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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

I wonder when they will do an in-depth expose of the culture of brutality and cheating that the Spartans had.

One of the points of having such a rigorous, grueling training program, is that when stuff hits the fan on a mission, they can look back and say, "hey, this is bad, but Hell Week was worse, and we all made it through that."

Basically, every elite military unit in history has had a very brutal/dangerous entry.

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For all of the supposed training Spartans had, they held military domination for less than half a century (counting the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE to their defeat at Leuctra in 371 BCE. The image of their training comes from non-Spartan sources centuries after their Golden Age. Athens maintained naval domination without such "training." Rome, too. But I digress. The real point of this is that the most rigorous training doesn't have to involve life-death situations based on infection, PEDs, or other incidents off-course. The article here doesn't seem to focus on deaths occurring in the midst of the course, ie, during the training program itself (eg, drowning or severing a spinal chord during action). I think there's debate for the merits of the training, but leaving that aside, the idea of monitoring these warriors when they're "at rest" (in quotes of course), when it's both feasible and does not interfere with the training itself, seems more than fair. Heck, between treating infections and suffering withdrawal, they probably should receive treatment as part of their survival training...why shouldn't that be good practice in the field?

Or to identify individuals who can cope with some of the most difficult, dangerous and impactful decision making on earth.

What’s the saying? Exercise like it’s a battle and battle like it’s an exercise?

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