[onigiri420]

I tried to keep an open mind reading this.

For those who didn't have time to read the whole thing, according to other articles online the guy would pretend to be the Parkland shooter and send messages to the victim's families.

> As examples of the messages, Fleury wrote, “I’m your abductor I’m kidnapping you fool;” “With the power of my AR-15 I take your loved ones away from you;” and “I’m the monster that killed your family,” according to the opinion.

What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass.

[maeln]

> It made a bit more sense when he heard Brandon’s account of what happened – his son admitted to almost everything straight away. Brandon told a federal investigator that he’d been inspired by an internet troll who went by the name of Lynn Ann. “Lynn Ann” was obsessed with one of the Columbine High School shooters, and achieved a small amount of fame online by posting messages on social media about how “ugly” the shooter’s victims had been. Brandon’s messages to the Parkland victims’ families had been “pure bullshit trolling” like Lynn Ann’s, he told the investigator. Brandon said he had become interested in internet trolls because they were “popular”.

> It was the same with “Shark Tale”. It made sense to Fleury that Brandon would mimic the language and behaviour of internet trolls without really understanding them. An expert on autism hired by the defence gave a similar assessment to the court.

> The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.”

No one is denying that what he did is awful. The idea being discussed here is how to properly judge someone when they don't necessarily understand the wrong in what they are doing. You might want to believe or not that Brandon did it knowing the pain that it cause. But I have been around neurodiverse people in my life, and I saw how they where sometimes unable to understand that their behaviour could cause pain to other. The opposite was also true, where they could be deeply pained by what neurotypical people would consider a fairly normal behaviour. Therefor, is it fair, is it just, to judge someone who doesn't understand the consequences of their action (or at least in the same proportion) in the same way that someone who does ? We already answered this a long time ago it seems, since the law for minor is usually different than for adult based on this exact principle. So how to we handle neurodiverse people has a modern society, it is an important question that bears asking.

[johnchristopher]

> So how to we handle neurodiverse people has a modern society, it is an important question that bears asking.

We handle them so they can't have the possibility to hurt others again until we can be confident enough that they understand what they did and/or won't do it again. IMO protection of society is more important than punishments.

At the very least that person's internet usage should be restricted and monitored for a while.

Judging and handling are two different things.

FWIW, I have been victim of a mentally unstable person years ago, with employment consequences I still suffer from. Basically that guy's medication were not adequate anymore and he went to the police to report me and others for computer related crimes (things like hacking his family's emails). Me and others still have that info somewhere in my country's police system. I wish he went to the police with his usual bullshit of Noriega still being alive and manipulating him through the electrical outlets or that South Africans replaced his heart with a bomb while he was sleeping or threats of crashing our skulls through brick walls instead of the mild fantasy he had that day.

I don't think he should be punished. But he's still at large and that's not okay. Hope his prescriptions are better handled now, for others first and then for himself.

[navjack27]

In the case of delusions, as this mentally unstable person you describe seems to have, the prescriptions should be better handled for them first because the prescriptions that someone needs to take the control that stuff sucks. The side effects suck. Sometimes the side effects suck more than being delusional. It's really easy to say that they should be taking the medication to make themselves less of a threat to other people but then you really have to think about compliance issues and the reasons why they probably stop taking the medication. There really isn't any sort of silver bullet medication for delusions that doesn't just completely fuck with you in many ways. Like yeah you're not having paranoid delusions anymore but you really have to sit down all day and you can't stop shaking your legs because your legs just have to be moving all the time and you're having problems controlling your muscles when you try to grip things and your mouth is always dry and your eyes hurt... But hey at least you're not delusional right you're totally thinking about how you're not harming anyone else right now and not how you really would just not like to be on these medications anymore so you could feel not uncomfortable anymore.

[johnchristopher]

> In the case of delusions, as this mentally unstable person you describe seems to have, the prescriptions should be better handled for them first because the prescriptions that someone needs to take the control that stuff sucks.

Yes, there's also the fact that those prescriptions have to/must/should be regularly reevaluated. Either to increase or decrease the dosage or switch to another approach to manage a change in side-effects and/or the evolution of the condition itself. It really is a delicate matter.

> Like yeah you're not having paranoid delusions anymore but you really have to sit down all day and you can't stop shaking your legs because your legs just have to be moving all the time and you're having problems controlling your muscles when you try to grip things and your mouth is always dry and your eyes hurt... But hey at least you're not delusional right you're totally thinking about how you're not harming anyone else right now and not how you really would just not like to be on these medications anymore so you could feel not uncomfortable anymore.

There's also the advantage of not getting shot because you went on a rampage in a 24/7 or ruin someone else's live (or your own) or health because of your unchecked behaviour. If that person can't make that choice anymore (or don't want to), I hope society can shield us from the consequences without unnecessarily hurting that person.

Life isn't fair. It's not fair for those people and it's not fair for those suffering the consequences of their conditions.

[bilekas]

> What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass.

As it was kind of explained that, 'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world and so he emulated that behavior. In fact one could say he went to the extreme. But his understanding of the context and emotional impact is nothing compared to us on the outside.

This isn't a case of him falsifying a condition to get off, this guy has his whole life documented with diagnoses. It's not a 'pass' but it's simply not the same situation and so it doesn't seem sincear to charge him as such.

[Cthulhu_]

It's an explanation, but not an excuse; he still did what he did. Do you believe he should be treated not compos mentis and have his agency taken away?

[q-big]

Why do most people what they do? Because their are conditioned/brainwashed by school and society to believe in specific morals for their behavior.

Similarly, as bilekas suggests, the fact that "'trolls' are seen as cool in the online world" gave this man an active feedback loop for reinforcing this behavior.

[prewett]

"Society made me do it"? He had no agency in this? Nobody ever told him that these sorts of things hurt people?

Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable.

[q-big]

He is influenced by multiple feedback loops: one that is encouraging this behavior (from the respective website) and one that does discourage it. In this case, the former one was stronger.

> Well, even from that perspective, "society" is giving him some strong feedback that this is not acceptable.

With the same reasoning, you can argue that people in this kind of internet forums gave him a strong feedback that the "society" is wrong here.

[ivanhoe]

> But his understanding of the context and emotional impact is nothing compared to us on the outside.

Well, similar defense could be used for psychopaths as well, they too have a condition that prevents them from seeing or understanding the context and the emotional impact of their actions - but some lines have to be drawn somewhere. Society has to protect itself and innocent people who get hurt by these antisocial actions.

In case of Brandon here no one got physically hurt, and the court should certainly see his condition as a mitigating factor - but you can't just completely dismiss the damage that was done and seriousness of his actions. Emotional traumas are serious deal too, and he, knowingly or not, psychologically tortured those families, causing them a great deal of pain. And he probably got some pleasure from it too, whether from the feeling of power or from the peer support and cheering, as he wouldn't be inclined to repeat it so many times otherwise...

[cassianoleal]

My understanding is that psychopaths are well aware of the damage they're doing to their victims, they just don't care.

I could be wrong though, but in case I'm not - these are entirely different situations.

[zozbot234]

That was not trolling. Trolling is about riling people up in subtle ways that aren't apparent at first glance. This guy wasn't doing that, he wasn't someone playing gadfly in order to expose people's biases and hypocracy. He was saying really horrible, offensive stuff and nobody should get a pass for this.

[DaiPlusPlus]

It’s no use trying to reclaim the term “troll” for the legends of Usenet: the word is now a synonym for a griefer, the contemptibles, FBI swatters, and so on.

Defending the word can be misconstrued as defending the act. It’s not a fight worth having.

[zozbot234]

When someone is laboring under the misapprehension that online "trolls" are popular and committing very real crimes as a result, clarifying the history of that word is absolutely appropriate. That's the very opposite of defending cruel griefers.

[cm2187]

Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences, this is why those rules are codified in law and don't just rely on your own appreciation.

Most assassins are psychopaths in one way or another. It might be interesting to study them but it doesn't mean they get a free pass for their actions.

[bilekas]

I don't think it's a free pass, but it's not intentional by any means and I believe there is certainly some room for leniency in such edge cases.

[oxygen-crisis]

It was by all means intentional. He packed as much hurt as he could into his short messages and expertly targeted the people those words would hurt the most.

[eurasiantiger]

Understandable, given his condition.

Autism can be an experience of having all your senses, empathy and emotions turned up to 11 while everyone around you is behaving in seemingly irrational ways you have no way of understanding except through the vicious pain other people steadily inflict on you.

Imagine growing up like that. Not just occasionally but every day for decades. It dulls something.

[Scandiravian]

Psychopaths are always dangerous and has a desire to do harm. They have no empathy at all. Because of this the currently only way to protect others from their behaviour is to incarcerate them

People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

Your lack of empathy and understanding for people on the autism spectrum is honestly scary

[winReInstall]

There certainly is a fascination with strong, reproduceable emotional reactions in some autistic cases though. They also seem to be fascinated by certain emotional reactions, that make no sense to them.

They do understand that they hurt people, but the fascination of finding something adhering to rules, is stronger.

@Scandinavian: Relatives of mine. One in particular, enjoys trolling me, and i sincerley hope its limited to me. Others might not understand the sense of humor, and it particular, the endless "reproduce" joke and reaction sequence.

[Scandiravian]

Who are they? What combination of symptoms from autism are you referring?

[laserlight]

> People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

I don't think it's insane to bring the comparison into this conversation, because the behavior of this autistic person is clearly a psychopathic one, regardless of the intention.

[bsjanmelttq]

Autistic people feel emotions but don't understand them [0].

Psychopaths understand emotions but don't feel them.

They might seem similar but really are polar opposites.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

[Scandiravian]

The motive was a desire to be accepted and have a connection to other people

Excluding intention as a part of judgement is also excluding a desire to rehabilitate the offender, which makes the goal of punishment revenge

What ends up happening is that people with autism are sent to prison, where they will be the victim of psychical and mental violence almost every day, in an environment that's torturous to them, with no ability to understand why they are there or how to change their situation. All this simply because of a desire to hurt someone who's perceived as "bad".

I'm not sure we agree who's displaying psychopathic traits in that situation

[badcppdev]

Seems like someone could be on the autism scale and a psychopath.

I'm aware that the concept of a disabled person also being 'bad' in some way is not an intersection box that modern world has the tools to discuss at the moment. Outside the Overton window so to speak.

[Scandiravian]

They could, but what does that have to do with the situation? Psychopathy affects approximately 1.2% or the population, so given that autism affects 2.2% of the population, the combination would have a prevalence in 0.027% of people

I think that's a number so low, that it's not worth discussing, given that a psychopath with full mental capacity would undoubtedly be more dangerous

[prewett]

I'm not sure that you can just multiply those probabilities (are they both uncorrelated? Can autistic people even become psychopathic?), but, 0.027% * 300 million people in the US = 81,000 hypothetical autistic psychopaths, which is over 1600 per state. That's plenty to worry about from an administrative (e.g. police) standpoint.

[deafpolygon]

> People with autism are not psychopath

And psychopaths are not autistic.

Yet it does not make the two things mutually exclusive. They can be both present and exhibit in individuals at the same time.

[Scandiravian]

Sure. The occurrence of this combination would be so rare that I don't think it's worth discussing, unless your argument is that an autistic psychopath would somehow be more dangerous than a psychopath without autism?

[coldtea]

>Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences

You'd be surprised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense

[m_fayer]

The neurodiversity movement is rightfully credited with creating a world that's more tolerant of and accommodating to autistic traits.

But what's been lost in that discourse are the victims of autistic people's unintentional cruelty. Autistic people can be punitive, capricious, and neglectful toward their children (who did not enter into the relationship voluntarily), friends, and partners.

When these autistic people are confronted and asked to improve or make amends, the response is increasingly a demand that the victims adjust themselves to the autistic way and forget their own injuries, on the grounds that they were inflicted unintentionally.

I do see both sides here, but the fact remains that injuries cannot simply be waved away because they were inflicted unintentionally, by people whose psychology makes them prone to unintentionally hurt others.

[gattilorenz]

> according to other articles online the guy would pretend to be the Parkland shooter and send messages to the victim's families

That’s mentioned in this article as well, and with some of the exact quotes you reported.

The article doesn’t say that what he did is not horrible, nor that autism should grant him a pass (in the sense of freedom from any consequence).

[blowski]

I hear you on this. As always, there is a tendency to view all crime and criminals as "not the fault of the perpetrator, they were just misunderstood".

However, I don't think this article was suggesting we give people a pass, more that we need to think about how we handle some people's actions in light of what we know about neurodiversity. If we are locking people up partly to punish them and partly to prevent both them and others repeating that behaviour, then the people concerned have to understand what they've done wrong.

Does Brandon understand that he's done the wrong thing here? Would other neurodivergent people understand? If not, what should we do differently?

[autismparent]

Barring him from social media for a certain number of years would be a reasonable punishment for this crime. Not prison.

[hef19898]

Agree that prison is not the right solution, also agree that there have to be some consequences. Autistic or not, giving people a free pass on anti-social behavior will result in more harm down the road, and not the least to the, in this case, autistic person.

[googlryas]

Why shouldn't his autism give him a pass? Should a person with coprolalia be found in contempt if they interrupt a judge in court?

What should happen is his caretakers should ensure he can't do the things he does. But punishing him doesn't make much sense.

[somenameforme]

What happens if we take your argument to its logical extreme? Imagine we were able to definitively prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that all behaviors are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes within our bodies and minds. In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will.

Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

And yes, I preemptively agree that the ideal goal in a society would be to rehabilitate and not punish. But getting back to the thought experiment it may ultimately even be the case that widespread rehabilitation is impossible. It'd certainly be many orders of magnitude more difficult than simply getting society to agree to not kill each other, yet that's something we're still nowhere near achieving.

[suslik]

> Imagine we were able to definitively prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that all behaviors are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes within our bodies and minds. In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will.

I am not sure why you consider this a logical extreme; I'd say the existence of free will is in fact an extreme (although not very logical) position.

> Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

... which indeed renders the idea of 'punishment' obsolete - it is nothing more than a rudiment of our barbaric past. Punishment for the sake of punishment (as in inflicting suffering as retribution for a deed after the deed is done) is simply unethical, and punishment as deterrence is even more so. It doesn't mean a criminal should, in every case, go free - the objective here should be to maximize the outcome for the society, but equally as important, to minimise the suffering for the criminal. In the OP case, psychiatric supervision and prohibiting access to digital technology for the accused is more than enough.

[matbatt38]

Sorry but that's a terrible argument. It is likely that there is no or at least very few free will. But that doesn't mean that nothing can be done. Care and education are not only preventive, they could also be used as an answer to criminality - even in a world without free will.

Prison is known to fail at changing people who commit crimes anyway, free will or not, autistic or not: half of people who go there get arrested again in the 5 years. I'll actually follow you in taking the argument to the extreme: prison are pointless in almost every case and we should replace it with something different.

[luckylion]

> I'll actually follow you in taking the argument to the extreme: prison are pointless in almost every case and we should replace it with something different.

If rehabilitation is their only goal. If their primary reason of existence is to keep criminals from committing further crimes against citizens, they work well. You'd just need to extend the time to make them work even better. Can't reoffend if you're behind bars (well, you can, but only against your fellow prisoners, and that might earn you solitary confinement, aka prison in prison).

[coldtea]

And how does that work out for you, the country with the biggest per-capita incarcertation rate in the world?

[luckylion]

I am not a country, so I'm not the country with the biggest per-capita incarceration rate in the world, and so idk how to answer your question.

I do think in general that it's very hard to compare countries on these metrics unless the countries are very similar in culture and demographics. I.e. comparing Norway to the US feels like comparing a dog to a cow. You can extract some fundamental information ("tend to have four legs", "food goes in at one end and comes out the other") but there's little value in explaining the cow's digestive system to dog breeders who asked about nutrition.

[coldtea]

>Care and education are not only preventive, they could also be used as an answer to criminality - even in a world without free will.

In a world without free will "care and education" don't matter. People are gonna do what they are gonna do, and education or care aren't gonna change it. No free will means determinism, not just in choice of action, but in everything else too.

[q-big]

> In a world without free will "care and education" don't matter.

The fact that care and education cause change in the behavior has nothing to do with any "freedom" as in "free will"

[coldtea]

>The fact that care and education cause change in the behavior

If you don't have free will there's no change in behavior. You have the same predetermined behavior you'd have all along - the care is incidental, would have happened or not happened anyway.

No free will == deterministic universe. Everything that is to happen can't change, and is already "schedulled" in a causuality cascade from billions of years ago.

If you don't have free will, you can't also decide to have "care and education" or not. Whether you will have them or not have them is already a done deal.

[throw827474737]

You don't need to paint it black or white. Other jurisdications try it better imo - it is always and ever again amazing to see how in the US there is only one cause (very simplified: revenge/punishment here vs guilt and more in others), and that fully supported by most of the population (yes, admitted, by that it seems to be the right thing over here).

> widespread rehabilitation is impossible

Ah come on, that assumption is easily disproved by looking a bit around and elsewhere.

[somenameforme]

Many places in Asia have justice systems that make the US one look decidedly tame by comparison. The Japanese death row system is one of the most clear in its overt sadism. Prisoners are almost never allowed out of their cells, granted minimal resources to occupy their time, and never informed of the date of their execution until one day the steps coming down that hall aren't there to bring you food, but to (literally) put a rope around your neck.

Imagine just sitting there thinking each time you hear those footsteps. In the regular prison system at large Amnesty International has repeatedly singled out Japan for various abuses that verge on torture. A quick search for "keiheikin" can send you on a web crawl about such. Yet of course the criminality rate in Japan (and many places in Asia for that matter) is near zero, in spite of a vigorously punishment/revenge based system.

The point I make with this is that different places have different populations with different proclivities. It's not like if the Norwegian system was adopted in America we ought expect to suddenly see a relatively crimeless population with negligible recidivism rates, anymore than if Norway adopted the American system would they suddenly expect to see sharp increases in violent crime and skyrocketing recidivism rates.

[CuriousCosmic]

> Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves? I'm certain you don't agree with that. So the question then becomes where do we start, where do we stop, and why?

Not all consequences but rather all punishments. Like you said, widespread full rehabilitation may be impossible (partial sure but fully for 100% of individuals is unlikely) but outside of even attempting rehabilitation, some of the major mechanisms by which crime can be prevented are by reducing the individual's exposure to opportunities that put them at risk of committing a crime and by providing off-ramps for de-escalation before something actually happens.

In the case discussed by the article, this likely could have all been prevented had authorities contacted the individual's legal guardian and caretaker. The FBI should have easily been able to tell that this individual had a caretaker and was not fully independent. They could have worked with the caretaker to direct the individual away from these behaviors and towards safer/healthier outlets. Had things not gotten better, they could have escalated the situation to the point they eventually did but that should not have been a first response.

While non-neurotypical individuals certainly don't deserve immunity from consequence, we as a society should at the very least try to limit the opportunities for unnecessary escalation that may occur. This should be the case for all individuals but doubly so for non-neurotypical individuals who may not fit the standard mold despite being able to live a safe non-disruptive life when given some amount of accommodation and assistance.

[navjack27]

  The FBI should have easily been able to tell that this individual had a caretaker and was not fully independent. They could have worked with the caretaker to direct the individual away from these behaviors and towards safer/healthier outlets. Had things not gotten better, they could have escalated the situation to the point they eventually did but that should not have been a first response.

The FBI does that all the time though. They will secretly monitor and investigate without telling the person they are investigating and then whenever they feel like it they will swoop in and there's nothing you could do about it.

You could be investigated right now for something that might be illegal but it never went anywhere so you just have a file someplace with the FBI that just sits there in a filing cabinet.

Everything is punish first. Guilty until proven innocent or until proven not worth the time or effort to pursue. There is no rehabilitation, or in the case of internet crime, actually communicating when you've crossed the line, which is a humongous problem.

And it happens all over the place not just from the FBI or law enforcement but moderation policies where people get shadowbanned. That really actually doesn't help! Especially in cases where the individual might not know what they've done wrong or that what they've done was wrong. You see it in video games where you could just be a really curious person who downloads a hack for a video game and you're really just not using it to get a tactical advantage in the game you're actually using it because oh this is neat what does this do and then you get banned and the staff of the video game won't tell you a single thing about why you got banned. Take that to the next degree with this case and other cases like it where it doesn't seem like he was ever moderated at all and the first step at all was the FBI showing up at his door. That's so messed up.

I almost feel like what these cases need is basically... There's going to start to have to need to be some sort of organization or advocacy group of people who are on the spectrum and extremely high functioning but still disabled who are able to empathize and talk with the more autistic to try to get these concepts across to them in a way that they could understand. And I'm talking from personal experience a little bit with this idea because I went to a high school for kids on the spectrum and I was one of the ones on the higher end of the spectrum who still had issues but I was able to talk to the lower functioning kids a lot of the time and get them to calm down to listen better to level with them that "hey there's someone else here who understands that what you're being told is bullshit but listen just trust me just go along with it it's fine yes there's a logical fallacy going on here but it's okay." Because sometimes they just need to know that there's someone else out there who has that same kind of line of thinking that they have. But also to know that someone else out there can think the same way they do but also switch on a different mode that they might not be aware of that they could develop that is more compatible with the way the world works.

But the only way an advocacy group like this would work is if it was part of the government if it was part of some sort of law enforcement branch because otherwise it would just be another advocacy group that already exists that actually can't make any changes happen in situations like this. They would need to be able to have some sort of official pull otherwise it would just be pointless to put it bluntly.

[CuriousCosmic]

I agree 100%. Advocacy and de-escalation seriously need to be integrated into the US legal system.

Worth noting is that there is definitely a way this type of thing can go the wrong way when taken too far. When taken too far these types of helpful advocacy and assistance policies can end up having the opposite effect. I don't bring this up to say "too much is a bad thing" but rather that pushes for these reforms need to be careful and precise lest we end up accidentally undermining our own goals.

[coldtea]

>In other words that there was literally no such thing as free will. Ought we now simply drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general, because the people engaging in such literally cannot stop themselves?

If we had prove that "there was literally no such thing as free will" then the question would be moot - as it didn't matter whether we "ought" or "ought not" "drop all consequences for crime or asocial behavior in general".

We'd do it or not do it, without any say or free will on the matter. Even our meta discussion about it (e.g. its moral significance) wouldn't be made due to free will, and would be irrelevant to us doing what we end up doing.

You can't disprove free will and still be concerned of what you should do morally or strategically etc, as if its your own mind to make about it.

Or rather you can (still be concerned) but not your concern will in any way matter: it would be an automatic concern.

Note also that, in regards to crime statistics, without free will, it doensn't matter whether we drop "all consequences" or not. People will going to do or not do crime anyway, as they would have had anyway, as there's no free will to deter them.

[q-big]

> You can't disprove free will and still be concerned of what you should do morally or strategically etc, as if its your own mind to make about it.

The same as for free will can be said about God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[coldtea]

Not sure what you mean. I'm not making any religious claim.

In a universe without free will, you do what you're already set (by a causuality chain) to do. This is simply physics and basic axiomatic logic, no God or 9gag Spaghetti Monster memes need apply.

[candu]

> But getting back to the thought experiment it may ultimately even be the case that widespread rehabilitation is impossible.

And yet Norway manages a recidivism rate of 20% [1], by starting from the premise that rehabilitation is the point of incarceration; I'd certainly call it "widespread" to rehabilitate 80% of prisoners!

Also, I disagree strongly that the logical extreme of "some people are incapable of exercising full agency" is "free will doesn't exist at all, because biochemical determinism". This is a textbook example of the slippery slope fallacy. The law already recognizes and accommodates the possibility of the former, both in cases of permanent disability and of temporary incapability. One of its main tools for doing so is consultation with experts in psychology, which also means that we can refine legal application here as our understanding of psychology improves.

Moreover, "all behaviours are driven entirely and completely by chemical and electrical processes..." does not imply that free will doesn't exist! After all, it's pretty well demonstrated (through transcranial stimulation studies, cognitive behavioural therapy, more recent psychedelic studies on MDMA, etc.) that we can profoundly alter those chemical and electrical processes ourselves. Perhaps the better conclusion is that "free will" is merely our ability to alter our own biochemical state (where "merely" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here!)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway

[xorfish]

> Perhaps the better conclusion is that "free will" is merely our ability to alter our own biochemical state

But isn't our ability to alter our own biochemical state dependent on our current biochemical state?

[moonchrome]

Because he's basically predisposed to do similar shit again - that it's a condition only makes it worse.

Not sure about punishment, but corrective institutionalization for sure.

[mantas]

If someone can't properly control himself, then it's up to society to ensure that nobody is harmed.

[xorfish]

Society also has to ensure, that this is done in a way that causes him as little harm as possible. It clearly failed here.

[mantas]

Victims should come before the perpetrator though. It's better to harm the bad actor slightly too much rather than make even more victims. Why innocent people should be at risk if somebody just can't be responsible for himself.

[xorfish]

I think it is wrong to value the well-being of some humans more than others.

[mantas]

It is wrong to do harm.

Why someone's well being is more important because he has an illness? What if he hurts other vulnerable people? E.g. psycho attacking kids. Should we care about psycho's well being more than about kids safety? What if we take it the other way and kids attack mentally ill? Should we care about their well-being more, because they're kids?

[rnd0]

>Why shouldn't his autism give him a pass?

Because it's grossly unfair to the people he hurt, that's why!

[kube-system]

Criminal justice is not purely about retribution. Part of the value in criminal justice is also in rehabilitation and deterrence. And accomplishing those goals in a way that balances everyone’s human rights.

[worthless-trash]

I like how that sounds, so idealistic. I think that in some cases, the penalty can make the crime seem like a worthwhile financial transaction, I dont know about this specific case or how a disability relates to it.

There are many crimes that take peoples future and damage families for generations with only a slap on the wrist enabling them to repeat the crime. I don't think there is a good solution to keep everyone happy, the best solution is just to not be involved in crimes as either the perpetrator or victim, sadly perpetrators look like regular people.

[kube-system]

Yes, retributive justice is very popular among the general public, particularly those affected by crime who are often the loudest voices.

But it is a morally and functionally bankrupt theory of justice, which is why I will always point out that our legal system was also built on other more productive and more moral theories of justice.

[rnd0]

>Yes, retributive justice is very popular among the general public, particularly those affected by crime who are often the loudest voices.

I know right? What scumbags! Maybe those are the people who should be locked up instead of the people going out causing the pain and suffering.

/s

[tgv]

That's assuming he's dumb/stupid/retarded as well. A person with sufficient intellect and self-control is capable of suppressing such actions after a punishment. It doesn't have to be a heavy sentence, but autism by itself is not sufficient.

Well, autism as it's used today. It used to be reserved for rather severe cases, but the meaning has been watered down a bit.

[Cthulhu_]

"watered down"? You mean it's understood better, that it's not even a scale but a series of scales of symptoms that are different for everyone, with a lot of overlap with ADHD.

[tgv]

> with a lot of overlap with ADHD

That just shows the extent of how well it's understood. Both are a diagnosis without known cause and cure.

> series of scales of symptoms

So, radically altered. The label is attached to people that just register on one or two of those scales, instead of to the institutionalized that term originally referred to. If you take offense to me calling that "watered down," why don't you correct everybody who's calling it autism/autistic instead of "ASD".

Anyway, the point was: autism in a modern, colloquial sense is nowhere near as invasive as in its original sense. There's no reason to assume people labeled "autistic" in the press is severely mentally handicapped to the point where they can't take responsibility for their own actions.

[sph]

Please stop this myth of ADHD overlap, I keep reading this everywhere. There are a lot of autistic kids misdiagnosed with ADHD, but they are not the same. In some aspects they are complete opposite.

Nowhere in the ADHD definition difficulty to understand social norms or to empathise appear. They present very differently to society. I do believe that an ADHD diagnosis should not carry a reduced sentence because we are completely able to understand and see the world like neurotypical people.

There is no overlap, just ignorance and misdiagnosis.

Sincerely, a non-autistic ADHD person.

[roxgib]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you, and it's super frustrating to be put under the same label. Tt seems like there's this compulsion to mention that one is often comorbid with the other, but those numbers are questionable, since someone who has autism is more likely to have their ADHD picked up, and vice versa, so those who have both end up being over represented in diagnoses.

[alpaca128]

They may have meant comorbidity, which afaik is relatively frequent. And I'm not sure it's misdiagnosed that often just because of ignorance, but then again I'd probably fall into the ignorant(or rather uneducated) category myself in this field.

[Cthulhu_]

I'm not saying they express themselves in the same way, I'm saying they're related, probably more closely than we know now.

Sincerely, a non-ADHD autistic person with an ADHD + autistic girlfriend.

[bryanrasmussen]

>His autism shouldn't give him a pass.

since autism is a spectrum it is really hard to know if it should give him a pass or not without a full read up.

although that he is able to do these things puts him on a much higher level than say my own son who will probably never be able to talk much less write messages of any sort.

[sph]

I tend to agree. An involuntary crime tends to carry a smaller sentence because it's hinges upon the fact that the guilty person will have learned something from being tried and sentenced. They did something that doesn't fit into their set of morals. Humans learn from mistakes if there were consequences.

If the guilty person is unable to learn or understand, an involuntary crime is the same as a voluntary one: the perpetrator might do it again. So a sane sociopathic murderer and an autistic person (that is unable to understand) that thinks killing will make them popular carry the exact same risk to society.

Should an AI intelligent enough to hurt a person because it thought it might be a good idea but not "human" enough to understand the implications of it earn a free pass?

[xorfish]

> What a horrible thing to do. His autism shouldn't give him a pass.

You do understand that he doesn't understand that this is a horrible thing to do?

[colinb]

I cannot read the article so I'm possibly talking out of line, but still, do you have evidence to back this up? All of my anecdata of the ~20ish autistic people that I know is that they fully understand basic horribleness.

I read that autistic people might have trouble reading the moods of others, not that they don't actually give a fuck.

[jwandborg]

You can learn about feelings, but that means you misunderstand or is completely ignorant of the mechanics of the feeling until you are taught about it, once you're taught about it you can try to interpret the signs, but it's still hard and error-prone work, even though it's probably work worth doing, for the benefit of other's perception of your actions.

There are feelings and mechanics I wish I'd learned earlier.

[orbifold]

So do people with autism automatically have some form of anti-social personality disorder? If someone doesn't have empathy or can understand how they are hurting others that should be cause for a lot of concern.

[kube-system]

The article describes that he liked to recite the lines of movie super villains, and was fascinated with internet trolls because they were popular. And he wanted to be popular.

And how now he repeatedly writes letters to the judge and warden asking to be let out, and in calls with family he doesn’t understand why he’s still there.

[Scandiravian]

Autism is a spectrum disorder. There are many who can live high functioning lives, there are also those who never learn to speak and require assistance there entire life.

I'm guessing most of the people you've met are high functioning, so there's a bias in what your understanding of autism is

In more severe forms of autism a combination of learning disabilities and the inability to read facial expressions can make it hard to parse what is considered "horrible" for the people suffering from the condition

That does not mean they lack empathy or desires harm in others. The issue is that they need help and support parsing the environment around them

Of cause some might need to be denied access to certain things like knives or social media because their inability to understand could be a danger to their surroundings, but that's a situation for a minority of people with autism

[rnd0]

That doesn't help his victims in any way whatsoever. I'm more concerned with them, and not him.

[Toutouxc]

And the guy being in jail, not knowing why he's there, helps them how exactly?

[timeon]

At least the action is discontinued.

[xorfish]

Which could have also been achieved by telling him not to and that it is wrong or if that doesn't work banning the use of social media.

He seems to be able to follow rules very good.

[oxygen-crisis]

He understood it was horrible.

He wasn't asking people why their nose was so big or calling people doody-heads. He successfully figured out who the most vulnerable victims were, sought them out, and proficiently concocted threats and insults that would hurt them greatly.

If he wasn't so effective at maximizing horror, barely anybody would have noticed his remarks.

[CuriousCosmic]

Honestly I'm not so sure. To quote the article:

> The prosecution pointed out that Brandon’s messages didn’t simply copy Lynn Ann’s phrases, but were crafted with specific information about the victims and made ongoing threats. Brandon maintained that he didn’t intend to hurt or scare people but to “annoy” them. When a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution asked if he was trying to cause the victims anguish, Brandon responded, “What’s anguish? It’s not something I know what it is.”

There's this thing you'll see with people who really struggle to understand social cues and how to act "normally" in a social environment when dealing with teasing jokes (like back and forth jokes in a friend group). Someone will say some harmless thing about their clothes or their hair and they'll accidentally overstep a line while looking for a response joke that would do a lot of "damage" to get even. Instead of responding with an equivalently harmless "roast" they'll respond with legitimately hurtful things like "well maybe that's why your mom killed herself" or "XYZ is why your girlfriend left you".

Obviously they overstepped a line and went straight for the most hurtful thing they could find but it's partially because they never learned where the line was and why it was there. Even with "trolling" it's conceptually similar to "roasts" between friends with the exception that one side is often not a particularly willing participant(not that trolling is OK but you can view them in a somewhat similar light). They both have a degree where the troll/individual is harmless and it's all in good fun. There's also a degree where it's annoying or frustrating but has limited consequence on the recipient past that. Then there's legitimately hurtful and unacceptable stuff past that point.

The root of the problem here is that if the troll can't distinguish the line between annoying and hurtful, they'll try to deliver the most horrible and "damaging" blows they can all the while thinking something along the lines of "haha they are so mad, I must be annoying them really badly". Unless the person actually understands the social weight of what they are saying, there's a very real chance that in their eyes, harassing a person about tragedies personally suffered/making threats is equivalent to "I'm not touching you" dialed up to 11.

[colechristensen]

Then this guardians are responsible for his actions and he needs his freedoms legally taken away.

[kube-system]

Just ban him from using the internet. That was what happened during his bail and the article seems to indicate he was happy to follow the rules he was given.

Prison is only a deterrent because people know they did something wrong and know they shouldn’t do it again. Putting someone in prison who doesn’t know why they are in prison makes no practical sense. It’s only going to make his condition worse.

[colechristensen]

>Prison is only a deterrent

Some people just need to be removed from society. Not as a deterrent, punishment, vengeance, or anything like that, but just a recognition that this human is incompatible with freedom among other humans.

A person like this man probably deserves the chance to have someone, if willing, to take on legal and criminal liability for his actions (i.e. the other person takes on the legal consequences themselves), but if that fails and there isn't reasonable confidence that this or other things won't continue to happen... then removal is the only option. There are several levels of removal, but ultimately that's what you have to do.

I have heard and been close to too many situations were a mentally incompetent person who didn't necessarily know what they were doing hurt people who didn't deserve it. The rest of us shouldn't really have to be on our guard against folks who "don't know what they're doing" when they hurt people, sad as the stories of the incompetent person might be.

[kube-system]

Your partial quote of my sentence changes the meaning!

I understand prison can serve more purposes than deterrence, I said it only serves that purpose when people understand why they’re there.

This guy doesn’t seem like a violent danger to anyone that needs to be separated from society physically. He needs to be separated from a computer, which is perfectly doable outside of a prison.

[blowski]

I think that gets to the crux of the issue. If Brandon is culpable for his actions, it's right he is punished. If he is not, then should he have the freedoms that allowed him to do this?

Let's assume culpability is a spectrum, not a binary. How do you assess someone's culpability?

[helsinkiandrew]

> His autism shouldn't give him a pass

No but it should be considered when prosecuting and sentencing - 5 years in a prison for someone with severe autism is a much harsher sentence than for someone without.

The article makes the comparison with Navinder Sarao - another autistic person they thought was behind a $1trn market-manipulation scheme. Luckily he worked with the FBI, and the prosecutors recommended no prison time (he was sentenced to one year home confinement)

[mcv]

Simple prison is absolutely the wrong way to treat someone with autism. He should be punished, absolutely, but that punishment should include therapy and guidance that helps him find a better path in life.

And the same goes for every other criminal.

[roxgib]

I thought the comparison between the two cases was a bit odd. Sarao was able to assist the FBI significantly, which often results in a more lenient sentence. The total amount of money he earned illegitimately was a few million at most, not $1 billion, and regardless market manipulation is quite a different crime. How his Autism was handled wasn't nearly as big a factor as all the other differences.

[kypro]

Not saying what he did wasn't wrong, but this does sound very autistic.

But I literally don't understand bullying. If people say something mean to me it doesn't seem to mean anything, I just hear words? There's no emotional impact there. In fact I was bullied pretty badly in school, but I used to encourage it because I saw how happy it made people and it never really bothered me.

But obviously we largely treat others how we want to be treated ourselves so when I was younger it was common for me to say nasty things to people for "laughs". I didn't really understand I was hurting them because what I was saying wouldn't have hurt me. I wasn't trying to be mean (not that that should excuse me) I just thought it was funny saying stuff that was inappropriate I guess?

The messed up thing is that I still feel like this... I find places like 4chan hilarious and I think it's a good example of "autistic humour" in the sense that I don't think most people there are trying to be mean they just have a perspective and sense of humour that neurotypical people don't really get.

I know some people might think this has nothing to do with autism and maybe I'm just a mean person, and struggle with that because I think most people who know me well would say the opposite. I really care about people's feelings I just don't always understand why they feel the way they do about things which means I unintentionally hurt people a lot.

Perspective like yours have been hard for me. I'm aware of a lot of stories like this where autistic people have been locked in cages for saying things neurotypicals don't find pleasant. And when I argue they're just words and someone shouldn't be locked in a cage for saying words I get attacked for being insensitive. I struggle with whether I'm the one with the problem here or if it's actually everyone else. Logically I don't understand why neurotypicals care about words as much as they do and wish I didn't have to self-censor to appease neurotypical sensitivities, but I also accept I'm not normal and therefore should try accommodate neurotypical behaviours and norms as best I can.

But I'm not going to lie, my immediate thought here was "who cares what he said, that doesn't mean you get to lock someone in a cage?!". Intuitively I honestly feel like you're the one being mean here, but I know that's because I don't understand your perspective. I just have to assume those words hurt as much as being locked in a cage for 5 and half years to someone who's neurotypical, otherwise it seems extremely cruel.

Still, as out of touch as I am I can't imagine myself saying these things to victims families. It seems so pointless and cruel. But if I had to guess I assume he just didn't understand how hurtful what he was saying was, but saw humour in the inappropriateness of it. Again, not saying he doesn't deserve to be locked in a cage for 5 and a half years for being mean, but I can see how he might not have understood how what he was saying was hurting people.

[zozbot234]

This guy was locked up because he made severe threats that were taken seriously. Maybe you didn't care much about bullies saying mean things to you, but even then you absolutely would've been anguished if those same people had threatened you with death or grievous bodily harm, repeatedly and seemingly with full seriousness. There's no excuse here.

[kypro]

I'm more sympathetic with the perspective that they thought the guy was a likely danger to others. Reading the article though I think it's fairly obvious he wasn't being serious and he wasn't a threat, but obviously I haven't seen all the evidence. If he had a collection of weapons in his bedroom or something, then sure, the guy probably needs to be locked in a cage, but it seems to me far more likely that these were very stupid things to say from someone who didn't really understand the weight of what he was saying.

And even professional comedians make death threats as "jokes" sometimes. The nuance involved in determining whether a death threat is a joke or crime is something I've never really understood.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49508231 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40102229 https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/the-londoner...

[zozbot234]

> The nuance involved in determining whether a death threat is a joke or crime is something I've never really understood.

Well, would you be scared if a known comedian pretended to threaten you as part of an act? If not, that means you actually understand the nuances involved.