Showing posts with label Oslo incident. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oslo incident. Show all posts

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Prize for screening out mass killers

Legal weapons were used at Jokela and Kauhajoki school shootings and Oslo attack. The shooters had to get gun license first. The permitting process provides a checkpoint for screening out potential mass killers. Currently no effective screening exists to separate mass killers from the responsible and sane; therefore a prize is neeeded to give psychologists, criminologists and medical professionals incentives to create a test to screen out mass killers.

The prize would be based on pessimistic assumptions:
  • There are going to be more mass killings. Ways to prevent mass killings are not known.
  • Special brain function is needed for the monstrous lack of empathy which enables mass killings without war trauma, or delusionality where the murderer thinks he is an action hero tasked with saving the world by killing masses of nameless goons.
  • This brain damage may show up in hormone levels, genes regulating brain function, etc.
  • Shooting back is an effective way to stop an ongoing mass killing, for example Hyvinkää shooting stopped after the police returned fire. Effective screening paves the way for responsible and sane armed population. Should mass killers move to illegal guns (most regular gun kills are already done with illegal guns in Finland) then damage control through concealed carry permits is the only effective measure.
Genetic information already improves estimates about propensity to violence. The Finnish permitting process already screens out 2/3 of the criminals who would kill.

Update: The author of the linked article got his statistics wrong. He compares people with gun license killing with guns they own against kills by people without gun license using all methods. Gun kills are just a fraction of all kills, so it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Rules for the screening tests:
  • The tests can be based on any set of physiological measures like blood sample, genetic profile, saliva, urine, body height, etc.
  • The tests consist of a scoring algorithm for calculating pass/fail and a list of physiological measurements.
  • The tests can announce false positive for at most 10% of the population.

How prize money would be distributed:
  • After a mass killer is caught alive or dead, available physiological measures are taken. This enourages tests, which can be performed on the dead like blood samples, genetic profiles etc.
  • After each killing incident, 20% of the prize money is given for the tests which were positive for the killer. 80% remains in the fund for future killings.
  • The number of false positives is inversely proportional to the prize money. For example, a test flagging 0.01% of the population earns 100 times more than a test flagging 1% of the population.
  • Because of moral hazard, any research team with any links to the killer can't get prize money.
Here is an example of prize money division. Suppose that after a mass killing incident, two tests flag the killer. One of them flags 1% of the whole population, while another flags 0.01%. The price pot is 100000€, so 20000€ is awarded. The test flagging 0.01% of population earns 19802€, while the test flagging 1% of population earns 198€.

The institute administering the test would have to be international to get adequate sample size. It would also publish all physiological measures about the mass killers, and preferably also from other violent criminals and some voluntary controls without criminal record.

Without trying arrangements like this prize, we'll never know if modern psychology can screen out potential mass killers. What can be lost by trying?

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

About The Book

Summary: Breivik's book contains several fabricated statistics. This casts doubt on the truthfulness of his autobiographical claims.

ABB did not just reach wrong conclusion - namely, that political terror works. It doesn't. Even the Soviet communists who fought a civil war to gain power found terror strikes counterproductive.

His book is also worthless as a reference on the state of Islam and moral decay in Europe, as it is full of fabrications and factual errors. This is a pity as I'd very much like to see a well-researched "big picture" overview without liberal "don't worry, everything is ok" head-patting. I cross-checked some statistical claims about Finland.

The first claim which caught my doubt was the claim in p. 1173 that 35% of Finns get a sexually transmitted disease in their lifetime. Turns out that 15% of Finns had contracted an STD in their lifetime in 1992. Chlamydia was just as high in 1987 as in 2003, gonorrhea almost vanished and others are too small to meter, casting doubt on that 35% figure.

At p. 564, a table lists the Muslim share of the population for various European states. It claims that in 2009, 2% - 3% of people in Finland were Muslims. Wikipedia puts the estimate at 0.8% in 2006. This is a horrible mistake, as the whole book is about the Islamization of Europe

At p. 719, there is a discussion of social capital and trust, and claim that Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland top the list. This claim is true.

At p. 735, there is a table quantifying the levels of multicultural indoctrination in each country. The chapter doesn't tell how the numbers were calculated nor cite references. Conclusion: fabricated.

In p. 923, they put the level of Muslims in Finland at 2% - 4% of the population rather than 0.8%.

In p. 972, there is oil production amounts in different countries. The figure
is in line with an online source. Also other figures in this chapter seem factual.

At p. 1190, he claims that the "historic concentration of the Nordic genotype" in Finland was 85% at 1900, 75% at 1950, and 55% at 2010. Again there are no references or description of what is "nordic genotype". I seriously doubt if the genetic makeup of Finns has changed by 30% in 100 years. We haven't had that much immigration.

At p. 1223, there is a table listing countries in order of GNP. While the list seems genuine, it is interpreted wrong. He says "The International Monetary Fund ranking of the countries with highest GNP shows that the top 10 list is dominated by countries with an exceptional degree of social cohesion." The real conclusion from the table is that there are many ways to get high GNP per capita. 3 couuntries have oil. 3 countries have high social cohesion. Good capitalist economy has brough US and Singapore to the list. US is the antithesis of social cohesion and still on the list.

Conclusion: 2 figures don't match with official ones, 2 figures seem outright fabricated as there is no methodology mentioned, 1 is true but sloppily interpreted.

Social proof


What about his autobiographical claims? In his communication tips, he emphasizes the need for social proof and looking good: "...it should be a priority to appeal to a broadest selection of European males. Resistance leaders/cell commanders or individual cell operatives must prioritise to arrange and book a professional photo session prior to operation for one or all involved. Resistance leaders of larger networks should also arrange photo sessions with female patriotic models to use in online marketing/recruitment campaigns."

And he sure looks good himself! It reads like straight from Mystery Method. He was a leader of men, running a software company in early 2000s and a distinguished WoW raiding guild in 2005. But the guild he named was actually established only in 2007.

His tribe was also preselected by women: "Although I have had a change of mentality a majority of my friends have not. My stepfather Tore, one of my best friends Marius and my more distant friends Kristoffer, Sturla and Ronny are all living manifestations of the complete breakdown of sexual moral. All five have had more than 300 sexual partners (two of them more than 700)."

Finally, he's protecting us, his loved ones, from the threat of Islam.