I'm reminded that many land mines are designed to maim rather than kill, maximizing the cost to the enemy by forcing them to care for wounded casualties.
Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
71–80 of 255 posts
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Causing injury can mean responsibility for lifetime care. As well it should.
Some burdens are simply too severe to levy on a single person for an accident. These should be borne by a combination of insurance, the community, and/or the state.
The language "accident" (and the associated story) implies that one cannot control whether they injure someone with their 2000lb death machines. That is not true.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are basic human instincts not to hurt people. citation needed I don't think this is "human instinct". Looks more like a moral construct.
Not the best source, but this is common knowledge in many circles: "In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out — it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known a…
My comment was more about your use of the word "instinct" than the fact that soldiers normally dislike killing. It would not be surprising that some countries have different reactions to killing if this was indeed a moral construct and not an "instinct."
Same thing with the Wikipedia article you link that uses the word "instinct" without justifying it (do we see that in ALL cultures, in babies?)
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Causing injury can mean responsibility for lifetime care. As well it should.
And that makes the incentive to kill them instead it injur them.
Not if you set the penalty for killing even higher. The problem here is the order of the size of the penalties, not the penalty itself.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are basic human instincts not to hurt people. citation needed I don't think this is "human instinct". Looks more like a moral construct.
Not the best source, but this is common knowledge in many circles: "In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out — it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known a…
Interesting. I would suspect that a great amount of the resistance to moving to autonomous warfare (not drone warfare, but weaponry where no human pulls trigger) is by these same soldiers; not so much a matter of being put out of a job, as no longer being able to be the "conscientious objector on the firing line."
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#76The fact that this story is the top of hacker news should indicate to us all that this site has lost what it had. How is this different than reddit? How do we want it to be different? This is simply a sensational, horrifying article that has been up voted because of its shock value. We can do better.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#77I could not finish this article. I have read about and seen a lot of disturbing things, but this bothers me far more than any horror movie or shock film ever could. The situation exposed in this article evidences something really fundamental about human nature: the banality of evil.
That someone could run over a toddler and then reverse back and forth over them just so they only have to pay $50,000 instead of $400,000 — well, it's absolutely sickening.
Time and again I'm reminded that most people are really only "good" because it benefits them personally in some way. But the ease with which so many people simply rationalize away all the horrors that mankind commits — I suppose that's part of the human genome.
This really depresses me.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not understand the downvoting of this post. It is messed up. Completely messed up. Downvote if you disagree. But please do 'fess up to the fact that you downvoting because you think it is OK to transform an accident into homicide.
People a down-voting because the comment uses an appeal-to-emotion to vilify an entire culture.
Found the asshole that down voted it.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#79As a Chinese immigrant I am always baffled when Americans visit third world countries.
Why? Your comment is baffling to me. Why are these countries not worthy of visiting?
It is very hard for us to come in the US. Things are better and safer here. When I got here I discovered that people travel to poor and unsafe countries for fun.
Re: Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are basic human instincts not to hurt people. citation needed I don't think this is "human instinct". Looks more like a moral construct.
Not the best source, but this is common knowledge in many circles: "In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out — it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known a…
In response to below, many large animals have instincts about not killing their own kind. It is either too physically dangerous (a similarly-sized opponent) or in the case of social animals too socially costly, depriving the group of a member that represents significant investment. Wolves and lions will kill each other, but never casually.