beoShaffer comments on Summary and Lessons from "On Combat" - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 22 March 2015 01:48AM

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Comment author: beoShaffer 24 March 2015 11:17:52PM 2 points [-]

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.