
Kenneth Eng Is on the Other Side of Viral Now - ddulaney
https://www.popehat.com/2018/02/25/kenneth-eng-is-on-the-other-side-of-viral-now/
======
maxander
I think the key question of the article is finally asked explicitly near the
end:

> Why are we the way we are? Is Kenneth Eng a schizophrenic whose illness
> finds expression through florid racism? Or is he a racist asshole who is
> also schizophrenic?

In psychology there's the assumption that mood disorders and antisocial
delusions can be distinguished from non-pathological "being an asshole." I'm
not nearly well enough informed about psychiatry to say how this is done
clinically, or how quantitative these methods are. But cases like Eng show
that as a society we barely even try to make the distinction, or that our
ability to do so is profoundly lacking.

There's thousands of homeless people who are on the streets because they're
incapable of getting along socially or holding a real job. And a substantial
portion of humanity is prepared to leave it at that; they didn't do anything
to earn money or companionship, and they don't have what they didn't earn, so
all is well. But when you can quite clearly see that one of these people is
where they are because of an illness that, in better conditions, would be
treated and leave them a productive and happy member of society, that rings
hollow. The fact of the matter is that an amount of what we call "motivation,"
"agreeableness" or even "talent" come down to the functioning of relatively
simple, purely mechanistic biochemical processes, which can be subject to
incidental malfunction just as you can dislocate a joint or get an ingrown
toenail. If you want to assign blame the individual for one and not the other,
you have a lot of philosophical explaining to do.

~~~
jdietrich
>In psychology there's the assumption that mood disorders and antisocial
delusions can be distinguished from non-pathological "being an asshole."

Any decent psychiatrist readily accepts that nearly all psychological
diagnoses are based on quite arbitrary criteria. The problems you describe
arise from how the rest of society engages with psychiatry.

Clinically, a diagnosis is a crude but useful shorthand for reasoning about
how best to help someone who is experiencing distress or functional
impairment. Socially, that same diagnosis is a credential - something that
might entitle you to time off work, a welfare check or legal clemency. Moral
decisions about who deserves compassion and support have been delegated to
clinicians.

This isn't something that psychiatry can fix.

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purell_hack
I'm a big fan of Ken White (Popehat), his twitter feed is snarky and
informative. He has a new podcast on first amendment issues that is really
well done.

[https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-
law/](https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/)

~~~
mhneu
I like him too. Just be cautious - he's a contributing editor at Reason, which
is heavily funded by the Koches and tends to follow their agenda. I wish we
had decent smart right-wing voices that weren't co-opted by money from
billionaires, but they're pretty few and far between.

Ken White is close to that but the Reason and Fox connections taint him a bit.

Edit: after looking into it he's only got three articles at Reason and it
looks like 'contributing editor' is an overblown title. Phew. I want to like
him and think he's fair.

~~~
Fins
Out of curiosity, what exactly is wrong with Kochs' "agenda"? And where does
Reason follow it blindly?

~~~
mcguire
The Tea Party Kochs, or the anti-over-criminalization Kochs? The anti-climate-
legislation Kochs or the NOVA Kochs?

------
bitwize
I have a physical copy of _Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate_. I was hoping for a
bad-lit treasure, much like my physical copy of _Sass Girls X_ by Imari
Stevenson -- but aside from being written by the man who so desperately wanted
to talk about "dragons that can wield metal" on Fox News, and the brilliant
cover image of a dragon with Hanna-Barbera spaceman armor and weaponry
fighting a fluffy monster dragon, the book, I am sad to say, is profoundly
_boring_.

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rhcom2
Makes me think of Terry Davis and Bobby Fischer. Mental illness can make it
hard to be compassionate, but it is still illness.

~~~
theoh
I guess you mean illness as opposed to malicious behaviour. But what human
behaviour is not conditioned by biological and environmental factors? There's
nobody we can point at and say "this person is evil, not sick, and should
actually be held responsible for their behaviour".

~~~
tinymollusk
As a dense primer on the subject, I'm reading Sapolsky's book "Behave". It was
recommended by Gates and Mike Mouboussin as the best book they read in 2017.

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criddell
Krebs linked to this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4fjMhGn-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK4fjMhGn-I)

It's kind of hard to watch. The guy wasn't well.

~~~
lomnakkus
... and shame on the network for actually airing it, but I suppose such is the
way of "following the money" at all cost to morality. "BIG STORY"? What the
fuck?

This level of exploitation is pretty sickening.

~~~
tempodox
To the average media digestive system, a personality like Eng is like fast
food on steroids. Most other celebrities go through a rather lengthy media
life cycle of build-up and tear-down, but Eng was instantly destroyable and
ready to be made fun of. Sadly, this kind of handling wasn't really
surprising.

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andyv
The documentary "I am another you" (on Amazon, last I looked) is a great film
about mental illness. The documentarian is attracted to the subject of her
film based on his perceived freedom, which turns out to be an illusion.

My Best Picture of 2017.

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DyslexicAtheist
takes a serious turn quickly:

 _" Where do people like Kenneth Eng come from, and where do they go after
their virality pops like a soap bubble? Surely they differ. But Kenneth Eng
came from mental illness, to which he returned. How many other people we gawk
at are like him?"_

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gjvc
is this the Mr Smalltalk guy?

~~~
qohen
No, Mr. Smalltalk is Richard Kenneth Eng, a Canadian software-engineer:

[https://medium.com/@richardeng](https://medium.com/@richardeng)

~~~
gjvc
Well, the original poster should have made that clear, given the audience of
this site.

~~~
gjvc
Why the downvote?

------
AceJohnny2
... How's Terry Davis doing these days?

For those here unaware, he's the schizophrenic author of TempleOS, a weird
64bit OS. He used to post on HN, though they were usually racist or religious
rants, so that he eventually got banned (I think).

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-
lonel...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj43x/gods-lonely-
programmer)

Sounds like he's homeless:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105043)

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stevenh
I wonder how different his quality of life would have been if he had grown up
in an Asian ethnostate.

