Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheOtherHobbes | Hacker News Reader

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Some dysfunctional kids are there because of trauma, others because of opportunism and poor impulse control they'll eventually grow out of, and some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support will make them less destructive or dangerous to themselves and others.

Psychopathy and narcissism are psychological/emotional disabilities. They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb - or in congenital cases, without the brain structures needed for empathy and adult risk management.

I don't know what to do with these people. No one does.

I do know they're the single biggest threat to our future as a species, because if they get into positions of power they wreak havoc on unimaginable scales.

And even if they don't, they reliably leave a trail of wreckage behind them, because their relationships are defined by lies, gaslighting, and emotional and physical violence.

Unfortunately we have limited tools for diagnosis, so there's no way to know for sure if a problem teen can be rescued, or if they're guaranteed to become a problem adult.

> They're the emotional equivalent of being born without a limb

For start we could stop cutting part of their limbs shortly after birth. Doing this to dogs is considered too cruel and banned, but somehow it is ok for little boys?

> some are fundamentally defective and no amount of support

No need for support, just stop harming them!

It’s been said that the British executed about 1% of their population each year for a few hundred years, and that a similar number died in prison.

The claim is that this made Britain a much safer country in later centuries.

One would be trading a chance of being murdered by psychopaths on the street for a chance of being murdered by psychopaths in the government.

They need real, tangible, meaningful threats. Corporal or social.

Doling out talkings-to, ISS, OSS, bad grades and repeat courses are a relative joke. I spent uncountable hours in ISS for truancy, was made to walk miles to school, kicked off the bus and walk miles home, served community service, and had many talkings-to. None of it was effective.

Expulsion is treated as far too extreme and should be far more regular as both an incentive to the student and to the parents. For many of these kids school is an impediment and a detractor and they would do far better for themselves in the work environment gaining experience over the course of the 3-4 years anyways. There are far more permissive environments in workplaces than there are in school that are better suited for the nature of certain inclinations and measures than that of school. There's also the possibility of restarting vocational education, which frankly, is a good compromise. But the current system is bullshit. And the bar is so low that diplomas are given out to nearly 90% of students which is flatly wrong as from what I've seen there are a lot more people who are either academically or behaviorally unsuited for employment or voting by any reasonable standard. Setting up clear failure modes are the guidelines by which many of these people would derive structure and meaning in their education, instead they're allowed a de minimis exception and passed into the world as acceptably educated and competent when the opposite is true. And that totally erodes the meaning of the accomplishment.

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