Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What we know about CEO shooting suspect

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 1001 posts

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#731

Post by edanm »

wat10000 wrote: post #717
munksbeer wrote: post #586

Usually I don't tend to get caught up in stories like this. But one thing has me completely fascinated, is how far off the deep end the internet went over the last few days. A murderer became a cult hero online. I saw many posts even suggesting "the snitch" should be hunted down and get what's coming to him/her. I try not to overreact to stuff online, but this took me a bit by surprise. Things really feel like a melt…

It’s funny how we treat these things. Kill a bunch of people by putting lead in their drinking water and it’s a shrug. Occasionally you might lose your job over it. In extremely rare and egregious cases you might end up with a minor criminal conviction. Kill one person by putting lead in their heart at high speed and now it’s a serious crime. If the victim is Important then you get a massive manhunt and national news…

That's not funny; that's just not how things actually work.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#732

Post by liontwist »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #542
likeabatterycar wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educated people tend to overestimate their abilities outside their domain. We've all known someone with an "I can do anything" complex. Anyone can do anything... poorly. He likely deluded himself into believing he already outsmarted the cops so why even bother. Having two degrees doesn't make one a competent plumber, electrician, or in this case, criminal.

Looking at his tweets he looks like a perfect example of a smug “TPOT” postrationalist that identifies themselves as “gray tribe” and then mainlines figures like Bret and Eric Weinstein and has retrograde views. Thinking he’s smarter than the rest of us is most likely a big part of his identity.

> then mainlines figures like Bret and Eric Weinstein

I’m sorry are these supposed to be extremists? These are status quo western liberals, secular humanists, and science enthusiasts.

> retrograde

Is this a derogatory term in the human progress narrative?

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#733

Post by tivert »

noisy_boy wrote: post #676
gwd wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems he wanted to be found. I talked to someone personally who at some point had committed a series of crimes, and at some point they started doing things that were more and more likely to get them caught; they told me they thought to themselves, "What am I doing?" But they didn't stop, and eventually got caught. In a different story, a few years ago I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk outside my house, and som…

> My take is this: We present to others, and even ourselves, the illusion that there's just one unified "self"; but really inside there are a number of independent motivations within us. In both cases above, I think there was a part of those people who felt guilty and actually did want to be caught and punished. I have a different take. Assuming his crime is driven by his beliefs/mission, not being found will not fur…

> I have a different take. Assuming his crime is driven by his beliefs/mission, not being found will not further it.

I'm not so sure in this case. It would have been hard for the perpetrator to predict beforehand, but there was so little public sympathy for the victim, and there are lot of people who said they would not help the police catch him. Him getting away would have shown that insurance companies are so terrible and so hated that the public is OK with the murder of those responsible (because if they weren't, they'd help the police and he'd be caught).

Escape would have sent a much stronger message than whatever he could hope to accomplish by grandstanding in a courtroom.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#734

Post by liontwist »

wongarsu wrote: post #611
kypro wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was a joke when I saw the posts on the Reddit homepage celebrating the murder and even the murderer. Partly because I thought Redditors were above that type of thing, but also because I thought it was against their TOS. It's a real reminder of how little sympathy people can have about people who they consider the enemy or the "other". I'm almost certain nearly all of the people celebrating the murder bel…

A lot of people feel that he as the CEO of the health insurance with the highest rate of denied claims is indirectly responsible for the death of a large number of people. Thus killing him is justified as vigilante justice. And vigilante justice is frequently seen in a positive light when the justice system is unable or unwilling to act.

A CEO like this is an employee. He didn’t invent private insurance. He doesn’t get the 50 billion a year. He is a symbolic scapegoat.

Every person with a 401k probably owns UHC somewhere, and they expect it to increase every year. He is merely part of the system to help make that happen.

Try going into work tomorrow and saying “boss I think our VP’s initiatives are wrong and I’m going to take us in a different direction”.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#735

Post by mordymoop »

llm_nerd wrote: post #623
xyst wrote: post #491

A couple of theories: - person clearly had meticulously planned the execution of the hit and exfiltration. Even leaving red herrings on his way out of the city (backpack full of Monopoly money). Yet clumsily keeps _all_ of the evidence that would implicate himself in this murder. Not to mention he is wandering about in public while a multi-state manhunt is underway with the full weight of alphabet soup agencies, and…

>media really over-estimated this persons competence It is a bit of psychological blindness where we convince ourselves that random murders aren't as easy as they really are. The truth is that almost anyone -- including people with lots of security theater -- can be nullified by random people. This is quadruply true in the era of drones.

We came within a literal inch of witnessing the assassination of a presidential candidate earlier this year, by a kid with no particular skills and an easily obtained rifle. We are lucky that people are mostly nonviolent.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#736

Post by dfxm12 »

rvba wrote: post #585
profsummergig wrote: post #239

How did someone recognize him from that half-face photo? There must be millions of people in the East Coast who look like that.

Conspiracy theory below, so beware, I warned you. What are the odds that since case is high profile they probably used some grey area or illegal surveillance tool from their 3 letter agency friends and made up some story how a patron recognized him. Convinently guy also had a copy of all the incriminatint stuff with him. (In russia he would also have sims3). Since he talked on phone, they used some voice recognition…

Why stop there? Thompson was allegedly set to testify on some insider trading hearing while he knew about an anti-trust case before the public. Maybe those same TLAs found a guy with a grudge and nudged him up to take care of a witness who might testify to something they didn't want public, or maybe some of their superiors were just upset about the $25B in lost shareholder value in the whole situation.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#737

Post by thegrimmest »

LetsGetTechnicl wrote: post #728

Murder is only justified when it's your business model and behind numbers and profit margins in an Excel sheet are the real people you are sentencing to a lifetime of suffering and/or death.

Refusing to pay for medical care is hardly murder. It’s a standard monetary dispute, and we have a due process for these. If you think that so many claims are being unreasonably denied, why not start a company offering bridge loans, and funding legal challenges?

Maybe the courts are too inefficient to handle these disputes, but that’s an argument for reforming the courts, not for shooting executives.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#738

Post by salawat »

gwd wrote: post #553
breadwinner wrote: post #44

He was carrying all of the evidence with him, including the fake ID he used at the hostel, the gun & suppressor, mask, and even a handwritten manifesto that points to his motivation. It seems he wanted to be found.

> It seems he wanted to be found. I talked to someone personally who at some point had committed a series of crimes, and at some point they started doing things that were more and more likely to get them caught; they told me they thought to themselves, "What am I doing?" But they didn't stop, and eventually got caught. In a different story, a few years ago I dropped my wallet on the sidewalk outside my house, and som…

Welcome to Jungian Psychology and the wonderful world of enantidromia. As humans are General Intelligences, we're capable of entertaining contradictory courses of action/thinking at the same time. At some point our conscious faculties "meet" our unconscious faculties, and the period of time when the two start to integrate into a whole individual is a bit of a wild ride that practically no modern practitioner of psychology I've met seems to even be aware of anymore, and can absolutely go awry.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#739

Post by ceejayoz »

nostrademons wrote: post #716
xyst wrote: post #491

A couple of theories: - person clearly had meticulously planned the execution of the hit and exfiltration. Even leaving red herrings on his way out of the city (backpack full of Monopoly money). Yet clumsily keeps _all_ of the evidence that would implicate himself in this murder. Not to mention he is wandering about in public while a multi-state manhunt is underway with the full weight of alphabet soup agencies, and…

This looks like a case of "suicide by revolution". Various media reports (including this one) suggest that he had a back injury in 2023, has not worked since 2023, started losing touch with friends in 2023, has been reading books about back injuries and chronic pain, etc. If you've ever known someone dealing with chronic pain, it can easily make you decide that you're better off dead than continuing to live. Likely h…

When I heard about the Monopoly money I wondered if it matched up with the amount of a specific denied claim.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#740

Post by wat10000 »

edanm wrote: post #731
wat10000 wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny how we treat these things. Kill a bunch of people by putting lead in their drinking water and it’s a shrug. Occasionally you might lose your job over it. In extremely rare and egregious cases you might end up with a minor criminal conviction. Kill one person by putting lead in their heart at high speed and now it’s a serious crime. If the victim is Important then you get a massive manhunt and national news…

That's not funny; that's just not how things actually work.

It’s not?

Air pollution alone kills tens of thousands of Americans a year. More die from air pollution than die from what’s legally defined as murder, by a substantial margin. How many people are in prison for it? Most of that pollution it outright legal. The illegal parts are rarely punished and never on the level meted out to “murderers.” And that’s just one example.

It’s totally legal to deliberately kill innocent people, as long as you do it in certain ways.

Post reply on HN