Comment by pfannkuchen

Comment by pfannkuchen 2 days ago

3 replies

View on Hacker News

> and then deciding to kill him

This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.

For me, when I assess situations like this, I try to find an explanation that doesn’t require anyone to be cartoonishly evil, since very few people are actually cartoonishly evil in practice. In this case, similar to aviation incidents, there are two cascading failures, neither of which in isolation would have resulted in death, but both of which together did.

Speaking of aviation, it would probably help if there was an NTSB style agency for police killings. If there was an analysis of that type presented publicly I think it could make people feel better.

Forgeties79 2 days ago

> This is the key disagreement. Making this statement requires mind reading and it isn’t something we can assert one way or the other. We can only look at the evidence and make a guess.

They shot an unarmed, subdued civilian in the back multiple times while he was facedown. What mind reading is necessary here?

Reply View 1 reply
  • pfannkuchen a day ago

    Mind reading intent, of course.

    People do foolish things when they panic. And the question is panicked mistake vs intentional murder.

    My mind does anchor on things that feel too low probability to be a coincidence. The very odd “gun gun gun” shout immediately before the shooting, which very clearly could induce panic, is just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the shooting? And instead they just maniacally decided to kill him, coincidentally immediately after hearing “gun gun gun”.

    Like it seems like this structure does not cause your brain to prioritize “gun gun gun” as a likely explanation. Do we just have different mental heuristics? Like I wouldn’t say that this is proof, just that it is my default explanation and that I need reasonably strong evidence to end up with a different default. I wonder what causes you to end up with the other default?

    Reply View 0 replies