Stop Conflating Violence and Mental Illness
m.xojane.com
m.xojane.com
People are already suggesting that the mentally ill be added to registries, much like the already-flawed sex offender registry. This isn't going to make life any better for the mentally ill, and certainly won't make anyone safer. It'll just make mental illness even more of a black mark on someone's record -- imagine being diagnosed for depression or autism once and never being able to hold a proper job again. People will be even more deathly afraid of being properly diagnosed and cared for, not the inverse.
Why is there no similar outcry for stricter car control? That could really save a lot of innocent kids lives as well as making the lives of all kinds of criminals way harder.
You'd also reduce the emissions of CO2 and the overuse of hydrocarbons.
Since cars are bigger and mostly are used on roads collecting most of them should only take a few years.
But nobody seems to be interested, why?
Guns are useful, to move people around, only in selected locations.
And thanks for the downvotes. I expect the explanations to become visible soon and to be well grounded in sitee policies.
I do not know why you wrote that in your reply to my comment. I cannot downvote, nor would I have downvoted you if I could. If you have a grievance, please reply to the appropriate comment (or your own). Is there an "explanation" or "site policy" I need to refer to in relation to my comment? Otherwise, please do not target individual comments, unrelated to your grievance, it is quite rude.
(And by the way I haven't crossed the downvote threshold myself and it doesn't bother me. If anything it seems too easy to get downvote privilege.)
To drive a car you need to pass a competency test, as well as be insured against accidents. Your right to drive can also be revoked if at any time you demonstrate that you can't operate one safely.
So uh, yeah. I agree with you, lets do guns like cars!
Any public use or brandishing of firearms, other than pursuant to self defense/defense of others, is a criminal act (with obvious exceptions like public ranges, public uninhabited land depending on State law, etc.)
[note: visibility does not imply brandishing, in the case of open carry]
Anyone who passes a simple safety test (simple enough that the bulk of the population has little problem with it) can purchase a firearm and use it (subject to safety regulations) in public.
With or without a license you can own and use a gun on private property.
There are certain quality regulations on cars/guns which apply to using them outside private property (i.e., if it's likely to burst into flames, you can't take it onto public roads).
There is no federal regulation, except for rules saying that a license in one state is valid in all other states (i.e., a Texas CCW license works in NY).
This sounds like exactly what the NRA regularly lobbies for. The only people who will argue against your proposal are gun control advocates (e.g., Bloomberg).
I wasn't suggesting a straight find/replace of car with firearm...
If you actually don't want to regulate guns like cars, but instead want far more draconian regulations, why not just clearly state that?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
How many companies could operate with tens of thousands of people dying from using their products every year: cars and roads?
What advances in technology would have been required so peoples property rights were not trampled on with regards to pollutants from vehicles?
The reality is that that thought scares the living shit out of everyone and its become culturally accepted that there is a line in the sand on what types of weapons should be available to people. Perhaps the line for the US needs to be redrawn.
As has been shown in other countries (specifically, Australia where I live) when you reduce the availability of weapons that are designed purely for mass killing (our buyback scheme went pretty smoothly in 1996), the ability of people to do mass killing goes down. We have approximately 1/3 the number of firearm related deaths[1] (both accidental and not) than the US has of just homicides alone per 100k people[2].
Thats not to say guns aren't still available. They are. That's not to say people still don't get killed with guns, because they do. But the numbers just dont lie.
[1] http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia [2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
For example, the only way we ever had unions in the workplace in the first place is thanks to civilian weaponry. Leave guns to the national guard? Ha. In many cases, they were the ones shooting and killing the strikers. Given the current state of affairs, I wouldn't be surprised if such a thing became necessary again at some point. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way people (like the ones in charge of companies) will listen to you is if you have a way to keep them from killing you. It's not as common these days, but who's to say what the future will bring? I can understand why negating the constitutional right to bear arms makes people nervous. In the past, it was a way for many people to make sure their families were fed. For many people in the present, it's a way to make sure their families are safe in case the government fails us (again). In America, corporate interests run politics, not the people, and companies don't usually have your best interest in mind (just the bottom line).
I.e., with or without guns, the US is a more violent place than Australia. Drawing conclusions about gun control without correcting for this fact is a fallacy.
Incidentally, how do you define a weapon that is "designed purely for mass killing"?
Nor should anyone be allowed to keep home any amount of explosive substances or explosive devices, unless for professional use, or any kind of chemical or biological weaponry.
Also, you could not own any kind of firearm if you have criminal record, poor eyesight, mental retardations and such.
No ownership is possible without having a licence issued by the government.
Those are basically regulations in Croatia for example.
Actually he had all that: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732467720457818...
It was also illegal for him to purchase a gun, and the law prevented him from doing so. Additionally, shooting people (unless they tried to shoot or stab you first) is also illegal. Didn't seem to stop him.
Megan Mcardle has an excellent essay on why there is basically nothing we can do about incidents like this besides perhaps collectively rushing the shooter (like we currently do with terrorists on airplanes).
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/17/there-s-lit...
Arming the victims also seems to help once in a while:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shoo...
HN is the first place I would look to see part of the problem and misconceptions about mental illness.
It seems the mental health of our country is failing as a whole. As the symptoms accumulate, in time, there will probably be a disease or syndrome named after it, with a little pill to "cure" it.
I have other opinions, but they are just that, opinions and as such I won't pollute HN with my ignorance. I prefer to judge myself (as part of this country's failing mental health) and not others I know little about.
Let's get back to tech, a topic where our opinions are more informed and the facts more easily understood.
The only reason the occasionally mentally ill (you heard me) gunman gets press is because the UMC media can identify with the victims. The UMC media can also identify with the gunman. Unlike Chicago gangbangers, they've known such creepy kids back in high school.
Mental illness in our system is defined like we are all chicken. We are defined healthy if we lay an egg every day, have clean feathers and don't pull feathers of other chicken in our cage. But not the chicken are insane. The system is insane!
And the system became worse over the time. A lot of more people are now declared mental ill, then ever before. Especially children and the fear of the parents are exploited by doctors and pharmacy. Pharmacy drugs only try to hide the symptom, and often fail in even this. The result is more likely a drug addicted kid, who will later visit the doctor again, and again, like a junky visiting his heroin dealer.
People are afraid of unpredictability. They are afraid of irrational people doing irrational things, and many people with mental illnesses behave irrationally. That's the long and short of it.
That said, we ought to be careful in making ex post diagnoses of mental illness as a means of coming to terms with a tragedy. It is merely a figment of the collective imagination that a person of sound mind would not consciously take the lives of many others.
Just look at the hysteria that flares up every time an event like this occurs. Guns are bad, gunmen are mad. Unless they're police or military, in which case they're obviously in perfect mental health and heroes to boot. Very rational.
Here's the image upside down: http://i.imgur.com/d095a.jpg
Just like: InternalFrameInternalFrameTitlePaneInternalFrameTitlePaneMaximizeButtonWindowNotFocusedState
That's not part of a class API, it's a cry for help.
Too cheap?
"it's a cry for help"
I'll agree with this.
what we really need to do is starting to make a more distinctive diagnosis of what the actual mental illness was and don't just conflate all forms of schizophrenia with psychosis, bi-polar mood and depression disorder, etc. under mental illness.
and a last remark on statistics (and sampling bias), and I believe we can all agree that:
P(violent|person is mentally ill) ~ P(violent|person is not mentally ill)
however (and I believe this is the source of the discussion, correct me if I'm wrong):
P(person is mentally ill|violent) >> P(person is not mentally ill|violent)
But simplifying is human nature. We'd be unable to make sense of the world otherwise (he said in a hilariously un-self-conscious way).
We're not just interested in the proportion of people with mental illness in the population of violent criminals. We are also interested in the proportion of violent criminals in the population of people with a mental illness. We find that very few people with a mental illness are violent. We find that people with mental illness are far more likely t be the victim of violent crime than the perpetrators of violent crime.
This situation is so common, that people literally didn't know any better. Common sense about what things really are and how things works and why are naive oversimplifications and folklore at its best.
Common folks have no clue how, say, financial instruments works, or what software engineering is about, or what is mental disorders and Autism in particular. But everyone are cock-sure that they have an opinion and their opinion is the most accurate description of the reality.
99% of these talks are naive but emotional nonsense. Guns are not the causes. It is the same stupidity as to blame the pain for the cancer. Blaming autistic traits as the causes of some particular acts of people who "seems like autistic" is just as stupid as to blame food for obesity.
Yes, autistic individuals have much more pressure in society because they have very unpleasant, physical sensation of discomfort, comparable with pain or fear. We can do nothing with it, it just is. It is almost the same sense as of being overwhelmed by annoying, loud noise you have no means to escape.
It might be caused by mere presence of noisy, loud, annoying, hyper-active, rude and selfish people, it might be just forced conversation or forced eye-contact - each autistic individual has his own sources of causes of overwhelming annoying pressure.
It doesn't really matter how exactly it works, due to some inherent over-sensitivity of Amigdala or due to dis-balance in production or metabolism of some neuro-chemical substance, it doesn't really matter. The matter is that life is much less pleasant task if you are one of us.
The most interesting part is that most of autistic people don't even realize that they are somehow different from others, and that not everyone share the same feelings of being overwhelmed. It is very difficult realization, which requires lots of knowledge and intelligence. You're, of course, heard of it many times, but you probably thought that it is not about you.
So, like it or not, the cancer is society. It is that simple. How people threat each other (let alone how they threat Asperger and autistic individuals) is the cause of most troubles. Just what people are in general. The bell-curve is very real thing, and so-called ordinary people, en mass, is by no means a nice thing.
I do not try to say that this particular shooter deserves any mercy or special consideration. He is just like a sick animal - everything is too late. All I'm trying to say that do not talk about things you have no clue about. You may hear some shit about ASDs and event felt something like being overwhelmed by stress or depressed, but some people live all their lives under a constant pressure, source of which they didn't realize, having no idea that it is not the world around that is wrong.
World is the same for everyone. The hell is other people, you like it or not. Especially for autistic people.
Some idiots used an analogy with rabies, but, no. There are no microbes that produce toxins that rewires your brain so you have no control over it, so, you are not responsible for your actions. This is an instance of that naive oversimplification nonsense. It is all mental, and it accumulates in fullness of time, as chronic depression or constant agitation does.
By the way, most of accompanied mild, non-organic mental disorders go together. If you have physical discomfort being forced to deal with people, you likely have the whole bunch of personality disorders in their mild form. They are just artificial names of the same thing - consequences, effects, reactions to an overwhelming pressure.
btw, that illustration in original posting, with a girl in a corner is a good illustration of a common misconception.))
1. Autism is mostly boy's disorder. That picture is about clinical depression, which is women's trait, and it is just being shut in oneself.
2. To depict autistic narrowed focus, the corner must be not of a closed room, but something of a ruin, with no other walls or ceiling around, with all the world all around, but a boy didn't notice.
___Autism is mostly boy's disorder. That picture is about clinical depression, which is women's trait, and it is just being shut in oneself.___
The loaded _gender-nomenclature_ of this patriarchal, advanced-capitalist polyarchy has become so freaking thick that I would find it laughable if scientific literature (STEMers) even distills 5% of it from shared knowledge 100 years from now.
___In a similar vein, Baron-Cohen and Hammer (1997) argued that, whereas individuals with autism have extreme “male brains,” with better spatial skills than social skills, those with Williams syndrome show the reverse pattern and, as such, may be characterized as having extreme “female brains.” ___ -- https://sites.google.com/site/drjonbrock/publications/the-ot...
Now looking at your statement, we have terms like "boy's disorder" contrasted with "women's trait".
What are you talking about? With Williams Syndrome we have "female brains" so with every reason to believe that they are alone in clinical depression. That is, by your grammar of reasoning. But what is more?:
___This view of Williams syndrome and autism as diametric opposites has, however, proven to be somewhat simplistic (Tager-Flusberg, Plesa-Skwerer, & Joseph, 2006). Despite their sociable and empathetic personalities, individuals with Williams syndrome are often reported as having high levels of social anxiety (Dykens, 2003; Udwin, Yule, & Martin, 1987). Children with Williams syndrome typically prefer adult company to mixing with their own age group, and have great diffi culty making and sustaining friendships (Einfeld, Tonge, & Florio, 1997; Rosner, Hodapp, Fidler, Sagun, & Dykens, 2004; Udwin et al., 1987). The two disorders also overlap clinically.___ -- https://sites.google.com/site/drjonbrock/publications/the-ot...
So what are you, in factual terms, please, sir, saying? What is going on here, where your post ranks highest, and you have express'd what seems to be unessential and obfuscating sexist language, in such a way as to talk about what is clinical; and current research says, quite simply, and quite exactly the opposite of what you theorize on with false knowledge; if indeed they clinically overlap, that is?
Please see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-paraconsistent/.
This human man is clearly using language in a way that is expected and fits along a normalized pattern that suggests "rational." However, his theorizing immediately leads to "explosion"; so it is a matter, then, of what content quantities of his exist which, in principle, say nothing. How much of any of this paradoxical language exists? And how did we get to a point in society where what he says passes off as passively authoritative? -- What are we filling the Internet with? -- Ultimately, when I reflect on Godel's proof, Candor's diagonalization, it all becomes too clear that our Western society is intolerant to difference; and this can undermine scientific progress.
I am concern'd with consistency and the stress of things like general internet ecologies (and hypermedia applications) on organic cognitive systems (like us). Because, quite simply, What is going on here? What is he talking about? Is it informational? Operational? Pragmatic? Dogmatic?
What does his content and its ilk engender in terms of rational, dialectical discussion with no obvious linguistic glitches that mislead and misinform.
You address none of my claims; the response I get is "butthurt."
What is this? That is what I am asking. Right now. This conversation; starting from "boy's disorder"; and then "butthurt" -- what is that? It's a mod-chic-Nietzschean way of saying "womanish." Did I fail to generate a proposition such that your internal theory of mind, or inner homunculus, do not perceive it?
[Edit:] Fascinating. 1 hour, 5 downvotes and a response later, still none the wiser. I even gave away a futuristic subplot for it. Low point.
Baron-Cohen's argument sounds solid if you consider that women evolve non-verbal communication skill they use with babies, who cannot talk until of age of 2. All that communication is well-researched and documented. Autistic people have difficulties in communication, and no wonder that they are mostly men.
As of language usage, different cultures, well, tend to use a language differently. Most of world's cultures, by the way, does not believe in an gender equality and tend to name things, as we believe, they are. There are differences between men and women and they aren't just anatomical.)
This.
We've seen this equation of displeasure with mental illness in the fallout as well. The NRA are referred to as "crazy gun nuts". Well, they're not actually "crazy". They hold strong ideological beliefs that we dislike, and they're almost certainly wrong (in that the benefits of ubiquitous AK-47s do not compensate for the drawbacks, because the probabilities associated with the events that would make then beneficial are ridiculously low). They're not the same thing. These radicals are dangerously wrong and I'm glad they're on the fringe, but they're not "crazy".
I also take umbrage against the attempt to explain away evil using mental illness. It's like people don't want to admit that bad people or evil exist. Hitler was crazy, Adam Lanza was crazy, Ted Bundy was crazy. Well, I have no idea if they were mentally ill. They were, however, evil. Evil exists. It probably doesn't have a metaphysical platonic form (a Satan) and there's no evidence that it has any supernatural presence but, in the practical real world we live in, evil's a real thing. It's a part of our story as humans. You can't understand what we, as a species, are if you leave it out. In fact, to the extent that evil and "insanity" correlate, I would argue that the causal direction goes the other way: people who do evil things, especially if they're rewarded and become powerful, warp over time and eventually go nuts. It's not the other way around. Mental illness is painful and horrible and sometimes it makes people do harmful things but it does not make people evil. Killing 28 innocent people, mostly children, for no reason is evil. Adam Lanza may have been mentally ill but he was also an evil piece of shit.
Was I supposed to have? I certainly didn't. I imagined a lot of things, on a wide spectrum, but not that.