People No Longer Properly Understand the Connection Between Biology and Capability of Violence

[ParadiseLost]

This is something I have been thinking about for a while.

Something I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to understate how important actually physical build is these days.

In an argument on Reddit, someone insisted that using physical force (including physically striking) a 6'+ and almost 250 lb individual was child abuse because the person was a minor, and that because the person was a minor, they were not actually a threat.

There was also whataboutism about how "all people can be dangerous."

I also notice that when discussing police brutality, few people discuss the size differences that can exist between police and the people they are arresting.

Imagine a cop who is 5'8" and 150 lbs. Realistically, how do you expect someone to easily/peacefully restrain an individual who is 6'4" and 250 lbs? Its just not going to be pleasant on either side, because the physical differences call for desperate measures on the part of the cop, who has to worry about how quickly things could go very badly for him if he loses the upper hand.

Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to investigate this, but I suspect you would see a substantial correlation between police/civilian encounters resulting in a civilians death and the size of the civilian in question, especially when controlling for other factors.

More broadly, there are the memes of "women are just as strong as men," that you sometimes see - videos of women expressing such beliefs at college campuses, for example. You also see videos like this, where some... radio hosts (?) discuss the subject, and the dude has to basically inform these grown women that they would not be able to take a 14-15 year old boy in a fight. Then you have just plain hilarious videos like this one about tennis.

Honestly, I kinda blame Hollywood more than politics for once. Hollywood portrays nearly all sizes and genders as being roughly equal in an encounter, when in reality, when unarmed, physical differences are incredibly hard to surmount.

People really don't understand just how vulnerable a women is, for example, or just how aggressive a smaller man is going to have to get against an individual who is substantially larger than him in order to subdue him in a fight.

 

[Scottty]

Some of those people who sit on the internet all day sound as if they live in their own little world, utterly detached from physical reality.

But I think the reality is that such a person will pretend not to understand anything that contradicts his or her ideology. Part of what you are seeing is what I call "runaway egalitarianism", where "all people are eeequal!" gets taken to absurd and reality-defying extremes, and partly their innate hostility to law and order, to anything that restrains evil people from doing evil.

In the real world, if you want police officers to be able to overpower criminals without any struggle, then the cops need to be big, tall, muscular dudes, whose very presence commands respect. That is how it used to be done, too. Here in South Africa back in the old days, the police were big and scary. Men who were "built when meat was cheap".
Way back then in the bad old days, when they did things according to the bad old ways.... the bad old ways actually worked.

And they would never have thought of sending a 4-foot-tall policewoman to try to arrest a man who could kill her with a single punch.

My advice here? Stop trying to reason with people who are simply not reason-capable on the subject, and who regard the insanity of their position as a mark of their own moral superiority.

 

[PsihoKekec]

There are multiple vectors here, one is that lot of people can't really different fiction from real life, so movie and television heroes routinely taking care of enemies bigger than them is real and applies to them as well, because everybody is the hero of their own story and when reality comes knocking, it is always fault of someone else.

Another vector is ideological dogma of blank state, everybody is capable of everything (except bad things) and the only reason they couldn't do so in the past is due to the system of racist white patriarchy holding them back.

Another vector is the ideological dogma of proportional representation, women have to be represented proportionally, no matter the cost, although dogma of blank state assures us that there is no real cost.

 

[Simonbob]

There are multiple vectors here, one is that lot of people can't really different fiction from real life, so movie and television heroes routinely taking care of enemies bigger than them is real and applies to them as well, because everybody is the hero of their own story and when reality comes knocking, it is always fault of someone else.

Another vector is ideological dogma of blank state, everybody is capable of everything (except bad things) and the only reason they couldn't do so in the past is due to the system of racist white patriarchy holding them back.

Another vector is the ideological dogma of proportional representation, women have to be represented proportionally, no matter the cost, although dogma of blank state assures us that there is no real cost.

All of which comes back to "Deny Reality!"


It's stupid. It's also a large part of why we're having so many issues.

 

[JasonSanjo]

There are... so, so many things to unpack on this subject.

One is mass and size: In online discourse you often have two basic "camps". One is composed of those people who believe size and mass don't matter at all, and that a tiny woman can fight evenly with a big, strong man. The other is composed of those people who believe size and mass are, essentially, the only things that really matter, and that things like speed, skill, tactics and technique only matter if the fighters are of roughly equal size and mass. Both camps are, of course, hilariously wrong.

First of all, let's get into some of the biological differences between men and women. If you take a man and a woman of the same height, build and overall fitness level, the man is going to have denser bone structure and a greater proportion of twitch muscle fiber compared to the woman. This is why, when you take a male-to-female transitioner and put him/her (it?) up against a woman of the same overall proportions and comparable skill level, the woman is going to get hurt a helluva lot more. The denser bone structure not only allows the shemale to take hits more effectively, it also allows for a greater proportion of force projection without causing self-injury, and of course the greater portion of twitch muscle fiber means there will be greater total striking speed (and thus force) as well as superior reaction time. A lot of this could be compensated for or even negated if the woman had substantially greater skill and experience, but let's be real: how often does that happen? In any physical confrontation between a man and a woman (at least in the west), odds are they have the exact same skill level and experience: 0.

Next, let's take an example of two men. Let's say Guy A is 5'7" and weighs 155 lbs, while Guy B is 6'2" and weighs 220 lbs. Obviously, Guy B is going to dominate any fight between them, right? Not necessarily.

First is the matter of what their respective mass actually is. Say Guy A is physically fit with a healthy amount of body fat, and Guy B is out of shape and overweight. Right there, all other things being equal, any fight is squarely in favor of Guy A.

But let's make it a little less clear-cut. Let's say Guy B is actually a semi-professional body builder and has a lower body fat percentage than Guy A. Surely Guy B will win now, right? After all, he's big, with a bulky muscular build and very nice muscle definition! He could probably lay out Guy A in a single punch! Not unless he gets hella lucky, no.

See, the typical body builder... uh, build - with bulky, impressive-looking muscles and very low body fat percentage - is horribly inefficient for fighting. Not only are the muscles weak relative to volume, they are also going to get in the way of Guy B's attempts at kicking and punching, slowing down striking speed and reducing striking force. And if Guy A decides not to end things quickly and instead drag them out, Guy B's inefficient musculature and greater weight means he's going to tire before Guy A has even finished warming up properly. All other things being equal, any fight between them is still in favour of Guy A (though not to the same extreme degree as before).

And we haven't even touched on things like skill, timing, technique, tactics, experience, etc...

In short, most people know absolutely nothing about either biology or fighting, and instead carry around a whole host of misconceptions they've picked up from pop culture, equally clueless friends and family, random strangers on the Internet, etc. If one were to grade their expertise on the subjects of biology and fighting on a scale of 1-10, most people alive today in the west (both men and women) would be squarely in the sub-zero region.

 

[Marduk]

This is something I have been thinking about for a while.

Something I've noticed is that a lot of people seem to understate how important actually physical build is these days.

In an argument on Reddit, someone insisted that using physical force (including physically striking) a 6'+ and almost 250 lb individual was child abuse because the person was a minor, and that because the person was a minor, they were not actually a threat.

Trolling or legalistic brainrot of someone who never had to deal with such matters, probably a sheltered woman.

There was also whataboutism about how "all people can be dangerous."

I also notice that when discussing police brutality, few people discuss the size differences that can exist between police and the people they are arresting.

Probably action movie influence too, making them thing all the cool martial arts shit can work independently of body size and effectively can give superpowers applicable in a real fight.

Imagine a cop who is 5'8" and 150 lbs. Realistically, how do you expect someone to easily/peacefully restrain an individual who is 6'4" and 250 lbs? Its just not going to be pleasant on either side, because the physical differences call for desperate measures on the part of the cop, who has to worry about how quickly things could go very badly for him if he loses the upper hand.

This shit is exactly why cops are supposed to work in pairs, and in some exceptional cases call backup.

Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to investigate this, but I suspect you would see a substantial correlation between police/civilian encounters resulting in a civilians death and the size of the civilian in question, especially when controlling for other factors.

More broadly, there are the memes of "women are just as strong as men," that you sometimes see - videos of women expressing such beliefs at college campuses, for example. You also see videos like this, where some... radio hosts (?) discuss the subject, and the dude has to basically inform these grown women that they would not be able to take a 14-15 year old boy in a fight. Then you have just plain hilarious videos like this one about tennis.

Honestly, I kinda blame Hollywood more than politics for once. Hollywood portrays nearly all sizes and genders as being roughly equal in an encounter, when in reality, when unarmed, physical differences are incredibly hard to surmount.

People really don't understand just how vulnerable a women is, for example, or just how aggressive a smaller man is going to have to get against an individual who is substantially larger than him in order to subdue him in a fight.

Part Hollywood, part politics cheering it on.
Sure, some smaller men can subdue much larger ones if they are well muscled even if not bulked out and also are well trained, think Ghurkas, but in more common scenarios, not happening.
Also most people don't know that the vast majority of cops (and also soldiers) are not martial arts or trick shooting masters, and they have neither the talent nor time and resources to train to such level of those skills.

 

[A'lan mandragon]

The simple reality is that regardless of what society currently believes,men are the only class amongst humans who matter. How women feel, believe,or act is entirely irrelevant in reality. The fact that i need to say this is in and of itself a function of completely false ideologically feminist relaity.....The base and simple reality of both humanity and frankly all of reality period is "Might Makes Right"period. You can object to this and whine, cry, and pretend violence doesn't decide who is correct. Yet despite ANYTHING you do,say,or believe if I can beat the Fu*k out of you. Guess what I AM correct full f*cking stop. At the end of the day this is the brutal and undeniable truth of the world,if you rightly say 2+2=4 and I sayv2-2=7. Then I openly and publicly beat the sh*t out of and openly and utterly humiliate you. Then to society at large 2+2 now equals 7 regardless of the reality of the equation. VIOLENCE IS THE ULTIMATE ARBITER OF What IS CORRECT, accept that simple reality or don't. It is the absolute truth of humanity though and frankly your opinion and even objective reality is entirely irrelevant to what the race will do

 

[A'lan mandragon]

There are... so, so many things to unpack on this subject.

One is mass and size: In online discourse you often have two basic "camps". One is composed of those people who believe size and mass don't matter at all, and that a tiny woman can fight evenly with a big, strong man. The other is composed of those people who believe size and mass are, essentially, the only things that really matter, and that things like speed, skill, tactics and technique only matter if the fighters are of roughly equal size and mass. Both camps are, of course, hilariously wrong.

First of all, let's get into some of the biological differences between men and women. If you take a man and a woman of the same height, build and overall fitness level, the man is going to have denser bone structure and a greater proportion of twitch muscle fiber compared to the woman. This is why, when you take a male-to-female transitioner and put him/her (it?) up against a woman of the same overall proportions and comparable skill level, the woman is going to get hurt a helluva lot more. The denser bone structure not only allows the shemale to take hits more effectively, it also allows for a greater proportion of force projection without causing self-injury, and of course the greater portion of twitch muscle fiber means there will be greater total striking speed (and thus force) as well as superior reaction time. A lot of this could be compensated for or even negated if the woman had substantially greater skill and experience, but let's be real: how often does that happen? In any physical confrontation between a man and a woman (at least in the west), odds are they have the exact same skill level and experience: 0.

Next, let's take an example of two men. Let's say Guy A is 5'7" and weighs 155 lbs, while Guy B is 6'2" and weighs 220 lbs. Obviously, Guy B is going to dominate any fight between them, right? Not necessarily.

First is the matter of what their respective mass actually is. Say Guy A is physically fit with a healthy amount of body fat, and Guy B is out of shape and overweight. Right there, all other things being equal, any fight is squarely in favor of Guy A.

But let's make it a little less clear-cut. Let's say Guy B is actually a semi-professional body builder and has a lower body fat percentage than Guy A. Surely Guy B will win now, right? After all, he's big, with a bulky muscular build and very nice muscle definition! He could probably lay out Guy A in a single punch! Not unless he gets hella lucky, no.

See, the typical body builder... uh, build - with bulky, impressive-looking muscles and very low body fat percentage - is horribly inefficient for fighting. Not only are the muscles weak relative to volume, they are also going to get in the way of Guy B's attempts at kicking and punching, slowing down striking speed and reducing striking force. And if Guy A decides not to end things quickly and instead drag them out, Guy B's inefficient musculature and greater weight means he's going to tire before Guy A has even finished warming up properly. All other things being equal, any fight between them is still in favour of Guy A (though not to the same extreme degree as before).

And we haven't even touched on things like skill, timing, technique, tactics, experience, etc...

In short, most people know absolutely nothing about either biology or fighting, and instead carry around a whole host of misconceptions they've picked up from pop culture, equally clueless friends and family, random strangers on the Internet, etc. If one were to grade their expertise on the subjects of biology and fighting on a scale of 1-10, most people alive today in the west (both men and women) would be squarely in the sub-zero region.

While you are technically correct in general this is nonsense,in any given fight betting on the bigger man is the best bet. There is a reason why every single combat sport includes weight classes. Quite literally everything that you point out is without a single exception an exception to the rule. In the vast majority of situations the bigger man is going to triumph sorry that's the simple reality. I understand that you are a little dude who got triggered by someone telling the simple truth

 

[Cherico]

The simple reality is that regardless of what society currently believes,men are the only class amongst humans who matter. How women feel, believe,or act is entirely irrelevant in reality. The fact that i need to say this is in and of itself a function of completely false ideologically feminist relaity.....The base and simple reality of both humanity and frankly all of reality period is "Might Makes Right"period. You can object to this and whine, cry, and pretend violence doesn't decide who is correct. Yet despite ANYTHING you do,say,or believe if I can beat the Fu*k out of you. Guess what I AM correct full f*cking stop. At the end of the day this is the brutal and undeniable truth of the world,if you rightly say 2+2=4 and I sayv2-2=7. Then I openly and publicly beat the sh*t out of and openly and utterly humiliate you. Then to society at large 2+2 now equals 7 regardless of the reality of the equation. VIOLENCE IS THE ULTIMATE ARBITER OF What IS CORRECT, accept that simple reality or don't. It is the absolute truth of humanity though and frankly your opinion and even objective reality is entirely irrelevant to what the race will do

I see I'm not the only one who grew up in the rough part of town.

Ah people who haven't lived it just don't get it man.

 

[IndyFront]

People really don't understand just how vulnerable a women is, for example, or just how aggressive a smaller man is going to have to get against an individual who is substantially larger than him in order to subdue him in a fight.

The main reason I'm so adamant that Master Chief could not effectively fistfight an Alien Queen, who is twice his height and weight at least.

 

[Scottty]

The main reason I'm so adamant that Master Chief could not effectively fistfight an Alien Queen, who is twice his height and weight at least.

Well if you go from discussion of a fistfight between individuals of the same species, to one between totally different species, you are jumping tracks a lot.
What are the vulnerable points on an AQ? Probably quite different from those on a human.

 

[Scottty]

@IndyFront

 

[IndyFront]

Well if you go from discussion of a fistfight between individuals of the same species, to one between totally different species, you are jumping tracks a lot.
What are the vulnerable points on an AQ? Probably quite different from those on a human.

I imagine it would be a lot like how a fistfight between a 7' bodybuilder black-belt in karate, jeet kun do and krav maga and a methed-out chimpanzee would go. It doesn't matter if the chimp is physically incapable of lifting what he lifts, running a marathon like he does, or performing martial arts. It is going to rip his fucking face off and shit inside of his head, is what is going to happen. (With the added bonus of the chimp being twice his size)

 

[LordsFire]

The simple reality is that regardless of what society currently believes,men are the only class amongst humans who matter. How women feel, believe,or act is entirely irrelevant in reality. The fact that i need to say this is in and of itself a function of completely false ideologically feminist relaity.....The base and simple reality of both humanity and frankly all of reality period is "Might Makes Right"period. You can object to this and whine, cry, and pretend violence doesn't decide who is correct. Yet despite ANYTHING you do,say,or believe if I can beat the Fu*k out of you. Guess what I AM correct full f*cking stop. At the end of the day this is the brutal and undeniable truth of the world,if you rightly say 2+2=4 and I sayv2-2=7. Then I openly and publicly beat the sh*t out of and openly and utterly humiliate you. Then to society at large 2+2 now equals 7 regardless of the reality of the equation. VIOLENCE IS THE ULTIMATE ARBITER OF What IS CORRECT, accept that simple reality or don't. It is the absolute truth of humanity though and frankly your opinion and even objective reality is entirely irrelevant to what the race will do

This is one of the more edgelordy takes I've seen recently.

If violence is the ultimate arbiter of what is correct, why is it that more violent societies, that more explicitly embrace 'might makes right,' end up not only being less prosperous and healthy, but also less capable of using violence, even if they're more willing to do so?

 

[A'lan mandragon]

This is one of the more edgelordy takes I've seen recently.

If violence is the ultimate arbiter of what is correct, why is it that more violent societies, that more explicitly embrace 'might makes right,' end up not only being less prosperous and healthy, but also less capable of using violence, even if they're more willing to do so?

Because tools increase the capacity for violence as does a group vs a single person's capacity for such. At the base level cooperation makes the society stronger and more dangerous then the individual. It's still very much might makes right.

 

[LordsFire]

Because tools increase the capacity for violence as does a group vs a single person's capacity for such. At the base level cooperation makes the society stronger and more dangerous then the individual. It's still very much might makes right.

That is not logically consistent.

If might makes something right, then it shouldn't matter what a different society does, just whether or not they're willing to exercise violence to make sure it happens.

If what is done matters independently of whether or not violence was used to enforce it, then there is something deeper than 'might makes right.'

 

[Poe]

The idea that men are the only ones who matter thanks to violence is ridiculous and fails to understand the real dynamics of any society. Historically, and mostly still today, all men are raised by women for at least the first decade of their life and women are far better at understanding (and manipulating) emotions than men.

This doesn't mean that woman are the more important ones either, men and women both play a very important role in society and the best societies understand this.

 

[A'lan mandragon]

That is not logically consistent.

If might makes something right, then it shouldn't matter what a different society does, just whether or not they're willing to exercise violence to make sure it happens.

If what is done matters independently of whether or not violence was used to enforce it, then there is something deeper than 'might makes right.'

"Two people beat the shit out of one person generally and an armed dude beats sn unarmed person generally" is absolutely logically consistent. If my brother and I decide to harm you chances are you have 0 capacity to stop us from doing so. The same applies if say I have a big,long,and sturdy piece of oak,in most cases you get fuck*d up.....How is it not logically consistent,is your contention that multiple and or armed opponents are easier to fight against?

 

[Scottty]

The ability to bully other people into agreeing with something that's obviously nonsense does not make the nonsense true.

 

[LordsFire]

"Two people beat the shit out of one person generally and an armed dude beats sn unarmed person generally" is absolutely logically consistent. If my brother and I decide to harm you chances are you have 0 capacity to stop us from doing so. The same applies if say I have a big,long,and sturdy piece of oak,in most cases you get fuck*d up.....How is it not logically consistent,is your contention that multiple and or armed opponents are easier to fight against?

You have completely missed my point, and are arguing against some other point, though I'm not sure what.

The simple reality is that regardless of what society currently believes,men are the only class amongst humans who matter. How women feel, believe,or act is entirely irrelevant in reality. The fact that i need to say this is in and of itself a function of completely false ideologically feminist relaity.....The base and simple reality of both humanity and frankly all of reality period is "Might Makes Right"period.

This is what I was arguing against.

My argument against it is as follows:

1. If might makes right, then if the mighty declare a thing is to be done, that would make it the right thing to do.
2. Doing the right thing should result in success and/or strength. If it is not resulting in success and/or strength, it is not right.
3. Many times through history, mighty men and nations have ordered a variety of things to be done, which have failed miserably.
4. Conversely, men with little might, have charted paths that have made them very successful and caused them and their people/nation to become mighty, without needing to force people down said path.

Thus, might alone does not determine right.