Someone deserves a large hattip for this, but I'm having trouble remembering who; my records don't seem to show any email or OB comment which told me of this 12-page essay, "Epistemic Viciousness in the Martial Arts" by Gillian Russell. Maybe Anna Salamon?
We all lined up in our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow.
I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen.
This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices.
It all generalizes amazingly. To summarize some of the key observations for how epistemic viciousness arises:
- The art, the dojo, and the sensei are seen as sacred. "Having red toe-nails in the dojo is like going to church in a mini-skirt and halter-top... The students of other martial arts are talked about like they are practicing the wrong religion."
- If your teacher takes you aside and teaches you a special move and you practice it for 20 years, you have a large emotional investment in it, and you'll want to discard any incoming evidence against the move.
- Incoming students don't have much choice: a martial art can't be learned from a book, so they have to trust the teacher.
- Deference to famous historical masters. "Runners think that the contemporary staff of Runner's World know more about running than than all the ancient Greeks put together. And it's not just running, or other physical activities, where history is kept in its place; the same is true in any well-developed area of study. It is not considered disrespectful for a physicist to say that Isaac Newton's theories are false..." (Sound familiar?)
- "We martial artists struggle with a kind of poverty—data-poverty—which makes our beliefs hard to test... Unless you're unfortunate enough to be fighting a hand-to-hand war you cannot check to see how much force and exactly which angle a neck-break requires..."
- "If you can't test the effectiveness of a technique, then it is hard to test methods for improving the technique. Should you practice your nukite in the air, or will that just encourage you to overextend? ... Our inability to test our fighting methods restricts our ability to test our training methods."
- "But the real problem isn’t just that we live in data poverty—I think that’s true for some perfectly respectable disciplines, including theoretical physics—the problem is that we live in poverty but continue to act as though we live in luxury, as though we can safely afford to believe whatever we’re told..." (+10!)
One thing that I remembered being in this essay, but, on a second reading, wasn't actually there, was the degeneration of martial arts after the decline of real fights—by which I mean, fights where people were really trying to hurt each other and someone occasionally got killed.
In those days, you had some idea of who the real masters were, and which school could defeat others.
And then things got all civilized. And so things went downhill to the point that we have videos on Youtube of supposed Nth-dan black belts being pounded into the ground by someone with real fighting experience.
I had one case of this bookmarked somewhere (but now I can't find the bookmark) that was really sad; it was a master of a school who was convinced he could use ki techniques. His students would actually fall over when he used ki attacks, a strange and remarkable and frightening case of self-hypnosis or something... and the master goes up against a skeptic and of course gets pounded completely into the floor. Feel free to comment this link if you know where it is.
Truly is it said that "how to not lose" is more broadly applicable information than "how to win". Every single one of these risk factors transfers straight over to any attempt to start a "rationality dojo". I put to you the question: What can be done about it?
I wouldn't put Krav Maga into the same category as Wing Chun; it's essentially Jeet Kune Do under another brand name (or Jeet Kune Do is Krav Maga under another brand name, since neither particularly owes its existence to the other.) To the best of their abilities, Krav Maga instructors test the performance of their skills under as close an approximation of the circumstances they expect that their soldiers will need to apply them as they can contrive.
I only took a few classes in Krav Maga, but I spent a longer time training in Wun Hop Kuen Do, a branch of Kajukenbo with similar training outlook. Kajukenbo was a mixed martial art before the rise of sport MMA, and developed a formidable reputation in Hawaii at a time when violent street engagements were common. My own instructor's teacher (Grandmaster Al Dacascos, father of the martial arts movie actor Mark Dacascos,) reminisced about how back when his old school had a white pants and white shirt dress requirement, students from his school would actually go and beat up sailors and steal their pants to wear in class. This is not a style that developed in isolation from regular exposure to evidence of what works on the street. As a side note, some Kajukenbo schools train professional MMA competitors (such as the one where Chuck Liddell trained.)
When I did full contact sparring with my instructor, he would indeed usually finish matches by submission. Having trained for a while in BJJ as well, while I was never able to submit my instructors using legal techniques, I often found myself in positions where I could grab their testicles, gouge their eyes, manipulate the pressure points under their ears, shove a thumb into the base of their windpipe, etc., and they would tell me that while those techniques were effective in a real fight, I wouldn't be allowed to use them in competition. Trying those against Sifu Jason, my Wun Hop Kuen Do instructor, he'd simply shut me down because he was used to dealing with all of them. He trained and used his techniques in MMA rules fights (Krav Maga practitioners often spar this way as well,) but he would also do heavy contact multi-man sparring drills, weapon vs. weapon sparring, weapon vs. unarmed sparring, and other drills to condition students for potential self defense situations. Being an instructor level pracitioner in Wun Hop Kuen Do is essentially a research position; he would train against guys who would attack him in earnest with a real knife (having worked his way up after years of training with a rubber knife with a chalked edge) to make sure that his techniques actually worked as advertized. Is it reckless? Of course, but when the product you're selling is defense in potentially life-and-death situations, and your techniques aren't effective, you're putting all your students at risk.
Sifu Jason is also one of the more active participants on Bullshido, and many of their style vs. style matches are hosted at his school. When it comes to demonstrating real life effectiveness in martial arts, I think he's pretty effectively shouldered the burden of evidence. And because lives depend on it, and they're passionate about what they do, that's how seriously serious military instructors take their styles too.
Present day MMA is probably not far off from the optimal on-on-one fighting style without street clothes in a ring with no rules. But if MMA fighters optimize for personal combat of that type, and display the same sort of uncomprehending helplessness that many of the strikers did back in the earliest days of the UFC upon being brought to the ground for the first time as soon as they run into a fight with multiple opponents or a knife, then the training is not well optimized for self defense.
Krav Maga as taught to Israeli soldiers might be some such animal. The scam with the same name where you... (read more)