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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Wisely put. People who steal and fence the goods on the Internet are obviously inept criminals who act impulsively without thinking through the consequences. Inevitably, a DIY sting operation is going to end up with a criminal panicking and trying to cover his tracks by killing the "witness."

It's an unlikely outcome, but imagine this as a reverse-slot machine. You get one pull of the handle. Three of any fruit and you win a used laptop. But if three skulls come up, you are executed.

How good a bet is this?

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Is the slot machine located in a back alley, in a windowless van, or a Starbucks?

I'd feel pretty safe pulling that lever in a Starbucks, as they did.

Comparatively, some of these hypothetical slot machines are less likey to kill you than others. But no location is truly safe, thus I contend they all have three skulls waiting for someone.

If a used laptop is enough of a reward to wager your life, I admire your courage, but when I think of it in financial terms, the thought gives me the heebie jeebies.

In financial terms, she could not afford to buy a new one, and I'd wager that she couldn't complete her studies without it.

I would have done the same thing, except I would bring more friends, at least some of whom would have professional photography rigs to get some nice snapshots of the thieves, as well as their car - assuming they arrived in one.

In this scenario, I think that the 'three skulls' result was about as likely to come up getting in the car and driving to the public location as it was during the actual confrontation.

I completely agree with all the other arguments you make here, which makes me re-evaluate my disagreement on this one. But I think my interpretation still holds up:

In 2010, Ottawa saw 27,446 property crimes, and 14 homicides[1]. In general, about half of murders are committed by a friend or family member[2]. So even if the other 7 murderers _all_ started out doing petty theft, there's still only 1 in 3,920 laptop thieves who's going to kill someone.

Now, as a high-falutin' tech blogger for whom laptops grow on trees, that still may be an unnacceptable risk/reward ratio for you. But if a laptop represented a more substantial investment, its value might begin to approach the value you personally would place on, say, 50 separate scuba dives. Which, at a death rate of 1 per 200,000 dives, is about where the risk evens out.

[1]http://www.ottawapolice.ca//Libraries/Publications/2009_-_20... [2]http://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/nvaa/ch16hom.htm

I appreciate what you're trying to say, and believe me when I say that if you consider the risks and want to go get your laptop, that's fine and I'm not arguing with you making your choice.

However, the statistics you quote above do not support your quoted odds. Since the 27,446 reported property crimes did not all involve the owner confronting the thieves, we cannot use the numbers to draw a conclusion about the risk of a confrontation resulting in a murder, much less an attempted murder or assault.

On the flip side, while I do not have statistics handy, deep diving, dry suit diving, cold water diving, decompression diving, mixed gas diving, drift diving, and other activities I have enjoyed of are thought to be associated with slightly higher risks than the overall statistics suggest, although not as high as the three big killers: Cave/wreck diving, rebreather diving, and commercial diving.

I thought you were being sarcastic but it turns out, from the rest of the thread, that you're serious. You need to get out from this culture of fear you've gotten into. It really is not healthy.

I resent the expression "culture of fear." I wear a seat belt when I drive. I will be wearing armour tomorrow when I risk my life riding DH-MTB. I train extensively to dive deep, cold water. I rock climb. I do not live in a "culture of fear." I do, on the other hand, come up with a different result when asking myself if I wish to hurtle down a mountain vs. if I wish to recover a used laptop from petty criminals.

I am pointing out that it is prudent to consider the risks, rewards, and potential for catastrophe when making a decision. Having done so, you make your own call. If you think the balance tips in favour of trying to recover the laptop, that is your opinion and I do not argue with your conclusion. But there is no "culture of fear" involved, there is simply a decision that differs from your own.

Now if you want to condone the idea of psycho-analyzing strangers based on their HN posts, I would encourage you to ask whether people who set out to recover the laptop are thinking strictly about the utility of the laptop, or whether they have an emotional desire to one-up the thieves or perhaps show the police up as inept.

Or maybe... And I encourage you to spend some quality time with a mirror while thinking about this... Maybe there is an emotional desire by some people to prove that they not afraid. This latter emotion is particularly dangerous. Ironically, it is often motivated by fear of being cowardly.

(And yes, the point is NOT to be taken seriously. I am not Dr. Phil!)

The culture of fear I'm talking about is a social fear, this idea that there are lots of evil people in the world, ready to do you harm. It divides society; makes people even more individualistic, suspicious of one another, and it has corrosive effects on public goods. Instead of helping out your neighbour (metaphorically, and perhaps even literally), you sneak past and think "there but for the grace of God go I". And the irony is that this attitude actually makes the world less safe. Situations can be taken advantage of in the knowledge that people won't interfere, precisely because they are too afraid.

It's a culture that leads to people driving around in SUVs, living in gated communities, to the point of carrying guns where legal, and voting for governments who promise safety and deliver it with mechanisms of control: filtered internet, surveillance society, TSA, etc. Its endpoint lies somewhere in a Ballardian dystopia, like High Rise or Super-Cannes.

I also am disturbed by the culture of fear you describe.

Are you saying we should all just trust the laptop thieves of the world a little more? Maybe stealing a laptop is the worst thing a thief will ever do; maybe not. It's not unprecedented for a criminal to murder a witness to a relatively minor crime in order to avoid a third strike conviction. Is it worth the risk to find out?

There's a difference between "living in fear" and "minimizing risk" just as there's a difference between "living without fear" and "courting danger."

You're a lot more likely to end up dead scuba diving than arguing with petty thieves, and you don't even get a free laptop out of it.

I get a lot more out of diving than I would tricking a petty thief into returning a stolen chattel to me. And I do not have any evidence that confronting thieves is less risky than diving.

I suppose it's hard to get good denominator data for confronting petty thieves. However, most people are very unlikely to kill anybody, ever, and would rather die than kill somebody in self-defense. (See On Killing.) By the numbers, Torontonians are substantially less likely to be cold-blooded killers than the average person.

Now, we had a mafioso living in the apartment downstairs from us for several months, with a couple of warrants out for his arrest. Good buddy with the police who patrol our street. Real friendly guy. Name was Teddy (yes, I know that's not a Spanish name). Stole all the landlord's furniture from the apartment, even the refrigerator. I don't remember what the warrants were for, but there's a substantial chance that he was a cold-blooded killer. But if he'd been on the other side of that table, I still don't think he'd be very likely to try to maintain possession of the stolen laptop by killing you. I'm sure he'd do his best to intimidate the living fuck out of you, maybe threaten to call the police himself, but I don't think he takes violence so lightly that he would stab you with a Starbucks knife in order to keep the laptop.

May be Randy really bet to be Amy's hero. We (Men) tend to do a lot of stupid sh*t to impress a girl.

I'd be the one executing the person who stole my stuff.

So a theif's life is worth less than the things they stole from you?

If they are also attempting to slit your throat at the local Starbucks, then yes.

This is an interesting problem, and I don't know the answer. If you go to Starbucks, someone assaults you, and you kill them defending yourself, I'd say you haven't done anything wrong.

But if you go to the police about your laptop, they don't do anything, and then you go out of your way to create a possibly tense situation by confronting the thieves... And an altercation breaks out... And you fight to sieze the laptop... And an alleged thief is killed...

It's easy to say you have done nothing wrong because the thief brought it upon themselves by stealing the laptop and attempting to fence it. But blame is a non-zero-sum game. You also made choices that perhaps involved knowingly creating a risk of a physical altercation.

On the whole, if you are going to try to do a sting, I'd hope that you do not press the issue if the thieves refuse to run away without a fight.

Although it may sound like you are defending yourself, in reality you are saying that the laptop is worth more to you than a human life, and that is disturbing to me.

>in reality you are saying that the laptop is worth more to you than a human life, and that is disturbing to me.

// I think you've misconstrued the situation.

If the thief refuses to return the stolen item and save their life then they are the one that has chosen to value their life below the return they can get on a used stolen laptop. Assuming that they are the thief and are not acting under some complex duress ("steal that laptop or we kill your child") then at any point they can return it and save themselves.

The onus is not on those who have been stolen from to act in favour of the thief. The thief assumes, and interestingly controls, all risk.

My instinct is that if someone does a self-motivated major immoral harm to you, are in a position to relieve or remove that harm and chooses not to then you're pretty much justified in carrying out any pre-warned harm against them. (Like I said that's just my instinct, very interested in contra-positions).

The thief assumes, and interestingly controls, all risk.

The hidden assumption you make is that blame adds up neatly to 100%. Since the thief is in the wrong, he controls the risk. But you also control the risk in the situation described, where you choose to meet the thief and take your laptop back. You both had an opportunity to make other choices.

So for instance, if a thief is running away from me carrying my laptop, may I tell them to "Stop or I'll shoot?"

This is one of those things where different cultures take different positions. I don't want people doing things like that in Toronto, and the fact that people do things like that in other places is one of the reasons I do not wish to raise a family there.

I suppose my original post was incorrect. The thief's life is never worth less than my laptop. But the thief's life, to me, is worth less than my own life. Society would most likely agree with my assessment of value. A productive, peaceful citizen is better than a harmful citizen, which is why we have self defense laws, for those specific situations where I am forced to choose between my life and his life (although I don't know how I would make such a choice, I'm certainly not qualified to defend against a criminal who is armed with a knife...)

I don't believe that I should ever have to be responsible for another person's tendency towards violence. It may be unwise to fail to account for such tendencies, but to be legally responsible for them is wrong. Had this situation turned violent, the woman and her neighbor would be no more responsible for that unfortunate outcome than a rape victim is to be blamed for wearing revealing clothes (again, perhaps an unwise decision, but certainly a legal and moral one).

>may I tell them to "Stop or I'll shoot?"

Yes. Why not?

They then have the power to avoid all harm (in both directions), they can even stop and tell you how their family is starving, etc., so you can give them a bag of food and they can return your laptop.

Moreover if they pulled a weapon on you in return I think you'd be warranted in killing them.

>I don't want people doing things like that in Toronto

You want to protect thieves so that they can continue to steal without any risk?

My point being your life may be in danger but the thief is just as likely to die too.

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