[ExI] insanity plea

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 25/02/2013 03:18, Anders Sandberg ha scritto:
> On 24/02/2013 20:08, spike wrote:
>> Ja agree sir, but you understate your case in an important way. Just
>> the discussion of the possibility of restricting gun ownership to the
>> mentally ill would compel the mentally ill to refuse to seek treatment
>> for fear that they could lose the ability to purchase a firearm. 

> OK, maybe I am terribly European here, but that argument sounds pretty
> crazy to me. How many people regard their ability to buy guns more
> important than seeking treatment if they can?

I know of a patient showing himself at the psychiatric ward with an ax
because the psychiatrist refused to sign a certification he was healthy
enough to have a driver license. Obviously he ended in a psychiatric
hospital for criminally insane even if there was no one hurt.

And another patient forging his driver license because he was unable to
renew it.

> I could be able to see it in regards to driver's licences, since not
> having one in the US is presumably severely handicapping, so presumably
> people would not seek treatment for disorders that would impair their
> ability to get one. How many people avoid having their epilepsy or bad
> eyesight diagnosed because of this? Surely some, but enough to be a
> serious problem?

The same could be said about crazy people owning guns.
The great majority of psychiatric cases are less dangerous than common
people and never end in any psychiatric ward voluntarily or forcedly
committed. A little minority end in a psychiatric ward sometimes during
their life. And a smaller minority again is forcefully committed. Even
less are forcefully committed because they are violent and dangerous.

They are dangerous with a gun as much they are dangerous with a knife.

In my experience, the more dangerous are the psychopathics with low IQ.
They feel no empathy, are unable to think ahead the repercussions of
their acts and have problem to self control themselves.
It is like interacting with a shark.

> Discrimination happens when people are judged along irrelevant
> dimensions, for example by membership in some group that actually
> doesn't relate to the matter. When J.S. Mill defended the rights of
> women he pointed out that even if his opponents were right and women on
> average were mentally unfit for higher studies, that still did not work
> as a motivation for banning them from universities. Some women would no
> doubt be smart enough. Hence the group membership did not matter, only
> the actual individual level of smarts.

Unfortunately, the current way of thinking is all mired in quotas.
After the current elections in Italy the PD (Democratic Party) are
boasting how they have 40% of women elected (greater share of all other
parties) and the M5S (Five Star Movement of Grillo) have the elected
with the lower median age (32-33 years).

The same is true for Medical Degrees in the US and Italy. More women but
there is no indication the quality of the workforce is increasing.

> Whether somebody can handle a gun responsibly seems to be what really
> matters: if the new rules just say that people in the group "mentally
> disordered" cannot have guns, then they are discriminatory and wrong.
> But if they say that people that do have responsibility problems can't
> have guns, then they make sense.

The problem is the "responsibility" problems are usually detected too
late, after the fact. This is exacerbated by a social problem.
Individuals are shielded from personal responsibility a lot longer than
in the past, so many mature without the ability to take responsibility
of what they do or don't and many irresponsible people are detected too
late.

I see a lot of people breaking down as they must move from school (High
School or University) to the workforce. They simply have never developed
the ability to manage themselves without external help. Even very
intelligent people. They simply are unable to manage the stress of a
job. Some settle for a low stress job (like flipping burger or likes)
and others simply develop a lot of symptoms that, in the end, are their
way to avoid to take a job whatsoever with all his rules, rhythms,
expectations, etc.

Mirco