is wrong as a consequence, because you can never train yourself like you are in the Army. That fundamentally needs a group, entirely separate from the question of social incentives and environment.
How is a group separate from the question of social incentives and environment? Having a group of people to motivate you seems like intrinsically a question of social incentives and environments.
I took my friend’s suggestion to be less that we can actually gather the resources to train ourselves like we are in the military, and more that if we were to do so, it would improve our discipline in the long-run. Hence the popular wisdom (or misconception) that military “straightens people out.”
To be more exact, if you have a group, then the group provides social incentives; but social incentives do not imply a group. For example, if I were publicly humiliated in front of strangers, they might mock me if they saw me later in a restaurant. This is a social (dis)incentive, but the fact remains that we aren’t in a group.
What qualifies people as a group in the sense that I intend is at least twofold: they have to share the same set of incentives; this fact has to be common knowledge among them.
I do agree that if person trains successfully it would improve long-run discipline, but doing military training won’t meaningfully change the outcome from non-military training because the group context is what does the extra work. If that is not the focus, ie veterans are just an example disciplined population, then my comments are probably not relevant to the true concern.
How is a group separate from the question of social incentives and environment? Having a group of people to motivate you seems like intrinsically a question of social incentives and environments.
I took my friend’s suggestion to be less that we can actually gather the resources to train ourselves like we are in the military, and more that if we were to do so, it would improve our discipline in the long-run. Hence the popular wisdom (or misconception) that military “straightens people out.”
To be more exact, if you have a group, then the group provides social incentives; but social incentives do not imply a group. For example, if I were publicly humiliated in front of strangers, they might mock me if they saw me later in a restaurant. This is a social (dis)incentive, but the fact remains that we aren’t in a group.
What qualifies people as a group in the sense that I intend is at least twofold: they have to share the same set of incentives; this fact has to be common knowledge among them.
I do agree that if person trains successfully it would improve long-run discipline, but doing military training won’t meaningfully change the outcome from non-military training because the group context is what does the extra work. If that is not the focus, ie veterans are just an example disciplined population, then my comments are probably not relevant to the true concern.