
The origin of live and let live (and a very interesting system to analyse) - etherael
http://www.heretical.com/games/trenches.html
======
lionhearted
This reminds me a little of how Shaka Zulu broke from rituals to conquer most
of sub-Saharan Africa. Shaka was one of the most effective African generals
and conquerers in recorded history, because he changed the nature of African
warfare very quickly.

Basically, pre-Shaka, warfare was a ritualized thing in the area. The tribes
would take throwing spears and stand on two hilltops facing each other, and
threw spears and shout at each other until one side gave up and fled. The
conflicts would create injuries, but not so many fatalities.

Shaka moved to a more shock troop charge style of attack. He outfitted his
guys with large, wooden shields, and short, heavy spears that could slash or
stab. So when the other side lined up to fight ritually, Shaka charged and
would have his side massacre the other.

Normally you'd see the other sides adapt, but he brutalized and then
assimilated his enemies very quickly so they couldn't adjust to his tactics.
He swept through Africa conquering very quickly.

This has been seen many times throughout history - basically, the side of the
war that fights with less rules, wins. But normally, if the other side
realizes you're not fighting a gentlemanly ritual any more, they adapt. Yet a
few military men in history moved so fast that their opponents couldn't adapt.
Shaka, Alexander, and Genghis Khan are the first three examples that come to
mind - they fought relatively dirty, breaking rituals and customs of warfare
with new equipment, a more brutal focus, and immediately assimilating or
executing prisoners of the defeated. Because they moved so fast, and all the
survivors became either new recruits or were killed, there was no time for an
organized, adapted resistance. That's how those guys were able to take such
large amounts of land in short amounts of time.

The ironic part is that the kind of personality that'll do that rarely knows
restraint, so they overextend themselves and have their empires die after
their usually premature death.

~~~
swombat
How did Alexander fight dirty? In all the biographies I read, it seemed his
"advance" was to use clever tactics, rather than to fight dirty. Would love an
example of this.

~~~
lionhearted
He had no regard for his troops' lives - something like 80% of his soldiers
that went with him died, and he conscripted new guys everywhere he went. So
he'd conscript, shock attack losing a lot of guys, then conscript from the
newly defeated, and repeat. He did make advances in strategy and technology
too - I believe his major military innovation was actually much longer spears
than opponents, and he moved fast enough that that technology wasn't diffused
and adapted.

He also executed, assassinated, or otherwise brutalized his own supporters
fairly often when it would advance a goal of his. Alexander's romanticized in
the west, but he didn't have much respect for the lives of his soldiers and
people.

------
numair
This reads as though it is straight out of a Monty Python sketch:

 _I was having tea with A Company when we heard a lot of shouting and went out
to investigate. We found our men and the Germans standing on their respective
parapets. Suddenly a salvo arrived but did no damage. Naturally both sides got
down and our men started swearing at the Germans, when all at once a brave
German got on to his parapet and shouted out "We are very sorry about that; we
hope no one was hurt. It is not our fault, it is that damned Prussian
artillery."_

~~~
stcredzero
I went to a military academy as a high school student, and we had lots of
military instructors who were in Vietnam. One of them was a Staff Sergeant in
US Army logistics. Though they were logistics, they occasionally had to defend
themselves. According to this one instructor's account, US logistics personnel
would _deliberately miss_ the enemy, and would instead try to _almost hit_
them in order to scare them. The logic was this: as logistics, you don't want
to fight them -- that's not your job! You just want to get out of there in one
piece with your supplies. So you try to get the machine-gun bullets to go
right past them or right around them. That should scare them into taking
cover. The _last_ thing you wanted to do was to kill someone's best friend and
have them go super suicide commando on you.

I told this to an acquaintance who was an ex-marine from a family full of ex-
marines, and he just commented that this was what was wrong with the _Army_.
Apparently, a lot of people in the Marines are definitely there to _kill the
enemy_.

------
ugh
Buy the author's book: [http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-
Robert-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Cooperation-Revised-Robert-
Axelrod/dp/0465005640/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257123981&sr=8-3)

And please put a NSFW tag on links to a racist's website (no, this is not
about the graphic, this is about the rest of the content:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Sheppard_%28activist%29>).

~~~
etherael
I didn't actually know that the site in question was run by this fellow, but I
fail to see how it matters in the context of the linked article? Especially in
a "someone is looking over my shoulder and saw me reading about world war I
military history" fashion being comparable to "saw me looking at sexual
imagery". I don't believe it's appropriate at all.

~~~
ugh
I have nothing whatsoever against the content of the linked excerpt (in fact I
quite distinctly remember reading it somewhere else and liking it a lot). And
I also quite enjoyed the discussion here. I just don't think it is so great if
you link to content hosted by nutjobs. The article is SFW, so using NSFW was
maybe misleading.

~~~
etherael
For the record, I found it hitting random on wikipedia and chasing citations.
I didn't know a thing about the guy and as soon as I saw highly charged
political imagery my mind must have flat blocked it out because I didn't even
actually notice it consciously till I checked back just now.

~~~
ugh
I believe you! I believe you! I didn't for a second think that you had any
other intentions other than linking to a interesting article.

------
nazgulnarsil
the escalation of war throughout modern history, culminating in the world
wars, is a fascinating subject. the methodology of total war is so alien to
the human psyche that it requires quite a bit of brain washing and careful
planning, and even then you constantly have to maintain it via a strict
hierarchy, lest you get the sort of unspoken agreements between sides as
discussed extensively in the article. the escalation to total war was caused
by at least three things:

1\. the growth of government as a percentage of GDP (more efficient taxation
and indoctrination) allowed ever greater a nation's economic output to be
turned to aggression. see Bertrand de Jouvenal's excellent _On Power_ for a
lengthy dissertation on this subject.

2\. the slow change from a multi-polar to bi-polar power arrangement. in the
animal kingdom you will see "posture fighting" between contesting males where
little actual damage is done. This is because a real fight is disastrous, even
for the male who wins since he may be weakened so much that he can not now
defend himself against a third male who will swoop in on this opportunity.
Likewise with a multi-polar power arrangement. No one nation will devote tons
of resources to a total war with another because doing so will weaken both
with regards to other nations. what we see in pack animals (including
primates) is that aggression generally only occurs when one side has
overwhelming advantage (5 vs 1) and thus can act without reprisal. larger
fights, while rarer, usually end when one side gets a kill. why doesn't the
winning side press the advantage? again, the risk is large for an uncertain
payoff.

3\. of course, technology. this one is harped on by so many history channel
shows that I feel no need to go into it.

