Ahhhh... free at last from the cultivation, nurturing and support of vegetables (mostly flowers). At almost 2a.m., one can stare at one's keyboard, trying to make sense, and ingest alcoholic beverages to one's heart's content...
So let me start by chewing over something CN posted:
No, you're not overthinking this. Here's the problem: your BinL doesn't know what he's talking about. Literally: he's voicing an opinion about an outcome which he has no possible way to predict, and making a prediction. Sure, he's entitled to his opinion. But his opinion has no basis. In fact, it's not even clear what it means.
What would it mean to eliminate all variables? It would mean, basically, clone two fighters out of one single fighter, and let them fight it out enough times to eliminate luck and other contingent factors, so that the only difference between them was that one was using Karate(including TKD and TSD)/Wing Chun/Kempo/Hapkido/.... and the other was using the skill set conventionally described as MMA, involving... techs synthesized from a variant of Jujutsu (a TMA) plus various striking (traditional) striking arts. Two points here:
(i) First, as was pointed out in an earlier post, all of these arts are `traditional' and all of them are mixed. Look at karate: a synthesis of Minamoto-era bujitsu (as Iain Abernethy has discussed in his Bunkai-Jutsu book), Chinese martial arts of the `chuan-fa' variety of boxing, Okinawan tui-te joint manipulation/throwing/grappling techniques, and the specifically linear striking principles developed very, very recently—less than 150 years ago!—by Bushi Matsumura. That isn't `mixed'??? That lethal mixture went first to Japan and then to Korea, where it resulted in the Korean striking arts we call Taekwondo/Tansoodo, both of them Korean Shotokan Karate when you eliminate the modifications introduced by the Olympic sport version. Those striking techs (plus the less commonly taught joint attack/grappling/throwing components of the art), combined with Japanese Aikido, and a few other odds and ends, give you Hapkido—as mixed a martial art as you could imagine... the point is, all martial arts are mixed. And all of them, a few generations up the line, become `traditional'. The MA that Matsumura invented in Shuri wasn't traditional; it was unlike anything ever seen before, so far as anyone knows—the combination of linear striking and overwhelming force delivery was essentially unprecedented. So it make no sense, from one point of view, to contrast MMA and TMA...`mixed' and `traditional' are orthogonal, not contradictory, as someone pointed out earlier in this thread. It reminds me of something the great French cynic Tallyrand said: `What is treason? Merely a matter of dates.' What's radical and innovative and what's traditional are just a matter of dates: one will become the other in a hundred years or so. Your BinL is working with a false dichotomy.
(ii) Second: how the hell can he tell what would happen in the clone-vs-clone situation?? Sure, you can have an opinion, but an opinion is worth no more than its basis: if you have no valid basis for that opinion, then your opinion is worthless. Your BinL has absolutely no valid basis for that opinion, because there's no way to provide such a basis. What's his data source—a special apparatus that can view all the different ways the universe might develop in time from any given instant?
The points here are (a) that there is no empirical basis for deciding which of two otherwise identical fighers, one fighting TMA and the other MMA, will win in any particular encounter. Only if you have such a basis can you determine whether the fighter using TMA principles and tactics will defeat his dƶppelganger using MMA principles and tactics; without such a basis, nothing you say about TMA/MMA carries any weight at all; and (b) it's all nonsense anyway, because there isn't a single tech in MMA that isn't anticipated somewhere in a `TMA' (I've seen somewhere a photo of Iain Abernethy performig a suplex in accord with a kata bunkai from a book by... Gichin Funkakoshi!!).
What's going on in arguments such as the one between you and your BinL doesn't have to do with street combat reality. It has to do with the power and influence of electronic media. He's convinced, because the combat sport labelled MMA has been promoted so heavily; his opinions are really based on that, though he thinks they're based on evidence. But the kind of evidence that would really bear on the case is unavailable in principle since it would require you to have data about the outcomes in a large number of clone vs. clone encounters that have never happened and never will happen.
Let him rave on. It doesn't mean a thing. The question itself is pointless, unresolvable and in the end, I think, basically meaningless. And who can afford to worry about something with those credentials?
So let me start by chewing over something CN posted:
No, you're not overthinking this. Here's the problem: your BinL doesn't know what he's talking about. Literally: he's voicing an opinion about an outcome which he has no possible way to predict, and making a prediction. Sure, he's entitled to his opinion. But his opinion has no basis. In fact, it's not even clear what it means.
What would it mean to eliminate all variables? It would mean, basically, clone two fighters out of one single fighter, and let them fight it out enough times to eliminate luck and other contingent factors, so that the only difference between them was that one was using Karate(including TKD and TSD)/Wing Chun/Kempo/Hapkido/.... and the other was using the skill set conventionally described as MMA, involving... techs synthesized from a variant of Jujutsu (a TMA) plus various striking (traditional) striking arts. Two points here:
(i) First, as was pointed out in an earlier post, all of these arts are `traditional' and all of them are mixed. Look at karate: a synthesis of Minamoto-era bujitsu (as Iain Abernethy has discussed in his Bunkai-Jutsu book), Chinese martial arts of the `chuan-fa' variety of boxing, Okinawan tui-te joint manipulation/throwing/grappling techniques, and the specifically linear striking principles developed very, very recently—less than 150 years ago!—by Bushi Matsumura. That isn't `mixed'??? That lethal mixture went first to Japan and then to Korea, where it resulted in the Korean striking arts we call Taekwondo/Tansoodo, both of them Korean Shotokan Karate when you eliminate the modifications introduced by the Olympic sport version. Those striking techs (plus the less commonly taught joint attack/grappling/throwing components of the art), combined with Japanese Aikido, and a few other odds and ends, give you Hapkido—as mixed a martial art as you could imagine... the point is, all martial arts are mixed. And all of them, a few generations up the line, become `traditional'. The MA that Matsumura invented in Shuri wasn't traditional; it was unlike anything ever seen before, so far as anyone knows—the combination of linear striking and overwhelming force delivery was essentially unprecedented. So it make no sense, from one point of view, to contrast MMA and TMA...`mixed' and `traditional' are orthogonal, not contradictory, as someone pointed out earlier in this thread. It reminds me of something the great French cynic Tallyrand said: `What is treason? Merely a matter of dates.' What's radical and innovative and what's traditional are just a matter of dates: one will become the other in a hundred years or so. Your BinL is working with a false dichotomy.
(ii) Second: how the hell can he tell what would happen in the clone-vs-clone situation?? Sure, you can have an opinion, but an opinion is worth no more than its basis: if you have no valid basis for that opinion, then your opinion is worthless. Your BinL has absolutely no valid basis for that opinion, because there's no way to provide such a basis. What's his data source—a special apparatus that can view all the different ways the universe might develop in time from any given instant?
The points here are (a) that there is no empirical basis for deciding which of two otherwise identical fighers, one fighting TMA and the other MMA, will win in any particular encounter. Only if you have such a basis can you determine whether the fighter using TMA principles and tactics will defeat his dƶppelganger using MMA principles and tactics; without such a basis, nothing you say about TMA/MMA carries any weight at all; and (b) it's all nonsense anyway, because there isn't a single tech in MMA that isn't anticipated somewhere in a `TMA' (I've seen somewhere a photo of Iain Abernethy performig a suplex in accord with a kata bunkai from a book by... Gichin Funkakoshi!!).
What's going on in arguments such as the one between you and your BinL doesn't have to do with street combat reality. It has to do with the power and influence of electronic media. He's convinced, because the combat sport labelled MMA has been promoted so heavily; his opinions are really based on that, though he thinks they're based on evidence. But the kind of evidence that would really bear on the case is unavailable in principle since it would require you to have data about the outcomes in a large number of clone vs. clone encounters that have never happened and never will happen.
Let him rave on. It doesn't mean a thing. The question itself is pointless, unresolvable and in the end, I think, basically meaningless. And who can afford to worry about something with those credentials?
asian
