NOT GOOD, Connecticut shooter was diagnosed with Aspergers..

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[quote="chard1973"]I came across this thread via Google. I know no one of autism or aspergers. I only know what I see on Parenthood.
I am saddened and sickened by what happened.
But I wanted to comment on the thread title.
Why is it Not Good?


Hi, 'Not Good!' for me is like a colloializm (sp?) and simularly could be used like 'Oh My', or 'Oh Dear' word usage used by earlier generations.

If things go bad for me I can walk around muttering, "not good, not good"...........to myself while I sort of measuring the situation I find myself in. I likely am doing so in the early phase of 'proccessing out loud' and as yet do not have more mental images about the situation nor what would be a solution.

I am a very verbal ASPIE. Many of us are not, except in type. So I just reconized this 'catch phrase' and thought it fit the situation perfectly.

Now that was a 'literal answer' as that is how my brain thinks. I am trying to be kind to you as I like people who ask questions. Since you are likely what we refer to as an NT nero-typical. You might have been posing a theroretical inquiry and want to have us give you various feed back.

<grin I have been studying NTs>

Hope this helps and that you keep asking questions your whole life.

Spocks Daughter
age 60

If guns murdered all those people last year, just think how many repetitive elbow injuries playboy magazine caused???

Guns never murdered anyone. Gun wielders have done the murder.

In the area around Lancaster, Pennsylvania there have been a rash of drive by shunnings committed by Amish. Should we outlaw buggies?

ruveyn

Of course guns are murdering people.

Look at the statistics - the numbers don't lie. The number of gun-related deaths is significantly lower in countries where guns aren't sold freely.

To date, there has never been a single school shooting in my country. Why? Because getting a gun is a hard and complicated process (with mandatory psychological test and thorough criminal record check).

I'll bet countries with no cars have fewer traffic accidents too...

Entering the midst of the media maelstrom now...it's a full blitz blizzard.

Why was my last post to this thread deleted?

Americans need to ask a serious question at this point: let the country devolve into the Left Bank which it seems to be quickly doing over the past years or are we willing to confront some fundamental truths about ourselves, that we require something more than a steady diet of nihilism, paranoia and hatred?

You're kidding right?

There's only two choices at this point. One, you take guns away from people but in the US, banning simply does not work. It goes against with fundamental American principles of freedom, self determination and personal protection. It isn't really an option in this country. Second option is to try to change people's fundamental view and philosophy of life. Sounds like brainwashing to an extent but would actually be easier than taking away the guns.

One thing that's caught my attention is a logical "maneuver" that comes up on this forum ALL OF THE TIME which is now being trotted out on national news shows.

Namely, when an association between Asperger's/autism and some objectionable trait or behavior is proposed, those on the defense will quickly cobble together a kind of "Asperger's version" of that trait/behavior and draw all kinds of definitive, often black and white contrasts between the normal trait/behavior and the Asperger's version that show the two are, in reality, utterly different. This maneuver comes up most reliably in discussions about empathy (do you mean affective empathy or cognitive empathy?) and laziness/"autistic inertia". But it comes up in many other autism-related topics, too.

Last night, I saw it invoked by a staff doctor on a national news show, in response to a question about violence and Asperger's, that people with autism are capable of "spontaneous bursts of violence" but not "planned out" or premeditated violence as was recently carried out.

Number one, not only is this distinction virtually meaningless in many cases (possibly the one in question), this guy is drawing the "severity" cutoff line SUPER LOW in making this judgment. If this was used as a diagnostic criteria, it would rule out a huge number of high functioning Aspies. For all we know, all the "planning" that went into this shooting was this guy thinking, "You know, I'd like to do something awful" one too many times, and then realizing that he could off his mother and take her car (and gun). How many people here are, on account of their autism, incapable of doing this? I mean, obviously I expect that, necessarily, a very small fraction of people would feel any impulse to mow down a bunch of kids, much less kill their mother, etc. But the "planning" of it...I don't know about you, but I do about as much planning in the process of taking my morning dump.

Statistics, as always, are so malleable...anyone can point to the fact that most people with Asperger's aren't prone to do something like this and try to dismiss it...how about we just look at the people who've actually done these things? These disturbed loners/losers/etc.

Does Ted Kaczynski strike you as an Aspie? Just a little, maybe? And he was a hell of a planner. If you look at serial killers, school shooters, etc. you'll find an AMAZINGLY high incidence of people who fit the profile of Asperger's or are part of the "Broader Autism Phenotype" or whatever they call it. Like, way too many for it to be a coincidence.

But will this ever be addressed, studied, discussed, etc.? No. It's verboten. But events like this shooting could be enough to get people talking.

Above all, people like to feel safe. In addition to that, there's a tendency in people to not to want to adjust all the thoughts they have on one issue or another. So faced with the option of having to accept that any person could, at any time, just go and shoot up a school, they choose not to accept that idea. It contradicts too much of (a) what they think they know and (b) what they'd like to believe. That's where the "exception to the rule" explanation comes in. Have you noticed that whenever something happens like a school shooting, the first thing that's done is the shooter is separated from "normal" people? They have a different religion, a different home life, a different way of dressing, they act differently, they have a different mental/developmental state than everyone else, etc. They separate the perpetrator from everyone else and single them out and tell themselves that they're safe because the majority of people are not like this person...and at the same time, some unsuspecting minority takes the fall for something that has potentially nothing to do with them.

The harsh truth is not only that bad things happen...it's worse than that: not only bad people but even otherwise good people do awful things sometimes...and for NO reason. (Note that I'm not implying that this guy was good, I'm just saying that someone doing something truly awful doesn't mean they were truly awful every other second of their lives.) We, as people think that because we do things for a reason, everyone else must be the same but it's not always the case. Sometimes awful things just happen and even if you could ask the person who did it, they wouldn't necessarily be able to give you any straight answer...because there isn't one. But that is a truly terrifying thought -- which is why any intelligent news organization would rather use a scape goat than scare people even more by telling them the truth.

The fact that anyone was hurt or killed is a tragedy...but placing blame on a widely-misunderstood minority that, because of sometimes obvious social differences, can be easily singled out of the crowd and harassed...or worse...well, that's taking one tragedy and making it into potentially two. These news organizations should be ashamed -- and criminally liable for the way they're presenting things. It's clear that their need to make high ratings is considerably more important than the lives of innocent people which is just plain disgusting.

They should stick to facts...I mean the autism spectrum has as much to do with violence as an internal combustion engine has to do with bananas...

You know what comes to mind here? This book from probably the most obnoxious author I've ever read anything from: Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In this book he wrote called "The Bed of Procrustes" he wrote this story about how this man, in ancient times used to prey on unsuspecting travelers by putting them in his bed. If they were too tall, he'd cut them down to size -- literally. If they were too short, he'd stretch them. He brought up the idea of how we try to make the world fit our ideas instead of doing the more intelligent thing of adjusting our ideas to the world around us.

The reason this comes to mind is because of the labels people feel the need to give mentally ill individuals. While groups of people have certain things in common, we too often get stuck in those labels and discard information that would otherwise be useful. For instance, if a doctor wants to diagnose a mentally ill patient and they have all the symptoms of depression but only one or two symptoms of anxiety -- not enough for a diagnosis -- then they'll likely be diagnosed with depression but not anxiety. This is because there's no label for that different level of anxiety as of yet. Does it mean they're not anxious? No. It means the world is more concerned with labels than accuracy. You see this everywhere with diagnoses and it's because if doctors made diagnoses with consideration to each and every possible symptom, there'd likely be one new disease with every new patient that came in! While this isn't feasible for doctors to write down or for insurance companies to process, it should be what happens when approaching someone. People are individuals, not the labels they're given.

Though they might be able to find some correlation between this diagnosis or that diagnosis and violence, the truth is, some percentage of any given group is violent. It would probably be wiser to put that effort towards paying more individual attention towards people than trying to categorize people, don't you think?

Drugs are associated with poverty, so let's end poverty by banning drugs.

This is why we shouldn't confuse association with causation. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I may as well point out that the association between guns and violence is paltry at best. Most statistics trying to make this connection focus broadly on the US violent rate because we lead the world in terms of per-household gun ownership, but Switzerland which has the second highest rate of handgun ownership in the world has a low rate of violence, even fur Europe. Clearly, then, guns in and of themselves are NOT the most significant factor. There have been studies which show that social cohesion is.

Finally I'd like to point out two associations which make a lot of sense to me, that is 1) that nearly all the mass shootings in this country are committed in gun-free zones and 2) the cities with the highest murder rates are the hardest for law-abiding citizens to own guns.

I think it would be best devoted to real conversation and education. Not the blatant and ludicrous type of spin you get on this site and from autism rights advocated.

It's actually lines of thought in this country and fundamental social philosophy that I blame for violence and it's all kinds of violence, not just with guns. It can be any kind involving any weapon, even fists and feet. America lacks that basic ethos or whatever it is and until we manage to create a collective ethos, the rate of violence will continue to increase.