Bombadil
12d ago
Any recommendations on how we're supposed to square that circle?
The simple answer is flipping the burden of proof. Institute a presumption of sanity just like there is a presumption of innocence. The blackbox nature of what precisely happened in your head at the scene, probably makes proving insanity so hard that it's basically only possible if you recently escaped a psych ward. Is that really acceptable though, if it means that you miss a lot of people who legitimately were not in control of themselves when it happened?
You could also keep the burden on the prosecution but reduce the criteria to "more likely than not". "It is most likely she was sane as we see evidence of planning, prior abuse, etc."
Or you could combine the two and shift the burden to the defense, but all they have to prove is that she was more likely than not to be psychotic. Show that she had a history of past episodes and no history of abusing the kids. Or something like that. This still leaves the issue of how responsible she was in managing her illness. It sounds like she may have been doctor shopping and stopping her medication without medical guidance. In that case, I would imagine there is an argument that she knowingly caused this risk for her kids and should at least be held somewhat liable for what happened.
I can only hope if I'm charged with a crime to have a particle physicist on my jury for whom five sigma (p < 3e-7) is a reasonable threshold for conclusions.
lol
The burden to prove that she was not insane has been on the prosecution, so the legal argument here might be sound. It seems like a weird way to trial murders though. Why doesn't every murderer in Massachusetts just go for the insanity defense? Such an assertion seems impossible to conclusively disprove in most cases.
Bombadil
14d ago
Standardized methods is one way. This at least lets you compare between studies that use the same methods, and thus determine if you find the same thing. The best methods have clearly defined scopes that indicate what they are and are not looking for. So the authors should be well aware of limitations well before starting their studies.
You are also supposed to be aware of your biases and validity threats, and admit to them in your writing so that the reader can easily understand your limitations.
It's just that a lot of researchers don't do this. I remember reading feminist papers, cited by journalists and used in political arguments, that make conclusions not supported by their results or where the methods are clearly designed to create a bias which is never admitted. The opportunity for rigor was clearly there, but the authors and reporters decided to forego it.
Bombadil
16d ago
citizens gain additional votes by doing various salutary things: starting a family and not divorcing, operating a profitable business, gaining education and so on.
Isn't this basically a return to "the only people who can vote are property owners over the age of 30", except this time it's gender neutral? At least the prosocial things you list, are generally attained with age, so it should work out to be fairly similar.
Bombadil
16d ago
If she actually is mentally ill, then consenting to treatment is taking responsibility. Agreeing to be locked up until she is cured (which may never happen) is taking accountability for what happened.
Bombadil
16d ago
Clancy is still getting punished. Spending years in a hospital for the criminally insane is not a good thing.
But I agree that many women seem fine with positive discrimination. When they claim their hormones cause them to be irrational, the purpose is to elicit sympathy. They don't want it to be used as an argument to take away opportunities.
Bombadil
16d ago
I can get behind the motivation being the dividing line. And evidently, there does exist sexist men who believe women and men should be treated differently. Just the idea that women should be treated more gently and men more harshly is arguably sexist, although also very accepted as long as you package it right. "Don't hit women!" "You can't say that about a girl!" And so on.
The chuds are doing the more classically sexist thing, where they argue that women are incapable of controlling their emotions and having logical discussions, so they should stay away from careers that require this.
Though to your point, I agree that not every man called sexist is one. There are a good amount of people using the word to discredit people or silence conversations for their own gain, when the accusation is totally unwarranted which in turn waters down the seriousness of the word until it becomes something you can call yourself with little risk.
Bombadil
17d ago
That's fair. My main point is that malice does not factor into racism either. FtttG claimed that the only way something is racist is if the motivation is to bring harm to the other race. I outlined a different motivation that is not about actively harming anyone, but still leads to a racist decision. My point is that racism is simply discrimination based on race. Whether your motivation for this discrimination is neutral or harmful does not change that.
Bombadil
17d ago
It's society's over-correction when it comes to freeing women while ignoring what still ails men.
Society doesn't just ignore men. Men are being sacrificed at the altar of women's rights. Gender quotas will by their nature discriminate against men. MeToo made it possible for women to climb the career ladder while throwing men under the buss. Male sexuality has been demonized and made out to be inherently predatory. The US has issues with title IX laws and using the Duluth model to respond to domestic violence.
So not only are existing problems unaddressed. New problems have been created and either ignored, or passed of as equality victories.
Bombadil
17d ago
Sure, but belief + said decision is still racism, even if there was no desire to harm anyone behind it. And that type of decision making is often what people want to spread awareness about and litigate against.
Bombadil
18d ago
The first definition absolutely makes sense too. You just have to expand it and include a potential conclusion to that line of thinking.
Belief: Black people generally have lower IQ than whites.
Conclusion: I will not waste time interviewing black people as I don't want low IQ people for this job.
The problem is that just because a population of black people have lower IQ's, that doesn't mean an individual black person cannot have a high IQ and pull the average up. If his application otherwise looks good, it would be unfair to judge him merely on the color of his skin.
This kind of discrimination based on belief may not be intended to cause harm, but it is still obviously racist.
Bombadil
18d ago
While actual complete 100% equality is probably impossible, it is still an ideal worth striving for. There are many cases where striving for objectivity is the best we can do, and once people stop doing that, leaning into their biases instead, the value of what they are doing plummets.
This is part of what is wrong with journalism and academia. Standards have shifted so far towards "bias can never be avoided" that presenting your own POV as objective fact while ignoring the other side is increasingly accepted, because everyone is biased anyway so it is pointless to try and mitigate it.
It is well known that no trial is completely fair. Lawyers literally try to pack juries in a way that make them favorable to their clients. But the law should still strive for objectivity and try to get as close as possible, otherwise it will only become more dystopian with time.
Bombadil
18d ago
if you assume men and women are already equal, then the number of crimes committed against them should match
Not necessarily. You can assume equality before the law while also acknowledging that there are overall differences between the genders. Men may commit more violent crimes than women, but in each trial the judgement should be based on the specific case rather than the person's gender. The differences in crime rates would be caused by nature or nurture, neither of which the law is capable of controlling directly.
Again, I remind you that feminists have tried using the law as a blunt instrument to change the culture through gender quotas, which has not at all resulted in women being seen as more competent. Instead, they are regarded with increased scrutiny by coworkers, as there is no longer a guarantee that they were hired based on their skills.
Bombadil
18d ago
This is the same kind of talking point the leftists used to argue for preferential hiring of women.
"Biases in the population means it doesn't matter how fairly you write equality law. The only way to remove those biases is by forcibly including more women in workplaces, which will normalize it."
You are treading dangerous ground here. If anything, the rise of the chud indicates that explicitly giving preferential treatment to one gender will only result in resentment and backlash in the long run.
Bombadil
18d ago
Strict legal equality and equal opportunities were never the problem. The issue is that the goal was always equality of outcome, with the assumption that women were oppressed. So instead of A woman and man with the same skillset and drive will have the same opportunities in life, the goalpost moved to the idea that less than equal representation is a sign of discrimination, while women doing better than men is a sign of equality.
This belief is what justifies the current state of affairs. Swapping the genders around so men are now seen as the oppressed group might feel good, but won't solve much in the long run. Rolling back to strict legal equality while recognizing that innate differences between genders will likely results in non-50% representation in many fields, seems much better.
In other words, you could also look at this as a problem of the state trying to micromanage in order to reach a specific outcome. If the state realizes this doesn't work, a rollback to legal equality but this time we learn from experience and don't pass laws that escalate it, should be possible.
Bombadil
18d ago
Perhaps the chuds will also take over that competition by simply banning female doctors
I imagine this would cause the nurses and obstetricians to go on strike, and cause a huge shortage of doctors.
It was a win in the sense of inflicting great damage on the enemy while suffering relatively little damage yourself.
It was a failure in terms of creating a self-sustaining and western aligned country. The Taliban quickly regained power, and the Kurds who had worked with the Americans as allies were left behind to fend for themselves.
I would not call that situation a straight up loss, but I can't justify calling it a victory either, since the occupation ultimately could not manage to fulfill its goals, and everything it gained vanished shortly after it left.
Since they are arguing insanity, I would assume the problem was with the mother not the kids. Even having "easy" kids is taxing, and could aggravate existing mental health issues. Insanity also helps explain why you don't understand her, as the way you see reality during a psychosis is entirely different from what everybody else perceives. I am not sure it is possible to completely understand such a mindset without experiencing it yourself.
Bombadil
22d ago
If you are anti-AI or anti-big tech, then being anti-datacenter follows quite logically. There area many reasons as to why people hold those positions.
And of course the people who live near where the datacenters are set to be built have a stake in this, and will want to make sure that their communities benefit overall.
Oh, I did not know that was the case. I assumed that, since people are blaming the father and a lack of medical care, that the defense must be blaming some chronic condition. So I just assumed that post partum depression could somehow cause psychosis without looking further into it.
If it was a sudden onset emergency that could not have been foreseen, that changes thing. But then I don't really understand the rhetoric around it.
Bombadil
23d ago
Ironically, sanewashing the women who post about wanting to kill their own kids like this risks stigmatizing mental illness more. Psychotic people usually don't become murderers. Depressed mothers usually don't kill their kids. But trying to normalize it make it seem like this is the common course of the illness. Like post partum depression is something that takes over your body and uses it to kill kids.
If so, can any mother with PPD be allowed custody of her kids? If your family member has occasional psychotic breaks, can you ever allow them within vicinity of your children? Or yourself? If the illness is this uncontrollable and leads to such terrible outcomes, then surely anyone exhibiting symptoms should be committed to 24/7 care at a psych ward, as mothers with PPD are simply not in control of themself.
Bombadil
23d ago
I have also seen the argument float around that she is actually the victim of a society which didn't take her mental illness seriously until it was too late. This is happening to many other parents which is why they relate. I just don't quite think that works when
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She killed her own kids. That's a bit like saying Joaquin Phoenix's Joker was not responsible for the murders he committed.
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Much of the support is either in the form of denying she did it or "I understand, I want to kill my children too".
Overloaded hospitals + atomized society + rat race economy -> overloaded mother's. Taking care of newborns really should involve extended family and not just the parents.
Alternatively, I guess you can solve this problem by just throwing money at midwifes and expanding the maternity wards so that new mothers can stay there for a few days and recover (and maybe receive instructions on how to take care of the baby) after giving birth. That might prove challenging in the privatized healthcare system of the US, but could at least work in other countries.
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