Comments on: Heroes

By: Toddy Cat

Toddy Cat — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 18:52:58 +0000

Didn’t the U.S. Army Air Force use gun camera film to confirm kills? Certainly that wouldn’t be infallible, but it would put you in the right ball park.

By: Eggo

Eggo — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 02:06:25 +0000

I believe it's come out in recent years that the counts of every nation's top aces were vastly exaggerated for various reasons, so there's that to consider.

By: Slovenian Guest

Slovenian Guest — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 10:29:03 +0000

Yes, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity, it states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

By: AYY

AYY — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 08:52:41 +0000

As I recall Marshall’s statement about the low killing rates in WW2 has been debunked. Can’t find a link right now.

By: A Boy and His Dog

A Boy and His Dog — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 01:12:21 +0000

Heroes or, as Heraclitus called them, Warriors. This 100:1 breakdown seems to hold true for other areas of business and life, not just on the battlefield. Some people get things done — those are the ones you want on your side.

By: Scipio Americanus

Scipio Americanus — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 18:19:22 +0000

I think what Alrenous is getting at is that “psychopath/sociopath” is a term for a specific mental disorder that doesn’t fit the set of observations we’re talking about. What we need is a term for those who aren’t bothered by killing and violence, but for some reason(s) other than a lack of human social instincts, as is the case in sociopaths.

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 17:41:37 +0000

Gwynne Dyer probably did not expect to find a power law, but even if we do expect one, we need to explain its nature. What factors cause some to becomes heroes while most remain zeros? Also, I think the term psychopath is a product of its time. But what do you call people who aren't bothered by war and killing, while everyone around them is?

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:09:45 +0000

Gwynne Dyer misinterprets the numbers. A power law is what you should naively expect. Since a power law is what we see, we haven’t learned much until we do the numbers in particular. We have to work out which power law we expect and compare it to which one we see.

E.g. perhaps most pilots almost never saw combat due to being at rest when combat was available, just by chance. The details matter a lot.

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Psychopaths make spectacularly poor soldiers, as they combine cowardice with recklessness. The typical psychopath’s impulsiveness will have them flee the front lines whenever they think they can, in the moment, get away with it. They’ll abandon their comrades at the drop of a hat. They will then shamelessly try to weasel out of punishment. The reckless disregard for social consequences makes it almost impossible to control them. Similarly the psycho will abandon overwatch positions to ambush individual enemies – soldier or otherwise.