The appropriateness of this showing up on Hacker News, the Internet's favorite dream killer in Show HN threads and perpetual contest to see who can be most correct in comments, should be lost upon no one.
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.
How exactly would a sealed juvenile record affect job applications? They don't show up on any criminal background inquiry that companies have access to. Police and government (i.e., clearance or priors), yes. Juvenile charges are practically thrown out by everybody, minus things that require clearance or sensitivity. Regardless, the article says she's going to be tried as an adult, which means it's an adult charge. It'll stick, but...
Even an American adult, in most states, can make a felony disappear with some effort and the cooperation of the convicting judge. In other states, it becomes a charge but no conviction is recorded from the company's perspective, so you can say "no, I've never been convicted of a felony."
(I'm a felon with extensive experience in this area.)
Nobody does. I promise. My conviction made lots of news as well; has never come up since I got it expunged.
Typical BigCos get a standard background on you (these are measured in dozens of dollars), and any further investigation that involves a human being is reserved for a very, very rare candidate. HR and operations are expensive at scale.
Since everybody rational considers this news item ridiculous, I think we can safely say this girl will be alright. The expulsion is the thing she'll have to work around, but even a felony conviction is not a life-ender. Many companies specifically hire felons because they're a tax break if filed properly.
Except if you have the misfortune of being convicted in New York State, which does not expunge or seal even misdemeanor records any amount of time after conviction, you're literally branded for life with it.
I've heard stories of employers using Google, but seems to me any company that did that would be opening itself up to a bunch of lawsuits. There are plenty of things you're not allowed to ask about at interviews because they are potentially discriminatory (for instance, asking candidates - particularly women - if they plan to have children), but you could potentially discover this information from a Google search.
That's why you contract out with a binary pass fail, and/or search for red flags, so the 3rd party replies if the dude is clean or perhaps mentions some areas requiring further study.
I can't be the only one here to have passed this process. I've done it a couple times. This vaguely resembles my military security clearance some decades ago in that my Army CO never had any idea I got picked up by the cops for truancy after skipping out of gym class in my sophomore high school year, but the clearance guy knew, didn't really care (I mean, come on, really?), and issued my clearance and that credential is good enough for my CO not to personally investigate my police record.
Needless to say the pass fail criteria provided to the 3rd party doesn't include things like "Is the candidate a jew?". They ARE often dumb, but not that dumb.
Usually it involves a lot of verification of resume "facts" like if the candidate claims no criminal record but a simple glance at a public facebook feed shows all manner of talk about his extensive time in jail, the red flag gets raised. No need to tell the company what church he attends, just warn them to take a second (first?) look at the criminal background report.
The better architecture is to bring logs to a centralized place and do analysis on them that way. Your GUI tool doesn't scale for real work, particularly if the machine you are investigating logs upon has been compromised or is broken.
That attack is more useful against a mosaic than a straight blur. In this case, to attack successfully, the attacker would have to lay out every possible passport with the letters in the exact position as they'd be printed, because there is a pretty strong blur applied. You have an F and the line of < characters to work with, you know about how long her given and surnames are, and you have a frame of reference for the rest based on how much of the bottom line the author had to blur. Not much else. You also don't have a guarantee that the blur is straight out of Photoshop and contains what you are trying to reverse; looking at it, I don't think it is the actual passport data. I think it was modified then blurred.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think this one is impractical.
If you cross paths with enough Googlers in your career, eventually you'll come across the lucky souls with first names as gmail accounts; then when they explain the deafening background radiation they get, you start thinking "hm, maybe lolhackerx0@gmail.com isn't such a bad address after all"...
Example: Grandma sending pictures to Larry! Oh, he must be larry@gmail.com, right?
I have a first name only email forwarding account at a "well known Easter technical school." (I signed up first thing when these were made available at a time when a lot of people still weren't on the Internet.) I don't get as many random emails as I once did but, at one point, I even got on an email thread involving board discussions at some company.
ha! i can up you. last year got invites to some chinese gov stuff intended to a consul of some country with my same first/last name as me. they had a bunch of emails @gmail and @yahoo and a couple @country.gov, and apparently mixed a few.
Should have taken that free trip to shengze or something :)
I wonder if you have trouble giving your email over the phone.
I have a <name>@<name>.net email. And every time I'm spelling my email to someone, I say: name, n a m e @name.net, 99 times out of 100 they ask me if the second "name" is spelled like the first one.
I have a friend whose surname was McCurry (which she rarely used - family baggage) and she ended up changing it to Blake, because you never have to spell out Blake to people, but you do every time with McCurry.
Yeah .... I had the same problem with a common first name + last name @gmail - even to the extent of getting someone else's buddy passes for JetBlue - before getting my own domain. I thought it wasn't bad for my purposes, but it's a terrible domain name for spelling out (my handle here plus .com).
Before someone corrects you with a photograph, the ascent stage had fins in addition to the vectoring on the F-1s. However, my understanding, though I might be wrong, is that those were intended for stabilizing the vehicle instead of acting as control surfaces.
That isn't remotely true; where'd you hear that whopper? A merchant can authorize and charge a card for any reason, and the cardholder can challenge it and it will be investigated. How would VISA and Mastercard even enforce "the product must exist", honestly? What about my charges for services rendered, or digital downloads, or...
You really think Amazon Payments would have let Kickstarter go this long if they weren't kosher?
Kickstarter is kosher, precisely because as the parent post said ""Kickstarter is not a store, it's just a website where you give money and get stuff in the mail later."
It's the fact that it's a donation, not the pre-purchase of a physical good, that makes it so.
If you're selling a physical good, you're supposed to deliver or ship it at the time of the transaction.
> where'd you hear that whopper?
Originally from our banker at Chase that handled our merchant account set up, but it's easy enough to confirm if you look:
> You really think Amazon Payments would have let Kickstarter go this long if they weren't kosher?
It's worth noting that even though Kickstarter is kosher, the area is gray enough that Amazon is not taking on any more Kickstarter-type sites until further notice precisely because of their legal concerns.
I've noticed this tack a lot recently (three arguments like this in 24 hours), and I'm concerned by it.
There seems to be an inability on the part of some people, apparently Richard Stallman included, to realize that active intent to harm human beings is not in the same ballpark as passive intent to harm human beings. They're not even playing the same sport. A fertilizer plant has a chance of harming someone in an accident, and while it is definitely wrong if those concerns go unheeded, there is not even a remote comparison to the actions of demonstrated sociopathic behavior to harm, kill, and decapitate eight-year-olds watching a marathon. There just isn't. A man waking up one morning and saying, "gee, I'm going to drop explosive devices in the middle of a fucking crowd in Boston" isn't even in the same universe as "our unstable manufacturing process exploded after an accident".
Let's say, for a moment, that Stallman is in effect proven right about the danger of the chemical plant, and that the chemical plant owners, say, willfully traded employee safety for money. That's wrong. However, inability to be appalled by and react accordingly to a human being intentionally killing and maiming fellow human beings using explosive devices on the streets of a populated city during a marathon, demonstrating full intent to kill and complete disregard for the free agency of children as young as 8, and blowing people's limbs off on purpose, is the mark of a sociopath.
You concern me if you present an argument to me along these lines, that we should "care more" about the fertilizer plant or auto accidents on the interstates in a day or ... whatever. I'm more and more convinced lately that the people in my life who have arguments with me like this, including Richard Stallman, are sociopaths, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life, and so should you; the complete disregard of basic social empathy, the understanding of why normal human beings consider the Boston bombings a life-changing event but the chemical plant marginally less so, indicates to me a conscience that is capable of thinking unspeakable things. What else can a conscience like that justify?
Some people can manage being a sociopath long-term, and I think we can all name some examples in the tech industry. It's arguable a bit of sociopath can be a valuable tool for career and business building. I don't think being sociopathic is a death sentence, but it should give you pause when dealing with them, that their conscience leads to hypothetical discussions like this rather than "it's just business" types of transactions in the working world.
None of this commentary considers the media or law enforcement response to the Boston events, which Stallman does discuss, and I do not present an opinion on that point (I do have one, but it clouds the issue). Only the point I've discussed above.
EDIT: I've edited through to adjust a point I mistakenly attributed to Stallman which he really didn't say, but is the logical conclusion. I misread one key sentence in the e-mail that I responded to, and should have paid better attention, and I'm sorry. Thank you for bringing it to my attention; my point still stands in the edited form above, and if you've quoted the prior version, I'd appreciate a second chance at making my point. I'm not going to respond individually to those of you who have quoted the prior version, since it would waste column inches, and I hope you notice my edit and act accordingly.
Yet here's rms doing his thing, making the case that the chemical plant owners willfully ignored employee safety in the name of profit.
That is an argument that's not supported by the text.
The point that Stallman is making, as I see it, is to be concerned about overspending (and sacrificing freedoms) on rare salient threats, while neglecting more commonplace but more dangerous sources of danger like chemical plants and car accidents.
As a matter of public policy I could not agree more with Stallman here. For more information on this line of argument I'd recommend reading Bruce Schneier, who makes the point passionately and with authority.
Richard Stallman made several points in the linked e-mail. The point that I'm concerned with, and made clear that I'm concerned with, is that the Texas plant is the, quote, "bigger danger" than the Boston incidents. He wrote that nearly verbatim; his evidence for that was backed up in the paragraph prior by citing numbers -- specifically, numbers of people dead. That's what I'm attacking, specifically not reaction to, preparation for, or money spent on these heinous events, as I said quite clearly and will continue to say.
My edit specifically applies to the head of your comment.
While intent does matter, the consequence is still the same. People die. Therefore, we should devote effort to reducing incidents of death, no matter what is the cause.
People who kill others intentionally are going to be treated differently than those who ignore basic safety precaution, as a matter of justice. But we must still pay attention to the magnitude of tragedy when it comes to allocating money to reduce probability of death incidents.
That mean, if car accidents kill more than terrorists each year, there should be more money on accident prevention.
Agree with your first paragraph. I definitely think we should devote effort to reducing incidence of death, no matter the cause.
Couldn't agree less with the remainder, because you are comparing car accidents and terrorism, which I specifically said is impossible to do; there is no comparison remotely possible between automotive accidents and terrorism.
How they cannot be compared? The metric here is the rate of death and the probability of incidents. The goal is to reduce suffering in the most impactful way as possible.
Be careful, applying your engineering mindset to real life. We cannot quantify the human experience. Let's take one tiny minutiae of both incidents with the strong and clear prior warning that there are countless examples of these points: in general, a parent would expect her child to be safer watching the Boston Marathon than standing several feet from a fertilizer plant. That's an expectation that, while your data might consider it irrational, is part of the human experience and why numbers cannot quantify what we feel.
You just can't apply numbers to being human. It doesn't work, it will never work, it's really disappointing to see people try, and I notice engineers try to do it more than most people I spend time with.
> That's an expectation that, while your data might consider it irrational, is part of the human experience and why numbers cannot quantify what we feel.
You seem to be claiming an axiom that we should make reality conform to our irrational emotions more than our attempts at rational analysis -- I think what you're hearing from other engineers is that they've experienced the same conflict and have decided that it's the emotion, rather than the rationality, that ought to leave when deciding how to act.
If you disagree, I think that all you can say is that your personal opinion is that life is aesthetically more pleasing when you stop attempting rationality. I think you should try to recognize that this is just an opinion you have, and not some objective truth that everyone else is failing to acknowledge.
But the child IS safer at the Boston Marathon, even considering what happened. How many people have attended this event over the years? Now how many have been maimed or killed in those years?
Parents also assume that their children are safer swimming in their backyard pools than standing several feet from a fertilizer plant, yet swimming pools are orders of magnitude more dangerous. I'm not sure what you're trying to say, exactly. Ignore the statistics because they don't account for the "human experience"? What is the goal here, preventing senseless deaths or preserving the "human experience"?
Please do not equate rational behavior with being a sociopath.
If what RMS says is true (and I admit that I have no way to verify that) and that fertilizer plant is responsible for more deaths than the terrorist attack, then it is a more pressing problem. How can you possibly argue that point (unless dead people as such do not worry you and it is just anger or fear that justifies the actions - but then, who's the sociopath?)
Terrorism is hardly the most pressing problem faced by the US. Due to irrational fears we willingly spend insane amounts of money and have our civil liberties curtailed... To protect us from something that statistically hardly kills more people than lightening.
This is all RMS is trying to point out.
Nobody is saying that these terrorists should not be prosecuted, just that should put this all into perspective.
A rational person interested in the well being of the people would tackle issues like lack of healthcare, edudation, obesity, heart disease, unjust wars, poverty, civil liberties, privacy, etc, etc, just to name a few issues, before tackling terrorism.
An irrational person is driven by fear and anger and thus typically acts against his/her own best interest.
His point was that there are better things in life to worry about. An example is chemical plants.
To paraphrase his letter -- your actions should not change based on the events these past few days. Decisions should be made off of data and actual potential to harm, not on what happens to be scary at the time.
If you know that people will die, but are simply indifferent to it, the difference between that and actively wishing to murder is at least arguably academic. You are killing people with your choices in either case.
This is the precise attitude GP is railing against.
Are you seriously tabling the notion that "gee, hundreds of Americans will die in car accidents today, oh well" is even in the same universe as "gee, I think I should drop a bomb in the middle of a crowd"?
The difference here is as wide as the ocean, it is anything but academic.
And this is why some arguments cannot be taken seriously. No one is saying that car accidents, heart disease, and cancer shouldn't be Big Deals, but to say that being idle in these matters is tantamount to mass murder is how you get people to stop taking you seriously.
Plus there's the obvious angle. Accidents are part of life and are random. With any crime there's always the possibility of repeat, or worse, escalation (this was an act of islamic terror, so chance of escalation if this goes unpunished is probably very real).
A society must ensure that crime doesn't pay (because the reason crime is committed in the first place is obviously because it does pay, not necessarily in money, but it does pay). Arrest and punishment is essential for that purpose.
By this logic why even try to apprehend the terrorists at all? The death toll was a rounding error in the number of fatal car accidents during the same time period. Since we're not going to do anything differently in response to the fatal car accidents, why should we spend any effort at all trying to stop those responsible for the bombings?
I am not a sociopath. I ask myself if I want to save lives or if I want to feel better.
I get that a motivated attacker is a more alarming threat, but that is because we didn't evolve with chemical plants and car accidents.
If you just want to reduce your alarm and comfort you friends. Then focus on dealing with whatever alarms you. But by my standards that's not caring.
'Be appalled by' is cheap and easy. 'react accordingly' is, I'm sorry but that's probably not what you're doing. There are so many people in the world who have demonstrated full intent to kill that if you reacted accordingly you'd become Batman.
If this is just about what we say upsets us as we go about our daily lives, then we can agree to disagree and there's no reason to think worse of each other.
Just remember, there are some people who literally cannot see the emotional difference that's obvious to most. Call it sociopathy or being "on the spectrum" or what have you, for them its like watching a black and white TV picture of a world in color.
They may care very much about life, see two events one with many deaths, one with few, and a everyone inexplicably spending all of their money fixing the few and seemingly ignoring the obvious cheap fixes for the many.
So because they care (and not because they don't) they reach for their superhero capes and go try to help.
So what you're saying is that people who value human life equally -- regardless of whether it's lost "actively" or "passively" -- are sociopaths? That people who advocate for a system that tries to save the most lives possible are sociopaths? What?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you're saying that adhering to some arbitrary societal standard of behavior in the face of tragedy is more important than, you know, saving lives.
I specifically did not address measurement of the reaction and took active measures not to conflate the two, because I'm quite aware that they are easy to conflate. That's what the bottom of my comment is specifically targeting.
I have some thoughts on the response level, both in the media and law enforcement, but I cannot draw a salient conclusion just yet. The media is an easier target than law enforcement in that regard. I think it's better if I leave that discussion to others like Schneier. My issue is the subtext and, on more than one instance, direct suggestion in Stallman's writing, comparing the two incidents in any way.
RMS, like any intelligent sentient being is capable of thinking complex thoughts and making good points.
But I rail against his thoughtlessness. His constant...sociopathy...it's why he's ineffective in getting his views across, why he treats people like automatons (well documented) and why he's plain and simply put, "not a good person".
I never put it in these terms before, I just always felt "skeeved out" by his writings. Logically, he makes lots of sense, but personally he's as connectable as the sidewalk in front of my house. Sociopathy is the perfect term.
Anybody who can sit in Boston the last week, have a cop murdered in cold blood near his office by two men on an active terror event that just murdered and maimed dozens of people a few days before, and upon the conclusion of that event shit out this garbage before the close of the same day is a person so far removed from empathy, from society and from humanity as to be a sociopath.
I've never gone through such a wild swing of elation, joy and exhaustion, then disappointment, sadness and anger in such a short period of time as today. This isn't the kind of frustrating conspiracy nuttery that's so exasperating written by people so lost in their private world as to have lost touch with reality, this is written by a person fully cognizant of their writing and what he's saying, the time in which he's saying it and the tone in which he's saying it.
it should give you pause when dealing with them, that their conscience leads to hypothetical discussions like this.
I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life
Amen, and my first step is to leave this thread after this an never return. My next step is to flag any posts here about RMS. Next is to boycott any events where RMS is to be the speaker and actively lobby events who are thinking about hosting him to rethink that decision based on this writing as well as his piss poor treatment of other human beings in the past.
Take a deep breath and ask yourself why you responded so emotionally to these terrorist attacks and not the fertilizer explosion.
Is it the loss of life? There was tragic loss of life in both instances.
Is it the presence of a human instigator? Or maybe the presence of evil? Are terrorists somehow a greater threat than fertilizer explosions because they are supposed to be rational, sentient actors? Are they representative of all that is wrong with humanity? Why are they more threatening than any of the myriad dangers lurking around every corner in this world? I genuinely want to know.
Maybe the very fact that these types of terrorist attacks are so infrequent is what scares us the most. They are met with such a media circus that it's very hard for us not to react in a visceral way.
Or perhaps the scariest part about them is that it represents a breakdown in what we consider decent. The more normal the terrorist or mass-shooter ends up being the more scared we tend to be. By all accounts, these kids were popular, intelligent, handsome young men. And yet within a very short span of time they were radicalized and capable of committing these attacks. That scares us to our core, even though its frequency is so small it should be considered mathematically insignificant.
We desperately want our terrorists to be caricatures of every evil villain we've ever seen. That makes it easier to deal with. Of course they would blow people up, they're evil! The truth is, these types of events, although caused by humans, are no more explainable than tornadoes, lightning strikes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or any other natural disaster we have no control over. Fertilizer plant explosions, on the other hand, we feel like we can prevent, and so they are not accompanied by emotion, fear, and vengeance. But trying to prevent the radicalization of every single youth on the planet is no different than trying to hold a tsunami at bay with a bucket.
RMS is not being a sociopath, he's analyzing an emotional situation in an unemotional way. It doesn't mean he's dangerous, or an asshole, or incapable of relating to other human beings. It means he's logical and not prone to lapses in judgement due to heightened emotional responses.
I genuinely want to know.
If you kill somebody with an intention to kill them, you are a bad person. If you kill somebody without an intention to kill them, it's tragic, but you probably aren't a bad person.
Why exactly is that hard to understand?
RMS is not being a sociopath, he's analyzing an emotional situation in an unemotional way.
He's bringing forth a dispassionate, disturbingly cold analysis of an event that should be emotional by any psychological norm before the day has even closed out. It's so outside of social norms as to only be classifiable as an emotional disconnect so extreme it has to be the result of a severe psychological disturbance.
1) Because it's totally irrelevant. A life is a life. Your life isn't worth more (or less) just because you were killed intentionally (or accidentally). All else being equal, would you rather prevent 100 accidental deaths or 10 intentional murders? Anyone with a shred of morality would save the 100. This isn't "cold analysis". It's prioritizing basic human decency over knee-jerk emotional reactions to sensational events.
2) Because it's inconsistent. If what you really care about is the intent to kill, then you'll focus on run-of-the-mill murders just as much as you focus on sensational bombings. But you don't. So when I try to imagine why you and millions of others care so disproportionately much about the events in Boston, I must eliminate the false reason that "it's because they're intentional." What's left is that you are simply drawn to exciting, sensational, unique events. I can't blame you for that. It's only human. What I can blame you for is having the gall to claim you have the moral high ground. The audacity to condemn people who think rationally about saving lives. It's disgusting to read.
> He's bringing forth a dispassionate, disturbingly cold analysis of an event that should be emotional by any psychological norm before the day has even closed out. It's so outside of social norms as to only be classifiable as an emotional disconnect so extreme it has to be the result of a severe psychological disturbance.
Yes, and 300 years ago it was likely "outside of social norms" to mourn the death of a slave. You're arguing as if behavior being socially normal makes it morally justifiable. That has never been true in the history of the world, and it isn't true today. And one's conformance (or lack thereof) to arbitrary societal norms is certainly not a reflection of psychological disturbance.
You are, quite literally, advocating a herd mentality. Gross.
I thought it might be the best way to reply to both posts without having to write two since there's no way to reply to multiple posts. The emotion in the second post was definitely what prompted me to respond, though.
Replace "work at a fertilizer plant" with "drive an automobile" or "swim in a pool" or "use a bath tub" or with any other seemingly innocuous activity that's orders of magnitude more likely to kill you than terrorists. What is more rational to be concerned about?
Quite honestly your admitted emotional swings suggest that you are the one closer to the animal state. Anyone infected by excess emotion is essentially unsuitable as an analyst or arbiter regardless of how immediately salient the circumstance.
Any policy overly informed by an animalistic emotional driver instead of proceeding from some sort of logical principal can't be taken seriously.
I've noticed Easterners often can't deal with life at an easy pace while remaining comfortable with the minuscule nature of their existence and thus have trouble living relaxed lives.
Every incident like this illustrates it. If a cartel bombed a motor-home in New Mexico or something there'd be none of this brouhaha because Southwesterners live with open horizons under a sea of stars and can take a step back and don't need to feel validated by trying to rouse the whole country to a frenzy.
Plus it would be far removed from the self-centered self-important East Coast rush where the obvious route to increased salience seems to be requiring a different outfit for everything.
Please stop clutching fear and start reaching towards increased animacy.
So, you're worried more about a few dead people rather than all those people you never heard of dying in hospitals, in motor accidents, and other cause of death? They are someone's aunts, uncles, sons, daughters, friends, lovers, etc.
Maybe we should connect our emotion to the logic rather than the other way around.
The trap is applying logic to being human, when humans are illogical by our very nature. kiba is doing it, and your poignant extrapolation of that logic demonstrates why we "can't think through this one, we have to feel it," as the film quote goes. She was right in that scene and the observation equally applies here, just with slightly different antagonists for the discussion.
Too many engineering types try to apply logic and data analysis to the human experience and it just doesn't make sense. You can't meaningfully talk about death in numbers unless you are counting deaths.
making the case that the chemical plant owners willfully ignored employee safety in the name of profit;
No, that's not what he said. He said more people were killed in the "Texas explosion" he hasn't mentioned anything about the cause other than maybe imply that it was not related to terrorism. He also hasn't maligned the plant owners, but rather suggested that technology might be employed to prevent it from occurring in the same manner again, and that the resources we spend on terrorism and the freedom we've sacrificed might be better spent in other ways.
> There seems to be an inability on the part of some people, apparently Richard Stallman included, to realize that active intent to harm human beings is not in the same ballpark as passive intent to harm human beings. They're not even playing the same sport. Cutting corners in the name of profit has a chance of harming someone, and while it is definitely wrong, there is not even a remote comparison to the actions of demonstrated sociopathic behavior to harm, kill, and decapitate eight-year-olds watching a marathon.
I don't really see the distinction here. Active intent vs. passive intent to harm others that means that you known that the actions you are taking will hurt, maim, or kill others and that, one way or another, you are OK with that. To say that passive acceptance of one's actions as leading to the ruining and death of others is not as bad as actively going on and committing murder is silly, either way you are justifying your actions and you had the same end result.
> Let's say, for a moment, that Stallman is right, and that the chemical plant owners willfully traded employee safety for money. That's wrong. However, inability to realize that a human being intentionally killing and maiming fellow human beings using explosive devices on the streets of a populated city during a marathon, demonstrating full intent to kill and complete disregard for the free agency of children as young as 8, and blowing people's limbs off on purpose, is the mark of a sociopath.
If you willingly traded employee safety for sake of profit and knew that doing so could reasonably hurt or kill others, you have demonstrated an intent to kill and demonstrated complete disregard for the free agency of people. That the tactics differ between someone dropping a bomb in a crowd vs. someone abusing their business and employees doesn't change the reality that both are doing something evil and destructive to society.
> You concern me if you present an argument to me along these lines, that we should "care more" about the chemical plant or auto accidents on the interstates in a day or ... whatever.
The point is that there are common issues in our society that cause greater loss of life and damage compared to less frequent events like bombing a crowd or a mass shooting. That doesn't mean that a bombing isn't bad or that it is less important. However, these kinds of events receive much more attention and coverage compared to those common dangers.
> I'm more and more convinced lately that the people in my life who have arguments with me like this, including Richard Stallman, are sociopaths, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make active strides to remove these people from my life, and so should you; the complete disregard of basic social empathy, the understanding of why normal human beings consider the Boston bombings a life-changing event but the chemical plant marginally less so, indicates to me a conscience that is capable of thinking unspeakable things.
For some, the chemical plant incident is more of a life-changing event than the Boston bombings. We should have empathy to see this and consider that hearing alternative points of view may provide a richer perspective about how these events affect our lives and the lives of others. If you reject anyone who doesn't agree with you about how important the Boston bombing is, you are saying that you are not interested in empathy in the first place because you are placing your experience and sharing of that experience as more important than others.
The guy who goes to deliberately kill a bunch of people by bombing is probably very much not a sociopath, because a sociopath is someone who sees other people as expendable.
That matches the psychology of someone who doesn't give a shit. Which is your corporate CEO who didn't give a damn about the risks of the chemical plant.
A terrorist bomber may very well care deeply. He might be motivated by hatred. He may be motivated by vengeance. He may think his victims really have it coming to them. He may in fact be the exact opposite of a sociopath.
Actually if his comment causes the poster to reflect on the fact that perhaps this was a mistake in the first place and a lesson to be learned, the poster and anyone reading this thread might be better off.
I don't see any reason his comment should be down-voted, the others just sound emotional and butthurt about the situation. Sorry you guys are so torn about this stuff, but if anything is useless, it's this meta-conversation about his comment.
If you participate here -- myself included -- this is a message to heed.