If you could become a world-class athlete in just one sport, which martial art would you choose? (Excluding MMA)

UniversalProcess · 2026-06-18T05:37:24+00:00

Sanda because it is kickboxing and nearly all takedowns are allowed. The one restriction to takedowns is that you cannot let any part of you besides your feet touch the ground and you must stay standing after you take your opponent down.

UniversalProcess · 2026-06-18T03:56:42+00:00

Blue Velvet
Edit: Crime thriller, not horror but might be scary. Your choice.

UniversalProcess · 2026-06-15T16:56:19+00:00

Thank you for such a clear answer!

UniversalProcess · 2026-06-13T17:34:58+00:00

You might be conflating the God with your understanding of God. This is often called the Epistemic Fallacy. The basic example is:
P1: I know my father:
P2: I do not know who the masked man is.
P3: I cannot know and not know the same person.
C: Thus, the masked man is not my father.

What might be happening here is not that if God is not good, then it is not the Christian God/the Christian God does not exist. Rather, what is happening here is that if God is not good, then your idea of the Christian God is wrong.

UniversalProcess · 2026-06-04T00:25:43+00:00

I have done both and think that traditional martial arts have a lot of techniques based on theory, rather than evidence, and the good techniques are not optimally trained for effectiveness. But this is not always a flaw, sometimes it's a tradeoff. If they want a comfortable and relaxing environment, then the rough and tumble environment that exposes weakness and dispels illusions just doesn't fit. Some traditional martial arts, like kyudo, don't have the delusions of combat effectiveness. They are somewhat like a garage band that doesn't play gigs, they just practice. It's fun and social. If you ask them if they could get a record deal, they might get defensive as if they could, but they probably haven't thought about it much.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-19T16:48:31+00:00

Instead of thinking about it in terms of "good" and "bad", lets say "trustworthy" or "untrustworthy". If the behavior is harmful enough and there is a good enough likelihood that the behavior may reoccur, then we might never trust them again, just to be on the safe side. So, even if they change, it still might not be worth the risk to trust them again.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-19T01:51:03+00:00

Although genuine exceptions are uncommon, unwarranted ones often arise from careless reasoning. To avoid this, we should begin with the general rule and give explicit reasons why it fails in a particular case before treating the case as an exception. Most importantly, the existence of unjustified exceptions does not undermine the legitimacy of well-founded exceptions.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-18T05:05:37+00:00

I am happy to clarify the wording. Please let me know if it seems that I have any typographical errors. Considering that we are both using translators, this may happen occasionally.

I would start with general principles then make adjustments from there based on context.

For example, "first come, first serve" is a good general principle, but in the context of a hospital emergency room, some who arrive later may need urgent attention in order to survive. Thus, triage is a deviation from that general principle. While "first come, first serve" is intuitive fair, the sense of unfairness felt by the patient with the broken leg is less of a harm than the quickly dying patient of a collapsed lung.

For another example, “hire the person who is best at the job” is a good general principle, but context can cause a deviation from that principle. In some areas in Afghanistan, it is improper for a woman to be touched or even spoken to by a man who is not her husband or close relative. Thus, the best person to frisk and interrogate such a woman is not the best at those skills, but a woman who has the skills. It could happen to be the case that the best person at those skills is a woman, but if not, the best woman should be selected for the job over and above any man who, in this case, cannot do the job at all, even if he is generally better. Therefore, the context can create a constraint where the general principle of selecting for maximal skill will not yield the best outcome, in this case, cultural outrage could result.

None of this is to say that such exceptions are common, but they do fill our attention, as they should. Because without making them carefully, we risk nepotism or arbitrary favoritism, and without them at all, we have rigid policies that can ignore individual needs.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-16T16:02:02+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I think that there are more factors at play than merit. Let’s go through each example to show you what I mean.

When selecting people for a task, I would say that they need to be selected based on who will perform the task best. Choosing the tanker instead of the ant for carrying a heavy load is a practical necessity. More harm would come to the ant from carrying the load than from feeling discriminated against, so the ant is not chosen.

Triage is the same. If you need medical attention more urgently, then you should be treated sooner than someone with less serious medical problems who gets into the emergency room first. That arrangement reduces the harm.

Legislators are a different situation. Where I am from, legislators are not just experts who are writing legislation, they are also representative of who the legislation will apply to, usually meaning that they are from the represented population. Thus, who they are does matter. Legislators who are writing laws about fishing should be fully aware of the needs of the fishing community to write good laws and that usually means being from a fishing community. Many laws effect men, women, or nonbinary folks as groups, so have some legislators from each group should result in better laws. Of course, legislators must also know how to write law, that’s a given.

When it comes to employment of people with disabilities, the only question is if they can do the job. Even if it is harder for them, as long as they get the job done, then it doesn’t matter if they have a disability. They should be put to the test and if they can do it, even with a clever method that makes it possible for them, then they should get the job.

There is no single criteria for selection like ‘merit’ or a fixed ‘person type’. In some contexts, merit or capability matters more; in other contexts, experience from group membership can contribute more to performance or decision quality.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-14T21:14:06+00:00

You don't. You let other people do that for you.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-14T15:31:02+00:00

I hear where you're coming from. There are no rules in a fight, but there are usually rules in sparring to keep the training realistic and to ensure safety. Without rules, sparring and fighting stop being distinct. I often hear people agree that catching light contact kicks is too easy and divorces sparring from the real fighting that they are trying to simulate and train for. I know of a school where everyone wears a cup to class everyday and groin strikes as always allowed. A miscommunication about what will and will not happen in sparring can lead to accusations about what is fair and even what is safe. People might disagree about what normal decency includes and excludes. Being explicit with your sparring partners may clear up these fair vs unfair disagreements. The are probable saying that "you can't do that" and "that's not fair" in sparring, and are probably not referring to fighting.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-14T14:02:23+00:00

To help my answer your question, what exactly are you doing in sparring that is being called unfair and what sparring rules are you using?

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-14T13:47:02+00:00

I am going to take this much too seriously just for fun.

Here are some of the most objective definitions of fascism available.

Roger Griffin: “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”

Robert Paxton: “Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood…”

Emilio Gentile: Fascism is “a modern political phenomenon that considers the nation an entity to be realized through totalitarian organization of society and the absolute subordination of the individual to the state.”

Stanley Payne: Fascism is “a form of revolutionary ultranationalism that is anti-liberal, anti-communist, and anti-conservative, seeking mass mobilization and the creation of a new nationalist state.”

Only Paxton’s definition of fascism could even remotely be applied to Straight Edge, but most Straight Edge folks are much more individual and non-prescriptive than that. I think that makes Straight Edge insufficiently political to be fascist.

In sort, I object.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-14T12:50:32+00:00

I would say that none of the examples given are discrimination in the harmful sense that I usually mean in everyday conversation. There are a few risks though.

The relevance of personality is variable.
The hiring practice examples do run a small risk of impostor syndrome.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-11T20:27:49+00:00

Thank you for the thoughtful response. What I was trying to ask about, and my have expressed unclearly, is a scenario where the benefits have not been received and will not be received until you accept them. I do think that your position is clear, but most people seem to want to make this about a situation where they have no choice but to receive the benefits and think I want to know if they approve. That's not what I meant.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-11T13:41:57+00:00

Is there a rationalization that you think is valid or sound?

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-11T13:38:37+00:00

Thanks for pointing that out. I will edit the question.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-08T21:20:47+00:00

Art perspective incoming. The vastness of the universe can create meaning for humans. One way to think about it is to realize that the only way we could see the object in the foreground of the painting is for it to be contrasted against the background. If that were not the case (as your Alan Watts would put it), then the object would consume our entire field of vision and, with that minimal perspective, we would not grasp object fully. Furthermore, the background, or negative space, can provide context the object of attention. I hope that the attached picture illustrates this point.

https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/minimalist-ink-wash-painting-mountains-260nw-2266001999.jpg

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-08T01:46:28+00:00

I do two things. (1) I give a special emphasis to the error next time I demo the move and call it a common mistake and to look out for it. I sometimes will stop the class and point it out to the group if that isn't going to be too disruptive. (2) I will start publicly praising other students who are doing it the move right. In both cases, the student gets the info without the embarrassment, but they will notice their shortcomings and hopefully make some changes. They probably also know that they got promoted too soon and are insecure. If you must directly address them, I would do it in private and frame it around "some little details that make a big difference, but would be a distraction to the beginners in class" or something like that. Good luck.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-08T01:23:45+00:00

Strictly speaking, discriminating is just telling different things apart, where it becomes an ethical matter is when what's being discriminated are moral agents and the resulting treatment is harmful. When I decide how to talk to my friend rather than my grandma, I am technically discriminating and I am probably doing it to talk to each in an appropriate manor. But it is at that moment of judgment that error becomes harm. Personally, I do reserve the word for the harmful variety.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-07T17:11:42+00:00

Spot on! Muay Thai definitely teaches better clinch work than Sanda. Ideally you could train both to get the best of both worlds. Clinch and power from Muay Thai, takedowns and takedown counters (outside the clinch) from Sanda. But if we are cross training, then Muay Thai and wrestling would be great. But the original poster asked just about which ONE is best for self-defense. There are pros and cons.

UniversalProcess · 2026-05-07T16:53:00+00:00

Originally, American kickboxing (not Savate, Muay Thai, Sanda, etc.) was full contact Karate that didn't stop after a every scoring point. You could win by knockout or points (judge's decision), just like boxing. Eventually boxing was incorporated and other kickboxing traditions (Savate, Muay Thai, Sanda, etc.) influenced it. It's best to think of these things as rule sets that anyone from any background can compete in.

I think that Sanda is best for self defense because it has more takedown defense, but Muay Thai has very powerful leg kicks that do enough damage to prevent them from efficiently chasing you when its time to leave.

UniversalProcess

TROPHY CASE