+ because he's a police officer.

Oh right. Allow me to correct myself: Your suggestion that all humans are inherently terrible is horrifying.

It appears I have selected the wrong venue for an open-minded discussion.



The good news is that most of us have adapted to it and have developed restraint (most of the time).

That's a funny way of spelling uncritical acceptance.

I'm sorry we couldn't be more accommodating of your opinion that all people are essentially evil and deserve whatever you accidentally.

Or you could just accept that not everyone has dangerous untreated personality disorders.

Man with obvious personality disorder denies personality disorders to blame. News at 11.

Other than Flirbnic, no one has offered any response that contains any substance.

"You're wrong lol WTF religion" has been the theme of the day.

For the record, my criticism of your belief is that evil is a wholly relative concept which has a very long history of being perverted by people in power to convince people exactly like you to do utterly vile things. It's not clear to me why you think this response lacks substance.

And for the record, as of 1830 Sunday night, I'm not in law enforcement anymore. It's pedantic and unfulfilling. I start my new job next week.

"I dismiss comments critical of me as lacking merit because my beliefs don't offer any actual explanation of anything, and as such I am unable to formulate a complex response to criticism."

I've never heard police work described as pedantic before, but congratulations on finding a better career. Even though it's probably more dangerous than police work.

On average.

And I do want to say Steven, as a person, I am sorry that you had to be there, and I am glad that someone chose to respond to situations like this. I don't agree with your opinions but I'd never belittle what you've gone through or what effect it will have on you.

That is kind of you. Thank you.

I had responses to various things typed up, but my sausage fingers can't work this little phone screen. I'll get back to it tonight.

Traumatic experiences can have serious effects on our own mental health. I know that after witnessing the aftermath of my father's suicide I harbor some uncomfortable feelings toward him. It's very complex and I haven't yet found a way to fully process what it actually makes me feel.

However, I acknowledge what feeling certain things says about my state of mental health, and it's not as black or white as stating that thinking one thing or another makes me good or bad.

It doesn't take religion. All it takes is the power of accurate observation.

They should have never been in a position to cause harm in the first place, yet as of today, we still don't have any functional mechanisms that allow us to prevent incidents such as selling firearms to the mentally or emotionally unstable, probably because activists would cry discrimination. I'm not for banning firearms, but they should be far more controlled. There is no reason for a responsible, healthy adult not to own a firearm for his own protection, sport (hunting, target practice, etc) simply because others deem it unnecessary or feel uncomfortable. I am 100% convinced that if you disarm everyone, only criminals will be armed, creating an enormous demand in gun black markets, literally making illegal gun trade factions grow to unprecedented scales, making a situation that could be contained with minor regulation, into a worst case scenario. I've read the argument that the probability of needing a firearm to defend your home from a home invasion is so low that it is an unnecessary investment, considering the risks. I find this argument to be invalid for the simple fact that it assumes crime rates will remain constant, when in fact the economy of any country (as demonstrated in recent history) can go terribly wrong, giving way to mass growth of crime, therefore, increasing the probability exponentially of facing such a situation. TL;DR (regulate gun sales, don't ban them).

I'm not going to quote the posts challenging the notion that everyone is inherently evil (which I'm not sure why people consider this a religious idea), I will simply give my take on the notion, everyone has the capacity of doing evil, and sometimes it doesn't take much for them to use it.

No it requires the type of myopic disillusionment typically only found in the hyper religious. You're unique in that you've arrive at that state of mind through a different type of delusion than religious people: That your life turned out poorly because that's just how the world is, not because you made mistakes.

Whether you're religious or just a miserable ******* who refuses to take responsibility for his own flaws, the world is not fundamentally bad. One way or another you're just engaging in self deception.

If you believe that the world is amazing and just then you're also being self-deceptive. It's pretty much just subjective.

.

.

.

When did I say that the world is omg amazing?

.

.

There are definitely reasons, other than 'elemental evil', that can explain situations similar to this one. In this particular case, I'm not particularly sure. It seems that he was the kind of person who would have resisted more serious intervention (at least by the time he turned 18). I think there are three choices:

1. Implement an extensive surveillance apparatus that relies on snitches. In the days prior to the shooting, the guy posted on the bodybuilding.com forums under his real name, posting photos of his car with the license plate number visible, as well as supplying videos showing him with his semi-famous parents at some Hollywood event. In his thread, the responses were split between accusations of trolling, being a of being "beta", or, most significantly, of psychopathy. In fact, one poster even wrote: "I hope this in an elaborate troll.. scary to think people like this exist. this is how shootings happen." Now, if there were a widely used way for people to "report" red flags like this to some central authority, an algorithm automatically could connect this with his record of having purchased a large amount of ammunition. Then the local police could instantly be notified, and be given addresses and license plate numbers. He also sent a last minute email to his family immediately before the act. Google (assuming he used gmail) could have algorithmically notified the police when it picked up words like "retribution". All in all, this system would probably fail miserably and simply result in a runaway police state dystopia.
2. Heavily restrict firearms so that violent young males have less power to kill people. Highly unlikely to happen.
3. Admit that we are lucky to have any semblance of a non-violent society in the first place, and move on to improving people's welfare in more meaningful ways. A rough calculation shows that about one person dies per week from automobile accidents in Santa Barbara County alone.

.

.

.

I mean, society as a whole could certainly improve if we devoted more funding to the development and well-being of children. I.e., decrease isolation in general*. A lot of responsibility lies with the parents. It would be nice if most families had decent wages, less hours, and were cultured / educated enough give their kids a healthy social life.

*decrease electronics ?

Ah, yeah. PUAhate. A website for people who fully embraced PUA and hate it for not being effective enough.

Right, my mistake, he totally wasn't the literal exact kind of misogynistic subhuman garbage that Emon and I are talking about and the fact that at least he never successfully victimized a woman means he is somehow different than other PUAs.

Uh huh.

Sure.

But how do we define "responsible, healthy adult"? Our entire legal framework is largely based on the protection of individual rights, to the point that proving somebody is either not "responsible" or not "healthy" is so cumbersome so as to be ineffective.

I think its more than just inner family environment. In general, all environments generally suck. Schools are filled with bullying, peer pressuring people into sex, drugs, drinking, sometimes violence and crime, for the sake of acceptance. While electronics play a big part, since they do allow ease of access to content that can be very impressionable upon minors who are in turn, in their family environment ignored, or feel inferior, and need to "grow up", gain "importance". I'm not saying this is the case in every family or school, but it is becoming the norm. Remember when it was weird to know of a girl who wasn't a virgin before 18? Notice how so many 14, even 12 year olds brag about their sex life today all over social networks? And this radical change has taken place in only a few decades, maybe less. I just want to point out, kids are ignored at home, pressured at school, and influenced on their main source of information, the internet. What is worse, these people have an extremely difficult time integrating into real life, once responsibilities kick in, and probably, a good amount of them can't cope with it.

Because guns are literally the only way that one human who wants to kill another human can go about it.
Oh wait. No, it isn't. It's common only because they're a convenient force-extender. Guns just make make knives and/or bludgeons go faster.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/08/30/harvard-gun-study-no-decrease-in-violence-with-ban/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm




No, I don't. And neither do you. It wasn't as visible or talked about, but that doesn't mean it was less common.
Did you know there are states where you can be married as young as 13?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_marriage_in_United_States_of_America
Did you know the age of consent in Delaware at one point was 7?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#History_2

.

I actually mentioned the electronics thing somewhat as a joke about something Wookie posted in another thread.

But looking at those crime statistics posted by Dormouse, I was reminded of the well known trend of consistently decreasing violent crime in the U.S. and the U.K., which (might?) coincide with increasing levels of interactive electronics into our lives. Obviously this is just speculation, but it would be funny if the reason for less violent crime was that kids these days are inside playing video games instead of looking for trouble.

.

I never said they were the only way humans kill each other, I just mentioned them because they are an example of weapon that requires more regulation to help lower the number of incidents where a mentally insane person can just walk into a gun shop and fill out paper work, get his weapons and commit a crime. It won't stop these type of incidents, but it should lower their incidence.




Yes I know those things, and yes I know that people got married and children at a much younger age in the past. However you are wrong, none of my class generations got laid until they were at least 16, some even waited until they were 21. This is not the case with current generations going though their puberty stages, who post every little thing they do on Facebook, twitter, and other social networks, accompanied sometimes by obscene photographs. The fact that kids get cell phones at a much younger age is also a contributing cause to this, as any teen can easily download an app on to their smartphone to hide pictures, can easily erase conversations, just a little common sense and they can hide their private life from their parents or relatives. This has been my experience, I have no elaborate study to back it up, because perhaps it is a regional thing. Perhaps in your area of the world such circumstances have always been public and commonplace, and have only grown slightly more visible with time, which is not the case here.

But SF_Gold, I would imagine California does in fact have such laws. It's just that Elliot Rodgers was not "mentally insane", in the eyes of the law, at the time he bought those firearms.

You have first-hand knowledge of this?
[RIGHT]
[/RIGHT]

You originally said 18. Now it's 16.

I guess you want us to take the average: (16 + 21) / 2 = 18.5

QED

:downs: