Choosing the right art

Steve said:
I'm glad you loved it . I intended that to be a bit of humor . I sensed you were getting defensive and thought it would lighten things up . I usually say ninja in a dark alley but ninjas have been taking a beating lately.
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My "I love how you" was sarcastic. Because what you did was present a strawman fallacy about my point.
 
skribs said:
My "I love how you" was sarcastic. Because what you did was present a strawman fallacy about my point.
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Lol. I know. Spoiler alert, I was also being sarcastic.

FWIW, It wasn’t actually a straw man. It was hyperbole, I.e., exaggeration to make a point. Not the same thing as a straw man. The point being, you could have literally shared any self serving anecdote, whether it’s a high school coed breaking a nose or 12 ninja in a dark alley, and the point remains the same.
 
Steve said:
Lol. I know. Spoiler alert, I was also being sarcastic.

FWIW, It wasn’t actually a straw man. It was hyperbole, I.e., exaggeration to make a point. Not the same thing as a straw man. The point being, you could have literally shared any self serving anecdote, whether it’s a high school coed breaking a nose or 12 ninja in a dark alley, and the point remains the same.
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No, the point does not remain the same. Consider these statements:
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 300 MPH
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 3600 MPH
It is possible for planes to fly 3600 MPH, but it is ridiculous to claim so. A plane can easily fly 300 MPH, and in fact could be expected to.

It is also very easily possible that a teenage girl learned enough in a martial arts class to defend themselves in class and break someone's nose. It's not nearly possible that same girl will learn to defend against 12 ninjas in a dark alley.

So no, you took my argument from something entirely reasonable (and that actually did happen), and turned it into something ridiculous.
 
skribs said:
No, the point does not remain the same. Consider these statements:
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 300 MPH
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 3600 MPH
It is possible for planes to fly 3600 MPH, but it is ridiculous to claim so. A plane can easily fly 300 MPH, and in fact could be expected to.

It is also very easily possible that a teenage girl learned enough in a martial arts class to defend themselves in class and break someone's nose. It's not nearly possible that same girl will learn to defend against 12 ninjas in a dark alley.

So no, you took my argument from something entirely reasonable (and that actually did happen), and turned it into something ridiculous.
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If the point remains the same no matter how fast your plane flies, then one is hyperbole and not straw man. Seriously. Do you actually know what my point was? I’m starting to think that’s the problem.

Regarding this teenage girl, how do we know 1)that she exists in real life, and 2) that if she does exist, it was the training that broke dude’s nose, and 3) that it’s just dumb luck that a broken nose deescalated the situation rather than escalated it?

The point was, and is, that you can literally make anything up, and even if it is true, it’s an air tight, self serving, circular sales pitch. Had the guy ended up beating the snot out of this girl because she broke his nose, I don’t think you’d be as quick to take responsibility for the situation.
 
Steve said:
If the point remains the same no matter how fast your plane flies, then one is hyperbole and not straw man. Seriously. Do you actually know what my point was? I’m starting to think that’s the problem.

Regarding this teenage girl, how do we know 1)that she exists in real life, and 2) that if she does exist, it was the training that broke dude’s nose, and 3) that it’s just dumb luck that a broken nose deescalated the situation rather than escalated it?

The point was, and is, that you can literally make anything up, and even if it is true, it’s an air tight, self serving, circular sales pitch. Had the guy ended up beating the snot out of this girl because she broke his nose, I don’t think you’d be as quick to take responsibility for the situation.
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I don't know which is worse. 1) That you think saying a privately owned plane going 300 MPH and a plane going 3600 MPH is making the same point. 2) That you think it's impossible for a teenage girl to break someone's nose and for her to have learned it in a Taekwondo class.
 
skribs said:
I don't know which is worse. 1) That you think saying a privately owned plane going 300 MPH and a plane going 3600 MPH is making the same point. 2) That you think it's impossible for a teenage girl to break someone's nose and for her to have learned it in a Taekwondo class.
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Okay man. I’ll try one more time and then leave you to it. The speed of the plane doesn’t matter. And that IS part of the point. If one says 3600mph, they are really saying that the speed is beside the point. Surely you get that. This is fundamental stuff.

And you’re ducking the question of whether you’re as eager to accept blame for injury as you are credit. Tell us a story about how one of your students got beaten to a pulp by a group of kids, and your training was entirely unhelpful. Didn’t happen? Of course not. Never does. When people get hurt, that’s just bad luck, or they didn’t train hard enough or long enough. But when they succeed, well, that has to be the training. Like in your anecdote. I shared that in the 3rd grade I broke a kid’s nose. How could that be? People with zero training survive assaults all the time. People with training get murdered, too.

Personally, I think the lady in your story deserves all the credit, and that you’re appropriating it says a lot about you and her (presuming she is real). TBH, I am beginning to think you might have an ego problem.
 
skribs said:
No, the point does not remain the same. Consider these statements:
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 300 MPH
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 3600 MPH
It is possible for planes to fly 3600 MPH, but it is ridiculous to claim so. A plane can easily fly 300 MPH, and in fact could be expected to.

It is also very easily possible that a teenage girl learned enough in a martial arts class to defend themselves in class and break someone's nose. It's not nearly possible that same girl will learn to defend against 12 ninjas in a dark alley.

So no, you took my argument from something entirely reasonable (and that actually did happen), and turned it into something ridiculous.
Click to expand...
every once in a while this comes up, and Steve tries to make one of two points. People don't seem to get what he's saying for some reason, not just you, but everyone when he first says it, which I don't get since his points seem clear to me, and they are genuinely good/important points. I'm going to try to explain them slightly differently, and hopefully they make sense. I'm going to use kenpo/myself as an example in both points.

Point #1: Kenpo is a self defense art. As such, anyone learning that art should be learning genuine self defense. However, until they actually use it in self-defense, they are missing a key component, in the same way that a pilot is missing a key component, if he only does flight simulations. It doesn't mean that he won't succeed at it, but that he cannot definitively say that he (personally him, not the simulation as a whole), can be translated to flying an actual plane. When he gets in an actual plane he may freak out, or there may be a variable not included in the simulation, that prevents him from being successful, but that experience would teach him. It doesn't mean the simulation wasn't useful, but that experience also is. For some reason, this is taken as fact in piloting, or the military, or being a doctor (who do you want as a doctor, the resident in his first year who in theory has the most modern knowledge of medicine, or the attending physician who has 10 years experience?), but not in MA.

Point 1B: If I have never been in a self-defense situation, I cannot personally state that a move works in self defense. I can explain why it should work in self defense, but I cannot actually say that it does. So when I'm teaching self defense, and someone asks me "will this work in real life", I should clarify that I don't actually know. From a marketing/business standpoint, I shouldn't, but as a person I agree that I should admit this. The exception to this (I haven't heard steve make this...I'm including it myself), is if I know someone who uses the art in self defense. So: I am not a security guard. One of my fellow students a few years back was in charge of a security guard company, and he arranged to have them taught shaolin kempo. Multiple security guards used it for their job successfully. So I cannot say that I can confirm it's useful in self defense, or say that it's useful in self defense in general, but I can suggest that it's useful in confrontations, based on there being multiple guards who successfully used SKK at their job (notice this is multiple people, not just one, for point 2).

Point 2: Just because someone has successfully defended themselves after taking my SD course doesn't mean that they learned to defend themselves from my SD course. That's confusing correlation with causation. The only way to know that for certain is to develop a study where I compare people who haven't taken the course in SD scenarios, vs. people whom have, to see if there's a statistical significant difference. Anecdotes don't really have a place in scientific data, and as a result they shouldn't have a place in a debate. They do, because of the appeal on human emotion, and also, more practically, because we haven't done a study on every single thing (no one has time for that), but it's a lot less strong of an argument.


I tried to get his points as thoroughly as I could. @Steve, if I misspoke at all feel free to correct it. @skribs, let me know if this made sense. If it did, I may just link it the next time this argument comes about.
 
Steve said:
Okay man. I’ll try one more time and then leave you to it. The speed of the plane doesn’t matter. And that IS part of the point. If one says 3600mph, they are really saying that the speed is beside the point. Surely you get that. This is fundamental stuff.

And you’re ducking the question of whether you’re as eager to accept blame for injury as you are credit. Tell us a story about how one of your students got beaten to a pulp by a group of kids, and your training was entirely unhelpful. Didn’t happen? Of course not. Never does. When people get hurt, that’s just bad luck, or they didn’t train hard enough or long enough. But when they succeed, well, that has to be the training. Like in your anecdote. I shared that in the 3rd grade I broke a kid’s nose. How could that be? People with zero training survive assaults all the time. People with training get murdered, too.

Personally, I think the lady in your story deserves all the credit, and that you’re appropriating it says a lot about you and her (presuming she is real). TBH, I am beginning to think you might have an ego problem.
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To say I have an ego problem because a girl from my school broke someone's nose? I didn't even say I taught her. It's not even my ego in question. She had been at the school for years before I even started there.

But so far you've said it's impossible for someone to learn real skills in a martial art class if they aren't fighting daily as part of their job. When I presented a story of someone who has successfully fought off an attacker because of her martial arts training, you have chalked it up to:
  • The girl probably doesn't even exist
  • The girl got lucky
  • The girl would have had the skills and reactions to defend herself even if she never took a martial arts class
  • I might as well have said she fought off 12 ninjas while blindfolded because that's as believable as her breaking someone's nose
What world do you live in where it's impossible for a martial arts class to teach a teenager how to effectively strike someone in the face? That's like...the first lesson in most arts.
 
skribs said:
Even if they're adults, but they're beginners, it's still the same line of thinking. I'm not doing it from an ego perspective. I'm not exactly doing it from a salesman perspective (although there is a bit of that). It's telling people I'm confident that what they learn at our school will work.

However, I also make a point NOT to trash talk the other arts. I say our art is good. I don't say the other arts are bad.
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This is why I would never be able to run a school (and why I turned down the offer to do so when I was 20). If someone asked me "is kempo the best art", my answer would be no. Not because I don't believe kempo is a great art, but how do I know it's the best? I haven't tried every art out there. I have tried: Kempo, kenpo, judo, sambo, jujustu, bjj, kali, fencing, boxing, kickboxing, and ishin ryu. Of those, I wouldn't say kempo is the best. Kempo, IMO is the most rounded of those, but I still wouldn't call it the 'best' of them. I would tell whomever came in that kempo does seem to work, and that the training philosophy is more important than the art, and what my training philosophy is. I get why you would want to 'sell' your art though...Idt my way would get me a whole lot of customers.
 
kempodisciple said:
every once in a while this comes up, and Steve tries to make one of two points. People don't seem to get what he's saying for some reason, not just you, but everyone when he first says it, which I don't get since his points seem clear to me, and they are genuinely good/important points. I'm going to try to explain them slightly differently, and hopefully they make sense. I'm going to use kenpo/myself as an example in both points.

Point #1: Kenpo is a self defense art. As such, anyone learning that art should be learning genuine self defense. However, until they actually use it in self-defense, they are missing a key component, in the same way that a pilot is missing a key component, if he only does flight simulations. It doesn't mean that he won't succeed at it, but that he cannot definitively say that he (personally him, not the simulation as a whole), can be translated to flying an actual plane. When he gets in an actual plane he may freak out, or there may be a variable not included in the simulation, that prevents him from being successful, but that experience would teach him. It doesn't mean the simulation wasn't useful, but that experience also is. For some reason, this is taken as fact in piloting, or the military, or being a doctor (who do you want as a doctor, the resident in his first year who in theory has the most modern knowledge of medicine, or the attending physician who has 10 years experience?), but not in MA.

Point 1B: If I have never been in a self-defense situation, I cannot personally state that a move works in self defense. I can explain why it should work in self defense, but I cannot actually say that it does. So when I'm teaching self defense, and someone asks me "will this work in real life", I should clarify that I don't actually know. From a marketing/business standpoint, I shouldn't, but as a person I agree that I should admit this. The exception to this (I haven't heard steve make this...I'm including it myself), is if I know someone who uses the art in self defense. So: I am not a security guard. One of my fellow students a few years back was in charge of a security guard company, and he arranged to have them taught shaolin kempo. Multiple security guards used it for their job successfully. So I cannot say that I can confirm it's useful in self defense, or say that it's useful in self defense in general, but I can suggest that it's useful in confrontations, based on there being multiple guards who successfully used SKK at their job (notice this is multiple people, not just one, for point 2).

Point 2: Just because someone has successfully defended themselves after taking my SD course doesn't mean that they learned to defend themselves from my SD course. That's confusing correlation with causation. The only way to know that for certain is to develop a study where I compare people who haven't taken the course in SD scenarios, vs. people whom have, to see if there's a statistical significant difference. Anecdotes don't really have a place in scientific data, and as a result they shouldn't have a place in a debate. They do, because of the appeal on human emotion, and also, more practically, because we haven't done a study on every single thing (no one has time for that), but it's a lot less strong of an argument.


I tried to get his points as thoroughly as I could. @Steve, if I misspoke at all feel free to correct it. @skribs, let me know if this made sense. If it did, I may just link it the next time this argument comes about.
Click to expand...

1A: I agree with what you're saying. But "class doesn't give you the experience" is not the same as "it's impossible to learn in class", which is the point he's making. Or at least the way I read his post.

1B: Like I said, I agree with you that you don't have PROOF that it can work. But lack of proof doesn't mean it won't work. It just means you haven't proven it. And, because of the nature of self defense, it's generally not a good idea to go around trying to prove it will work. With that said, while I don't personally have the real-world experience in these kinds of situations, my Master does, and most of these arts were developed by people who were using them for real situations and handed down their wisdom. So while I may not have personally used these skills, I know they have been used by others before me.

2: The only way to do that would be to take the same person and clone them, and have them go into similar situations. There's obviously no way to prove one way or the other that the art has taught someone how to do something. But I think it's a pretty safe assumption that if someone has spent 10 years training a martial art, and used a technique learned in class in self defense, that the art had at least something to do with it.
 
kempodisciple said:
This is why I would never be able to run a school (and why I turned down the offer to do so when I was 20). If someone asked me "is kempo the best art", my answer would be no. Not because I don't believe kempo is a great art, but how do I know it's the best? I haven't tried every art out there. I have tried: Kempo, kenpo, judo, sambo, jujustu, bjj, kali, fencing, boxing, kickboxing, and ishin ryu. Of those, I wouldn't say kempo is the best. Kempo, IMO is the most rounded of those, but I still wouldn't call it the 'best' of them. I would tell whomever came in that kempo does seem to work, and that the training philosophy is more important than the art, and what my training philosophy is. I get why you would want to 'sell' your art though...Idt my way would get me a whole lot of customers.
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To me, it depends on who you're talking to. Is it someone who wants to be confident in Kempo, or is it someone who wants to have a real philosophical discussion about martial arts and how they're related or differ? I've answered the question differently depending on how its asked.
  • Is Taekwondo the best? Yes.
  • My cousin said Taekwondo is useless and I should do Krav Maga instead. Taekwondo isn't useless. Our Master was a Special Forces instructor, so I'm pretty sure he knows what works and what doesn't.
  • What's the difference between Karate and Taekwondo? Karate is Japanese, Taekwondo is Korean. Other than that it depends more on the school, and we got a good school.
I kind of assess the level at which they're asking the question. If it's just a search for validation, I give them validation. If it's an actual search for information, I give them information.
 
skribs said:
1A: I agree with what you're saying. But "class doesn't give you the experience" is not the same as "it's impossible to learn in class", which is the point he's making. Or at least the way I read his post.
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Well, it is impossible to learn in class. It's impossible to learn experience in class. It's what I've gathered he's saying, after reading this argument play out over and over on here. But @Steve is free to say I'm wrong if I'm not getting his point right.

1B: Like I said, I agree with you that you don't have PROOF that it can work. But lack of proof doesn't mean it won't work. It just means you haven't proven it. And, because of the nature of self defense, it's generally not a good idea to go around trying to prove it will work. With that said, while I don't personally have the real-world experience in these kinds of situations, my Master does, and most of these arts were developed by people who were using them for real situations and handed down their wisdom. So while I may not have personally used these skills, I know they have been used by others before me.
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Again, we agree here. I have no desire to prove what I do works. But that means I can't tell others, definitively, that it does. I can only rely on others whom have used the same art effectively (which goes to the anecdotal part, unless it's enough people that I could make a study from it. IMO I would need 100 people, and 100 people from the same area that have needed SD not in my program to reliably state it's effectiveness. Not very likely to happen).

The only way to do that would be to take the same person and clone them, and have them go into similar situations. There's obviously no way to prove one way or the other that the art has taught someone how to do something. But I think it's a pretty safe assumption that if someone has spent 10 years training a martial art, and used a technique learned in class in self defense, that the art had at least something to do with it.
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Actually, no. That's the beauty of controlled studies and large sample sizes, if you look in social psychology they're able to get around that all the time. Take something like the bystander effect. I can't clone people to see how each person would react to a situation, but I can repeat a situation enough times, with one change (variable) to determine if that change seems significant or not. The issue with doing that with martial art is that it means assaulting people for the purpose of an experiment, which isn't something that would be ethical by any ethical review board. I see the issue that exists here, I just personally have no way to fix it, beyond relying on security guards and bouncers to tell us what is/isn't effective.
 
skribs said:
To me, it depends on who you're talking to. Is it someone who wants to be confident in Kempo, or is it someone who wants to have a real philosophical discussion about martial arts and how they're related or differ? I've answered the question differently depending on how its asked.
  • Is Taekwondo the best? Yes.
  • My cousin said Taekwondo is useless and I should do Krav Maga instead. Taekwondo isn't useless. Our Master was a Special Forces instructor, so I'm pretty sure he knows what works and what doesn't.
  • What's the difference between Karate and Taekwondo? Karate is Japanese, Taekwondo is Korean. Other than that it depends more on the school, and we got a good school.
I kind of assess the level at which they're asking the question. If it's just a search for validation, I give them validation. If it's an actual search for information, I give them information.
Click to expand...
Here, I still have the same issue. for each question (with kempo in mind, which again is the only art I'm qualified to teach)

  • Is Kempo the best? Depends. What do you mean by that question? What's your concern?
  • My cousin said kempo is useless and I should do Krav Maga instead. Kempo isn't useless. Our Master was an LEO (same as your answer)
  • What's the difference between Karate and Kempo? Karate is Japanese, Kempo is a hybrid art. I could go into a lot of detail, but basically SKK is a combination of karate, judo, shaolinquan, and kickboxing. If you want to know more, try a few classes.
Basically the same, except the first answer. I'm not definitively telling them SKK is the best, because I don't know that (a lot of people would actually say it isn't because villari was an ***, but the system he created seems great to me). (*cough cough @Buka just to piss you off that I'm supporting villari's system cough cough*)
 
skribs said:
2: The only way to do that would be to take the same person and clone them, and have them go into similar situations. There's obviously no way to prove one way or the other that the art has taught someone how to do something. But I think it's a pretty safe assumption that if someone has spent 10 years training a martial art, and used a technique learned in class in self defense, that the art had at least something to do with it.
Click to expand...
Also, with this point, you're making the assumption that your art is effective, when you're assuming someone spending 10 years in the art that used a technique was effective. This is overused, but that's because it's the most blatant contradiction. If I spent ten years learning no touch ki jutsu, and someone attacked me, and I did a hadouken, which happened to hit them as they charged at me, would that be proof that system worked, or just a fluke?
 
skribs said:
No, the point does not remain the same. Consider these statements:
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 300 MPH
  • My privately owned airplane can fly in excess of 3600 MPH
It is possible for planes to fly 3600 MPH, but it is ridiculous to claim so. A plane can easily fly 300 MPH, and in fact could be expected to.

It is also very easily possible that a teenage girl learned enough in a martial arts class to defend themselves in class and break someone's nose. It's not nearly possible that same girl will learn to defend against 12 ninjas in a dark alley.

So no, you took my argument from something entirely reasonable (and that actually did happen), and turned it into something ridiculous.
Click to expand...

It doesnt matter if one is mre believable. If both statements are completely unprovable.

I mean what is the top speed on an imaginary plane anyway?
 
kempodisciple said:
Not clicking the link (at work) i thought the phrase was butt pirates. Has that changed, or is this referring to something new?
Click to expand...

It's different, sort of...

Taken in the same context - the pirate version says "aaar", but with the ninja version you don't know what's happened until after ;)
 
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