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Comment by max_ | Hacker News Reader

I think you heavily under estimate what normal people motivated by money are capable of doing.

In my friends highschool, some businesses guy was paying highschool kids (16 - 17 ish) to strangle car owners and steal their cars. They were later caught.

Also, watch or read Killers of The Flowers Moon.

The problem with planned murder is that it is all hidden, and the details are fuzzy. So there is alot of reasonable doubt.

But trust me, there is alot do planned killing going on out there.

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Out of interest do you have an article on the case at your friend's school?

> normal people motivated by money… strangle car owners and steal their cars…

Those are not in any way normal people. If someone makes it to 16-17 y/o without acquiring that fundamental moral lesson, I would not characterize them as normal, whatever the cause of that failure.

"Normal" means common here, and the fact that common people happily commit heinous acts is nothing new. E.g. the holocaust was comitted by "normal" people.

Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us

>Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us

I don’t think civilization is a panacea here.

To my mind, civilization is not exactly a strict synonym of peaceful generous enlightened humanism. Of course as a phenomenon it can encompass this kind of behavior, but just as well as it can help foster genocides, war and torture.

Holocaust didn’t happen despite civilized minds, it happened specifically through a civilizational scheme.

Agree, not normal. Then again, what percentage of high level executives or contractors with companies like Boeing are "normal"?

I think what I meant was that they "looked normal".

They were just attending classes like their class mates.

It's not like they had a horns on thier head or walked around with pitchforks that made them obviously seem like killers.

All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann by Leonard Cohen

EYES:……………………………………Medium

HAIR:……………………………………Medium

WEIGHT:………………………………Medium

HEIGHT:………………………………Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None

NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten

NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten

INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?

Back in Finland I saw an incredible play: https://www.tinfo.fi/en/NPfF-Plays/48/I-Am-Adolf-Eichmann - the utter banality of the thing, how the convicted mastermind behind the genocide was "merely solving ongoing logistical problems". And how the trial turned into a massive media circus, likely letting a number of equally culpable war criminals off the hook.

Turns out there is currently a fresh play in works that may have some of the same undertones: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-trial-of-eichmann-world-pre...

Go watch the recent movie "The zone of interest".

https://youtu.be/GFNtVaAuVYY?si=jiQlDA9Z1EKnPZ0Z

About 3% of the male population has Antisocial Personality Disorder (ie, sociopathy). That could be described as normal - we're talking 1 person in 33. You'd probably meet one at a party. Nature no doubt builds some people to be killers.

Now most of them aren't going to kill anyone because that would be dumb. But that is a pretty decent pool of people who would consider the idea for money.

3% strikes me as a pretty extreme minority, which makes it seem like the opposite of ‘normal.’ They might be more common than most people think (IE, 1 in 33), but that isn’t something that makes them normal.

3% is 3465 Boeing employees. That doesn't seem so minor.

150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465

Boeing has about 150,000 employees (from the 2022 company report). US workforce is 23% women.

What if one of the 3465 males had its job at risk because of Barnett?

150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465

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