiers’ backs “to force them to hold their position”; Paddy Griffith on a “pervasiveness of fear and firing incompetence” in the US Civil War; Richard Holmes and Dave Grossman on the same “pervasiveness” “for twentieth-century wars”; a conclusion “that the level of non-firing was similar [in WWII] in all armies” from Dyer’s 1985 edition of War; Ulysses S. Grant’s description of newly equipped troops fleeing in panic on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh; and Martin Gilbert’s First World War to show that “[m]utinies in World War I occurred among all the armies that had been long in action, or had taken accumulated casualties [on the order of 100%]”.
Collins also tabulates observations from a collection of combat photographs and from Russell W. Glenn’s Reading Athena’s Dance Card, finding that more US infantry in Vietnam reported firing “Rarely” or “Sometimes” (54% in total) than “Virtually always” (46%) in “life-threatening enemy confrontations”, and that most of his photos show no troops firing at all.
I could go on. This is just the first half of chapter 2. Some of the evidence is anecdotal and could be cherry-picked, but the broad drift seems really very clear, and the rest of the book compiles further evidence that people tend to experience “confrontational tension and fear” in the face of potential violence, which leads them to back down or fumble — though competent violence can still occur when people overcome that tension & fear.
Cochran is probably right about Marshall, but probably wrong about the ease with which people kill each other. Perhaps Cochran should be less keen to call others idiots in the future.
Um, most of these examples appear to be examples of soldiers fearing for their own lives as opposed to concern about the lives of the enemy.
Failing to shoot someone out of fear is just as much a failure to shoot someone as failing to shoot someone out of concern for their life. And most of those examples are evidence of soldiers failing/refusing to fire competently at the enemy, or needing to be coerced to try to attack the enemy.
Edit: surprised that within 30 minutes the parent’s at +3 and this is at −1, especially at this time of day. How is the parent comment responsive to the claim that consistently shooting at people is hard for soldiers to do? All alienist is doing is disputing why soldiers don’t manage it, not that they don’t.
If you read through the comments in the linked article (which of course you were under no obligation to do before commenting here) you see that Cochran’s main point was that it’s silly to think that soldiers avoid killing because they have some basic aversion to doing so, although Cochran agrees that fear might cause them to not put themselves in a position where they can shoot.
Would that Cochran’s original post had focused on that specific point and on Marshall’s unreliability.
In any case, thanks for making the downvotes intelligible. Upvoted.
I see Cochran as also making the meta-point that we should be sneering at things that are obviously wrong when you look at them from an evolutionary or realist perspective, or that map blue tribe ‘what-we-want-to-be’ back to the historical past. Take this comparable aside (that I expect is more agreeable) from The Germ of Laziness:
Sounds plausible, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such sneering. I do ask, though, that the sneering be reserved for obviously wrong claims, and that the sneerer not simultaneously make a sneer-worthy claim of their own.
Yeah, screw those fools who think homosexuality exists.
Science is hard.
In case you aren’t aware, Cochran is one of the names behind the ‘gay germ’ hypothesis, which is basically the claim that homosexuality’s most likely cause is a pathogen of some sort, given how common it is and the negative impact it has on fertility. (An index of his posts on the subject.)
So in practice, this means you will sneer at anyone disagreeing with an idea you consider “obvious”, ie clever. The point of the Jonathan Swift link was that your prior is bad and you should feel bad:
Consider this quote:
--Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
That there is some idea that you think is fundamental, and as a result it is overwhelmingly likely that anyone who goes up against will end in defeat, does not mean you extend that privilege to all ideas or that you lock in your current sense of obviousness.
I wouldn’t put evolution at second law status, but it seems like it should be more shameful to propose ideas that fail on basic evolutionary principles.
And if you can prove mathematically that some idea goes against evolutionary principles—rather than making an informal argument of exactly the type that Swift seems to believe rules out homosexual behavior in other animals—this would be relevant.
Sounds dubious, but I really don’t care—you’re talking about possible causes of homosexual orientation, while I linked someone denying it exists.
How is “someone denying it exists” relevant to this debate? Is that “someone” Cochran? I haven’t seen his name in the debate you linked. I don’t understand what exactly are you trying to say by posting that link.