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Comment by teddyh | Hacker News Reader

> His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”.

I don’t think I like these people.

> Occasionally, his parents caught glimpses of what he was doing. Mostly, he played games, especially the kind in which people are violently killed – such as by building amusement parks and then throwing people off the rides. There were also lots of shoot ’em ups.

Ah, yes.

> Edwin’s contacts abroad gave him a confidence boost. He spent hours chatting with people from all over the world about ways to hack websites. Edwin often mocked “normal” life and western society. He denounced materialism and superficial concerns.

As if that’s a bad sign.

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It's quite clear to me that he should have spent his gaming time watching violence and gore on television instead, like regular people.

This, so much

Are they seriously claiming that Roller-coaster Tycoon is a gore game?

Jack Thompson is back, baby.

This story reads like something straight out of the 90s

No bathrooms. Sink traps (block in the exit side of a ride), roller coasters that fling entire cars of people into oblivion...

Surely I'm not the only one who explored the macabre side of this game?

I recall him playing Garry's mod, that could definitely fit the bill.

I think this is a highly uncharitable read of his step-parents:

1. Adopting children and raising them as your own is already an act of extraordinary personal sacrifice and blind love.

2. His parents were supportive of his hobby and interest in computers, but were also concerned about his social and behavioral development. They weren't the only ones -- folks at his school were similarly concerned. He had trouble sleeping and had no friends. Neither of those is normal and both indicate Edwin was in serious pain.

3. His parents likely weren't wrong that he was using video games and hacking as crutches instead of addressing the root causes of his depression and anxiety. They likely weren't wrong that these crutches were beginning to form a vicious cycle. There's nothing inherently bad about video games, but IMO his parents were probably correct to be concerned in his case.

4. Forming all of your closest relationships around involvement in destructive and unproductive activity that's criminal and driven by ego is a bad sign! Hacking websites is a crime; almost never violent, but also not victimless! Would you say the same thing about a child whose only friends are folks who he breaks into buildings with?

5. Turning away even a grown child is beyond sad, but at that point he was 22 and cooking up drugs in their house. And they had younger children.

> > His parents let him buy a PC that he put together himself. It had a big memory card and a lot of processing power. He set it up in his bedroom. Looking back, José thinks “that may have been our biggest mistake”.

> I don’t think I like these people.

Since I read your comment before I RTFA, it wasn't immediately clear to me what was so awful about this. Just to be explicit, José is the mother of the teenage hacker in question, saying it was a mistake to get her son a computer.

(I would think the remark considerably less reprehensible if it came from the hacker himself.)

Given the audience here I would image the majority of the people on this site had computers supplied by our parents at a young age, and we often played violent video games, or spent hours talking to people online yet we did not become criminals

Scape goating video games, or "the internet" for these types of things is a long disproven trope.

There are more factors in criminality that just playing a violent game or having computer supplied to you by your parents. Putting the blame on these things however is easier that looking at other more human causes.

Just to be clear, I am not arguing that having a computer plays any role in criminality—except possibly that it gives mischievous and easily bored youngsters a healthy outlet for their curiosity and restlessness, which presumably militates against criminality.

I was agreeing with teddyh (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898239) and I agree with you. I just meant to clarify (for the benefit of those who, like me, read the comments before the article) that José is the hacker's mother, not the hacker, which puts a different, and much darker, spin on the statement that José thinks that the hacker's getting a computer young was a bad thing.

You can fault the mother for thinking maybe if she never gave her son a computer a different outcome may have occurred? I see nothing of the generalization you accuse the mother of making, only a mother asking what wouldn't have allowed the eventual outcome she observed and we've now read about. Consider that the mother might simply be saying, "I wish reality had gone differently" but adding outcome specific details to say so. Of all the events in the casual chain, the alteration of many of them could have led to a better or worse outcome but the gift of the computer seems salient. I imagine most parents with children that die in car accidents question the gifting of a car. Doesn't mean they think cars are to blame, just fruitless, useless wishing that things had gone better.

The parents think giving the kid a computer may have been their biggest mistake. That's not just a matter of them imagining things might have gone differently; they're saying the computer itself was one of the most significant causes of harm. It's like they're deliberately avoiding thinking about the real causes—the factors that led to their son experiencing a different and much worse outcome than the vast majority of people who spend "too much" time on computers as they're growing up.

> It's like they're deliberately avoiding thinking about the real causes

I can see how you might get to that supposition. I guess I'm feeling a little more charitable. I expect they're likely muddling along in life like most of humanity trying to do it's best with only the most vague ideas of what it means to do that well.

I don't understand what is so reprehensible about it. Consequently he isolated himself and went into spiral and then everything went to hell. It is quite possible that had he not he'd his drug of choice in room, things were different. It is exactly the same thing if parents support soccer club and then the kid ends up spiraling with troublemakers. In retrospect the soccer was a mistake for this kid.

Just because we like computers and they did good to us does not mean having 100% access to one for him was right decision. In fact, it did caused massive issues.

The kid who leaves his room for socialization only is an issue. The kid who spends too much of his time playing video games is an issue. Some amount of playing is fine. Some amount of being alone is perfectly fine. The "out of room only for food and never going outside" is not fine.

If there is anything that harms young men, it that the above is normalized instead of being seen as sign the kid is loosing ability to cope with both real life and computer. And then, when they are alone, depressed or bursting angry, everything and everyone is blamed. Parents should be even more understanding, the girls should have go out of their way to meet guys in their rooms, the teachers are horrible for not tolerating them mistreating other kids and so on and so forth.

Except that saying that having kids socialization primary online, purely in gaming and hacking communities is a bad idea, because those can be quite atrocious.

> In retrospect the soccer was a mistake for this kid.

Do you not see how the absurdity of this sentence exposes the fallacy in the preceding paragraph? Neither soccer nor computers are at all plausible causes of these serious mental health problems. That's just a simple post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. At most, they could merely be the context in which other issues developed into a serious problem.

> Neither soccer nor computers are at all plausible causes of these serious mental health problems.

In some soccer clubs and in some computer subcultures, large issue is peer influence. The values and behavior you learn are causing problems. And yes, removing the child from the peers influence oftentimes in fact makes the child improve a lot.

In this case also, the excessive gaming is contributing to mental health problems. It feels good temporarily or while playing, but does not cure the problem. Instead, it makes it worst due to isolation.

Maybe comments like these are upvoted because it's fun to be contrarian, or maybe because a significant subset of HN audience consists of outliers like Robbe himself and empathize with folks like him easily.

But this does not even begin to make his behavior defensible or something to gloss over. He was a threat to society, and yet in your comment it's only his mother you reserve words of dislike for; a grieving mother no less, by her own admission technically inept, who probably tried her best.

The ugly nihilism to which YUI and others adhered to is something we should look at to prevent future YUI's. Was it the violent video games that turned him this way? I don't know, but it's worth thinking about probably. Why did he refuse to participate in a social society? Maybe if he took the time to work out in a gym and keep on top of his game this all wouldn't have happened.

> I don't know, but it's worth thinking about probably.

No, it's not—at least not for more than a few moments. This is really obviously not a useful red flag to worry about. Violent video games are very widely popular, and have been for many years now. It's still quite rare for their users to turn into criminals.

Highlighting things like playing violent video games is merely shining a spotlight on something we already know won't help anyone identify future criminals. That spotlight should instead be focused on traits and behaviors that aren't very common in the general population.

A lot of the critics of the general category of violent video games are people who wish to censor them, without any real evidence that a social good would result. These parents—or at least the journalist reporting on them—have lumped themselves in with the would-be censors by presuming that the son's video game preferences were a warning sign they should have been paying attention to.

I don't think it's necessarily predictive of anything, but I think it's clear that certain types of violent video games, especially first person shooter games , do serve to desensitize people to committing violence.

In fact, the military found long ago that changes as small as using a human silhouette rather than a round target helped soldiers to hesitate less when they were confronted with having to shoot someone on the battlefield.

Now, the military uses first person shooters for this same reason and I can't imagine that it isn't quite a bit more effective than a silhouette on a paper target.

The problem with this kind of excuse is that "desensitize people to committing violence" has absolutely nothing to do with a kid becoming a criminal but non-violent hacker. If there is a good reason to be concerned about the prevalence of violent video games, it doesn't apply here. So I won't bother to debate whether there's any evidence to support your implicit suggestion that violent video games contribute to actual criminal violence.

I've read very little actual evidence for any link between playing video games and violence. You can say that you think it desensitises players, but surely that should be measurable, right?

The Pentagon disagrees and has spent tens of millions on video games as well as other methods to desensitize soldiers to violence.

https://www.sfgate.com/science/amp/THE-SCIENCE-OF-CREATING-K...

That's a random article written by a journalist, not a scientific paper published by a researcher.

DARPA has, among other things, spent a lot of money on a glove to help blind people drive. That's not evidence that blind people are good drivers, or that wearing gloves will make you a good driver.

The military uses human silhouette targets so that you learn to estimate ballistic compensation from the sight picture geometry. It is part of basic training. A target that is round does not provide useful visual cues for estimating ballistic compensation as might be seen on a battlefield. You only have a second or two to estimate range and make appropriate ballistic compensations based on what you see in the sight picture.

The US military stopped having people punch holes in paper targets a very long time ago. In the 1990s, you trained on a field of varying silhouettes that randomly pop up for only a few seconds at ranges anywhere from 50 meters to 300-400 meters. You were expected to detect the target pop up in a busy field of view, estimate range from silhouette geometry, compensate for ballistics based on the range estimate, smoothly pull the trigger, and still hit the target most of the time before the target disappeared again. It becomes muscle memory but it is all based on silhouette geometry in the sight picture.

That may be one reason, but it has been widely reported that the military has long been working to decrease hesitation to kill another human using more lifelike targets, video games, etc

"The Pentagon improved firing rates. Research suggests that 55 percent of U.S. soldiers fired on the enemy in the Korean War. By Vietnam that rate had climbed to more than 90 percent. Police studies document similar changes in recent decades.

One of the key changes was to get rid of the old firing ranges, where shooters took target practice in an open field aiming at a bull's-eye. This failed miserably at preparing shooters for real-world confrontations."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sfgate.com/science/amp/THE-...

>"He was a threat to society"

No. Society was a threat to this non-violent minor. Whatever "ugly nihilism" a teenager entertains is trivial next to the adult nihilism -- our nihilism -- that destroys empathy, that destroys human lives, discards them in cages.

(By the way, the incomplete capacity to comprehend the negative consequences of actions isn't "nihilism" -- it is "innocence").

> No. Society was a threat to this non-violent minor.

You can't go around breaking into other people's computers and causing them massive headaches. He had investigators flying all over the world and utility providers planning around the possibility of a state-sanctioned attack on the country's emergency response system.

Many countries are horrendously punitive in general, and of course also over-criminalize and over-incarcerate computer-related mischief. Totally granted. But I just can't get my head around why folks think that's the case here.

A bit of community service as punishment/recompense for breaking into ISPs and university computer systems seems... downright reasonable?

> (By the way, the incomplete capacity to comprehend the negative consequences of actions isn't "nihilism" -- it is "innocence").

I think the word you're looking for is "ignorance". I'm disinclined to accept that being ignorant is a form of innocence. Ignorance doesn't lessen the load of one's criminal mischief on the rest of society.

>"But a bit of community service as"

The OP said 240 days in prison. (Easy to misread, as it was a "suspended" sentence... that ended up being served anyway).

He was given the option to do community service and chose prison instead.

He should've chosen the community service, and his choice of prison over community service should've triggered some sort of mental health review. But in any case the option was "contribute to society or go to jail" and he chose jail. I doubt that was the intention or expectation of the judge.

Would you pick "contributing to society" (where, mind you, the value of that contribution is often questionable anyway) right when getting what you believe to be an unreasonable sentence?

I'm pretty sure my only thought in that kind of moment would've been "No, fuck you".

> where, mind you, the value of that contribution is often questionable anyway

Examples given in another post included: graffiti cleaning, litter picking, cleaning other outdoor areas (e.g. derelict land), assisting in a care home or home for disabled people.

Which of those is remotely controversial? Even graffiti removal isn't controversial per se, even if prosecutions and lack of venues for legal graffiti are controversial.

> Would you pick [things from the above list] right when getting what you believe to be an unreasonable sentence?

Absolutely, in a heart beat. I spent $700 of my own money and five weekends on graffiti removal along last year (in a local state owned forest with a heavily tagged cliff face... this wasn't art on the side of a drab building, it was ugly unimaginative tags on trees and rocks). I also volunteer at park litter cleanups very regularly and volunteer with several different organizations that focus on improving the quality of life for disabled folks.

I do those things by choice, because I care about my community and its people.

> I'm pretty sure my only thought in that kind of moment would've been "No, fuck you".

It's pretty sad that you'd rather sit in a cell than improve your community, but whatever.

BTW, most of those activities can be as social or isolated as you want... scrubbing graffiti can be done in an entirely solitary fashion, and if you're using a sand blaster talking to others isn't even an option! Anti-social community service kid with a bug up his butt doesn't want to talk to anyone? No worries at all; here's the sandblaster, go at it -- I hate wearing the PPE on a hot summer day anyways :)

> Was it the violent video games that turned him this way?

No, it's usually the same reason that causes such people to do nothing but play video games in the first place.

> Maybe if he took the time to work out in a gym and keep on top of his game this all wouldn't have happened

I've been in a situation where playing games and neglecting everything else was kind of my thing. From that perspective this sentence sounds a bit like "just stop being sad". At some point going to the gym is simply not possible, as easy as it may sound. Games are a highly effective distraction from life and everything that comes with it. At least until the day that stops working, at which point it is a good idea to be near people that care and aren't blind to a red flag parade.

> maybe because a significant subset of HN audience consists of outliers like Robbe himself and empathize with folks like him easily.

I am one of those people. I knew YUI as a kid, I logged into those KPN computers too. I'd always thought he'd moved on, I never found out about his death until now, or perhaps someone told me and I assumed they were kidding. Now, I can't help but wonder how many other friends who I thought to be retired are actually dead?

Despite - or perhaps because of - my experiences I couldn't help but agree with you more. I found it deeply disturbing to see all the comments here berating his grieving family for wondering if they'd made a mistake letting him on the computer.

I know my parents must have thought the same every time the cops came to our home, they would've been entirely justified in that.

I turned out okay, but as far as I can tell most of us didn't.

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