Skepticism and Martial Arts

[Goaticus]

Sam Harris's blog discusses how to apply his philosophy to Martial Arts. This is exciting to me for lots of reasons. One of the people helping him learn is one of my favorite trainers, Matt Thornton. Martial Arts had a huge impact on me because I used it as a vehicle to learn to separate Bogosity from reality. In my teenage years I took a lot of stuff that was based on either Eastern Mysticism or unrealistic marketing.

One of the things that helped me was the sport of Mixed Martial Arts. I could test some of the techniques and claims of some of the arts like Ninjutsu (I'm a black belt, but not proud of it) against resisting opponents. Turns out that 4 years of training won't let you stop a takedown from a mediocre High School wrestler.

As a bonus the political campaign to ban Mixed Martial Arts changed me from someone who largely ignored politics to a Libertarian.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-pleasures-of-drowning

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Reminds me of a bit that Walter E Williams did about boxing.  Talking about why people used to always try to get boxing banned but not something like scuba diving even though more people die to the latter than the former.

Answer: Because rich people scuba dive.  Poor people box.  Rich people tend to be viewed as adults able to make their own decisions but the poor tragically are viewed as political property.

[Goaticus]

Reminds me of a bit that Walter E Williams did about boxing.  Talking about why people used to always try to get boxing banned but not something like scuba diving even though more people die to the latter than the former.

Answer: Because rich people scuba dive.  Poor people box.  Rich people tend to be viewed as adults able to make their own decisions but the poor tragically are viewed as political property.

Ironic since most people thought McCain tried to ban the UFC because his wife owns half of boxing.