Thinking the unthinkable • Hacker News Board

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#191

Post by thefreeman » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

polyfractal wrote: post #178

kamaal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hand writing is a big thing here in India. And generally many super intelligent kids lose out to mug pots because of hand writing. Coming to my case, I consider any one who boasts about great hand writing a loser. The moment I stopped writing exams I started giving a damn about hand writing. Hand writing improvement initiatives were the biggest things I hated in school. It was a exercise in futility. Looking back I f…

Interesting. Here in the States (at least, where I grew up), handwriting is a real mixed bag. When you are learning how to write as a small child, it's a big deal to write clearly (for obvious reason). Then you are forced to learn cursive, and its a big deal to write cursive clearly. Then it doesn't matter anymore. Literally everyone stops caring as long as it is legible. It's a weird system. While you are learning t…

I actually find it physically difficult to hand write more then a few words these days. It's pretty sad.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#192

Post by zekenie » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

polyfractal wrote: post #149

zekenie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk this over with a molecular biologist. Its never gonna happen. Some pathologies are (or have components that are) hereditary. Of those things, a handful are specific gene mutations or groups of mutations. These mental illnesses are so poorly understood... None (to my knowledge) have been shown to be genetic. And its not just that we haven't found the underlying genetic reason. There probably isn't an underlying g…

Mmm...I'd hedge my bets a bit. I think a better generalization is that many psychiatric disorders are caused by genetic abnormalities (or clusters of abnormalities, or complemented with epigenetics), but that the potential pool of candidates is vast. It only takes a few rotten eggs in the whole batch to ruin things. It's like a rocket. You need all the parts of a rocket to work or you won't get off the ground. If you…

Right... I agree that psych problems could be based in genetics, its just not my field. But these things can also be environmental, developmental, epigenetic. They can also be mixtures of all of them. I was just saying that we're probably not going to have a genetic test for psych conditions and be able to eliminate them. Sure, maybe one or two combinations of mutations could be screened for, but never most, no matter how far genetics research goes.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#193

Post by jff » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:06 PM UTC

RettalnhoJ wrote: post #90

potatolicious wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "He's SO SMART his brain is brute-forcing social methods of manipulation in order to obtain/achieve a goal/objective." This seems like wild supposition to me. We know that the child has wild mood swings and alternates between "normal" and "manipulative and violent". I don't think it's clear at all that his behavior is due to raw intelligence. To be more blunt, this seems like armchair psychology with nothing in the…

Just as I was/am, and probably just as he is. We are cunningly manipulative from the get-go, any emotional response from that point is just part of the game, even the fits of rage are a last-ditch effort to assert some form of dominance over the situation after we have expelled every last conceivable option/variable to achieve a set/dynamic goal or objective. It starts with the parent not parenting an autistic child…

How many poorly-disguised sockpuppet accounts do you have, JohnLatter/LatterJohn/RettalnhoJ? Really clever on that last one, Count Alucard.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#194

Post by thefreeman » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:09 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #162

elpachuco wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. I wonder if a nice beating would have done you any good. I have one anecdotal story. My older brother was uncontrollable at the age of 9…

In Urdu we have a proverb it translates to English as - "Treat your teachers beating, as a garland you could receive in the future". I agree corporal punishment is cruelty. But some minimal beating must be allowed to put things in order. My mom is a teacher, and back here in the past and to some extent now. Beating kids in school in India was the norm. She tells me many parents would come ask the teachers to not beat…

As I have never raised children, I can't speak from experience. But I feel like the same thing occurs in nature. Occasionally the parent needs to establish dominance.

I am not advocating beating your kids, but if they are hell bent on testing the limits I think you have to show them that there is definitely a line that can not be crossed.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#195

Post by mpweiher » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

thinkling wrote: post #147

mpweiher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gladly! Firearm related death rate, per 100K of population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re... US: 9.0 Switzerland: 6.4 Finland: 3.64 Germany: 1.1 UK: 0.25 ...

It seems that that data gives statistics for a single year, and not the same year for each country. While the annual gun-related death rate may be somewhat stable for the U.S., I would guess it varies a lot from year to year in smaller countries depending on whether there was a major incident that year or not. I'd want to look across a similar-size population (e.g. all of EU) and (say) a 10 year span, and then calcul…

The Wapo article links to a graph that has the "deaths due to assault" (not limited to guns) for OECD countries: http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2012/07/20/america-...

Luxembourg (total population 1/2 million) has the higher variance you mention, the rest of are pretty stable.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#196

Post by ForrestN » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

elpachuco wrote: post #148

unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. I wonder if a nice beating would have done you any good. I have one anecdotal story. My older brother was uncontrollable at the age of 9…

Physical abuse does not solve mental health issues. Ever. Submission is a terrible goal in raising children.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#197

Post by bambax » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:16 PM UTC

shirederby wrote: post #163

bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I'm getting very tired of this. If you want to have an informed discussion about gun violence you need to acquire at least a modicum of information about firearms, especially but not limited to different actions, e.g. , single-action, semi-automatic, and automatic. Virginia Tech? 2 semi-automatic pistols. Sandy Hook? 1 semi-automatic rifle and 2 se…

This discussion about "semi-automatic" versus "automatic" weapons actually strengthens the case FOR regulation; automatic weapons are regulated => they're not used in mass-killings; semi-automatic weapons are not regulated => they are used in mass-killings.

How one can conclude from these facts that less regulation is better, I don't know.

All guns are bad, and the more automatic they are, the worse.

The NRA says "guns don't kill people, people do" but the truth is that guns help people who want to kill people, kill more people.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#198

Post by jpxxx » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #37

mpweiher wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.

Everyone reaches for answers at a time like this, and a sad majority reach for thoughtless answers like gun control, that ironically embody the very stupidity and carelessness that contributes to this violence. It's such a smug, pat answer that relegates responsibility to some higher authority. It's the same sentiment that makes people feel isolated, alone, unheard, helpless, and eventually, desperate. "Just shut up,…

Oh what a conformist Hell it must be to live in a world where the severely mentally ill don't have in-home access to six semi-automatic weapons. Unpack your baggage before wading in to this one.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#199

Post by gridaphobe » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

Why is it so hard for people to conceive of the possibility that there may be multiple issues contributing to tragedies like Friday's? Mental illness is certainly an issue that does not get enough attention in the US. Gun control is also an issue that does not get enough (real) attention. These /two/ issues, and likely others, are together responsible for the shooting.

We need to address both.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#200

Post by mpweiher » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

justincormack wrote: post #74

pjscott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States also has more than 50 times the population of Finland. Normalize!

Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings... It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...

From that list, I count 16 events in the US and 4 in the EU. Populations are 501M (EU) and 316M (US) (Wikipedia). So 4:1 incidence rate, 6:1 adjusted for population. Very similar to the overall homicide and gun death rates.

I'd agree that Scandinavia has a bigger problem (EU would be at 2 without Finland). (Norway is not part of the EU, and I also didn't count the US soldier going on a rampage in Afghanistan).