Posts by Morgan Davie
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*Waits for Helen Kelly to answer Russell's questions*
*Patiently*
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After 18 months, my civil union partner and I are now apparently quite happy to use "husband" and "wife" in casual conversation with friends and with each other. We're both pretty careful about being partners in more formal circumstances though. Lovely Caroline spent a long time vexing a phone pollster for not being able to comprehend the civil union thing, like you say; I expect she's more conscientious about it than I am.
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Joe: thanks for making me express myself more clearly, which forced me to think more clearly.
I feel like I have to add that I don't think the people who pulled the trigger are morally in the clear. There are certainly soldiers who wouldn't have done what these ones did. But as for deciding how much guilt goes where - I put more of it on the situation. (And try and avoid going further than that, because that sort of decision seems way too difficult.)
Edit: but Keith is making the same point better than me so I'll be quiet now.
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Tom: as the post immediately above yours makes clear, I disagree completely.
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They may have started out much like any other human being, but thanks to the unquestioning obedience instilled by military training, and the circumstances in which they've been placed, they've become, to a degree, dehumanized.
As for the "coping response to a job that involves you killing other human beings", I'd have thought that would be plain to all but the most cognitively challenged. While you claim to be "horrified by this video", you appear to imply that by taking that into account the common-sense response is simply to harden up.
Dehumanized - yes, exactly. Being "dehumanized" is about the weaknesses/loopholes/patterns in human thinking and behaviour being systematically exploited. Horror and anger at this event should be directed at the military system that exists around it, not at the specific behaviour of the people pulling the trigger to kill other humans and then joking about it.
And of course I'm not saying "harden up". If I have to boil it down to one point, I'm saying that talking about the conduct of the soldiers we hear in the video, as Che did and as so many have done and are doing, is not helpful. Fury is better directed at the processes and systems surrounding these people, and the politicians and bureaucrats who create them.
Actually, no, my point is even shorter: beware the fundamental attribution error.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error -
Che Tibby:
yeah, my viewing of the vid suggests that it may well have initially been a mistake. but... the subsequent conduct of the pilots belies that as a factor, and they were instead actively seeking *any* target they could construe as "legitimate".
this was further belied by their response. the humane response to error is horror, not, "please pick up a gun" or "aw well i killed some kids".
I linked to my blog post about this earlier but shoulda made clearer what it was about. Basically - no. There's a well-known cognitive bias working here that says *everything they saw* after the initial misidentification was just reinforcing their views. They believed these were dangerous insurgents and right to the end of the video everything they saw was a reinforcement for that.
Their failing here is entirely and precisely and specifically human. (As is their bantering tone. It's a coping response to a job that involves you killing other human beings.)
I'm horrified by this video, but lets not kid ourselves that the people pulling the trigger are crazy or monstrous. They're not. They're just like you and just like me and just like the people they killed in every important way.
http://morgue.isprettyawesome.com/?p=1399
Here's the bit about this in my post:
You can hear in the spotter’s (gunner’s?) commentary as he sees the men and sees guns that he believes this is a legitimate military target. Look again at how exactly this happens:
At 3 mins into the video, the leaked footage begins as the spotters identify a group of people standing together.
At 3 mins 20 seconds, Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen is in the centre of the frame, hoisting his camera. The spotter says “That’s a weapon.” (With those words, Namir and companions were condemned to death.)
At 3′37, the spotter reports: “Have individuals with weapons.” Note the plural – one weapon has become several, without obvious cause.
At 3′40, two other men come into frame, and they both are carrying weapons, AK-47s apparently. (These are, again, legal to carry here.) Spotter, on seeing the first of this pair: “He’s got a weapon too.” Then, after seeing the other: “Have five to six individuals with AK-47s.” Three identified weapons (one erroneously) have become five to six. They’ve seen enough. At 3′50, permission to fire is sought, and soon after is received.
At 4′10, a long camera piece is identified as an RPG. Note, permission to fire has already been received at this point.
There’s a well-known perceptual/cognitive phenomenon called confirmation bias. This says that we interpret what we are seeing in terms of what we expect to see. This video captures confirmation bias in action. A camera became a gun, then two others with guns became proof of an attack squad, then the camera again became an immediate threat. The pattern is clear: there is no way for the spotters in the helicopter to step out of this chain of perceptions.
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I've blogged about how confirmation bias killed those journalists.
http://morgue.isprettyawesome.com/?p=1399Bad bloody business. Greenwald's been emphasising just how typical and expected this is, though.
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Robyn:
OMG, the angels! Right, there's another episode I'll be watching through my fingers.
Nope. There's *two* episodes for the finger treatment - it's a two-parter I believe.
I agree with Emma. Tho' wasn't the rubber snake Davison?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinda_%28Doctor_Who%29 -
Stop using maths, Keith, and give me my tax cuts.
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Modesty forbids me from saying anything other than to ask Nat Torkington about the time he walked into my house, demanded to know "How many goats did you have to sacrifice to make this happen?", and then wrote the evening up for Usenet consumption.
I shall also keep silent about the evening in question, except to note that I helped carry some of the equipment up the stairs. And to point out that Nat Torkington was very much Not The Subject of Attention.
Bloody hell, someone should tell this story. Lord knows it's one of the great regrets of my life that I only heard about it afterwards...