Is stupidity a defense for unethical conduct?
The news report from Texas about a father posing as an armed intruder to test the security of his son’s school once again raises the thorny problem of how to distinguish ethically obtuse and dumb as a brick. From U.S. News and NBC:
Officials say Ronald Miller was unarmed Wednesday when he told a school greeter outside Celina (Texas) Elementary School that he had a gun… The greeter froze in panic when Miller said he was a gunman and his target was inside, Celina Independent School District Superintendent Donny O’Dell told NBCDFW.com. Miller was then able to walk into the school and entered the office. “He told them that he is a shooter and ‘you’re dead, and you’re dead,'” O’Dell [said.] Never showing a weapon, Miller then reportedly revealed his stunt was a test of school safety and he wanted to talk to the principal. School staffers knew Miller, who was a father of a student, and police were not called until he left the school, The Dallas Morning News reported. He was arrested Wednesday evening and is being held in lieu of $75,000 bail…”
Is Miller so stupid he doesn’t know why this is wrong? It is “the ends justifies the means” thinking personified: he was willing to risk a panic, scare school workers sick, possibly set off a violent incident (what if, as the NRA fervently wishes were the case in all schools, someone in the principal’s office was carrying a gun and decided the safest thing was to shoot Miller before he started his rampage?), and undermine what little rational trust there is left in schools these days, all to prove absolutely nothing, other than the fact that parents aren’t high on the list of suspected school shooters, since no parent has ever been one. Does being stupid make him less unethical? Ethics, after all, does require some reasoning ability, unlike moral codes, which merely need to instruct believers that is it wrong to go to a school, where people are understandably jumpy, and to try a vigilante security experiment by pretending to be an armed killer. This is why moral codes and laws are especially useful for those among us who would lose a debate with Flipper.
It’s a nice point to ponder, I suppose, during TV commercials. At this abysmal level of brain power, responsibility and consideration for others, however, the exact stupidity/ bad ethics ratio is of academic interest only. This guy’s judgment, ethical or otherwise, can’t be trusted sufficiently for me to feel comfortable hiring him, living next to him, driving on the same road as he is, or having my child in a school with his. Jail is an excellent place for him as a start, and Ronald Miller makes an excellent case for establishing a registry of spectacularly stupid and, as a consequence, irresponsible people.
______________________________
Pointer: Jeff Field (thanks!)
Facts: US News and NBC
Ethics Alarms 
Thank you. I was just flabberghasted when a friend rather enthusiastically endorsed the arming of teachers and police in elementary schools. Accident potential or scaring children was all I could think of for bad outcomes, dumbth by parents like this didn’t even enter my mind.
1) I love “dumbth.” Original?
2) The worst tragedies often arise from complete outliers and unpredictable occurrences. Then everyone draws the wrong lessons from them, like: “We have to spend a gazillion dollars to make sure this never happens again in a thousand years or so.”
Dunbth is the title of a book by Steve Allen. http://www.amazon.com/Dumbth-Thinking-Reason-Better-Improve/dp/1573922374
Thanks. Sounds like the Great Steve.
The sad part is…….you have condemed this hero, without hearing his side. IF there was a threat, then the staff should have called 911….they didn’t……The time when this happened, there were children coming in to the school…….not one child paniced, called home, cried or even knew what happened.. If you look at the limited information it doesn’t add up. The police used Texas Penal Code 22.07, which does NOT meet the elements because there was no INTENT. So, now what do we have. A parent, which his child WAS confirmed in the school…….now is going to go in and hurt people, and he made such a big deal, no one was concerned enough to call 911, until later……People, waky waky, and quit playing with snaky……This whole thing stinks, and until we hear from the Police Chief or Mr. Miller, we are clearly STILL in the dark…….By the way, Mr. O’Dell wasn’t at the scene, so his informaiton is hearsay. There is a school board meeting on 1/21/13 at 205 Colorado. I bet they cover this….Want the facts…..Go…..See you there! Innocent until PROVEN guilty, not the other way around……I wonder if there would be a lawyer out there that would sue the crap out of anyone smearing his name.
However, if he did do all of this……put him away……we need the facts first.
A sillier batch of rationalizations for irresponsible conduct I never heard. There was no excuse for what he did, whether kids panicked or not. And news accounts are not “hearsay”—hearsay refers to inadmissible evidence in court. Every history book and every news story that isn’t an eye-witness account is “hearsay: by your definition.
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. He had the intent to bring a gun into a school—that’s intent enough in most jurisdictions, and whether it meets the criminal elements or not, it is still reckless and stupid. Perhaps more stupid than calling this fool “a hero,” but I’m not certain.
How does the saying go? “Never attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity.” Something like that, anyways.
Mr. Miller has got to possess an Olympian level of stupidity. A modicum of sentience and he would have realized that he could have been shot full of holes had the school “passed” his silly test.
I think the ethical dilemma here is that Mr. Miller may indeed possess the ability to grasp basic ethical concepts, but all that takes a back seat to proving some “gotcha” point.
Just smart enough to latch on to an ideology can be a lot more dangerous than plain old stupid.
Yes, well spoke. That’s exactly what is going on.
“what if, as the NRA fervently wishes were the case in all schools, someone in the principal’s office was carrying a gun and decided the safest thing was to shoot Miller before he started his rampage?”
Because, unlike the stereotype of Texas, we aren’t cowboys who manage to make it work everyday through a hail of gunfire. Texans aren’t trigger happy as some would like to think.
The law here is clear, and, as I can recently attest, is one of the things hammered solidly into concealed hand-gun license holders. The law is clear that verbal threats alone are INSUFFICIENT to be a defense in court for use of deadly force.
True, but verbal threats + shifty motions has been upheld repeatedly in internal investigations of police shootings… and I think the improper protection might be extended to other civil servants that are considered, literally, in the possible line of fire.
More importantly, whether shooting the dad would be legal or not, considering the state of the current debate, shooting him would be a not unlikely outcome.
“I think the improper protection might be extended to other civil servants that are considered”
That’s a long, obstruction filled Slippery Slope fallacy.
“onsidering the state of the current debate, shooting him would be a likely [sic] outcome”
Expounding on the slippery slope. Again, I reiterate, the Texas law pertaining to “no defense if lethal force is used against verbal threats” is pounded into CHL student’s heads.
Additionally, the training proposed for teacher’s under the suggested legislation for arming teachers would include more in depth coursework and practice involving analyzing threats and proper escalation of force.
erg. the ‘c’ from ‘considering’ did not get highlighted.
You misused the term “slippery slope fallacy”. You mean to say something more like a “Hasty generalization” or that my connection is not supported. There’s no flip response to me here. You can disagree with my statement, but you’d have to give an actual reason (or say why my reason is wrong).
You misquoted me. (“[sic]” denotes that the transcribed error was in the original.) I worded my comment as I did intentionally to denote that I didn’t mean more than 50%.
As for your argument that training will prevent the situations, I submit the current rate of belief in evolution. Despite it being settled science that everyone learned in high school, 80% of the US population still gets it wrong. I submit the first amendment and photographer’s rights. Despite it being a protected right to photograph police officers in public and government buildings from public land, despite the appeals court decisions upholding this right, despite departmental policies, and despite the memoranda from the attorney general specifically stating this right, it’s rare that a day goes by that Carlos Miller doesn’t have a video to post about a cop illegally harassing a photographer.
Just because something is drilled into people does not mean they will follow it in any given situation. Police officers are drilled about not using deadly force. As Radly Balko has aggregated, they still shoot puppies in yards daily.
And you are wild (if not wrong) in your assumption that school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext. The same accusations were hurled in the 1990’s when Texas was debating Concealed Handgun Laws. Assertions were made that at routine fender-benders, the two involved in the crash would hop out of their vehicles and begin blasting away at each other. Other such hypothetical scenario based on insignificantly minuscule probabilities were asserted to stop CHL. CHL passed, the wild hypotheticals didn’t happen.
Many people like to what-if proposals to death. “what-if’s” are fine as long as they are based on legitimate probabilities.
And you are wild (if not wrong) in your assumption that school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext.
I don’t make this assumption.
Also, by dropping off all your previous arguments, you’re acquiescing to my comments, right? If so, it would be polite to apologize for your false accusations.
Reply, no it doesn’t. It means I’m not going down your TGT death spirals you always go down to divert from the substantive core of the discussion.
Weren’t you the one that had a big problem with rhetorical irresponsibility? Didn’t you say that needed to be called out? Now you say my calling it out is diversion. The actual diversion is your making false accusations about my comments. As it is, my original comments stand. Until you can deal with them, you’ve essentially conceded your case.
Yes, rhetorical irresponsibility is as I described in our discussion many moons ago, an intentional act. It is not mislabelling (which would be a mistake, and I didn’t do) a fallacy.
Let me correct my quote of you:
“…considering the state of the current debate, shooting him would be a not unlikely [sic] outcome.”
And no, I’m not acquiescing to anything. Like I said before, I’m not going down the traditional TGT death spiral of diversion that may as well be your trademark.
tex,
Rhetorical Irresponsibility
First, I didn’t claim the mislabeling was the rhetorical irresponsibility. You cherry picked one flaw that I pointed out that didn’t match, when there were multiple flaws I pointed out that clearly matched.
Your previous description of rhetorical irresponsibility:
“Each of the tactics [Schopenhauer] described are usually based on INTENTIONALLY manipulating a logical fallacy or informal fallacy with well crafted words or ACCIDENTALLY doing the same in order to appear as though an argument defeats an opposing view.”
Rhetorical responsibility was intentionally or accidentally manipulating a logical fallacy to make it look like you’re right and the other person is wrong.
Here, you attempted to use the rhetorical device of a flip comment to make it look like my argument was silly. You also used a strawman to make it look my argument was silly. Both of those techniques are in the list you linked me to originally.
Proper usage of “[sic]”
Still wasn’t used right. There was no mistake in the original.
Projection
I put us in a “death spiral of diversion” when I point out your logical errors. I think the logical errors (and then continued logical errors in an attempt to defend the indefensible) is where any death spiral would come from.
This is just another bit of particularly heinous rhetorical irresponsibility.
You can’t just call everything a straw man when it punches holes in your arguments. This is TGT tactic #1.
You implied (as explained in the substantive portion of this discussion, the branch off from this portion -which is the TGT death spiral) that administrators would shoot at people unnecessarily. I gave an example of how similar assertions were made in the past prior laws being passed. The laws were passed, no instances occurred.
If anything I responded to your straw man.
I used [sic] because you failed to simplify a negation. When contradictory terms are available, use the simple positive. Not unlikely = likely. They are not contrary terms. They are contradictory.
I do note, interestingly, that you have chosen to continue the TGT death spiral branch of the main conversation while not continuing on the actual Substantive branch of the main conversation. Which, I believe I pointed out (17 Jan 2013, 7:10 pm) was a fear of mine in regards to even answering an initiation of one of these massive diversions.
You can’t just call everything a straw man when it punches holes in your arguments. This is TGT tactic #1.
Now you’re being SMP. A general accusation of false accusations. Here, again, is your strawman: “And you are wild (if not wrong) in your assumption that school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext.”
You implied (as explained in the substantive portion of this discussion, the branch off from this portion -which is the TGT death spiral) that administrators would shoot at people unnecessarily.
I can’t parse the parenthetical, but the main statement is generally correct, though overstated.
I gave an example of how similar assertions were made in the past prior laws being passed. The laws were passed, no instances occurred.
No, you didn’t. You made up a strawman of my argument and attacked that.
I used [sic] because you failed to simplify a negation. When contradictory terms are available, use the simple positive. Not unlikely = likely. They are not contrary terms. They are contradictory.
This is telling. Their are different connotations to saying “likely” and “not unlikely”. The connotations matter. You should only use “[sic]” when you need to make it clear that there was an error in the original… that it wasn’t a transcription error.
You also seem to have no idea what “contradictory terms” and “contrary terms” are. Neither of those phrases apply to this situation. “Not unlikely” and “likely” are not contradictory terms as you state.
I do note, interestingly, that you have chosen to continue the TGT death spiral branch of the main conversation while not continuing on the actual Substantive branch of the main conversation. Which, I believe I pointed out (17 Jan 2013, 7:10 pm) was a fear of mine in regards to even answering an initiation of one of these massive diversions.
I have not intended to drop off any substantive discussion. I don’t always get notified of new comments for some reason. There are two open comments on this thread. One I intentionally didn’t respond to, as it’s just you lying about what you previously said, and I didn’t feel like getting into another discussion with you where you can’t parse English: https://ethicsalarms.com/2013/01/12/is-ronald-miller-an-ethics-dunce-how-unethical-is-really-really-stupid/comment-page-1/#comment-60298. You may have meant that previously, but you didn’t say it. The other I didn’t see until now, and I will be respond to it shortly.
“Now you’re being SMP.”
You’ve pulled out SMP faster than Wyatt Earp pulled his revolver at the OK Corral countless times. I’m beginning to feel that it is some sort of perverted “Appeal to Authority” or closer to the humorously named “Argumentum ad Nazium”. It’s like you assume that SMP has such a general disgust attributed to him by all that merely invoking his name ought to identify to all readers that the person with whom you are discussing is somehow automatically to be doubted.
You know people did that in elementary school, also? Ew, you’re like Creepy Kyle, gross!!
Here, again, is your strawman: “And you are wild (if not wrong) in your assumption that school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext.
Debunked when I showed how certain of your assertions required this assumption, you just didn’t like the debunking. Also, not a strawman. And, I think my artistic hyperbole is what threw you.
the main statement is generally correct
You’ve agreed to my comment about administrators shooting people unecessarily in a paragraph immediately following one in which you say I am wrong in showing you assume this. You contradict yourself.
You made up a strawman of my argument and attacked that.
No, I didn’t. You may need to research what a strawman actually is.
Their [sic] are different connotations to saying “likely” and “not unlikely”. The connotations matter.
Likely = likely
Unlikely = not likely
Not unlikely = not not likely
The 2 “not’s” eliminate. That you do not know this, while claiming to be logical, is, as you say, “telling”.
Likely and unlikely are contradictory, that is, one must be true but both cannot. It’s a simple definition thing in this case, one that is glaringly obvious.
This isn’t like hot and cold, which are contrary, that is one or the other may be true, both cannot be true, but both could be false. In this case there are gradations between hot and cold that could be true.
Since I assumed you were a logical individual (an assumption I see weakening daily) I added “[sic]” because I saw that failure to simplify double negation as an error in the original transcript, but didn’t want people to make the mistake of assuming it was me who made the glaring mistake.
“You also seem to have no idea what “contradictory terms” and “contrary terms” are. Neither of those phrases apply to this situation. “Not unlikely” and “likely” are not contradictory terms as you state.”
Already demonstrated to be another erroneous assertion.
Now, are you prepared to drop this TGT death spiral of diversion?
The first reply didn’t format properly, this one should:
“Now you’re being SMP.”
You’ve pulled out SMP faster than Wyatt Earp pulled his revolver at the OK Corral countless times. I’m beginning to feel that it is some sort of perverted “Appeal to Authority” or closer to the humorously named “Argumentum ad Nazium”. It’s like you assume that SMP has such a general disgust attributed to him by all that merely invoking his name ought to identify to all readers that the person with whom you are discussing is somehow automatically to be doubted.
You know people did that in elementary school, also? Ew, you’re like Creepy Kyle, gross!!
Here, again, is your strawman: “And you are wild (if not wrong) in your assumption that school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext.
Debunked when I showed how certain of your assertions required this assumption, you just didn’t like the debunking. Also, not a strawman. And, I think my artistic hyperbole is what threw you.
the main statement is generally correct
You’ve agreed to my comment about administrators shooting people unecessarily in a paragraph immediately following one in which you say I am wrong in showing you assume this. You contradict yourself.
You made up a strawman of my argument and attacked that.
No, I didn’t. You may need to research what a strawman actually is.
Their [sic] are different connotations to saying “likely” and “not unlikely”. The connotations matter.
Likely = likely
Unlikely = not likely
Not unlikely = not not likely
The 2 “not’s” eliminate. That you do not know this, while claiming to be logical, is, as you say, “telling”.
Likely and unlikely are contradictory, that is, one must be true but both cannot. It’s a simple definition thing in this case, one that is glaringly obvious.
This isn’t like hot and cold, which are contrary, that is one or the other may be true, both cannot be true, but both could be false. In this case there are gradations between hot and cold that could be true.
Since I assumed you were a logical individual (an assumption I see weakening daily) I added “[sic]” because I saw that failure to simplify double negation as an error in the original transcript, but didn’t want people to make the mistake of assuming it was me who made the glaring mistake.
“You also seem to have no idea what “contradictory terms” and “contrary terms” are. Neither of those phrases apply to this situation. “Not unlikely” and “likely” are not contradictory terms as you state.”
Already demonstrated to be another erroneous assertion.
Now, are you prepared to drop this TGT death spiral of diversion?
SMP
My reference was a conclusion, not a premise. It was said to shame you, not as an ad hominem. (As a random aside, When something like this is used to discredit an argument, I’m pretty sure I’ve called it a “backwards appeal to authority” before. I’ve learned since then that it doesn’t have a proper name, it’s just an informal subset of ad hominem. It’s pretty common, so I’d love if it had an actual name.)
The strawman
This is where you claimed that my comment “shooting him would be a not unlikely outcome” was accurately characterized as “school administrators will begin shooting people willy-nilly on the slightest pretext.”
What you call “artistic hyperbole” is actually a textbook strawman. You changed my claims from something sedate to something wild, and then debunked the wild comment.
When you switched back in your language to something closer to what I actually said and implied, I agreed with it generally, but with a caveat. You claimed this as a contradiction, but you had to lie about my comment to do so. (In this case, I’m willing to stand behind “lie” as the appropriate term as you stripped off my caveat, and my caveat went directly against your argument.)
not unlikely vs likely
Words have meaning. They have implication. In math, yes, not unlikely = likely. In English, saying “not unlikely” specifies a subdued kind of likely. Here, it implies that it’s likely to occur over time, not in any particular instance.
I already explained the connotation to you. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to write at a third grade level just for you. English is a beautiful language. It would behoove you to learn the implications and subtle terms instead of going reductionist on them.
Contradictory terms
You never stated the terms “likely” and “unlikely” were your contradictory terms. The only terms you referred to were “likely” and “not unlikely.” I’d chalk this one up to an innocent mistake, but if it was an innocent mistake, you would have stated your previous comment was unclear. Instead of doing that, you decided not to quote me here, effectively hiding what the problem was in your previous comment. More bad faith.
[sic]
No, you didn’t originally use “[sic]” to show that you didn’t write “not unlikely”. You swapped out my terms and wrote “[sic].” When I called that out and explained that my wording was not an error, you kept my words, but still put in the “[sic]” on a known non-error. This was you being an ass, nothing more.
Contradictory terms, redux
Hey, you did quote me… and pretended that your previous treatise responded to your error. It didn’t.
SMP
“My reference was a conclusion, not a premise. It was said to shame you, not as an ad hominem.”
Your conclusion adheres to the following syllogism:
“SMP is associated with undesirable traits which are agreed to by most people and are shameful” (Unstated Premise)
“You are like SMP”
“Therefore, you are … shameful. (Unstated but assumed conclusion, which you confirmed just now)
So, yes, you do make a premise, which is wholly subjective, unsubstantiated, downright immature, and fallacious, to which you admit:
(As a random aside, When something like this is used to discredit an argument, I’m pretty sure I’ve called it a “backwards appeal to authority” before. I’ve learned since then that it doesn’t have a proper name, it’s just an informal subset of ad hominem. It’s pretty common, so I’d love if it had an actual name.)
I think it would be better termed “Appeal to an Undesirable Authority” or what has already been named Guilt by Association (a sub-form of a Red Herring). Guilt by association has a sub-form as well, which I’ve mentioned is humorously referred to as Argumentum ad Nazium or Reductio ad Hitlerum.
It is fallacious and fairly juvenile. “I don’t really despise this one guy, now I kinda don’t like you, so I’m going to call you this guy”. It works on the schoolyard playground, but not here.
Additionally, the syllogism you inadvertently used borders on a False Analogy, based wholly on your own personal prejudices.
Strawman
“What you call “artistic hyperbole” is actually a textbook strawman. You changed my claims from something sedate to something wild, and then debunked the wild comment.”
Here’s where you are closer to the truth, the artistic hyperbole would have been a strawman, if I did proceed to debunk the hyperbole. I did not, my debunking reverted back to the original assertion.
“When you switched back in your language to something closer to what I actually said and implied, I agreed with it generally, but with a caveat. You claimed this as a contradiction, but you had to lie about my comment to do so. (In this case, I’m willing to stand behind “lie” as the appropriate term as you stripped off my caveat, and my caveat went directly against your argument.)”
What caveat did I strip? Your “Whether or not” comment??
“Whether or not” is logically translated as (P or not-P). That is a tautology, tautologies attached to other premises do not change the value of the premise, and in this case, (P or not-P) actually translates as “Regardless of P”. So, no, I stripped nothing, you stripped it yourself with your language, which you so aptly reinforce:
“Words have meaning. They have implication. In math, yes, not unlikely = likely. In English, saying “not unlikely” specifies a subdued kind of likely. Here, it implies that it’s likely to occur over time, not in any particular instance.
I already explained the connotation to you. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to write at a third grade level just for you. English is a beautiful language. It would behoove you to learn the implications and subtle terms instead of going reductionist on them.”
No, brother. You are the one who religiously expects people to follow logic. You’d better follow it yourself. Likely and unlikely are explicitly clear in their meanings and they ARE contradictory. There is no continuum of unlikely, sorta likely, and likely, in which non-unlikely includes set {sorta likely, likely}. You could say that there is a continuum from 0% to 100% and somewhere in that continuum, depending on what subject you are discussing, lies a point where you differentiate “likely” and “unlikely”. There is not, by the definition of the words and, subsequently, the law of the excluded middle, multiple points on that continuum that delineate other subsets.
It would behoove you to follow your own self-proclaimed dogmatic approach to definitions and your pharisaic expectation of logic that you expect of others, lest you tread into hypocrisy.
And no, even though you use 3rd grade fallacies, I don’t need you to write at a 3rd grade level; I would prefer you get over writing at a sophomoric level.
Contradictory terms
“You never stated the terms “likely” and “unlikely” were your contradictory terms. The only terms you referred to were “likely” and “not unlikely.” I’d chalk this one up to an innocent mistake, but if it was an innocent mistake, you would have stated your previous comment was unclear. Instead of doing that, you decided not to quote me here, effectively hiding what the problem was in your previous comment. More bad faith.
Heaven help us. Your Titanic is sinking and you’re rearranging the deck chairs. I clearly described them as contradictory terms when I demonstrated your error in not simplifying a double negation. You have erroneously assumed that likely and not likely are contrary terms. They are not.
Get a bigger bucket, you’re not bailing quickly enough.
“Hey, you did quote me… and pretended that your previous treatise responded to your error. It didn’t.”
TGT’s first score of the year, although the ball wobbled in the air and came a hair away from bouncing off the goalpost. You are incorrect about me pretending. You are correct that it didn’t respond to my error (which I haven’t had one); I responded to yours.
“True, but verbal threats + shifty motions has been upheld repeatedly in internal investigations of police shootings… and I think the improper protection might be extended to other civil servants that are considered, literally, in the possible line of fire.”
This presumes that administrators begin shooting people without actual threat to life situations. So, yes, you make the assumption.
Actually no. As should be clear, that was about the legality of shooting people based on verbal threats.
You are at least right that I suggested that administrators armed to stop armed intruders would likely cause some innocents to be shot. That part looked like this:
“More importantly, whether shooting the dad would be legal or not, considering the state of the current debate, shooting him would be a not unlikely outcome.”
This statement makes it even more clear that my first statement was only about legality.
So, I did suggest suggest that if we arm school officials specifically to protect against school shooters, that it is likely that there will be occasions where one of those armed officials shoots someone inappropriately. By the technical definition of “begin shooting people”, I agree with your statement. With the implications of the statement, I don’t agree. Your previous “willy-nilly” statement was explicit in the improper implications. Nowhere am I suggesting that each armed person is going to be shooting people. What I am saying is that you are taking each incredibly unlikely event (accidentally killing an innocent due to misidentification) and making it much easier to occur. Since there are so many chances for misidentification (and false positives are correlated with training in detecting positives), I think it would make the nearly impossible event expected to occur.
With police officers, the trade off generally makes sense to me. With school administrators? Not a chance.
Edit. the sentence: “You are at least right that I suggested that administrators armed to stop armed intruders would likely cause some innocents to be shot.” should have a “somewhere” tacked on the end.
You said “whether or not” indicating that the legality of the act of shooting is immaterial to the rest of your assertion. That leaves us with discussing the increased probability of whether a jumpy administrator or teacher may presume a person is a threat and shoot them before proper escalation of force measures were taken.
The rest of your response, the last 2 paragraphs, is an opening to a large utilitarian discussion that will ultimately boil down to balancing a few variables, most importantly including:
Likelihood & quantity of innocents being shot by a jumpy administrator/teacher (which with effective and timely training will be reduced to practically 0)
Likelihood & quantity of people being killed by murderers invading the school in which there are no armed personnel (which could be derived from historic data)
Likelihood & quantity of people with the aforementioned intent being stopped by an armed administrator/teacher (which, I submit, would be very high, based on effective and timely training)
Likelihood & quantity of people killed by murderers before armed administrators/teachers stop them (this would be purely speculative, based on a wide variety of unknowns)
You said “whether or not” indicating that the legality of the act of shooting is immaterial to the rest of your assertion. That leaves us with discussing the increased probability of whether a jumpy administrator or teacher may presume a person is a threat and shoot them before proper escalation of force measures were taken.
So, you’re agreeing that my statement said what it clearly said? I’d expect an apology to go along with that.
The rest of your response, the last 2 paragraphs, is an opening to a large utilitarian discussion that will ultimately boil down to balancing a few variables, most importantly including:
This isn’t properly sourced. To make sense with your first paragraph, I would have had to have written more than 2 paragraphs in my original response. I’m guessing that you meant to jumped from referencing my original response to my most recent comment in this subthread, which wasn’t anything new…just a rehashing of my previous comments that you misinterpreted.
Now, on to the substantive part. You’ve got the pieces (that I already outlined) correct, but you (1) beg one giant question, and (2) fail to put numbers to the one that actually matters, the likelihood of school shootings at present.
You assume that (1) the armed personnel will be well trained and (2) that a well trained person won’t ever shoot someone improperly. This begs the question. As I noted, police are well trained, but still shoot harmless dogs daily. You need to support your position or counter my position, not just restate a position that I already responded to.
As for the likelihood of school shootings, it appears that, on average, 20 people are killed a year on around 3 incidents. There are around 100,000 public schools in the US. That’s a .003% chance of a true positive each year. There are ~180 school days a year and multiple hundred parental interactions per day, so the chance of any one individual being an issue on any given day is going to be somewhere around 1 in a billion. Anyone trained to try to find a 1 in a billion shot is more likely to find a false positive than an actual positive.
Need for an apology
I’ve abbreviated most of our premises and propositions to Letters, for the detail of the full discourse, I’ve added timestamps for your research pleasure.
TGT (12:03 pm, 15 Jan 2013): “(P or not-P), Q.”
texagg (11:55 pm, 15 Jan 2013): “Q is unlikely because of mitigating circumstance X.”
TGT (12:50 pm, 16 Jan 2013): “mitigating circumstance X is debunked, because unrelated mitigating circumstance Y doesn’t work.” (weak analogy, but ok) “mitigating circumstance X may not always work” fair enough “mitigating circumstance X looks alot like characteristic Z of subset C, therefore the behavior of subset C will manifest itself in the subset in question, through implied behavior W” (this is your police shooting dogs analogy, another weak weak weak analogy, that does not take into consideration the vastly different personalities and daily interactions of police vs school teachers).
texagg (6:49 pm, 17 Jan 2013): “Q assumes W, W is based on a very weak analogy. A similar analogy was used to attempt to defeat a very similar situation years ago. The analogy was proven weak from the experience”.
TGT (6:55 pm, 17 Jan 2013): “I didn’t assume W!!! You haven’t addressed any of my weak analogies therefore you agree to them!!! Now apologize!!!”
texagg (7:09 pm, 17 Jan 2013): “Your context H supports my assertion that you assumed W in support of Q”
TGT (7:43 pm, 17 Jan 2013): “No, I’ve been talking about P all along”.
texagg (5:15 pm, 18 Jan 2013): “You originally asserted– ‘(P or not-P), Q.’. And since you are a logical fellow you know that a proposition conjoined to any tautology has the same truth-value as the original proposition. So, you were only discussing Q.”
In summary–
TGT: (P or not-P), Q.
texagg: Q is unlikely.
TGT: I wasn’t talking about Q, I was talking about P.
texagg: A proposition conjoined to any tautology has the same truth-value as the original proposition. So, you were only discussing Q.
TGT: apologize to me because you agreed to P!!! Now that’s a strawman!
For what? I’ve not agreed to anything you are claiming I’ve agreed to.
Actual substantive portion
TGT: This isn’t properly sourced. To make sense with your first paragraph, I would have had to have written more than 2 paragraphs in my original response.”
In your own words, are you being intentionally daft or just your normal self? Your response, to which I responded, from 7:43 pm, 17 Jan 2013 is composed of 6 paragraphs. So, when I say “the last 2 paragraphs” I mean for you to start at the last paragraph and count upwards twice, with the last paragraph being the 1st paragraph counted, therefore the final selection being composed of the 5th paragraph and the 6th paragraph from the entire composition. I’m sorry if “the last 2 paragraphs” was confusing….
As for your paragraphs being a “re-hashing of of comments” I got “confused”, I think the exposition from the subsection above (Need for Apology) addresses that. The reason I chose to call those paragraphs an opening for a larger discussion, was simply because now that your own confusion was cleared up, we could get on with the discussion at large.
Let me clarify, so you can see that I haven’t “begged the question” (which based on your usage, I don’t think you really know what “Begging the Question” is). When I stated that you opened a large utilitarian discussion that boiled down to balancing a few variables, the statement was based off your final paragraph (the 6th one) when you said “…the trade off makes sense to me. With school administrators? Not a chance.”
You assume I begged the question when I included a pertinent variable to discuss that was also one we previously discussed. However, when you mentioned “trade-off”, it was you who expanded the discussion to other variables (of which I created a non-exclusive list, including the variable we had disagreements about earlier).
Just so you know: begging the question occurs when the conclusion reached occurs as one of the premises asserted. I didn’t do that (since, based on your expansion of the discussion, we haven’t reached any new conclusions).
Now, your constant reference to police shooting dogs daily as an overextension of their legal protection of shooting things in defense being analagous to teachers shooting innocent people who they assume are threatening is a pretty weak analogy.
You are attaching the same serious consideration to dogs as to humans (essentially equating them morally in the mind of the person pulling the trigger). I find that an odd comparison. I think an individual (police officer or teacher) would regard a human life a bit more seriously than a dog’s, and therefore be internally urged to seek more conclusive evidence of a threat.
Police officers by nature of the needs of the job are more aggressive people compared to teachers, so that will sway likelihood of shooting a perceived threat as well.
In your mind you are comparing apples to apples (because hey, Police Officers and Teachers are both employed by governments, they must behave similarly). Unfortunately, you are comparing apples to oranges.
Also, based on your math (assuming you actually researched it and didn’t base it on 2012 alone), you are comparing a 3:100,000 annual risk to a 1:1,000,000,000 risk. Meaning that for every 30,000 years of school massacres being stopped by armed teachers, 1 person may be killed accidentally. Hm.
However, I won’t hold that against you because I’m not certain if you used your statistics responsibly in the formula leading to your risk percentage.
Need for an apology:
You completely failed in your breakdown. The apology is for your false claims about what I said. You said that my statement about legality implied that I suggested that people would be shot willy-nilly. That’s flat out wrong.
Maybe you should reread the thread.
Improper sourcing:
I explained why it didn’t make sense (which you ignored), and then told you what I was assuming you meant so there would be no problem going forward. Your attacks on me here are completely unwarranted.
Begging the question:
I explained your begging the question properly. The utilitarian argument had 4 pieces. In one of the pieces, you begged the question to get the result of that piece. I was very clear about that.
Police analogy:
The analogy is still valid. it’s not based on them both being public servants. It’s a direct counter to your training argument.
Math:
You fail at math word problems. The 1 in 1,000,000,000 number was not the chance of shooting someone innocent, it was the chance that any particular person in any particular encounter would actually be someone who it might be appropriate to shoot.
—-
Your error in the math section is representative of your errors generally. You repeatedly are twisting my comments to things I did not say. I’m not sure whether this is a reading comprehension deficit, a dislike of me that biases your reading, or something more sinister. What I do know is that when I call you on the errors, you continue to misrepresent what occurred, and that suggests bad faith.
Need for an apology
The break down is solid and accurate. You likely didn’t understand it, although it was clear and referenced the full conversation. I said no such thing about legality until you claimed your statement was about legality, which I demonstrated is moot, because “whether or not” statements are automatically immaterial. You can’t keep chasing your tail on this.
Maybe you should reread the thread.
Improper sourcing
This comment is either pure diverting drivel or an actual cry for help. I assume you mean the time-stamps so you could see I summarized the conversation in precise order and pertinent detail. Otherwise you are really going to have to clarify what you think I was responding too. Because you claim I didn’t source something earlier when I referenced your “last two paragraphs” and you feigned ignorance, then I showed you which comment I replied to.
Begging the question
Failed again. I indicated that you unintentionally expanded the conversation with your “trade off comment” (which implied other variables, hence my utilitarian lead in). I gave you an easy out so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself, but TGT is a creature of habit, he can’t help spinning off on spirals.
My entire introduction to the utilitarian debate was not the conclusion of the discussion. (which I indicated, and you ignored).
TGT: P or not-P, Q.
Tex: Q is unlikely when mitigated by X.
TGT: Q is likely, because of C is similar to Q based on assumed similar characteristics.
Tex: Comparing C to Q is a weak analogy.
TGT: No it isn’t. Q is not mitigated by X, but I can tolerated it in C, because of its trade off (with implied variables W, Y, Z)
Tex: Cool, this opens the discussion to involve W, X, Y, Z.
TGT: YOU’RE BEGGING THE QUESTION!
Tex: ….what? I just explained the falsehood of that assertion…
Police analogy
The analogy is still valid. it’s not based on them both being public servants. It’s a direct counter to your training argument.
It is a weak analogy because it oversimplifies the comparison, for all the reasons I listed and some I haven’t.
Math
“You fail at math word problems.”
No, I indicated that you likely misused your variables in your calculation of odds. When given such an odd relation of variables, there is little to do but ‘fail’. Where you fail is in proper arrangement of stats to achieve an informative result.
“The 1 in 1,000,000,000 number was not the chance of shooting someone innocent, it was the chance that any particular person in any particular encounter would actually be someone who it might be appropriate to shoot.”
That drivel is pure circumlocution. I still don’t adhere to your shaky math, but I will use your numbers. You’ve said that Person X (someone appropriate to be shot) would appear in a 1:1,000,000,000 likelihood. Then you said that the likelihood of a massacre in a given year is 3:100,000. Hm. Seems to me that the person perpetuating a massacre (Person X) would appear equally likely as the likelihood of a massacre, or 3:100,000. Otherwise he wouldn’t even exist for the massacres if the likelihood of Person X appearing is 30,000 times less likely to appear than the massacre which he would hypothetically perpetuate!
Your closing to all this:
“Your error in the math section is representative of your errors generally. You repeatedly are twisting my comments to things I did not say. I’m not sure whether this is a reading comprehension deficit, a dislike of me that biases your reading, or something more sinister. What I do know is that when I call you on the errors, you continue to misrepresent what occurred, and that suggests bad faith.”
Easily applies to you.
I do like you TGT! Your over-enthusiasm for seeking fallacies has led to many false positives, as I’ve observed in your many conversations with others and me. You fight like hell when you’ve backed yourself into a corner and nit-pick as many words as possible to bail yourself out while allowing yourself the loosest interpretation of language. It’s really quite fascinating.
What I do know, is when I call you on your errors AND demonstrate them, you immediately jump to the quickest fallacy you can think of or return to the start of the argument as though the refutation did not happen. This suggests bad faith.
I’m curious if he was intoxicated.
I can’t fathom an individual, even with a skewed hierarchy of values, ever reaching a conclusion that says an “impromptu drill by an non-constituted authority (not even an authority)” is a good choice.
See, even Ted Kaczynski or the sociopath from Aurora, Colorado, had the mental clarity to put their anti-social schemes into diabolic plans.
This guy truly is stupid.
The question of if stupid is unethical, yes. Unintentional crimes can be called “negligent”. But ethics…I don’t see how unethical behavior gets a pass just because someone is stupid.
Even the idiot principal in New York was a constituted authority. He even has 1 or 2 points added to his behavior over this guy.
The guy is a paramedic for care flight. Scary.
Indeed. Probably more accurate stated “the guy *was* a paramedic for care flight.”
But ethics…I don’t see how unethical behavior gets a pass just because someone is stupid.
I don’t know about a “pass”, but I think there are cases at the margins where this is likely true. If someone is actually retarded, for example. In that case, some responsibility likely transfers to either the state or other caretakers.
A man with a kid and a first responder job clearly isn’t on those margins.
You’ve read to much into my intent. I’m not associating legality to it.
The analogy of a crime of negligence getting a lesser sentence due to negligence was meant to highlight that although we may be able to forgive some unethical behavior due to the conditions you’ve described in ‘the margins’, it is still unethical.
However, this man’s incredibly stupid behavior, in light of his supposed credentials, ought not to receive such forgiveness.
We’re agreed on that part.
I was trying to say that we treat different people on different scales for ethicaljudgments as well as legal ones. Something can always be unethical, but we don’t respond socially to everyone the same way. We do lighten are criticism for certain people.
Good, so a rewording of my initial comment.
I live next to Ron Miller, I drive down the same roads as Ron Miller, my kids go to school with his son, and I’d put my kids in his hands any day and twice on Sunday.
I’ve heard Mr. Miller’s version of how the morning transpired, the ISD has a conflicting version, the truth lies somewhere between. But, what isn’t disputed is that he had no weapons or intent to harm anyone, that he made the stewards of our kids quake by wielding (brace yourself)… a hypothetical scenario. The stories reported in the news are the lowest form of hyperbole and character assassination I’ve ever seen. Reporters were at our house hours after the incident, and they were told Ron is a great and upstanding guy; but I guess that isn’t sexy enough to be reported.
Mr. Miller brought to sharp relief a very real problem with the schools, that we have a false sense of security, any person ‘known’ to school officials can just walk in.
You noted the NRA fervently wishes that school officials should be armed with guns, speaking as a member of the NRA and I’d be satisfied if Celina school officials were simply armed with common sense. Mr. Miller is accused of walking in and “terrorizing” the greeter and office staff. If he were really that menacing why didn’t anyone do anything to stop him? Forget arming them, is it too much to expect school staff to know basic self-defense? If he were truly making staff uncomfortable, Ron should have found himself rolling on the ground singing falsetto instead of getting in the school.
Please don’t fire off a retort that I’m an uneducated, gun-toting, red-neck. I support any organization that defends the bill-of-rights; that includes the ACLU as well as the NRA.
Perhaps Mr. Miller will be successfully prosecuted for Felony Terroristic Threats, but maybe his case will go down in history as a case of civil disobedience that challenged the errant belief that your kids are safe with someone because they’re a parent or you know them.
Since your slant on Mr. Miller’s story is one of ethics, examine the ethics of the staff at Celina Elementary claiming they felt terrorized by Mr. Miller’s words in the same press release they said our kids were not in any danger. Either they weren’t threatened at all and they’re punishing him for exposing the lack of security; or they’re really craven and will be standing in a puddle if any attack were to actually happen. Either way, their public statement contains a gross factual misrepresentation.
You’re wrong that parents aren’t shooters… In 1977 in Lewiston, Idaho a family was at a public marina when a man pulled up, got out of his car with a rifle and started shooting at the family. The third shot hit the step-father as he pushed his wife and two kids in the river… I was seven when my father shot at us.
Is there a registry for mealy-mouthed erudites??
Walking into a school, with or without a gun, and announcing that you are threatening the school, is criminal and crazy if you mean it, and irresponsible, dangerous and stupid if you don’t. Is that clear enough for you?
Do you comprehend the words you fling around? Let’s take a poll of the readers here. I think there are a lot of descriptors of my writing that they might offer, some complimentary, some not, but “mealy-mouthed” is one that would never arise from anyone who has read a single one of my posts. “At this abysmal level of brain power, responsibility and consideration for others, however, the exact stupidity/ bad ethics ratio is of academic interest only. This guy’s judgment, ethical or otherwise, can’t be trusted sufficiently for me to feel comfortable hiring him, living next to him, driving on the same road as he is, or having my child in a school with his. Jail is an excellent place for him as a start, and Ronald Miller makes an excellent case for establishing a registry of spectacularly stupid and, as a consequence, irresponsible people.”
That’s mealy-mouthed? I’d call it rather assertive, though I can do better. You, for example, confuse affection and familiarity with trust, and rationalizations with logic. Unless Miller announced, “Let me offer you a hypothetical—suppose I had a gun…” in the most gentle and convincing manner imaginable, and was naked besides, he was reckless and asking for it. You do know that the mere mention of a gun or a bomb on an airplane will get you thrown off the plane and arrested, do you not? Why do you suppose this is? Do you think Ron knows this? Does he fly? Can he read? He is obviously prone to hysteria, because there is nothing wrong with allowing a known parent to enter the school without a pat-down, a metal-detector or an interview, and more measures to protect thousands of schoolchildren from a once in two-centuries anomaly is pure panic-driven insanity.
You want to blame the school for not properly handling a fictional crisis that Miller had no right to create. You are grasping at air to justify and excuse the inexcusable—tell me, and I hope this isn’t too erudite for you, what does the Lewiston incident have to do with parents shooting up a school? I repeat—there is no incident I can find of a parent attacking children in his child’s own school. I am not “wrong”? You are desperate.
Desperate to stand up for someone who is untrustworthy. Go ahead, but you kids in his hands twice on Sunday, and good luck with that. He’s impulsive and he has shown the ability to provoke a crisis on a whim while applying the judgement of PCP user. Telling the reporters that someone who did what Miller did “is a great and upstanding guy” is either ducking the issue—he is a great and upstanding guy who doesn’t have the brains and common sense not to create a crisis in his son’s school just for the hell of it—or its the equivalent of neighbors of serial killers telling reporters that “the nice Mr. Bundy wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
You’re nice and you’re loyal, and Miller is lucky to have you as a neighbor and a friend. But you argument is nonsensical.
You do know that the mere mention of a gun or a bomb on an airplane will get you thrown off the plane and arrested, do you not? Why do you suppose this is?
Bad example, as that’s a ridiculously stupid policy. Threatening a plane while in air is a better parallel.
I’m not opining on its wisdom. I’m stating the fact that it is general knowledge that falsely suggesting that one has a gun, even in jest, is irresponsible and foolish in an environment where there is heightened concern over safety.
Ah, you were saying that we all know talking about bombs on airplanes will cause X to occur; we all know pretending to attack a school will cause Y to occur.
Yes. I should have been clearer.
Accurate reporting aside (this whole website is a compendium of the irresponsible and unethical media), it is clear that Mr. Miller took it upon HIMSELF to test the security of the school.
That act ALONE, disregarding the school’s response, disregarding the ‘flaws’ exposed, disregarding the reporting, disregarding his intent, is WRONG because he is not a constituted authority to conduct such a test.
His ‘exposure of the flaws’ in security as an act of ‘civil disobedience hardly works as a justification. It’s not like he was protesting a policy or sitting in or walking out.