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Comment by darxius | Hacker News Reader

Its things like this that really make me wonder how we can progress as a society with nutjobs like this. Without sounding like a hippy, the world is filled with so much violence and hate. If these people (and they're all over) put more effort into building society instead of destroying we could really progress.

It takes a special kind of asshole to do this.

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I don't see the point in imagining a world without psychopaths. It'd be lovely, but no amount of societal structure will ever remove them, we can only try to reach them whenever possible and lessen their influence on others.

That's a pretty cynical world view. I think a lot of bad stuff happens for reasons that could be taken away given better social structures, e.g., people who are abusive because they were abused themselves, desperation because of poverty, etc. There are probably psychopaths which simply have the genetic disposition for that, but violence perpetrated for ideological reasons is definitely something that society could address one way or another.

Likely we can reduce the incidence of destructive acts somewhat, but it seems improbable to eliminate them entirely... with billions upon billions of humans roaming the planet, a few minds are bound to go off the rails.

It should be noted that multiple studies indicated that terrorists don't have a bigger share of psychopaths than the general population. Average people can convince themselves and/or be convinced to maim and kill if they believe their cause is just.

This does not in any way mean we should excuse them, any more than I would let a rabid dog attack me just because I recognize it can't be expected to follow ethical behavior.

I remember reading somewhere that a surprisingly large number of terrorists / bombers / what have you, are guys in their 20s or 30s with an engineering background, otherwise pretty normal and unremarkable.

Certainly among the 9/11 hijackers, but there appears to be a great deal of asymmetry with foreign terrorists. Domestic terrorists don't ~appear~ to find the same level of stability, though I haven't read any specific papers that investigated their family lives, careers, etc.

That's a scarier prospect than the opposite.

It'd be lovely, but no amount of societal structure will ever remove them

Anti-murder laws don't remove murder, but they do massively lessen it. I'm always perplexed by the idea that unless something is 100% effective, it somehow 'hasn't worked'.

It wasn't a particularly long post, but I directly stated that we need to do we can to help them at the same time that I stated that they're not going away.

My point is more that it's a continuum rather than a boolean. More societal structures to help mentally ill people means less mentally ill people. A lot of mental illness can 'go away' if the right methods are in place, and yes, it won't ever be 100% effective.

I don't have a problem with what you're saying, just that the particular phrase you used is a viewpoint that always puzzles me due to its implied binary status.

Yesterday I watched an old TV show with Sagan, Hawking and A. C. Clarke. At some point, discussing about violence and politics and the future, Clarke said: "we are a very unevolved species."

Seems kind of appropriate in this context.

All we can do now making sure we do not fuel more violence with reactive violence.

Of course the people who did this have to be separated from society, but any response should be measured even if that seems difficult.

While there will likely always be assholes who do shit like this, every time it happens an order of magnitude more people help those in need. Fuck the assholes society will keep moving forward.

We are all capable of acts like this. We are human.

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