

Feeling Sorry for Tsarnaev - l33tbro
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/the-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-empathy-problem.html

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patio11
"They excuse the fact that he killed people, because he is attractive" seems
to be a sanity-saving reading of the anecdotes, here. The much more
straightforward reason is "They are attracted to him because he is a killer."

You could find a hundred kids at MIT who fit his general description. What's
your estimate on the mean number of Facebook groups created by fawning
fangirls they each have?

~~~
mecha
Well, Obama murders way more people with his Drones and yet he is attractive
well spoken and very likable. And liking Obama is very sane.

~~~
DannoHung
The biggest distinction is that he has been entrusted with the authority to
order the deaths of people. No one gave Tsarnaev carte blanche to kill. About
66 million people gave it to Obama.

~~~
psionski
That's not a very big distinction at all if you hold the realatively prominent
view that the masses are stupid and manipulated (their average IQ is 100, for
God's sake!).

~~~
Ntrails
Perhaps if you hadn't used average IQ as a measure of the populations ability
to decide on a leader I might have been able to take this comment seriously.

It is really no harder to manipulate or indoctrinate someone with a high IQ.
It's not a measure of resistance to the former.

Of course, a perfectly reasonable question is "how many people does it take to
give someone the right to kill?". If 66 million is enough, is 50 million? 10
million? How about a hundred thousand? Which countries, therefore, have
leaders with the moral backing to do so, and which are too small.

The idea that popular support makes murder acceptable is ludicrous in and of
itself, if you doubt this look at our depictions of Hitler.

~~~
DannoHung
I'm not saying that President Obama has the right to kill, really. The right
to kill is a really difficult moral question, though not in the case of
Tsarnaev.

Obama _has_ been given the authority to kill along the officially legislated
channels of his office. So, there is the distinction: Dzokhar Tsarnaev had no
authority to do what he did. What he did was also _clearly_ immoral.

President Obama has the authority. What he's doing is questionably immoral.
It's also not the only thing he does that affects people in a material way
good or bad.

~~~
psionski
A hypothetical scenario - someone straps bombs to himself and detonates in the
middle of a crowd. I think you'd agree that this is "clearly immoral" too? But
to the other members of the terrorist cell this is either a moral thing to do
or at least "questionably immoral", otherwise they'd have left the
organization.

This is the relativity of moral decisions and the only way out is to try to
define morality in absolute terms, which has resulted in many religions and
philosophical works. The purest (i.e. simplest) form of a moral framework is
that of Jainism - it promotes full restrictions on all forms of violence
except when necessary for survival (e.g. a farmer killing a farm animal to
feed his family).

This may seem like common sense, but it helps that it's defined in a simple
form. This is why we don't agree with Tsarnaev or terrorist groups - what they
do is not necessary for survival, it serves other purposes. This is why we
sometimes just as easily don't agree with president Obama's choices. It has
nothing to do with "proper channels", "authority" or any of those words.

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dantillberg
I've felt this myself - said to myself and others a number of times, "I kind
of feel bad for him" ... "it was really his older brother that was the psycho
villain."

I would contribute that in addition to superficial qualities which may have
swayed my judgment more than I've been aware, the mostly-unchanged narrative
since the day of his capture has been that his older brother was the real
sociopath/nutjob... that they both had poor family support and appear to have
been vulnerably "alone" in the US... that Dzhokhar would have looked up to and
depended on his brother, and that in a way Dzhokhar may not be an arch-villain
so much as a treacherously loyal younger brother duped into _acting_ as a
sociopath/nutjob.

Presumably, we'll hear words from Dzhokhar himself in the future and come to
second-guess our current judgments, but until then, his silence does himself a
favor.

That all said... I do wonder how much my story above is _really_ the majority
of the thought process I went through, or whether it's just a shallow
justification for a superficial judgment.

~~~
venomsnake
Whatever we hear from him will be the narrative his lawyers decide to present
to the public.

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tunesmith
This guy is conflating empathy with something else. Not sure what the word for
the something else is, but it's when you're charmed by someone attractive for
no good reason. That isn't empathy.

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xianshou
Reminds me of a conversation my friend and I had on the same subject. "He
seemed intelligent, talented, attractive, well-adjusted - why would he throw
everything away?" By far the easiest story to tell was that of a disturbed
older brother coercing his younger brother into an act of twisted loyalty. But
that narrative was created by the pictures...a halo effect run awry.

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jebeng
Am I the only one who looks at the picture and sees an arrogant, deluded,
asshole?

~~~
rdl
I am pretty sure I would have thought "hipster douchebag tool" based on his
photo, even without the bombing, rather than attractive, but it's admittedly
hard to test this scientifically now that he's so closely associated with the
jihadist murders in my mind.

~~~
lmm
How well does your notion of "hipster douchebag tool" correlate with the
general (female) population's notion of "attractive"?

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acqq
Funny, the first time I've read about that, I've remembered the lyrics of
Beatles'

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwells_Silver_Hammer>

    
    
    		Rose and Valerie, screaming from the gallery
    		Say he must go free
    		(Maxwell must go free)
    		The judge does not agree and he tells them
    		So, o, o, o.
    
    		But as the words are leaving his lips,
    		A noise comes from behind.
    
    		Bang! Bang! Maxwell's silver hammer
    		Came down upon his head.
    		Clang! Clang! Maxwell's silver hammer
    		Made sure that he was dead.

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rbanffy
I feel bad because this is not about religion or someone's deep convictions.
It's about politics and religious bullying turning people vulnerable to it,
who, in other circumstances could have lived unremarkable, moderately happy,
lives, into wannabe mass murderers. I feel bad for the victims, who did
nothing to deserve what happened, and for the society that tried to integrate
an immigrant family and failed without really doing anything wrong to them.

I feel bad because I can't quite get rid of the feeling all this could have
been easily avoided.

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ritchiea
Point well taken but don't we also communicate with our facial expressions
something greater than our genes? You are born with the color of your skin but
you are not born with the ability to listen to others, and listening is a
state of being generally communicated with your facial expressions.

I won't take this as far as it being a good idea to empathize with Tsarnaev
but there are definitely important aspects of human communication one has to
ignore to suggest facial expressions are as arbitrary as skin color.

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return0
Thats why one should be skeptical with "public opinion" that is often taken
into account in making decisions such as for example science or bio-ethics.
Informed or expert opinion is better.

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saber_taylor
I DNRTA, but I was listening to the radio and the lyrics sung were sung to the
contrary but I wasn't sure which one I agree with: "By a lady in black / And I
held my tongue / As she told me 'Son, / Fear is the heart of love'".

Not sure what to make of the number 72 being featured in the new Star Trek
film though since I only read the plot on Wikipedia.

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Decade
I didn't feel sympathy for Tsarnaev because of his cute face. I felt sympathy
because his case is under the jurisdiction of Carmen Ortiz, and from Aaron
Swartz we know what happens to people who cross Carmen Ortiz.

~~~
cookiecaper
>we know what happens to people who cross Carmen Ortiz.

They get prosecuted, kill themselves in angst, and then are unjustifiably made
into martyrs by the tech community?

~~~
Decade
No. From his friends' improvised performance art piece, "How Not to Destroy
Evidence," I'm guessing that Dzokhar deserves to have the book thrown at him.

It's just that it should be the book that's thrown at him. Legally. Ortiz has
a history of trying to win at all costs, even if it would destroy the lives of
harmless people.

I don't really care about Dzokhar. I worry about the continual erosion of
civil rights. Used to be that being an American citizen meant something. It
meant having the rights guaranteed by the 5th and 6th Amendments to the
Constitution. If the Bill of Rights does not apply to Dzokhar, then it doesn't
apply to anybody.

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camus
Dont feel sorry for him, he has a brain , did not use it that much.He could
have been anything he wanted , he seems handsome and smart , yet he chosed to
kill for nothing. He is responsible for his own mistakes and should pay the
price. Violence is never a solution. He hates what USA is doing abroad ? then
what he did wont change anything , it will just bring more hatred toward the
muslim community in US. The right way to do things is to get political , in a
non violent fashion , freedom of speech is here for a reason, Killing is not
freedom of speech.

