(08-28-2025, 03:14 PM)Pete Wrote: Just yesterday after that school shooting in Minnesota, a pubic official announced they are preparing to launch an AI system to scan the internet for social media posts that can identify threats and inform authorities.
The problem with something like this is that the people involved with train the AI to look for the *wrong* indicators. For the right-wing conservatives, they'll train it to look for "Transgenders, Muslims, and Blacks" as they blame them almost exclusively for any mass shooting. For the left-wing liberalists, they'll train it to look for "White Supremacists, Gun Owners/Supporters, and Males".
At no point with either side step back and actually look at the real profile of these mass shooters and what's wrong with them. To diagnose the real potential for violence, one has to look at the EMOTIONAL STATE of someone and then see if it's simply a one-off incident, or an ongoing issue with emotional problems.
Honestly, I think the biggest motivators for shootings are.... dum dum de dum, drum roll please....
Uncontrolled Depression and/or Anger.
No politics involved here. No judgement on either side or against any group, religion, or race. I personally feel that if they're going to start looking for markers for severe violence, then they should start looking for signs of extensive and prolonged depression and/or anger.
Happy and contented people, regardless of race, sex, or creed, don't usually go around killing people and risking losing that happiness and security in their life. But you take someone who is so depressed that they want to get away from everyone and everything they know and just throw up their hands and give up or start over, and you have the potential there for issues. Once you reach the point where you no longer care if you live or die, life loses meaning and sanctity. Most of these mass shooters go out, shoot the shit out of whatever, and then take their own lives. If their own life holds no importance or meaning to them, how can you expect them to hold respect for anyone else's?
Same with intense hatred. When you put every problem in your life on someone else's shoulders and fail to accept anything whatsoever as being part of your own actions, then you develop an impossible hatred for them. You're convinced that getting rid of the perceived source would improve everything, but you realize that's never going to happen. By god, even if means you have to die, it doesn't matter! This <source> has already ruined your life, finances, romance, existence! All you can do is strike back at it and try to lessen it's impact for others in the future. You're not going to be a villain, but an unsung hero!
Again, you no longer see any hope or use in your own life, so you have no respect for any others.
*THESE* are the people who AI would need to be looking for, and not just for singular one-time expressions of normal emotions.
"STUPID GIRLFRIEND BROKE UP WITH ME! I'M GOING TO SHOOT HER DEADER THAN DEAD!!! RAHHHRRRR!!!" Chances are, that guy's drunk and venting and unless he immediately hops in the car and rushes out in his agitated state, he'll calm down and say, "Puck, I was stupid last night. Ignore me. I don't even have a gun. I was just ranting..."
But the guy who posts the same thing about darkness and death and gloom and how the world is out to get him, or how the world would be better off without <whatever> in it.... That's the one that should be flagged and sent for mental evaluation and hold.
We look back after the fact and we see lots of shooters who have shown all these warning signs. This latest shooter that Pete is referencing, is definitely one. He posted multiple times about an Ode to Death. He was depressed and didn't like being a man, trying to change himself to become a woman. (And NO, I'm not pointing fingers at transgenders here, I'm pointing to his *motivation* behind changing his gender. He was depressed being a man and thought he'd be happier as a woman. I'm just pointing to the depression he mentioned, not any surgery or name change he had. If you trade your old car for a new car simply because you're depressed, it's the same warning sign, in my opinion -- you're letting your depression control your action.) He posted videos talking about his depression... and he also posted videos reflecting intense hatred.
Depression and hatred. This guy oozed both, and he oozed them publically, socially, and visibly. And then he goes out an acts on them...
And Gosh, we need to ban guns!! Gosh, we need to ban Trans!!
Gosh, why the fuck isn't anyone looking at this guy's mental state and caring one damn little bit about it??
He was determined to kill and then kill himself. He thought he had cancer from vaping and didn't want to die and leave no impact. The motivation here is rather simple -- fame and notoriety, fueled by depression and anger. This guy fully planned to kill and he planned to die doing it. Gun control laws would've have changed his actions; at most, they might change his *TOOLS* for his actions. Instead of shooting through windows, he might've stolen a propane truck, drove through the side of the building, and then blew up the truck. He was going to do this act no matter what; he just chose tools of convenience. Gun control wouldn't have stopped this.
Stopping him from changing his name from Robert to Robin wouldn't have stopped this either. If he wore a damn dress or a pair of pants, it doesn't change that he was determined to kill people and become famous. He thought he had cancer. He didn't want to be a forgotten nobody. He was going to kill people, die doing it, and become famous.
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So how do we prevent this type of crap from happening ever again??
First thing Steve would do, and I've said this before, is: STOP REWARDING THE KILLERS WITH FAME AND NOTORIETY!!
We should pass a law that all criminals, unless they're still loose and being pursued by law enforcement, should only be referred to as JACKASS-YEAR-MONTH-DAY-ID. This guy wouldn't have his name out in the airwaves as Robin or Robert. He'd just be Jackass2025082701. He wouldn't get any fame. Nobody would know who is it. He'd be lost in the sea of numbers and digits and quickly forgotten. Other deranged people years from now wouldn't be very likely to say, "I want to be as famous as JA2025082701!"
We're not addressing to tool involved, as it's just a tool and not to blame. We're not addressing any gender ideology, sex, or race. What we're addressing, in this particular case, is the *motivation* behind the shooting. This guy did it in particular for the fame. That fame needs to go away once and forever. Quit glamorizing these killers. They're just JackAsses and Numbers. Their names don't need to go down in history. That motivation should be erased completely and utterly.
After that, we need to have a serious talk as a nation about addressing emotional extremes in individuals. The chronically depressed and the chronically angry both need mental help -- even if that means involuntary lockups and the public paying for it. Reagan shut down all our mental hospitals because they were expensive and, Gosh darn, they were locking people up and depriving them of their freedom just for being sad or mad or unstable!! And.. ever since then, we've seen these type of events even though they never seemed to exist before.
But neither side wants to do either of those things.
One would trample on freedom of the press to report anything and everything to the public, regardless of consequences. Hell, we even go to war now with reporters embedded in with our troops and then we wonder, "Gosh, why did the enemy possibly know what our plans were or what our troop numbers, makeup, and armements were?! We just don't understand!!"
The other would trample on due process and loss of freedom. "You can't lock up people in mental hospitals until AFTER they've committed a crime. Just talking about shooting kids at a school isn't actually shooting kids at a school! And they couldn't shoot them if they didn't have guns! Or couldn't change their name/gender!"
Instead, all you can do is point fingers and blame things that honestly have no chance of changing anything. "I'm going to propose a new gun law!!" Okay... What makes this new damn law any more effective than the 200,000 already on the books? "Because this one is NEW!!" Okay, but... "No butts! We have to do it for the children!" But... "YOU HATE CHILDREN, YOU MURDERER SUPPORTER!!"
And, on the other side, "We're going to ban people changing their pronouns, names, or genders! They have to stop living in a fantasy world!" Umm... I don't even know where the heck to start with that line of garbage. Doesn't matter what pronoun a killer goes by; they're STILL a killer!!
And thus, we're stuck where we are, and I can't imagine there's a thing AI can possibly do to change anything. After all, it's going to be trained and taught by people, and from my experience, the vast majority of the people involved in these type of decisions (AKA politicians) are idiots who are only pandering for votes, NOT solutions.
