Well, I have been in a lot of street fights, ranging from random run-ins with drunken louts, to being assaulted by a group, to deadly conflict involving weapons. I am sure you have experience of your own and that your beliefs have worked well for you, but I do not feel any obligation to adopt them based on your say-so. Nor do I expect you to adopt mine, but I will lay them out for your consideration.

Of course conflicts can escalate once you are already fighting. A bully's objective may be simply to scare someone, knock them down and administer a few painful blows. Or a mugger's objective might simply be to get whatever cash is in a person's wallet. Knocking such a erson down a few times or slapping them around may be sufficient to get them to take off. One can escalate a conflict by actively trying to hurt someone rather than merely repel them or drive them away, in which case the opponent will be inclined to try to knock the escalator unconscious or inflict a serious, debilitating injury such as breaking someone's arm. There's another level of escalation again in which one person actively attempts to kill the other and makes their intention absolutely clear, such that the other person fully believes their life to be in jeopardy and either begs for mercy or fights to remain alive.

You are suggesting that there is no distinction between the different states. This is nonsense. At the international level we are well aware of the differences between skirmishes, limited engagements, limited war, and total war. Conflicts between individuals are similarly nuanced, and the notion of a proportionate response is well established in law; if someone tries to steal your cellphone, say, and slaps you in an attempt to startle/intimidate you into letting go of it, you do not automatically have the right to kill them and you'll need to make a convincing case about being in fear for your life rather than just angry about the prospect of losing your phone.

There are certainly situations in which is it appropriate to inflict as much harm as possible. I have been there and done that. But I believe those situations are exceptional and I make no apology for holding back in situations where extreme measures are not warranted. Of course I would not like to be wrong and find myself a victim, but nor would I wish to be wrong and find myself having gone too far.

> One can escalate a conflict by actively trying to hurt someone rather than merely repel them or drive them away

I'd say this leads to a situation where you are actively trying to give the attacker more situations that they can hurt you.

> You are suggesting that there is no distinction between the different states. This is nonsense.

No, I'm saying assuming they aren't actively trying to hurt you is outright dangerous. Any street fight can kill - all it takes is the wrong fall or a lucky contact and someone is dead. Assuming the attacker is somehow nice and should be scared away is insane in that situation.

That is what you are advocating.

However you have characterized my position (wrongly as):

> inflict as much harm as possible

Which is NOT what I am saying. I am saying the goal is to end the fight. That doesn't mean giving them a chance to get back up and attack you again - it means ending the fight as soon as possible no matter what it takes.

Minimizing harm to your attacker is counter-productive to that. That's not to say that the only alternative is maximizing harm. That's silly, a false dichotomy, and not what I'm suggesting at all.

Of course that is what you are suggesting: That doesn't mean giving them a chance to get back up and attack you again - it means ending the fight as soon as possible no matter what it takes.

You've made it clear that you don't feel safe walking away from a conflict unless your opponent is completely disabled, even if temporarily (but then how do you know they won't come after you later?). I think this is bunk and am quite willing to tolerate the risk that they'll attack again, because I feel confident about my ability to repel such attacks. I have in fact knocked someone down repeatedly, let him get back up, let him attack me again, and and a third time, until he got the message and stayed down.

Yes, this is dangerous, but so are a lot of things. It's dangerous in that it perpetuates a low-level danger in time, but I prefer an ongoing low-level risk to a sudden significant increase in risk. My judgments about risk in real-world situations have so far served me very well. It's true that any given street fight could kill, but it's also true that it probably won't unless you're quite unlucky, so I see no point in altering that probability if I don't need to. This is the same reason I avoid fights in the first place and am indifferent to mere verbal abuse or bluster - it is virtually never in my interest to initiate or escalate a conflict.

Assuming the attacker is somehow nice and should be scared away is insane in that situation.

I don't assume they're nice, in fact I make a habit of avoiding value judgments about people because they can so easily be misleading. My experience is that many assailants are cowardly (not nice) and can in fact be scared away with minimal retaliation. It's both risky and wasteful to inflict more harm than is required; I do not, for example, want to become the subject of a police investigation. How you got the idea that I think those who would attack someone else on the street might be nice people underneath their criminal exterior is beyond me.