I Was a Bank Robber Until I Read Kant | Hacker News Reader

I Was a Bank Robber Until I Read Kant

thewalrus.ca

131 pointslermontov46 comments

Odd article, the writing style is intriguing but the content just isn’t there.

Basically it’s like half a The Clash song “I had a rough start in life, I was a bank robber, criminals and philosophers are both outsiders”.

There is no backing, explanation or argumentation of anything except that libraries are cleaner than pron movie theaters.

I feel cheated, but I would read more if there was any.

> the content just isn’t there.

It's there. You need to search for it. Raw diatribes like this are a window into the innermost nature of the human soul. My idea for a VR killer app was to have the camera attached to the front of a Red Bull airplane or snowboard. My friend, understanding more intimately human nature, realized it should be getting drunk, breaking into a bank and possibly getting involved in homicide. He was, sadly, right. I cannot morally follow that venture, but I know it is true. Here is a man that did, telling his story so that we don't have to follow.

The author could certainly go further into detail and while sparse writing can be great writing here it feels like too much is left unsaid.

>My idea for a VR killer app was to have the camera attached to the front of a Red Bull airplane or snowboard. My friend, understanding more intimately human nature, realized it should be getting drunk, breaking into a bank and possibly getting involved in homicide.

Isn't that the premise of the film Strange Days?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114558/

I was just talking about that movie last night. It was a splendid look at one of our possible futures.

I think I'm missing something in your comment. Why did your friend think a VR killer app would be breaking into a bank? You mean as a VR game? How was he right? Why can you not morally make that? I am confused.

'I feel cheated, but I would read more if there was any.'

I agree, it was like a pay-walled article where you have to sign up to get to the interesting bits, but wasn't..

'There is no backing, explanation or argumentation of anything except that libraries are cleaner than pron movie theaters.'

Philosophers also, as far as I am aware, don't sporadically acquire large sacks full of illicit cash.

Yeah, equating these things, as though some form if radical epistemology might advocate for violent acquisition of cash... it feels like something from a Robert Anton Wilson trilogy.

Philosophers are no more outsiders to society than any other high level academic. Which is to say their daily concerns in their career may be vastly different from most, but their societal place is towards the pinacle of society, a society advanced enough to allow for large segments of its population to focus on concerns further up in Maslow's hierarchy. Criminals, on the other hand, represent the society's failures and blindspots.

Equating the two really just says, "look at us, are we not identical? Do we not, both of us, exist on the extremities of societal progression?"

Kudos to the author for transitioning out of one extreme and towards another. But he doesn't need to worry that Daniel Dennett is going to shoot him for his stash.

You were initially intrigued and hopeful, but ultimately there was no explanation nor the content you were hoping for. Well, that's life for you!

I wouldn't go as far as to say I feel cheated but the article absolutely ended prematurely.

I used to be a Walrus subscriber, but that's basically their whole shtick - well-written half articles.

Haha so we’ll drscribed. I read a few more articles after OP and this summarized it perfectly

I actually really appreciated this article. I didn't want a 5000 word autobiography.

Sure, another paragraph explaining what exactly about Kant stopped him from robbing banks would be nice. But I'm willing to accept it at face value and move on with my day.

The content seems to be “By challenging me, the Critique forced me to develop intellectual tools I never knew I had.”. That is, after discovering his new abilities, realized he could be more than a bank robber.

But we're left to infer that from the title, and with no details.

How did reading Kant lead to a moral shift for the author? Gradually or one big moment? Did certain passages resonate with him especially?

He told us how he came to read Kant and what was going on in his life at the time. And did a pretty good job. But told us little about reading it actually affected him

> but the content just isn’t there.

Sure it is. There are 10 paragraphs of content. You just didn't like it that much because it seems like you went in with expectations.

I didn't. I liked it and I'm glad it got to the point right away without a bunch of flowery speech.

I liked the short story of a criminal become writer. I did not know that Montreal was once the bank robbery capital of the world at one time. Now I'm interested in finding out more about this Kant fellow.

> I feel cheated, but I would read more if there was any.

I got a surprising amount of entertainment out of this comment. My mind is tickled.

Reading philosophy has been an enligthining experience for me. I was no criminal, but a depressive teenager. As I read my first philosophy books---dialogues of Plato initially, then Schopenhauer, Freud, Lao Tzi, etc.---I learnt, not much from the actual informational contents of these texts as most are now outdated, but critical thinking. Through that I defeated the feeling of being abnormal, and the depressive state itself. I proceeded to answer many basic, existential questions with confidence, and to acquire a consistent, secure outlook to the life.

We suffer quite a bit because we are not able to, by default, deconstruct what the worlds does before our eyes and to us, and understand the mechanisms that govern the pheanomena. Knowing how the universe works, as far as modern science can explain it to us, and being able to think and observe objectively, are key to living a "free" life, i.e., free of lowly things like being a robber, or being too greedy or too aggressive, etc. The knowledge of the heavens does transfer to the execution of an ethical life: lest one leave himself to the command of "destiny" or dogma. I think thus, for example, astronomy must be a mandatory topic for the younger students as soon as possible, so that they are not raised with the outdated idea that something "up there" governs their life.

I can only agree. Studying philosophy in my spare time was among the most fundamentally helpful things i've ever done, easily on the same level as programming. Thinking back to my formal education i'm always left dumbfounded that these two things weren't even mentioned in school.

". I think thus, for example, astronomy must be a mandatory topic for the younger students as soon as possible, so that they are not raised with the outdated idea that something "up there" governs their life."

First of all, studying astronomy doesn't at all neglect religious beliefs in general (only some of the more simple believe systems who take their bible literally).

And secondly, making it mandatory never helps for raising enthusiasm.

I really, really wanted to have astronomy in class, when I was in 3. grade. But it only came in 10. and by then I was so bored, like everyone else, for me because it was trivial and for the others, because they didn't care.

And besides, I can't imagine raising enthusiasm for astronomy in a class room - you need a telescope and a clear night first!

Theory comes later.

I was lucky enough to spend three years of my elementary education in a private school with an observatory, but I was intrigued in the very first years of my education. It was awe-inspiring to see an illustrated but serious account of how universe was an infinitely large and infinitely complex mechanism. I was eventually bored, but what was important was that a core understanding that deep down everything is matter and energy stuck. When, some ten years later, I was intrigued in philosophy, and revisiting things like astronomy and physics, I was no alien to those topics, and I could accept the reality more easily over superstition and misinformation.

Astronomy has deeper impact on religious belief than the discovery of the absence of a material throne of a sacred being in the heavens. It can easily lead one to discover that superstition and metaphysical phaenomena have no logical base when he accepts the objectivity of today's scientific knowledge. Furthermore, the history of astronomy is a novel example of how science and philosophy overcome dogma despite violent oppression (e.g. Galileo), which is an eye-opener when confronting dogma.

Lucky you ...

I was only on a badly organized public school, where most teachers suffered from the trauma of suddenly having to teach the capitalistic way instead of socialism. But I had supportive parents, so I had access to a (small) telescope ..

And yes, science helped me, too, to overcome the dark Catholic dogmas.

Putting logic and reason to the world ...

But ... that logic and my believe in the science model of the universe doesn't contradict my spiritual believes. So basically, science is true, but so far it can only show us and explain parts of the universe.

But that there is apparently more to it, other forces which actually do interfere with our lives, I believe simply from my experience. And if you (and others) did not experience anything out of the ordinary ... well, there are two possible explanations, first, those forces don't care for you(strongly), or second, your mind tries hard not to notice them, as it would be inconvenient to do so ... since the ordinary world is already complicated enough without demons and spirits ...

Just a alternative hypothesis, I don't want to convince you of something, just pointing out, that science doesn't disprove religion/spiritually and it both can go along in general.

Maybe everyone should be taught about world religions to disabuse us of the notion that astronomy was a force against religion, rather than motivated by religion.

This is some fantastic clickbait. The article doesn't provide any link as to why the author stopped robbing banks, and the relation reading Kant had to that decision. The title is perhaps true, but if the reader is expecting the answer to "why" it is not there.

> This is some fantastic clickbait.

That describe almost everything on HN now.

> we cannot know the world as it is, independent of the structure, capacities, and limits of the human mind

This resonates with me. For example, I feel that even though mathematics and physics are perfect systems for describing nature and the universe, I am not convinced that mathematics is a property inherent to the universe itself as many people often say. Rather, I think there is a significant chance that these systems are tied closely to the structure and operation of the human brain.

Maths and physics are definitely not perfect descriptions, they approximate nature, they are not nature.

If you think they're capable of becoming "perfect" then I'd have to ask under which axioms. Also reflecting on Godel's incompleteness theorem it seems if we had a perfect maths (whatever that means) we couldn't prove it to be such.

If at some point you study scientific philosophy, you will learn a lot of terminology that makes it way easier to discuss these things. You might want to look up the anti-realist school of thought and obviously the Kantian view of it.

I've been reading some New Realist philosophy recently (Maurizio Ferraris). The basic idea is that although we don't have direct access to reality (Kant), we are constrained by it in ways that give us insight into it and it provides affordances for us that further reveal its nature as something independent of our perceptions and inferences. Sort of an anti-Foucault outlook but informed by Deriddean deconstruction.

This seems like a prologue for something interesting, but where the actual mass? It ends very abruptly. Too bad, i'de read more of there was any.

Must read for most people 5 Basic Laws of Human Dynamics http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...

//Take away This person is nothing more than an B2 Bandit that moved to the B1 side

That article you have linked is a crystalised instance of human stupidity and a demonstration of how far down it can go WRT the level of intelligence. An idiot that thinks he can connect stupidity and intelligence to genetics without demonstrating the truth of such claim in any way, acceptable or not. One can do nothing but hope all of that article is a joke.

edit: I can't sleep if I don't mention that that entire harmful.cat-v.org site is a fractal of stupidity, so it's no surprise that such article appears there. They hiss at all the software out there that has made a nearly completely free computing system possible, and the alternative they propose is an operating system that died some decades ago and compilers that can't compile standards-compliant C code. Go and Limbo as an alternative to Python and Ruby? Really? Where's Django? Matplotlib? Good morning, people have other things to do than reinventing the wheel every other day.

The Critique of Pure Reason is such a baffling book; it feels half finished manuscript, complete in thought but lacking polish. It’s harder to grasp what pulled the author in, but maybe it was just the above.

How did the author become founding senior editor at Vice magazine?

"mostly you’re getting high, hanging out with other crooks, and figuring out where to go for lunch."

sounds like its right out of an early Guy Ritchie movie

I feel blue balled. Article ended before we learned how and why he stopped robbing banks. We barely scratched the surface of his thoughts on Kant.

The writing style is pretty nice but yeah it feels like an introduction more than an entire article.

Would read more though.

Yes- A very compelling introduction or first chapter.

My hope at this point is that the article isn't actually finished and somebody hit submit by accident. A faint hope at this point. Oh well.

I should go read Kant myself.

I last read Kant in an intro to philosophy course in 1991, but a quick search shows Prolegomena as a good intro. https://www.amazon.com/Prolegomena-Future-Metaphysics-Immanu...

>"I should go read Kant myself."

Be ready for very dry reading. If you want something more funny, I read a strange science fiction book by Adam Roberts, called the "The thing itself". The argument of the book takes Kant 'categories of understanding' literally.

Or an MVP.

I want to become a bank robber now.

is it first one of the series? feels incomplete.

Perhaps this renegade should have studied from Immanuel Kant's unknown brother Immanuel Shouldn't. Why are we writing an article praising a criminal anyway? It's not like Kant was so mystic, He was essentially one of the first anti-machiavellian icons. Which later gave way to MLK's teaching when he said the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot achieve growth when the planted seeds are not good.

>Why are we writing an article praising a criminal anyway?

Because, not only being a criminal is a part of the human experience, but non-criminal people are not that great either. Some can be douches.

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