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human garbage bag posted:That is the question I started with, specifically "Why did Union soldiers fight in the American Civil War." I suspect that if they knew the true casualty rate then they wouldn't have fought. Now obviously it's good they fought, but I just don't understand why they would fight unless they didn't know how dangerous it really was. Now, that's a better question we can answer. IIRC, I remember reading some stuff that especially in the early war, it was seen as "important to sign up to defend democracy". The idea that you can't just go home and not play if the vote does'nt turn out your way. Other factors others have explained can talk about why people downplayed or underthought the risks (or, given the information available to them in 1860, probably had a decent grasp of them) but there's also patriotism and national pride as factors - just because you wouldn't go to war to Defend America or Defend Democracy in TYOOL 2021, doesn't mean others wouldn't or they didn't at the time, even fairly poor folks. Nothingtoseehere fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 22:51
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This is also the time of literal John Brown. Like people were definitely willing to fight and die in defence of or against slavery in the period and it's kind of weird to universalise from a position of "well I wouldn't die for a moral cause"
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Jun 14, 2021 22:54
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Epicurius posted:I mean, there's the famous Sullivan Ballou letter. That's exactly what I'm saying! They seem to not know that not fighting is an option. It's like they were indoctrinated to fight when your leadership declares war. Lack of critical thinking education?
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Jun 14, 2021 22:54
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Actually looking at the rap sheet I'm not sure this is a productive line of discussion.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:57
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human garbage bag posted:That is the question I started with, specifically "Why did Union soldiers fight in the American Civil War." I suspect that if they knew the true casualty rate then they wouldn't have fought. Now obviously it's good they fought, but I just don't understand why they would fight unless they didn't know how dangerous it really was. 2 million deployed, 100k KIA, 200k of disease, then 300k wounded. Meanwhile the confederates lost 300k of 700k-1 million deployed, with another 150k wounded. So I dunno, what would this "true casualty rate" have meant to you? I mean it seems like the confederates are getting killed at a much higher rate, so why wouldn't I instead conclude that, hey, we'll probably win, and I'll probably not get seriously hurt especially later in the war.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:59
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MikeCrotch posted:This is also the time of literal John Brown. Like people were definitely willing to fight and die in defence of or against slavery in the period and it's kind of weird to universalise from a position of "well I wouldn't die for a moral cause" Agreed. We shouldn't cynically write of motivations of the people of the past when they say they were fighting for patriotism or to preserve the Union or to keep their family's slaves in bondage. These motivations may look naive or silly or vile today, but - well, we weren't there. When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
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Jun 14, 2021 22:59
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human garbage bag posted:That's exactly what I'm saying! They seem to not know that not fighting is an option. It's like they were indoctrinated to fight when your leadership declares war. Lack of critical thinking education? For some of them later on, not fighting isn't an option, because they've been drafted, but early on, they know they don't have to enlist. But (if you're a notherner), the South is trying to tear the country apart, or (if you're a southerner) a dictator has just been elected President of the US and will make blacks superior over whites and oppress free people, so you know, what sort of person won't fight to stop that?
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Jun 14, 2021 22:59
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human garbage bag posted:But the low casualty rate would explain that, free college isn't very useful if you're dead. Somehow I doubt people today would sign up to participate in a ground war in China for free college when they could instead be a truck driver and make $60k+ a year. have you ever been poor or 17?
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Jun 14, 2021 23:00
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human garbage bag posted:But the low casualty rate would explain that, free college isn't very useful if you're dead. Somehow I doubt people today would sign up to participate in a ground war in China for free college when they could instead be a truck driver and make $60k+ a year. The better job doesn't exist for many people; many people can't afford college that is ever increasingly the requirement to get even a baseline poor job. Additionally for many people who join the military the training it provides and the free education means you can get a better job after you're discharged. And then of course you have various complex cultural values. In Ancient Rome, military service was not only highly valued, but mandatory for political office. Serving in the military is widely seen as something you do to make your parents proud, or to protect your friends and loved ones, or for national pride even if you do think you know the risks. There are plenty of wars where death was very likely but people still signed up and served because of bravery and a sense of duty and courage and they wanted to express these things. Consider resistance and freedom fighters who know they face an impossibly advanced adversary and know that in a head to head fight that death is certain. A lot of people would probably today volunteer and find themselves on a freaking waitlist if war broke out with China today regardless of the reason why.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:02
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human garbage bag posted:I have a theory that wars would be much less frequent if the soldiers knew the real casualty rate. I'm looking for evidence for this theory with records of soldiers not knowing the casualty rate in various wars. I know that in the end of WW1 the french soldiers refused to fight because they found out the casualty rate. No one knows the real casualty rates for anything but very modern wars and even then numbers can be iffy. But lets say hypothetically you knew the next war would have a 53% casualty rate. You're asking young men between 16 and 24 to do an accurate assessment of risk. People in general are bad at it but that group tends to be super loving bad at it. The schadenfreude thread can produce hours of amusing evidence of this. The OSHA thread can produce hours of much less amusing and much more horrifying evidence of this. Your assumption here is that with accurate information, people will produce good risk assessment. They don't.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:05
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human garbage bag posted:But the low casualty rate would explain that, free college isn't very useful if you're dead. Somehow I doubt people today would sign up to participate in a ground war in China for free college when they could instead be a truck driver and make $60k+ a year. If there was a ground war in China I guarantee there'd be a whole lot of people signing up for a whole raft of other reasons, mostly non-material ones. Patriotism, a desire to protect their homeland, a once-in-a-lifetime experience you can tell people about, a once-in-a-lifetime experience that you'll be forever shamed for missing ("Well, during the Great War your granddaddy shoveled poo poo in Louisiana"), hatred for the Chinese, hatred for Communism, a general sense of duty, a desire for adventure, possibly even some wild takes about defending a nebulous idea of Freedom and Democracy, a family lineage of military officers (though in that case you'd probably ALREADY be in the military), etc. etc. It wouldn't be everybody but there'd be plenty of volunteers, at least at first. But that's how most wars go, start with a big surge of volunteers and patriotism and then increasing rely on drafts as the really enthusiastic guys get killed off.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:06
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Cessna posted:The dirty secret that everyone knows is that, if you don't die or get maimed, war is exciting. This is the sort of thing that immediately came to mind, make potential recruits watch a four hour long video of troops waiting and digging. So do you think videos of the realities of 95% of war would put off a bunch of recruits? Would it have put you off?
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Jun 14, 2021 23:11
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human garbage bag posted:But the low casualty rate would explain that, free college isn't very useful if you're dead. Somehow I doubt people today would sign up to participate in a ground war in China for free college when they could instead be a truck driver and make $60k+ a year. This whole thing has a massive "we could prevent crimes if we just made the prison sentences longer" vibe. E: By which I mean it has that same energy of "well, any *rational actor* would..." energy which completely ignores everything about humans ever.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:11
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Generally speaking, what puts people off from signing up to fight in wars is not casualty rates, but the belief that their contribution will be meaningless. Even if people think that the ~reality of war~ is that they will suffer, if they will suffer meaningfully then that's heroism. Soldiers getting killed doesn't put people off - heck, it gets put in propaganda films, and presented with posthumous medals. A lot of people died? Well then, all the more reason to join up and AVENGE THE FALLEN, MAKE SURE THEIR SACRIFICE DOESN'T GO TO WASTE etc etc
Fangz fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 23:12
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Fangz posted:Generally speaking, what puts people off from signing up to fight in wars is not casualty rates, but the belief that their contribution will be meaningless. Even if people think that the ~reality of war~ is that they will suffer, if they will suffer meaningfully then that's heroism. Soldiers getting killed doesn't put people off - heck, it gets put in propaganda films, and presented with posthumous medals. A lot of people died? Well then, all the more reason to join up and AVENGE THE FALLEN, MAKE SURE THEIR SACRIFICE DOESN'T GO TO WASTE etc etc Also especially young males are loving magnificently good at going "well, sucks to suck for those guys but clearly I won't be dying, I'm the protagonist of my life, after all"
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Jun 14, 2021 23:16
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Weka posted:This is the sort of thing that immediately came to mind, make potential recruits watch a four hour long video of troops waiting and digging. So do you think videos of the realities of 95% of war would put off a bunch of recruits? Would it have put you off? Enlisting today is already a bunch of waiting and humiliating poo poo. Sit around for four hours, congrats it's time for your piss test, sad you weren't able to piss while directly showing your dick trying to work up the stream to the fat ex-navy guy drumming his collapsible desk to the tune of 1812 overture as he confirms it is definitely your real piss, sorry come back tomorrow and have the same wait plus more cuz you gotta do the piss test, then go get naked with fifteen of your new closest friends and wait four more hours to do extremely intimate poses together, a doctor will finger you in the butt it's fine, also you can't leave you're getting up at four regardless until you leave and you get your MOS counsellor meeting and sign the papers to designate your next of kin right after then you go home Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jun 14, 2021 |
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Jun 14, 2021 23:18
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Weka posted:This is the sort of thing that immediately came to mind, make potential recruits watch a four hour long video of troops waiting and digging. The most accurate recruiting video ever made was done by Saturday Night Live back in the late 70s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahizGoXibZo (For context, the Navy was doing the same sort of ad at the time, but showing sailors going to fun places like Hong Kong or Tokyo.) Weka posted:So do you think videos of the realities of 95% of war would put off a bunch of recruits? Would it have put you off? Probably not. Again, see "17-21 year olds don't think it applies to them.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:21
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Enlisting today is already a bunch of waiting and humiliating poo poo. Sit around for four hours, congrats it's time for your piss test, sad you weren't able to piss while directly showing your dick trying to work up the stream to the fat ex-navy guy drumming his collapsible desk to the tune of 1812 overture as he confirms it is definitely your real piss, sorry come back tomorrow and have the same wait plus more cuz you gotta do the piss test, then go get naked with fifteen of your new closest friends and wait four more hours to do extremely intimate poses together, a doctor will finger you in the butt it's fine See why didn't they include this in the recruitment videos.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:22
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Cessna posted:Probably not. Again, see "17-21 year olds don't think it applies to them. I feel you, I just thought, show them something they're actually worried about.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:26
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What happened to captured/intercepted blockade runners in the ACW? Presumably most were British/British flagged and I presume the Union didn't want to piss the British off any more than they had to. Were they seized as prizes? Crews interned? Was the blockade viewed as 'legal' internationally?
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Jun 14, 2021 23:28
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Weka posted:I feel you, I just thought, show them something they're actually worried about. When you join the USMC (and presumably other services) you take a test to see what jobs you qualify for. You can pick something like "armor crewman" if you're especially motivated and dumb or "cyber security" if you're smart and want to get a job when you get out. People still sign up to be 0311/Riflemen. Even more inexplicably, people join "open contract." That's literally "give me any job you want, sirs, and I'll do it." This is how you get people for jobs like "Musical Instrument Repair Technician (Clarinet)" or "Water Support Technician" or "Graves Registration Specialist." But, again, no one thinks they'll get those jobs. But they do.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:39
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Musical Instrument Repair Technician sounds like a pretty cool job to be honest
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Jun 14, 2021 23:45
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:What happened to captured/intercepted blockade runners in the ACW? Presumably most were British/British flagged and I presume the Union didn't want to piss the British off any more than they had to. Were they seized as prizes? Crews interned? Was the blockade viewed as 'legal' internationally? they were practically all privately owned, but captaining them was actually a pretty popular side job for Royal Navy officers having a hard time making ends meet in the peacetime navy. Crews came from all over the place. if one got captured the ship went to a prize court. Confederate sailors on board or taken as prisoner and any non-confederates were just sent back home. the legal status of the blockade is actually a pretty interesting question. the US never recognized the Confederacy as anything other than a domestic insurrection, and so as far as the US was concerned all of the ports in the South still belonged to the union. you don't blockade your own ports though, so it was argued at the time doing so was tantamount to formal recognition of the Confederacy as a separate nation. they didn't really have any choice though, the rules for a naval blockade were very strict and if they were going to be encountering British ships or sailors they had to follow all of the rules in place to avoid pissing the British off. in the end that legal argument didn't really change much and everyone did a pretty good job of following the rules so it was a surprisingly clean and straightforward part of the war.
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Jun 14, 2021 23:46
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Not to mention the whole Alabama mess....
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Jun 14, 2021 23:54
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bewbies posted:they were practically all privately owned, but captaining them was actually a pretty popular side job for Royal Navy officers having a hard time making ends meet in the peacetime navy. Crews came from all over the place. When did the blockade really become effective? I remember reading that the confederacy partly shot itself in the foot early in the war by intentionally not selling a bunch of cotton when it could in an rear end-backwards attempt to get Britain and France to play nice with them, and presumably it was too late by the time they realized their mistake? Wikipedia says of ~7 million bales of cotton produced in the south during the war (compare with 4 million in 1860 alone), only 500,000 were exported to Europe, which seems like the blockade sure worked. Also almost a million sold to the North-how did that work?
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Jun 15, 2021 00:11
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human garbage bag posted:That's exactly what I'm saying! They seem to not know that not fighting is an option. It's like they were indoctrinated to fight when your leadership declares war. Lack of critical thinking education? You seem to have this idea that if people are sufficiently educated, then they start making decisions that are solely in their best interests. All you need to do to produce a population of perfectly rational optimizers is educate everyone and make information readily available! To be clear: this is bullshit. Very highly-educated, intelligent, and informed people routinely make decisions because of ideology, whether that be patriotic, religious, ethnic/cultural, philosophical, or whatever. Humans are not rational individuals. That includes yourself (and myself), by the way. It also includes governments. Don't imagine that there's some cabal of high-level government officials motivated solely by power-seeking, for example. If a government passes a racist/sexist/etc. law it's entirely possible, indeed it's likely, that that law passed because the officials in power are racist/sexist/etc.
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Jun 15, 2021 00:44
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:Also almost a million sold to the North-how did that work? Very well until local Army officials started cracking down on the trade. Grant pissed off a lot of people with some remarkably stupid restrictions, but he made his real enemies by stopping the cotton trade along the rivers in his district out West early in the war. On the oceanic trade, you'd think the incoming blockade runners would be loaded to the gunwales with war material, and on government blockade runners they were. The private ships loaded luxury goods that paid a higher price per ton than boring stuff like rifles and machine tools. The war may have set brother against brother, but trading partner is an altogether stronger bond in practice.
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Jun 15, 2021 01:46
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Actually looking at the rap sheet I'm not sure this is a productive line of discussion. This tbh
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Jun 15, 2021 01:48
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Cessna posted:When you join the USMC (and presumably other services) you take a test to see what jobs you qualify for. You can pick something like "armor crewman" if you're especially motivated and dumb or "cyber security" if you're smart and want to get a job when you get out. I mean would you rather repair a clarinet or try to convince an OF-6 to use a special character in his password?
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Jun 15, 2021 02:24
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Ensign Expendable posted:I mean would you rather repair a clarinet or try to convince an OF-6 to use a special character in his password? It depends on how often they break the clarinets and how fiddly is it to fix them.
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Jun 15, 2021 02:50
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Hey, here's a question: In 18th century warfare, if a regiment broke and fled in combat but didn't desert entirely and managed to recover enough to rejoin the army after the battle, were the soldiers punished for doing so in any way? And if so, what was the punishment?
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Jun 15, 2021 02:57
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Grenrow posted:It depends on how often they break the clarinets and how fiddly is it to fix them. Not too often; extremely.
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Jun 15, 2021 04:05
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Skanky Burns posted:Not too often; extremely. Dad never talks about the Twenty Years War but when I told him I joined a woodwinds section, he just started sobbing.
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Jun 15, 2021 04:38
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Cessna posted:When you join the USMC (and presumably other services) you take a test to see what jobs you qualify for. You can pick something like "armor crewman" if you're especially motivated and dumb or "cyber security" if you're smart and want to get a job when you get out. Do you get to do the test and see what you qualify for before you join up? Or do you sign on the dotted line then hope you test into a tolerable MOS?
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Jun 15, 2021 04:54
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Actually guys, I think human garbage bag has a point- history is full of evidence that people don't want to kill people they hate and fear. If they just had a little more education than they currently have (even though by historical standards most of humanity is astonishingly well-educated and well informed), then war would just stop. Now granted literate populations in history are just as war mongering as others (maybe even more so?). But if they just had (current education) + (some kind of anti-war video) even taking into account that people have already seen tons of anti war videos, then people would just use their logic and critical thinking skills to rise above their base natures and seek an enlightened peace. Informed people don't do dangerous things. That's why college grads don't smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or soda, eat fatty food, or fail to get regular health checkups.
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Jun 15, 2021 05:07
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*a visibly releived 18 year old kid comes back to the 2 bedroom house his stepfather kicked him out of* You're not going to believe the video they showed us at the recruiting station- there's a less than 50% chance I could die or be seriously harmed in the military! Welp, off to my 60k a year job as a truck driver, which was my other alternative Uncle Enzo fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jun 15, 2021 |
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Jun 15, 2021 05:16
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https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1404644384268816391 I kinda want to steal this for use at the end of an AOM or all hands call.
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Jun 15, 2021 05:26
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Uncle Enzo posted:If they just had a little more education than they currently have (even though by historical standards most of humanity is astonishingly well-educated and well informed), then war would just stop. This may not be the best ironic argument since, by historical standards, humanity is not just astonishingly well-educated and well informed but also less likely to die a violent death..
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Jun 15, 2021 05:31
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human garbage bag posted:That is the question I started with, specifically "Why did Union soldiers fight in the American Civil War." I suspect that if they knew the true casualty rate then they wouldn't have fought. Now obviously it's good they fought, but I just don't understand why they would fight unless they didn't know how dangerous it really was. Do you know the true casualty rate? In addition to every other bad assumption you've made in this thread, you seem to be very badly overestimating how many soldiers actually died in combat. For instance, the state of Michigan sent over 90,000 men (Nearly a quarter of the 1860 male population) to fight in the Civil War, of which nearly 15,000 died—4,448 in combat, and the rest from disease. If you were to go back in time and tell an 18-year old considering enlistment that his odds of dying in battle are only about 5%, that would probably make them more likely to enlist!
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Jun 15, 2021 05:38
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Question: The perpetrators of the Richmond, VA bread riots of 1863. You would think logic would dictate that if one foodstuff (like bread) is rare and expensive, you'd switch to another food item. Why didn't the rioters just eat cake instead of rioting???? The violence didn't even solve any problems, why would they do something that was unlikely to yield meaningful improvement to their situation?
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Jun 15, 2021 05:41
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