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Ritalin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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Depends on the circumstances. For example, if you're inflicting the deaths yourself; I read somewhere that the Nazis used gas chambers rather than the bullets they used at first, because killing unarmed, unresisting individuals of all ages and genders by the dozen disturbed the soldiers. Or when you don't know the people yourself, but their disappearance impacts and cripples your world.
I've read the same thing about Nazi soldiers, and also that they couldn't handle another early method of killing-- driving prisoners around in closed trucks with the exhaust fed into the back compartment.
It's not that the thousands have no impact, it's that one person can make a much larger emotional difference.
I've also heard that for soldiers, seeing one more death or injury can be the tipping point into PTSD.
Am I missing something, or does this follow trivially from PTSD being binary and the set of possible body counts being the natural numbers?
The thing is that PTSD is really not that binary, like many mental illnesses, it has a wide range of symptoms and severity levels. What Nancy is talking about is how one death can push one drastically over, skipping much of the middle range where it might be ambiguous if one had symptoms severe enough to be diagnoseable. (Disclaimer, while I've heard the same sort of things NancyLebovitz is talking about, I'm not aware of any studies actually supporting this.)
Got it. I was previously having difficulty making that belief pay rent.