oh horseshit. there were at least four men who knew they were going to die and why. the rest might have been lied to with the promise of a parachute and money, who knows. but even with four, you're talking something quite rational, well-planned (likely over years) and purposeful. yeah, you bet, someone like Dahmers is rationally calculating, but your'e talking a small group of at least four. that's not explicable as psychosis or whatever...
kelley
>But just because a lot of crime has root causes doesn't mean that there
>aren't some areas of violence and criminality- the Jeffrey Dahmers of the
>world as an example - that escape almost any useful causal barometer.
>
>Extrapolation is a dangerous thing-- because we can argue that x is
>rational, then 3x or 100x must merely be a quantitative extension of x. I
>used the word "proportionality" early on and people had similar problems
>with my comments, but the line between rational causal conflict and
>irrational evil is precisely the proportionality of the acts.
>
>When that proportionality is lost, it becomes quite reasonable to abandon
>causal explanations, try psychological if you want, but ultimately you often
>are in the realm of the purely irrational- where John Hinkley, Son of Sam,
>Hitler, Bin Laden and the statistical freaks of hate and violence dwell.
>
>-- Nathan Newman