Posts by Neil Morrison
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There's one big hole in the Ohio was stolen theory - the Dems never fought it. They fought bitterly, all the way to the Supreme Court, over Florida. Had Kerry believed that Ohio was rigged he would have done the same.
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3410,cheers
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3410, I didn't take offence at your initial comment so wasn't looking for an apology. I took offence at RB's backing you up and adding the "do your self a favour" bit. That's what I meant by "rudeness" (please don't take offence at that RB, I've read your post and see what you're on about).
I did acknowledge that I could have been clearer. I should have added that in no way was I trying to denigrate people with autism.
I didn't mean to reject your olive branch.
I'm really not presuming to tell anyone what autism is and apologise if my comments have been insensitive.
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I guess I was mainly offended by this:
That at least gives me something to work with; you originally referred to a different post. But you could have just asked me for clarification - I was
saying that there is significant difference between them, it was my main argument, and I would have thought my relative judgment about the two was clear as well.But I could have been a bit clearer - narcissism and autism are similar to the extent that they both involve a mis-view of other people. In autism this an inability to perceive the world view of others - The Theory of Mind. For narcissists other people are a mere extension of themselves.
That bit about secular materialism was in response to the blame capitalism posts.
I don't mind being challenged but I would prefer if it was done without rudeness.
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You really have no idea what you're talking about and you'd do yourself a favour if you just stopped, Neil.
I really don't know what it was I said that called for that. I was just expressing my opinion that the diagnosis may have been wrong. I do have some knowledge about what I'm talking about; I was framing my statements in such a way as to make them judgment calls rather than statements of absolute fact.
But I'll be more inclined to keep my opinions to myself from now on.
Most people recognize that killing other members of our species is a taboo act but it's easy to imagine how a developmental disorder could produce individuals without such an awareness.
Most of these sort of killings are by people who a well aware that this is taboo - it’s the transgression that is part of the motivation. Cho knew killing people is seen as wrong and so for him it was a very powerful way of extracting revenge. It seems be more to do with what psychological restraints might be missing.
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It's not good that some in the autism community in the US have reacted as they have but the concluding sentence of that Huffpost piece really does annoy me -
Cho is guilty of the greatest mass murder in our history by a lone gunman and he is responsible for his actions - but there is much blood on many hands from a failed system, which never gave Cho a chance - and 33 dead is the result.
The guy was one nasty fucker, he got more chances than a lot of other people around the world. I'm really tempted to make a few unwarranted generalisations about liberals who blame "The System" rather than accept that some people are just evil.
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but then that might raise all sorts of thorny questions about the extent to which secular materialism leads to alienation and disengagement,
"Disenagement" has hardly the word for killing 32 people. A little more secular materialism might have done Cho some good - he seemed much more like a religious fanatic.
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The childhood autism diagnosis was stated as a fact by the aunt, and it does actually fit the characteristics I cited.
You know far more about autism than me and that diagnosis may well be correct but it might have been wrong. My understanding is that autism is "a-social" rather than "anti-social". Cho comes across as the latter - a narcissistic and anti-social personality disorder.
I'm not talking from much of a knowledge base but I would have thought that the sort of violence from people with autism would be spontaneous outbursts of anger caused by fear and frustration rather than the long term planning and premeditation that goes into acquiring guns, creating elaborate suicide messages and calmly working across campus to get to ones' targets of choice.
It sounds different to me. Maybe there is autism in the mix but which ever way, your concerns about early detection are fully justified.
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I'd be very cautious about any diagnosis of autism with Cho Seung Hui. He appears to me to have been narcissistic with a huge sense of entitlement and (therefore) agrievement. Those aren't as far as I know characteristics of autism.
Narcissism and autism are sort of similar, but narcissists see everyone as an extension of themselves and are aware of social dynamics (especially of hierachy - these are all males who feel hard done by and/or rejected by social groups) whereas autistics lack an understanding of the social evironment.
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It seems well on the way to becoming an article of faith.
We'll have to disagree there for the time being about how much the the conservative commentariate is taking this up. LGF don't have anything about it, but the're probably too busy baiting Muslims.
But Gaubatz sure is mad.