Hans Reiser: former genius, convicted murderer and future mad scientist?
tacomaconfidential.typepad.com
tacomaconfidential.typepad.com
You see Hans knows very well that he had a huge groups of fans and supporters and that those supporters were not very smart and supported him even after the evidence against him got more and more obvious and incontrovertible. I remember that even after he led the police to her body there were huge discussions on slashdot and some people were still talking about how he was still somehow unfairly treated by the justice system and Nina somehow brought this about on herself.
Psychopaths are very adept at using people, and I bet Hans just feels that there still are some people he can use out there. The problem is that after he showed her body to the police even his most ardent fans would have to admit that he killed her.
So he comes up with this story that he wants to clone her to give her the happy childhood that she missed. (Notice that he did not say that he wanted to give her her adulthood which she missed because he killed her).
Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows that this will not work. Even if cloning were possible, you would create a different person. It would be a different person with the same DNA but a different person nevertheless.
So yes, he is just a psychopath that wants to get another bunch of money from the fools that used to believe him.
Maybe it's just a ploy for him to make money, or maybe that's his way of remorse.
Remorse is an internal state. It would be like telling children to apologize without the children actually feeling bad for their action.
I am not sure whether Nina had an unhappy childhood, but if she did that was clearly through no fault of Reiser's because he met her when she was an adult. So even in this he cannot bring himself to admit that he did something wrong.
Cloning someone can not reverse murdering them. Cloning someone can not give someone back any life they may have lost. Cloning someone can not give them a happy childhood. I know this is academic now, but if (when?) there are human clones walking around, this kind of thinking is going to be a problem.
Because he was a programmer, contributing to Linux, people on /. and elsewhere wanted him to not be guilty. They identified with him on some level. As the evidence started to mount against him, it made people look for crazy ways in which he could not be guilty.
I agree with you, he's a psychopath. This new story is just further confirmation that he's lost touch with reality. All you have to do is go back and read his postings to linux-kernel to realize he's also a huge dick.
Oh, and reiserfs sucks.
Why should we assume that? Based on incentives, one would expect false convictions to be rather common: after all, when false convictions are discovered, there's no punishment meted out to the judge, jury, prosecutors, police and forensics experts that helped wrongly convict in the first place.
This is one of those statistics that will never be known with any precision, but even if the number of known exonerations is small (which I don't know to be the case) that doesn't prove that the number of innocents in jail is small.
You are assuming in that statement that there is an overwhelming majority of cases in which justice is served. You even try to leave yourself an out with the "at least nominally", which demonstrates part of the problem with your argument.
Among the problems with this argument: the assumption that many of the crimes we are convicting people for are actually bad, and thus worthy of being considered crimes. The assumption that convicting and imprisoning people for the crimes that they commit is just, or even that it achieves whatever ends it is supposed to achieve. The assumption that people are convicted of crimes on the basis of whether or not they actually committed the crime, plus a small random factor due to mistakes, rather than systemic social reasons relating to class, race, poverty, and other social issues (even if many of the people who are convicted of crimes are actually guilty, if the guilty of one group are convicted at a far higher rate than the other group, it's not quite right to say that justice is served in this case).
You have to be careful about bias in the other direction; the just world fallacy. It's very easy to believe that we live in a just world (and part of why people find such hope in the idea of just deities); when something bad happens, many people try to find a reason or to justify it. But in fact, we do not live in a just world; we live in an impartial world, populated with imperfect people. Given that, you need to be skeptical of any time you find yourself thinking that the vast majority of any particular situation is just, especially with stakes as high as criminal justice.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/
I'm of the opinion that it's basically impossible to know how many wrongful convictions have taken place, but those 266 cases are surely the tip of the iceberg when you consider the difficulty in identifying the cases, determining if potential exculpatory evidence existed, testing that evidence and then pushing all of that through a courtroom.
But were they really innocent?
DNA evidence can be misused in the courts:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727743.300-how-dna-e...
No.
The article is very clearly questions the role of DNA evidence as a whole.
A couple of relevant quotes:
"Defence experts were trusting that the scientists had interpreted the data correctly. This perpetuated the myth that DNA is infallible."
"There's a considerable lack of understanding, not just from the public, but from the judges and lawyers."
This seems to be the author's opinion about what the article is about.
Make of it what you will. The article speaks for itself.
edit: BTW, it's a very interesting article - thanks for pointing it out.
I was with you until here. T'so is quoted as writing that btrfs has a lot of the same design ideas of ReiserFS, and that he supports btrfs as the way forward (he particularly disliked Hans and Namesys, though): http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/1/217
Some distros moved to ReiserFS by default, too.
Somehow I've never found the time to properly try it out, but I never really got the impression from others that used it that it sucks. I might be wrong, though.
SuSE, who later realized it was a mistake and moved back to ext3?
When I was using reiserfs years ago, it ate all my data (/home unraveled). I like the features, and it was nice and fast for the time but I've held a grudge against it for years as a result. Looking at dumps of the on disk data structures showed massive corruption.
At work, we used it for a long time in a project where tail-packing is a huge win (many many small files). Never had any problems there.
So, it doesn't really suck I just had a bad experience.
I think he's just f-n nuts (or possible brilliant and nuts).
Of course I doubt any of this matters, because it is doubtful he will get paroled. But hope spring eternal.
Especially the bits about the fact that it's not a disease per se but more of a natural variation and the fact that it occurs as much as 1% of the time are quite something to absorb.
The first implies that there is no cure, the second that you probably know at least a few of them, even if they're of the 'subclinical' (according to the article) variety.
I think I've worked for one.
That's not exactly a scientific publication either, but it is not as if he wrote it himself.
Maybe he wants to kill her again.
The bit where he writes in this letter about wanting to raise her with his children to me clearly indicates the man is out of his mind, far more than his crazy plan of resurrecting her does (and as if murdering your wife isn't indication enough in that direction). I don't see any evidence that Reiser wants to kill his wife again but I do think that when he has served his sentence and is released that he probably should be placed in a hospital of sorts.
Of course his plan doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of working in the first place, clearly he has lost whatever marbles he still had.
Involving the kids in his minds view of this scheme is particularly painful, I think they'll need all the healing they can get without this sort of weirdness, they've been scarred for life already.
Come on, you didn't even give a small chortle?
I'm not a psychologist, but I think you may be on to something here. Thanks, you've talked me out of donating.
Really not a healthy mindset, I don't think. And that's not even getting into sexual issues.
if ones rights are trampled to prove their guilt then that guilt must be put aside / go unpunished. otherwise authority has very little incentive to abide your rights and very much incentive to violate them.
Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows
that this will not work
I'll offer an alternative 'explanation': his mind does in fact contain all kinds of 'feeling guilty' thoughts, but it doesn't know how to handle them. Hell, the appropriate pathways may be missing. As a response, his mind comes up with some plan to restore her to life. Never mind his justifications: they may just be made up by other parts of his mind, so it can ponder a narrative that seems coherent/consistent to itself. He may just ve trying to silence nagging guilt in the only way he can.
(Note: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with histrov, I'm just saying that calling a psychopath "smart and practical" doesn't contradict his argument)
The idea that psychopaths are often exceptionally rational people is a misconception, popularized by the common depiction of the 'accomplishments' of highly intelligent psychopaths. Most psychopaths are not highly intelligent. Moreover, as far as psychopaths seem to function as normal people, it's because they employ rational methods of thinking to know how to behave to get what they want. However, that their behavior is mostly based on rational ways of thinking, does not necessarily mean they are actually any good at those ways of thinking. Only the highly intelligent are.
And even then: point in fact: murdering your wife is hardly ever, and certainly not under the circumstances Reiser did, a rational thing to do.
Psychopaths behave in insane ways, specifically because they only employ rational modes of thinking, which are necessarily insufficient to make proper decisions about 'how to get what they want'. Why is that? Because you always lack enough information to make proper rational decisions. I can't rationally decide whether to eat another cookie.
It is obvious he lives in a totally different world than the one most of us live in. I would call it "anti-world" because really bad things happened when it collided with "normal-world".
Seeing their father in the news like this isn't going to help them at all, it's bad enough to see their father as a former open source contributor turned murderer of their mom.
Yes, that's a 'think of the children' argument, but in this case it is very specific children that I have in mind and I think it is a valid point.
Judge Goodman essentially confirmed the nature of
the crime from the bench. He said that he initially
agreed — prior to Reiser’s trial that
began in November — to accept a voluntary
manslaughter plea deal. Goodman said he would have
given Reiser the minimum, three-year term. The
maximum for that heat-of-passion crime was 11 years.
Reiser refused the offer, which required him to
produce the body and explain the crime, the judge
said. Had he accepted, he would have likely been
released next May, the judge said. "That deal was
rejected by Mr. Reiser. He chose, if you will, to
roll the dice," Goodman said.
Defense attorney William DuBois said, "It’s beyond
me" why his client did not accept the original
offer.
The judge said he would have approved the deal to
bring immediate closure to family and friends of
the victim, and to prevent the young Reiser boy,
who is now 8, from having to testify. The judge
said it would have also spared taxpayers the
expense of a trial.
I agree with DuBois. Consider the three possibilities:
1. Gamble with a trial, get lucky, and win. Get out as soon as the trial is over, end of April 2008.
2. Take the involuntary manslaughter deal. Get out May 2009.
3. Gamble with a trial, and lose. 25 to life. Make a deal then, and maybe get that knocked down to 15 to life.
Would anyone here have rejected the deal in his situation? Remember, you know that you are guilty, so going to trial means you are betting that you did such a good job of hiding the body and other evidence that they won't get a conviction.
The evidence was actually pretty good. Yes, there was no body which makes it circumstantial but the total body of evidence was such that it would have been very surprising if he had walked. Car seats don't go 'missing' just like that, cars don't suddenly get flooded and large bloodstains do not suddenly appear, and definitely not all around the moment when a person suddenly disappears.
Most explanations of these circumstances would stretch credulity considerably.
There is a fine line between genius and madness. Where is the remorse for his actions?
Weird? Yes. Uncomfortable? Yes. Not living on the same planet as the rest of us? Yes.
But perhaps that's his way of showing remorse. Give her another chance at life, one that he took away.
The "her" you refer to no longer exists, and never will again (at least in this sector of the multiverse).
What he would be giving "another chance at life" to would be a wholly distinct organism that happens to share the same DNA.
Just imagine... you're a perfectly normal young girl growing up in a middle-class household -- you probably told that these people raising you are your aunts and uncles. But then one day your family decides you're old enough to be told the truth -- you're a clone of their mother, who was murdered by their father. Your purpose in life is to be happy in order to make up for the long-dead woman who shares your DNA.
No thanks, I'd much rather take the genetic lottery. And this is why I oppose human cloning -- I can't think of any circumstances in which growing up as a clone of someone else (probably someone much older) wouldn't suck.
Other than the specific circumstances of the mother being murdered by the father, that's kind of close to the plot of this movie.
The movie also some pretty weird ideas about what cloning is.
If I were a clone, I would be pretty miffed when people confuse me with my DNA donor, even if it's just a typo. :-)
genius you are, genius you stay, the dash doesn't wash up.
Is "genius" some kind of IQ score that is measured abstractly? Can one be a "genius" behind bars or homeless? Or is "genius" measured by actions, as in inventing something like a filesystem? If the latter, does one piercing insight net you the genius title for life, or must one keep it up?
I can see how one definition of the word "genius" might be the realization of creative and intellectual potential, and one could consider this type of genius a temporary title that must be "renewed" through ongoing and active creation and intellectual activity.
This particular definition seems to be in harmony with widespread HN values, namely that it is not enough to have ideas, one must also manifest them to earn full admiration. In which case, Mt. Reiser might well be a former genius for the purposes of ongoing realization of creative and intellectual potential.
Since we're talking about a headline instead of a clinical diagnosis however, I'd suggest the author was using that phrasing as a more concise way of communicating "formerly known as a software genius, then famous as a convicted murderer, and now working on a shtick as a mad scientist."
Reiser's behaviour has always been bizarre by "normal" standards. It's only recently that it first tipped over (murder) and then was put under pressure and showcased to the world (investigation and trial), but there is little indication that he would he behaved more "normal" if a similar situation happened earlier in his life.
I hope somebody saves this article and mails it to the parole board.
W T F
I didn't know about this guy until today and now I'm freaked out about reading open source projects discussions :P