I've been meaning to share this on facebook actually. I thought it would fit well with this graphic.

An awesome piece of art, but the assumption that military personnel are brainless is risible. Churchill anyone?

Ever serve? If you're not careful, it happens. Not just in bootcamp, but the rituals and "totally not hazing" things that take place can completely change a person. I've seen people do complete turnarounds in their beliefs after 6 months at sea and a couple of rituals to inspire "brotherhood". We are malleable things and the service is designed to crush out as much of you as it can get its hands on.

Military culture is ancient. They've been perfecting their methods fo a long time.

None of which implies that they're devoid of mentality

They know how to create a cohesive and effective unit which can perform without doubt or hesitation. The buzz cut is the first step to suppressing the individual identity in favor of the group unity. That's what I took the painting to mean.

Point taken, and I don't disagree at all, but I restate my point; None of this implies that they're devoid of mentality

Based on my own experience, if the painting instead depicted the person being skinned and his appearance grafted onto that of a military robot, I would still consider it an apt metaphor. The system is ruthless and thorough in the way it attempts to stomp out traces of individuality. And, again speaking from experience, it is not merciful to those that resist.

I agree with your point, but my problem is that too many equate "military tries to brainwash soldiers" with "all soldiers are brainwashed." Soldiers are all too often lumped together as one monolithic entity -- they're all brainwashed killers who can't think for themselves and have no individuality. And what ends up happening is you get people like foobar saying "fuck the troops" instead of "fuck the system" or "fuck the politicians" -- they confuse the tool with the hand that wields the tool.

You realize I didn't paint this, right? :)

Is it saying all soldiers are brainless or the military harvests the brains of its soldiers. That's up to your interpretation.

From my own experience, and that's all i've got to offer, if you're looking for unbrainwashed, you're gonna have to look for a while. We all drank the kool-aid to some degree. And the military really would not function if their methods weren't effective.

Edit: keep in mind my arguments about free will though. I am agreeing with your issue, but sad truths are sad truths.

Oh, I know you didn't paint it. And I agree that the majority drink the Kool-Aid. But a lot of people (and I'm not necessarily saying you) equate the majority with all of them, and also ignore the fact that all of these kids eventually get out of the military and re-enter civilian life. Which means a group of kids from generally crappy backgrounds join up for crappy reasons, end up serving a crappy job, and then get out for everyone to treat them like crap. Which kind of sucks, and I'm amazed that some people's reaction is "fuck those guys" rather than, "man, that blows."

Can't argue with that. It sucks, but I get both sides of it. I mean a major part of the problem we're having right now with police abuse is unfortunately coming from ex military entering the ranks of law enforcement and not comprehending the difference partially because that seems to be what the powers that be want. And sadly the way it works is the loudest most troublemaking of a sample often becomes recognized as representative of the majority. It's an issue that all groups have to deal with.

There was a post a few down where people were talking about POWs and the military and various opinions on how guilty or complicit a soldier is. I thought this was an interesting look into someone who joined with good intentions and... his expectations were... let's say... challenged.

So I thought this post might be a nice continuation of a side conversation I though was interesting. Or not. But I'll risk that Sanepride down mod ;)

This is exactly why I say fuck the troops. Treating them like heroes only encourages more to join.

This may surprise you, but the military does other things besides kill people, such as:

Rescue operations
Medical assistance in impoverished areas
Food & humanitarian relief
Security at embassies and other locations
Policing in volatile areas
Natural disaster relief
Law enforcement
Piracy and drug interdiction

Not to mention the social forces that influence people joining up (mostly financial - it's not the well off that are enlisting) and the shit vets have to deal with when they re-enter the civilian population (have you tried getting a job when everyone assumes you must have PTSD or are a baby killer?).

So fuck you, Mr. Fuck The Troops. Most service members are just normal people trying to get by with a shitty job, and your aggression towards them because of their shitty bosses is entirely small-minded and ignorant.

To be fair, you live in communist Canada where it's largely not criminal to be poor.

Devil's advocate here: does the same argument apply if they are wearing a suit?

Yes, military guys are pulling the trigger, but are business people etc who enable it any better?

The nuke and the machine gun were ironically invested by people who thought it would stop war. There's always some poor bastard who is going to weld a club, sword, gun, tank, missile for some misguided reason.

It hardly seems fair the military gets poo pooed while there's military contractors out there literally rich off blood money.

Isn't the engineer or scientist making the weapons, or the middle management guys filing reports, or the lobbyists and politicians more deserving of the scorn than the poor asshole behind the trigger?

I'm not saying they're blameless- but people do worse things to others without a uniform (murder, human trafficking, pronouncing .gif like "jif" etc.

TL;DR: isn't the limited amount of energy I have for scorn better spend directed at the military industrial political complex that armed and sent the poor misguided grunt with his thumb up his ass?

What I don't understand is why anti-military people don't picket CEO/contractor mansions. Make working there a liability.

Oh mookie. You're a precious soul. You're a better man than me; I don't have limited scorn.

I agree that the suits at Halberton are at the very least as bad as the grunt kicking down doors. But they are the mustache twirling villains. Our scorn is wasted on them. They couldn't care less, because they are physiologically incapable of caring at all.

Nukes, perversely, have actually done a pretty good job at preventing war. The US and USSR surely would have had a go at it without them. They've stopped India and Pakistan's squabbles. Bush the Lesser chose to invade Iraq and not Iran or North Korea because the latter actually did have WMD and the former may have.

I now pronounce gif so that it rhymes with knife, just to piss everyone off.

Hate the summer, not the sweet summer child, bro.

On a marginally, related note, can I pronounce ".exe" like "eeks"?

+1 for your last sentence.

The idea that the long peace is a nuclear peace has been pretty comprehensively disproven, by Steven Pinker in the main.

http://stevenpinker.com/pages/frequently-asked-questions-about-better-angels-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined

I'll be honest, foobar might be taking it to the extreme, but there's a legit argument to "they signed up for it, fuck em". I mean, that's how society works in business, lawsuits, contracts and what have you. It's a valid viewpoint- but ideally that's for someone who is informed.

I think this article highlights, exactly, an example where the guy obviously was not informed- and the process of what happens. I think that's the value of the post, article.

I think it's along the same lines as college debt with false "you'll pay this back with your amazing basket weaving job after college!" Unspoken promise.

On the other hand, if you don't believe in free will then "the troops" aren't making a sacrifice. They are the sacrifice. Of society's ignorance, of its apathy, of its inequality, the troops are caught within the teeth of the system's gears as much as they are the gears.

I won't go so far as to say "fuck the troops" but pretending they're heroes and ignoring the atrocities they commit not only perpetuates the cycle and does them a disservice, it keeps society from acknowledging what it is they're forcing these people to do... and become.

If there's no free will then both the troops and the society they're sacrificed by are just mindless robots; there's no point in complaining about society because none of the individuals who comprise it are able to make the decisions necessary to improve it, and there's no point in worrying about what happens to the troops in the first place because when a robot wears out and breaks it's a trivial matter to just make another one.

Of course, if there's no free will, then this whole conversation (and literally everything else anyone could ever possibly think, do, or say) is pointless and we're just making preprogrammed mechanical beeps and boops at each other as we go about our scripted tasks.

No free will doesn't mean that your behavior is unable to change. You are just as vulnerable to influence from outside forces as any other information processing system. You learned english from the outside world, right? All around the world people are living examples of how the outside world effects the development of their internal world. Can anybody here honestly say, without being a troll, that they chose to learn their primary language? That you chose your first word? How about your second? Where would you like to draw the line that your magical free will (that you only have control over sometimes and nobody can agree on the criteria that defines it) takes over?

You sound like a Fox News viewer arguing against socialism or climate change. At least read a book so you know what you're talking about. I'm advertising enough of them.

Godel, Escher, Bach breaks down the concept of information and meaning to demonstrate where thoughts can come from without breaking the laws of physics. It makes the necessity of free will for consciousness obsolete. It's a beast of a book that most people just won't get. Its followup I am a Strange Loop is slightly less complicated but nowhere near as in depth.

Incognito is much simpler, basically an endless laundry list of ways your brain is capable of being fucked with to change your behavior (aka making you "choose" different things.) Tumors that make people become religious? Check. Drugs that turn people into compulsive gamblers? Check. Tumor that turns somebody into a pedophile? Check. The list keeps going.

Moonwalking with Einstein explains how thinking in a specific way allows your brain to more reliably store and retrieve information. And the best part? It inadvertently explains why virtual reality works and gives insight into where mythology comes from if you know how to grock it.


As the song goes, "Read a book! Read a book! Read a motherfucking book!"

Also, speed stick. It's not expensive.

Buy Land, Buy Land... Fuck Spinning Rims!!!

There are several good books on the physical limits, eg: Shannon limits of information processing capable by the human mind. I like that topic, but sadly don't have much time these days to read that depth of document. I own both GEB and IAASL, so I grok that.

Free Will though for a Normal* person we assume means that based on current incoming stream of sensory data, adjusted for our consciousness by various primitive motor functions and hormones, we are given a choice to perform, or not to perform, a given task. The choice to act is "free will" and we believe that this is true because we believe that the outcome is not pre-determined, and that we can always look back at the "path not taken" and convince ourselves that we could have at some point taken it. This is the genus of feeling regret.

OTOH if you simply move forward with life and make your decisions without concerning yourself of the ramifications of the "other" choice, then you can at least try to live a life free of regrets.

Now, if you are a True Believer in a life pre ordained (eg: a Mormon) then you may accept that any choice you make or and action you take is in fact merely a step on a path laid out before your birth, and therefore the idea of Free Will is indeed a facade.

I'm not entirely sure where you are coming down here when you say "No Free Will", is it the "our actions are largely governed by our subconscious" or "we all follow a divine plan"?

Both! :D

Though rather than divine plan I prefer "follow the momentum and natural laws of the universe.(Whatever they may be and whether we are aware of them or not. You know, science.)" And our consciousness being an interpretation of our subconscious. Or, if you prefer, the thing in our head we associate as "I" is not the speaker of our thoughts but is instead the listener of our thoughts.

Familiar with GEB, yes? So let's pretend we're working within a hierarchical layer made entirely of associations for a moment. The old "fire together, wire together" level. Before anyone jumps in, no that's not literal but it works for our thought experiment and to explain how things work on this hierarchical layer.

We know that something in our head creates associations between all the data that flows into us and our actions. So lets say we're learning how to talk. Something in our head is creating an association between not just the movements that make up speaking and the sounds we are making via feedback of the ears, but also the neurological activity that create those effects. It repeats them and dials it in until we get the effects that lead to our rewards. "momma" "oh, baby! Yay, good mini person!" Whatever, the important thing here is that there becomes a link between the thoughts that make sounds and the hearing of sounds (along with any other repetitive sensory inputs/brain activity. Seriously, this is an incredibly simplified way of looking at things that ignores all the other contextual information that is also being stored and will be taken into account as part of the mechanisms that determine future behavior. We're just isolating this one golden thread for ease of explanation.)

And as with everything else in our lives, the more we do something the more that action becomes a habit. Eventually we cut out the middle man and make the sounds in our head, without the physical movements of speaking. Usually. After all, I'm sure you've run into the issue with your internal dialogue being so emotionally intense that you've found yourself speaking the words or mouthing them and getting funny looks? That's because the circuitry that makes the words you speak is probably the same circuitry that makes your internal dialogue just with the physical actions dialed down. This also explains why you associate those thoughts with "I" because they've been associated to the idea that they are relative to outputs of your body.

Again, IOW, consciousness comes from not "I" the speaker, but "I" the listener.

And this same process probably works with all the other internal things you associate with conscious awareness like your imagination, your feelings, your memories, etc... Basically, consciousness (and the rest of your behavior) is an incredibly complex and contextual markov chain. The ultimate biological autocomplete function.

Strange loops on strange loops... all the way down ;)

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Now why do I feel this is so important and bring it up all the time? Because the conversation based on "soldiers made their decision they can live with it" is a much different conversation than "why is our society raising our children to be soldiers." One puts the blame on the soldier while the other recognizes that any behaviors of the soldier is based on a combination of genetic predisposition and trained behavior via experience/environment.

It also leads us to different ways of handling crime. This doesn't mean that because they have no choice there should be no repercussions for criminals, it just requires different way of approaching the problem. As with soldiers, "This person chose to be a kiddie diddler." is a much different conversation than "this person either has a genetic disposition or was trained through experience to pursue sex with children." There's not much of a point for punishing people who have no control over their actions. To do so is basically just cruelty. However, rehabilitation or imprisonment in a compassionate environment where they can't hurt anyone but are still treated like a human being has much different results not just on them but on the mindset of society as a whole.

Lack of free will doesn't mean giving up on the world because we're mindless robots, it's about having compassion for the faults and struggles of the world as we do the only thing we can do given the circumstances. We still have to live without knowing what the future brings, even if the universe is predestined, but that doesn't mean we can't strive for something greater while being compassionate for those who are literally unable to be anything different than what they are in the present moment... and that includes ourselves.

And the "informed" part should really matter when it's not your money but your actual life on the line.

Soldiers are not paid to express opinions. The public provides them for free.

Public opinion sends the troops out to fight, and brings them home. The public assumes moral responsibility, the conscience of a soldier who does his duty is clear.

There's a rather strong precedent against the "just following orders" defence.

In a perfect democracy. Something that doesn't remotely exist.