The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Frankly if you don't know a couple different animals wearing human skin that should be put down, you probably don't know enough about people.
Who can really solve this problem? Many of these psychopaths figure out ways to fit in the crevices of society where the state can't or won't get to them. Ticking time bombs.
I'm all for giving kids a fair shake, but once you get into the double digits IMO I haven't seen a freak like this change their stripes.
Many people would call people like you, who call for other human beings to be murdered because you perceive them as animals, a psychopath, or someone with anti-social tendencies at the very least.
So what are you saying here? That there are no such thing as psychopaths? There's never been a human with an outsize negative effect on society? Your moralizing tone doesn't make you any more convincing.
I'm a borderline pacifist that abhors violence. But if you disagree with my assertion you are either a teenager with too little life experience or willfully ignorant.
I am not saying either. Ofcourse there are people who have been a net negative to society throughout their lives. It's good to know that you abhor violence, but your initial statement didn't come across that way. I am saying that even the people who are a net negative to society and are psychopaths are still human (not animals) and don't deserve to be murdered ("put down"). I believe it is immoral to kill people except as a last resort (for self-defense). There are many other things we could do with these people instead of killing them that will still make society safer.
In my (admittedly most extreme) example we're literally talking about people who start by murdering, raping, and robbing other people their whole lives.
Then they have more children, addled by drugs from birth and neglect from the jump. Who kick things off by consuming vast quantities of resources from families that adopt them. The exact same problems, but geometrically multiplied for each generation. And they're fast too, because getting knocked up the first at 16 means more meth quicker.
These are rare examples, yes. Fractions of a percent. But to repeat: it's not a morally superior stance to look at the rivers of blood and treasure consumed by tiny fractions of society, then to just throw up your hands and say "oops, guess we can't fix it!". It's the absolute worst version of the tragedy of the commons.
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Like what? I’m trying to imagine some institutional entity set up to try and maximize the productive labor value of people like this girl; such an entity would need to devote a very onerous amount of money, time, and resources just to making sure she doesn’t fuck something up massively. This is money spent just to make sure she isn’t a huge net negative; that’s long before we’ve gotten anywhere near turning her into a net positive. We also need to make sure such an entity does not give her access to anything important with which she could channel her obvious devotion to cause into a genuinely destructive action.
So, what sort of menial, non-impactful tasks are we setting her to, such that if she decides to do something horrible she can’t have much impact, but she still has the capacity to represent an economic (or even social) net positive, after taking into account everything required to keep her from doing something horrible?
Feature, not a bug. Plus, all the boys and men whose lives are graced by her presence should Have Some Empathy and take her accusations on the chin like a Real Man (where each accusation needs to be thoroughly investigated by The Authorities).
It reminds me of a Reddit thread about a female illegal immigrant committing a DUI homicide (no, not the jetski incident, a different female illegal immigrant homicide while operating a motor vehicle likely under the influence).
The perpetrator was sentenced to multiple years in prison, and a Redditor bemoaned that we don’t treat Persons of Justice Involvement (especially those of Color) with enough Compassion, and it would be better for Society to give her a second chance instead of ruining two lives over a little DUI whoopsie while waiting for her citizenship documentation. A wrongthinker replied that it is awfully coincidental that what’s promoted as good for society always sounds suspiciously similar to what would be good for the criminal(s) under discussion.
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We don't have to necessarily try and maximize the productive labor value of such people. Even locking them up in prison and giving them the necessities to live is better than killing them. Many people with dysfunctional lives have mental illnesses that can be treated, or they can be institutionalized. There are constraints on how many resources can be spent on fixing such people right now because we live in a resource-constrained society. This is becoming less of an issue as we grow wealthier and technology advances though, and eventually I believe we will be able to give everyone what they need due to AI. I think the main reason we don't see a lot of change in mentally ill and psychopathic people is because we don't spend a lot of resources to identify the origin of their issues in detail and give appropriately personalized treatment to fix them in the first place (understandably so, but that doesn't mean that nothing can be done to fix them). I will also note that most psychopaths grow up into productive people because they are intelligent enough to understand the incentive systems created by society.
I think a huge cause of the issue with the girl in question is also that she is a child. I don't claim to understand her mindset fully, but she doesn't seem to want to be purposefully causing harm to people around her. I think her actions would be a lot more destructive if that were the case. I think it is possible that this particular girl will stop trying to do things such as break into other people's house for fun when she becomes older, has more responsibilities and her actions have consequences that directly impact her life. As of now, her actions don't have that many consequences. She gets to live in a decently wealthy house with attentive parents and have all her needs met without having to work for them. Punishments like grounding aren't really negative if you don't care about them much. She would probably also stop it now if she was in a harsher incentive system. I don't think she would behave in the same manner if she had to work to get money for her necessities like food and clothing, she couldn't steal and would be placed in jail like adults if she did anything illegal or harassed people, and had more things to worry about just like adults. We don't do that because it is considered child abuse, but I wouldn't say that we have explored all the options just because her parents take her to counselling, try to make her understand the consequences of her actions, and institute disciplinary measures that don't affect her very much.
But she didn't. She is intelligent enough to understand those incentive systems created by society to purposefully cause harm to others.
Her actions were already seriously destructive. Tantamount to attempted murder, in fact. Preventing it already required her to be locked up, and that has already put the rest of the family in danger.
She really isn't (Western fiction about the age of adulthood aside); note that your suggested solution is to treat her like the adult she clearly is. Mine is too, of course- adults attempting murder get adult punishments (including and up to physical removal), and that's OK. The British hanging tables have data matching youth body types for a reason.
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Not trying to beat you up with responses here, but I both:
You want to be fair to this child. I want to be fair to everyone else.
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