Robert X. Cringely on Jared Loughner

Here is a bit from an interesting post by Robert X. Cringely about his experience with a mentally unstable student like Jared Loughner:

I worked late at night back then in creaky old Redwood Hall. Sitting there grading papers at midnight every sound seemed to be an unwanted footstep. The math professor didn’t get any hate mail, to my knowledge and here I was getting a letter nearly every week.

Then they stopped.

My former student had taken his life, parking his car in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and jumping to his death.

...

It’s hard to think more than a step or two beyond our experience. The fact that the teachers and administrators at Pima Community College didn’t see their guy being a mass murderer shouldn’t be surprising. On the other hand I suppose that they — and I — played the odds to some degree.

Much of this comes down to not really knowing people. The Education School accepted my student not knowing what he was like, nor did they seem to put much effort into knowing him once he was there. They were incredulous that I even cared. So too this guy in Arizona. Maybe he had long been on this path but nobody knew it because nobody cared.

The whole post is interesting. It is another perspective on dealing with crazy students.

What bothers me the most is how much the "problem" people (criminals, crazies, etc.) suck the life out of a society. They are parasites who demand so much effort from the rest of society. It is tragic that they can't be spotted early and helped. You know, the ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure motto. But in reality, this is a problem that will always be with us. I think the only social control on these social parasites is via the ethic of the population at large. If society sets its expectations high and thereby pressures these people to conform then there is less parasitism. On the other hand, I don't want to live in a "barracks style" society where we are all regimented and forced to think in lock step.

This is a very tough problem. There is no solution. Like most problems society will swing around an optimal point sometimes been too indulgent (like the tolerance of Jared Loughner) and at other times the society will be too rigid and intolerant of non-conformism (and you end up burning innocent witches at the stake).