PhilosophyTutor comments on Epistemic Viciousness - Less Wrong

55 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 March 2009 11:33PM

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Comment author: PhilosophyTutor 27 December 2011 02:58:04PM 2 points [-]

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.

Krav Maga as taught to Israeli soldiers might be some such animal. The scam with the same name where you get an instructor's certificate after a brief workshop which allows you to rip off the gullible is pure bullshido.

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.

I've got no argument with this, although styles that train full-contact for multiple attackers or knives are very few and far between,

Comment author: Desrtopa 11 January 2012 06:10:39AM *  1 point [-]

Krav Maga as taught to Israeli soldiers might be some such animal. The scam with the same name where you get an instructor's certificate after a brief workshop which allows you to rip off the gullible is pure bullshido.

Agreed. Even the place where I trained briefly, which was run by a couple of former Israeli soldiers, was not on the level of instruction of some of the other martial arts dojos in the area. You can make a competent fighter with a few months of hard work, but it takes years to make a serious martial arts expert, so when it comes to military arts I tend to categorize the military instructors quite differently from the instructed.