>>>Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Didn't you post something a while back - maybe even by Goff - saying that
>>modern training techniques have gotten firing rates way up - that even in
>>WW2, soldiers were reluctant to fire, but thanks to operant conditioning,
>>now they've got itchy fingers.
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>That's not Stan -- that's Dave Grossman: Cf.
><http://squawk.ca/lbo-talk/0211/0742.html>. I think it's revealing that
>you have to get constant training to learn to fire your weapon as you are
>expected; in my view, that's an indication of how difficult for humans to
>kill other humans. You can learn "a reflexive quick-shoot ability"
>through training, but you can unlearn it, too, as many soldiers did, after
>or even during their tours of duty.
Doesn't Grossman make the claim that murder rates in the U.S. are as high as they are compared to other western industrial countries because of our violent films, T.V. shows, and video games? Doesn't he also compare these violent media images to the operant conditioning techniques used by the military? I read his book "On Killing" which I thought was quite good. I have not read his book "Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill" however which I believe makes the above claims.
John Thornton