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At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

nytimes.com

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Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#31

Post by joe_the_user »

physcab wrote: post #6
mnemonicsloth wrote: post #2

When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal. When a PhD from Harvard -- the first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker. Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and sympathy for the grieving.

I don't think the author was applying an explanation either dumbly or trying to reduce its significance. I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it. I'm not a therapist, but I sincerely believe this human trait persists in many people as a coping mechanism. That's why it makes sense (even as an academic myself) in some weird, comforting way.

I think it is part of our human nature to try and contain a tragedy by labeling or attributing some cause to it.

Are you implying that tragedies have no cause.

It seems like human to try understand tragedies as they are significant part of our human world. Moreover, tragedies usually do have causes.

Claiming that there is no cause to an event may serve some psychological purpose...

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#32

Post by rdtsc »

amichail wrote: post #25
nostrademons wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that not all people have the same goals as HN readers. We self-select for people whose goal is to found a successful startup. For many other people, their goal in life might be to be a good parent, or to be a professional sports player, or to be a tenured professor. It seems like she was well on the road to success by our standards, but that doesn't mean she was successful by her standards.

What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a founder of a successful startup? Perhaps this is the result of societal pressure on intelligent people rather than her own thinking?

> What gave her the idea that being a tenured professor is better than a founder of a successful startup?

The same thing that gives HNers idea that starting a startup is better than being a tenure professor -- personal choice and personal set of goals and motivations.

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#33

Post by mnemonicsloth »

joe_the_user wrote: post #27
mnemonicsloth wrote: post #2

When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal. When a PhD from Harvard -- the first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker. Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and sympathy for the grieving.

Hey, you could combine the abusive terminology and talk about "postal-track professors". But the need to "help the victims grieve" by labeling every killing "inexplicable" and so casting maximal moral unction on the killer is also just a variety of pop-psychology. However, this doesn't seem to be an "inexplicable" event. There's probably no single, easy explanation but there seem to be a variety of causal factors we…

"help the victims grieve"... maximal moral unction...

When an event like this touches your life, very few stimuli from outside your own personal bubble of pain and confusion have any chance of registering with you [1].

But having the national paper of record print headlines half-excusing your friend or family member's killer [2] because she's the right kind of people would definitely do it.

[1] Some people express surprise that there are other people "out there," still going about their lives as if nothing had happened.

[2] allegedly.

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#34

Post by houseabsolute »

maxharris wrote: post #10
houseabsolute wrote: post #9

I find it veeery interesting that she "accidentally" killed her brother when she was twenty. Casts some doubt on that situation too.

Wrong conclusion. I think that she must have been emotionally scarred by the accident. Did the accident make it easier for her to kill those faculty members yesterday? That's really hard to say. Would it be easier for the former first lady to murder someone because of the deadly car accident she was involved in? I'm inclined to say no.

I've seen no more evidence for your guess than I have for mine.

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#35

Post by razerbeans »

The irony of this is the fact that I had a lecture that very day across UAHuntsville's campus in which my literature teacher said often times, when a person murders someone, there is a significantly higher chance they will do it again. I'm not saying that the death of her brother was indeed a murder, but I couldn't help but get a chill when I found out the news later that day. All of the teachers at UAHuntsville have passion about what they do; this is evident especially in the passion that the teachers seem to imbue in us as students. It is saddening to hear that three faculty have been killed, especially since one of those teachers was my own this past semester.

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#36

Post by randallsquared »

colah wrote: post #23
randallsquared wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Of course, things are rarely equal, and I agree with maxharris that the impossibility of correcting errors means that capital punishment should be off limits for justice systems. More to your point, though, I think that a justice system which was ultimately based on retribution wou…

>All else being equal, capital punishment is a great deterrent: 100% effective at preventing that person from committing that crime again. Deterrence isn't preventing a person from repeating a crime, but ever doing it. The idea is that they won't do it to avoid the punishment -- a sort of sociopath's substitute for morality. I've yet to see any actual evidence that capital punishment is a more effective deterrent tha…

You'll notice I said that I mentioned protecting the perpetrator from society... Killing them kind of defeats that. Also, they can't achieve rehabilitation if we kill them.

You focus on the single exception I mentioned to a retribution-based system as though I had not mentioned it as an exception at all. Why is that?

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#38

Post by gwern »

neurotech1 wrote: post #11
maxharris wrote: post #7

What Dr. Bishop did was unjustified, no matter what other facts we may find (excepting force initiated by the victims); justice requires her death. (Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment.) Having said that, look at how the system worked. These guys were stringing her along for six years (or so?), while maintaining th…

I would suspect Dr Bishop has a personality disorder, such as Borderline Personality Disorder. I find it interesting that they have a 6 year rule, when the average is around 10 years to get tenure. I think that people missed warning signs, that she was feeling stress, and that there is a stigma against seeking help, and people often deny they have a problem. I agree with most of your comments, except the bit about "r…

> I find it interesting that they have a 6 year rule, when the average is around 10 years to get tenure.

I think you're interpreting this wrong; it's 6 years after the tenure decision, not 6 years to get tenure. As in, the articles says they denied her tenure back in 2004 and she would have to leave soon.

6 years is long enough that she had to have realized long ago that she would be leaving and so I'm not sure descriptions like 'snapping' is right; this seems more pre-meditated.

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#39

Post by joe_the_user »

mnemonicsloth wrote: post #33
joe_the_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, you could combine the abusive terminology and talk about "postal-track professors". But the need to "help the victims grieve" by labeling every killing "inexplicable" and so casting maximal moral unction on the killer is also just a variety of pop-psychology. However, this doesn't seem to be an "inexplicable" event. There's probably no single, easy explanation but there seem to be a variety of causal factors we…

"help the victims grieve"... maximal moral unction... When an event like this touches your life, very few stimuli from outside your own personal bubble of pain and confusion have any chance of registering with you [1]. But having the national paper of record print headlines half-excusing your friend or family member's killer [2] because she's the right kind of people would definitely do it. [1] Some people express su…

What does "half-excusing" mean?

Or...

In what way was does describing the factors influencing a person's behavior excuse it?

Re: At an Academic Pressure Cooker, a Setback Turns Deadly

#40

Post by camccann »

anamax wrote: post #28
maxharris wrote: post #7

What Dr. Bishop did was unjustified, no matter what other facts we may find (excepting force initiated by the victims); justice requires her death. (Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment.) Having said that, look at how the system worked. These guys were stringing her along for six years (or so?), while maintaining th…

> Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment. Life imprisonment is irrevocable. In fact, many "not life" sentences end up being death sentences. Innocents die in prison infirmaries every day. The death chamber, not so much. If you're actually worried about killing innocents, you want more death penalty convictions because…

What you say is an indictment of the inhumanity of the prison system, not an argument in favor of the death penalty.
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