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

[colorles]

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.

teenagers are not "children". most males are their adult height and bone structure by the time they are roughly 16 years old, with the physical prime as far as healing ability, explosive power, and all around athleticism being the ages of 16 to 24 roughly. but that this video for instance, titled "8 children arrested after refusing to leave McDonald's, crowding police":



do those males look like "children" to you? no. they are physically mature, fighting age males. and very much a physical threat to those officers. and those teens are all relatively averaged size as far as modern teens go; they frequently grow much bigger than that.

but to the bolded: most women certainly do know how vulnerable they are. many girls i know are literally afraid to walk alone down the street. many girls literally get boyfriends that they may not even be that interested in, just to have some protection. and even the ones i see walking alone are always glued to their phones because that is their protection.

most girls know how weak they are. and when push comes to shove, they are always ready to submit to men that are able and willing to protect them from dangers - very much including other men. it's just that, at the moment, the government/police is a big enough protection that more and more women don't feel the need for immediate men around them

 

[colorles]

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.

a man's frame matters way, way more to fighting than muscle mass. good height; strong jaw; wide shoulders; long arms; large hands; and just an all around robust, mesomorphic bone structure. old school boxers like Max Baer and Prime Carnera come to mind

that is what natural genetic power looks like

also, wrestlers have great frames for fighting, typically with long torsos for grappling and powerful backs and posterior chains. that is, power where it matters

 

[JasonSanjo]

a man's frame matters way, way more to fighting than muscle mass. good height; strong jaw; wide shoulders; long arms; large hands; and just an all around robust, mesomorphic bone structure. old school boxers like Max Baer and Prime Carnera come to mind

that is what natural genetic power looks like

also, wrestlers have great frames for fighting, typically with long torsos for grappling and powerful backs and posterior chains. that is, power where it matters

I intentionally made my post a very basic introduction on bone density, muscle composition and body mass composition for one very simple reason: Any more detail than that inevitably leads to know-nothing-know-it-alls and tribalists coming out of the woodwork to vehemently deny empirical data in favor of their personal misconceptions (Hence the examples I used).

Although, judging by some of the posts in this very thread, even that very basic introduction was too much for some people... I swear, not a day goes by that I don't quietly consider if maybe the only thing that Idiocracy (2006) really got wrong was the timeline.

Seriously, imagine trying to explain the mechanics of a hook visavi arm length to someone who unironically (and vehemently) believes total body mass is the sole determinator for punching power. Humans just make me so, so tired sometimes...

 

[LordsFire]

Although, judging by some of the posts in this very thread, even that very basic introduction was too much for some people... I swear, not a day goes by that I don't quietly consider if maybe the only thing that Idiocracy (2006) really got wrong was the timeline.

Idiocracy was, in and of itself, based on flawed premises.

It acted like the problem was 'people have low intelligence, and low-intelligence people believe nonsense.'

The real problem is the attitude of the heart. Highly intelligent people are at least as likely as low-intelligence people to believe nonsense, and are better at justifying it to themselves and others.

A lot of people working service jobs who believe in weird things aren't an existential threat to society. Highly educated intellectuals who think that they can make society in their image, and that everyone who tried what they did before and brought about ruin was just a low-skill chump compared to them, those are the people who will build an 'idiocracy.'

Hence active sabotage of our educational system by arrogant intellectuals for decades on end.

 

[colorles]

I intentionally made my post a very basic introduction on bone density, muscle composition and body mass composition for one very simple reason: Any more detail than that inevitably leads to know-nothing-know-it-alls and tribalists coming out of the woodwork to vehemently deny empirical data in favor of their personal misconceptions (Hence the examples I used).

Although, judging by some of the posts in this very thread, even that very basic introduction was too much for some people... I swear, not a day goes by that I don't quietly consider if maybe the only thing that Idiocracy (2006) really got wrong was the timeline.

Seriously, imagine trying to explain the mechanics of a hook visavi arm length to someone who unironically (and vehemently) believes total body mass is the sole determinator for punching power. Humans just make me so, so tired sometimes...

i take it...you are agreeing with my post? Max Baer being the perfect example, weighing around 210 for most of his fighting career...yet there are literally fat asses out there that think they have more power in their hands than someone like Baer or Wilder because they weigh more than them...

 

[JasonSanjo]

i take it...you are agreeing with my post? Max Baer being the perfect example, weighing around 210 for most of his fighting career...yet there are literally fat asses out there that think they have more power in their hands than someone like Baer or Wilder because they weigh more than them...

Yeah, precisely my point. A lot of people have no clue whatsoever how biomechanics work - in relation to fighting or anything else - and will instead go with whatever personal misconceptions they've picked up from pop culture and equally clueless friends and family. For instance, a fatty who thinks he can punch harder than someone like Max Baer based purely on having more body mass.

My original post in this thread limited itself to dicussing bone density, muscle composition and body mass composition because anything more complicated or in-depth (such as arm length, swinging technique, grounding, etc) than that always brings out loudmouth idiots who disagree based on their personal misconceptions.

 

[Doomsought]

The base and simple reality of both humanity and frankly all of reality period is "Might Makes Right"period.

I perfer the phrase, "Might may not make right, but it sure as hell makes law". What should happen, and what actually does happen are two sperate issues, and it is a very common fallacy to conflate them.