Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer • Hacker News Board

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#131

Post by moron » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #72

It's just a complete waste of time to think about these kinds of things. Some humans malfunction and do this kind of thing. It happens quite rarely, and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. One's probability of being harmed by the occasional insane murderer (or terrorism for that matter) is microscopic compared to so many other things that we can actually do something about.

I agree, but people don't want to hear that. Something must be done, think of the children. Political positions must be advanced, panicked news segments must be filmed, panel discussions must be held, Bill Maher has to run his mouth about conservatives, Rush Limbaugh has to run his mouth about liberals, opportunists must seize the moment, narratives must be created. Shit, man, there's too much gold in this tragedy to just throw it away!

Nobody likes hearing that the universe is uncaring and unpredictable. That's just a fucking bummer.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#132

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #129

tokenadult wrote: post #64

From the submitted article: "At this very moment, the police have probably gathered a great deal of evidence from James Holmes. They may well have a clear read on his motives right now. It is vital that they share this information fully with the public, but just as vital that they conceal much or all of it while they conduct their investigation. Testimony from friends, family and survivors of the massacre is also cru…

"So far I am not aware of any reason for young people in residential neighborhoods in the United States to have what are called "assault rifles" for legitimate purposes, and I certainly would be glad to know that none are in my (crime-free) neighborhood." What about suspending the Fourth Amendment? Surely enough random house checks, possibly automated with cameras, could also detect possible criminal activity and sav…

[deleted]

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#133

Post by nessus42 » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 7:38 PM UTC

zyb09 wrote: post #94

Ygg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually scientist are of strong belief that mind is deterministic (it's a hypothesis so far, but all signs to point to it). However if people believe they are slaves to determinism then they act worse, since their actions are not their fault. Overall society on large must believe that they posses the freedom in order to make life bearable. Other way to look on that is this. If _you_ are not responsible for your acti…

don't quantum mechanics stand contrary to determinism? As far as I know there's a certain amount of unpredictably with particles in superposition.

There are both deterministic and non-deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. The "Many Worlds" interpretation is deterministic, as all possible outcomes end up happening, albeit in different parallels worlds. Bohm's interpretation is also deterministic, and is experimentally indistinguishable from the Many Worlds interpretation, but only one of the worlds is real. Which one is real is deterministically determined from initial conditions that are impossible to inspect. And even if you could inspect them, the result is chaotic.

Other interpretations rely on probabilistic collapse of a "probability wave", but this amounts to nothing more than the cosmos rolling dice. It's hard to fathom how one is supposed to arrive at a mystical "free will" via the rolling of dice.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#134

Post by jessedhillon » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 7:40 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #129

tokenadult wrote: post #64

From the submitted article: "At this very moment, the police have probably gathered a great deal of evidence from James Holmes. They may well have a clear read on his motives right now. It is vital that they share this information fully with the public, but just as vital that they conceal much or all of it while they conduct their investigation. Testimony from friends, family and survivors of the massacre is also cru…

"So far I am not aware of any reason for young people in residential neighborhoods in the United States to have what are called "assault rifles" for legitimate purposes, and I certainly would be glad to know that none are in my (crime-free) neighborhood." What about suspending the Fourth Amendment? Surely enough random house checks, possibly automated with cameras, could also detect possible criminal activity and sav…

Look up "straw man argument" or maybe "slippery slope." Then, make a better argument.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#135

Post by nessus42 » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

paraschopra wrote: post #47

Ygg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually scientist are of strong belief that mind is deterministic (it's a hypothesis so far, but all signs to point to it). However if people believe they are slaves to determinism then they act worse, since their actions are not their fault. Overall society on large must believe that they posses the freedom in order to make life bearable. Other way to look on that is this. If _you_ are not responsible for your acti…

It's odd to say society must believe that they possess a freedom which isn't really there. Of course, in punishing me, you are not responsible, but by exposing this idea, I do hope your mindset will change. But if you punish me, I can't blame you. I see ideas as agents that change trajectories of free will.

The world is almost certainly deterministic. Either that, or the cosmos is rolling dice in quantum mechanics wave collapse. It's hard to see how any sort of mystical "free will" can come out of a random number generator. We are all just very complex computer programs running on meat machines.

These revelations make the common mystical use of the term "free will" rather meaningless. What could it possibly amount to? That you have a different mind living in your "soul" that makes your real decisions for you, while your physical brain is just some sort of fancy transceiver?

That's rather doubtful, if you ask me. On the other hand, the notion of "free will" that no one is holding a gun to your head still stands.

On the philosophical issue of whom to hold responsible for intelligent computer programs gone terribly wrong, I'm not sure that there is any real answer to that question. What should be clear, however, is that society has a right to defend itself against such rogue entities and to disincentivize such entities from doing bad things.

What should also be clear, however, is that there is no moral good to increasing the suffering of people (i.e., intelligent programs) just because they happened to get saddled with a bum program.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#136

Post by jberryman » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 8:07 PM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #111

jberryman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying, but really "there is nothi that can be done to stop it"? What about outlawing firearms for civilian use, or even just not letting the assault weapons ban lapse? And don't tell me every angry/depressed yuppie kid who was going to go on a rampage when guns were easier to get than a drivers license is going to negotiate some black market underworld he knows nothing about to get his guns.

Consider what might have happened if an individual as wealthy and as determined as this could not have gained access to guns. He spent thousands of dollars on the equipment he used for this killing. With that amount of money he would have been able to acquire guns easily on the black market, but even if that wasn't an option he could have instead resorted to bombs. And in that case he would have easily killed just as…

His goal was obviously to wreak as much havoc as possible and he used guns; I'm not sure how it follows that if he didn't have access to guns he would have done just as much damage.

Also I don't know what the point is of arguing about how easy it would be to buy guns on a hypothetical black market, but I imagine it would be much closer to (I imagine) trying to hire a hitman than buy pot: you have to have connections, and if you don't you'll probably hire an FBI agent.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#137

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 8:11 PM UTC

jackalope wrote: post #86

kiba wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 12,000 annual murder in a population of 300,000 million. The hardware bug is pretty rare in the first place.

Or that particular side effect of the bug is rare. Maybe the cook who spits in your food is suffering from the same hardware bug. Maybe it's counterproductive to focus only on the cases involving murder. It's a horrible act, and a problem that society wants to solve, but what problem was the perpetrator attempting to solve by killing innocent strangers? I can't think of any. It makes me wonder what the rest of the pe…

I think the bug itself is rare. A lot of people have at least few times in their lives reasons and desire to kill someone but they don't do it. Of course I agree that there are people who can kill and manage to live the whole life without doing it or just doing it without braking the law.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#138

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 8:16 PM UTC

arthurrr wrote: post #60

scotty79 wrote: post #8

I think of the murderers as having some kind of hardware bug. We have evolved special safeguard that prevents us form killing the people we live with and people we meet daily. It's crazy that we do live in proximity of other people and meet them if you think how dangerous single person can be when this safeguard fails. All the search for reasons why the person killed is little bit like creating fake narratives to kin…

I think this is too dismissive, and is the equivalent of sweeping it underneath the rug and hoping it doesn't happen again. To me, this is a symptom that there is something broken with society. The way I see it, energy builds up in the system, and needs to be released somehow. If there's no way for that energy to be released, it builds up and reaches a phase-transition state, like how water will slowly boil but then…

> People haven't changed one bit since the beginning of time. People have the same exact emotions that they had 2000 years ago, and they react in the same exact way. This is why history repeats, because the way people react to emotions never changes.

Not true. We are becoming less and less violent. You can see it by observing numbers of wars fought, war casualties, crime punishment, crime rates, entertainment over the last hundreds of years. Some artile about this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/22/world-less-violent-... There was also TED talk about this. You can find more.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#139

Post by kabdib » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 8:22 PM UTC

coenhyde wrote: post #30

arturadib wrote: post #26

Think outside the box. I've lived in the US for 10 years, and I follow plenty of world news. It is clear that Columbine-like shootings are (mostly) an American phenomenon. [1] So what is it so special about the US that makes this a recurring problem? Is it poor parenting, without much communication? Is it societal pressure, i.e. Mr Popular vs Mr Loser? Is it easy access to guns? Is it the disproportionate amount of m…

I know American's do not like to hear this but I am of the opinion that it's easy access to guns which is the cause of these mass murders. Now that Australia has gun control, the crazy's just stab a few people. It's very hard to kill so many people with a knife. If you take away easy access to guns then sure the hard criminals will still have guns but the wannabe criminals and the lunatics will do less damage.

A blanket ban will (a) have a miserable compliance rate, (b) dramatically increase the value of firearms, and (c) help ensure that law-abiding citizens are defenseless against criminals (who generally don't care if they're already breaking the law).

In the 1990s, California attempted mandatory registration of "assault rifles." Compliance was about 10 percent, and was officially acknowledged a failure.

I can't imagine what a total ban would look like. House to house patrols? With whom, the army? I'm guessing that nobody would want that job. I conjecture it'd be unconstitutional, or appear that way to enough soldiers and policemen that they wouldn't enforce it.

There are 300+ million guns in private hands in the US, in 50M+ households. This is a "wicked problem" if you're looking at a gun ban as the solution. Estimates I've read put the time to effectively zero guns in private hands in the 200-250 year range. A ban just isn't going to be pleasant; it might result in /worse/ violence, both immediately (in reactions and protest) and over time (through creation of victims) -- of course this is not testable, so it'll have to remain rhetoric.

I'm going to guess that arming lots of citizens isn't the answer, either. States with concealed carry permits /appear/ to be safer than those without, but a rational deterrent is not going to stop someone who's irrational.

In an ideal world we don't need guns, and everybody has a pony. We don't live in an ideal world.

tl;dl; Firearms bans in the US are really really hard.

Re: Don’t Jump to Conclusions About the Killer

#140

Post by csense » Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 8:23 PM UTC

jessedhillon wrote: post #134

jeffdavis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So far I am not aware of any reason for young people in residential neighborhoods in the United States to have what are called "assault rifles" for legitimate purposes, and I certainly would be glad to know that none are in my (crime-free) neighborhood." What about suspending the Fourth Amendment? Surely enough random house checks, possibly automated with cameras, could also detect possible criminal activity and sav…

Look up "straw man argument" or maybe "slippery slope." Then, make a better argument.

Actually, people often underestimate the power of a "slippery slope" argument.

To me, it looks more like reductio ad absurdum. If we accept curtailing the 4th, 5th, or 8th amendment as an absurd outcome, and a parallel argument to token's supports that absurd outcome, then there must be a flaw in token's argument.