[ExI] insanity plea

[Mike Dougherty]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:35 AM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
> If they fail their background check to own a gun, then they are also too
> crazy to work for me; I will not hire.  We are heading toward a requirement
> for universal background checks for anyone wanting to buy a gun.  These I
> favor, for there are a number of non-evil uses I can think of in providing
> complete public access to everyone’s arrest records and mental health
> records.  I will start by revealing my own: I have never been arrested or
> consulted a mental health professional.  There, see that didn’t hurt a bit.

For the sake of devil's advocate:  Since your metal health has not
been documented by a professional, I consider it a suspect data point.
 In the face of this unknown, I am unwilling to hire you until you
_have_ consulted a mental health professional.  I further suggest you
see my quack doctor[1] rather than your own.

Public health records are a bad idea in our current state of biased
judgement.  We're too quick to snap to a conclusion about someone from
scraps of information without considering how relevant it is to the
situation for which we're hiring someone (for example)  I see
insufficient advantage to the individual for making his or her
information public, especially in light of the disadvantage it may
cause.


[1] in addition to the usual notion of a 'quack doctor' I'd like to
submit something like this as alternative:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging