= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Summary and Lessons from "On Combat" - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (64)
Most of the criticism don't directly concern the claims you're highlighting, but on combat is actually pretty controversial.
I'm not surprised. The first reaction I got from someone I mentioned the book to was: "One of those West-Point trainers preaching war" (more or less)
Grossman does give clear advice how to create human killing machines. No doubt about that. Is that dark art? Maybe. But he also highlightes all the consequences. Even inspiring a hero cult as he does is backed by the fact that a small number of actors do make a big difference in battle.
And then his treatment of video game violence. If you are against him and see him as the bad guy this can't fit into your picture. And is surely one reason he is seen as a light side guy (or at least as balanced by the smarter ones).
I was referring to factual controversy, not political. While it sounds like the most dubious parts are the ones you skipped/skimmed, a major facet of Grossman's work in general is his ideas about the psychology of killing, and as the above link details these ideas are based on a mixture of pathetically bad evolutionary psychology, and dubious (read probably fraudulent) empirical evidence. Since, your review didn't focus on this aspect I don't want to harp on it too much, at the same time it has a lot of knock on effects e.g. your views on video games and violence are likely to be different if you believe humans are naturally violent than if you believe they need significant training to be psychologically capable of killing.