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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: JohnM who wrote (211810)12/16/2012 1:29:45 PM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (1) of 541141
 
I want to make sure I understand this statement...

<We can argue that these acts are such that the perpetrator must have been mentally unstable.>

So, it is your opinion that there is some sort of operational confirmation bias to say ex post facto that "normal" people don't do this so QED they are insane?

If I walk into a room and a guy has just buried an ax into the head of all his coworkers, it is circular to say that he is mentally ill? I don't think so. I think back to where I was really angry at a local merchant in college when I was more brash and foolish. I felt he had cheated me and was deceptive, charging more to diagnose a TV than the TV was worth. The repair would have doubled the cost of replacement - and I was living on the edge as it was. My impulse (even though I owned guns) was not to go down and shoot him but to superglue his locks - a major expense and inconvenience equal to what he had done to me. I didn't do it but that was my impulse and fantasy.

I would argue that if I told my shrink that I was thinking about shooting him and his family, plus all the people that went to his church, that such thoughts are a completely different scale and anger level than keying his car or gluing his locks.
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