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The inability to see from anyone's perspective but his own is astonishing here. Starting with the title "Beyond fiction," the only part of this account that str

The inability to see from anyone's perspective but his own is astonishing here. Starting with the title "Beyond fiction," the only part of this account that strikes me as fictional are Aaronson's explanation of why he did nothing wrong. To any reasonable observer it appears that Aaronson has committed a very petty crime that robs minimum wage workers of a tiny bit of extra income. Actually it doesn't just appear that way... that's actually what he did. He's then somehow pretending that he's been oppressed for this, as if the officers hauled him off to an interrogation room. > how do you live in a world where, again and again, you can choose the hard right path over the easy wrong one, and then see your choice gleefully wielded against you? Nothing was really wielded against him, except for the fact that he absent-mindedly committed a petty crime and had to deal with police officers questioning him about that.

rwcarlsen 8y ago
He went through a traumatic experience with aggressive, armed officers not knowing why. He wasn't trying to rob anybody. Have you ever accidently almost crashed into another car - but because the other person was paying attention, you both were spared? - or maybe we should all be severely punished for our mistakes. The world is a much better place if we can work together and be understanding of mistakes (especially petty ones like this) - we all make them.
- jdoliner 8y ago
  > He went through a traumatic experience with aggressive, armed officers not knowing why. Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic. > maybe we should all be severely punished for our mistakes This qualifies as severely punished? > The world is a much better place if we can work together and be understanding of mistakes Completely agree, that's why Aaronson complete inability to understand his mistake is so gross. Even after it's explained to him and he's back home writing a blog post about it, he still doesn't understand his mistake.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    > Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic. Did he commit a crime? What he did isn't a crime in England.
    - jdoliner 8y ago
      Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US. You're allowed to take from tip jars in England? That doesn't sound right to me. But I don't know much about English law.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US. Theft in the US generally involves intent, not merely taking. There was certainly probable cause to arrest for petty theft, but a taking under an honest mistake of ownership is not theft, so, if one accepts Aaronson’s account, he did not, in fact, commit theft. OTOH, whether a jury would believe it plausible that not only did he initially forget that he had paid by card and mistake the tip jar for change but, when told that the container from which he had just taken money was for tips, still did not realize that the money he had taken was tips and not his change is another question, so I wouldn't have been surprised if, if this had gone further, he had been convicted of theft even if his narrative of th facts external to his mental state were accepted as true.
      - DanBC 8y ago
        In England theft requires dishonest appropriation with the intent to permanently deprive the owner. I'm not sure what he did meets all of those tests. I'm not sure it meets "dishonest" - it sounds like it was a simple mistake.
        jdoliner 8y ago
        I think the amount stolen here probably precludes prosecution in most jurisdictions. But I have trouble believing that if it was a larger amount he'd be able to just say: "I was mistaken, I thought their money was my money." I'm not a lawyer but that seems like far too abusable of a defense.
pitt1980 8y ago
"in a liberal democracy, as long you know you did nothing wrong, even if you got arrested, frisked, detained, there’d probably be no real need to panic. All you’d need to do is calmly clear up the misunderstanding and be back on your merry way." This probably is a poor assumption about living in a liberal democracy, but it seems ironic that he was actually able to resolve this relatively on the spot (he doesn't have to appear in court, or use the services of a lawyer to resolve this) Kafka this isn't
- pitt1980 8y ago
  fwiw - 'In Dana’s view, what I saw as an earnest desire to get to the bottom of things, came across to grizzled cops only as evasiveness and guilt. She says it would’ve been far better if I’d categorically denied: “no, I did not steal. That’s completely absurd. Please release me immediately.”' fwiw, its seems pretty likely to me that this isn't true, and that had he done that, this situation would have been more expensive to resolve
F_r_k 8y ago
Of course he was in the wrong, but in other countries, you would have the manager come to you and tell you you mistakenly took some cash of the tip jars. It seems surreal to me that you would have the cops called on you for 3 bucks.. what happened to human interaction (for real) ?
- smacktoward 8y ago
  It sounds like the officers didn't know that the amount taken was so small. From the post: > After many more attempts to intimidate me, I was finally informed of the charge: “that smoothie place over there says you the stole cash from their tip jar.” Huh? How much? One of the officers returned from the smoothie bar, and said, a bit sheepishly: “they say it was $4.” So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do, so they roll up on him hard out of disgust that anyone would do such a thing. Then they talk to him and discover that what actually happened is that he absent-mindedly took $4. That's a very different class of violation, but it's not like they can take back the aggressiveness of their initial approach. The damage was done. In theory, the officers could have avoided the mistake by questioning the manager for more details before making the stop. Look at it from their perspective, though -- one of the people you're employed to protect is telling you that he's just been robbed, and if you futz around too long, the perpetrator gets on his plane and gets away with it. It's not surprising they would decide to stop the guy first and work out the details once they could be confident he wasn't going anywhere. I feel bad for the author, but I feel bad for the officers too, who (by this account, anyway) were put into a pretty awkward position by the actions of the smoothie shop manager.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do Also, apparently what he actually did: his story of mistaking the contents for his change don't make any sense unless it was the entire contents.
mrob 8y ago
In most jurisdictions, the crime of theft requires intent to deprive the owner of the thing being stolen. According to Aaronson's report, this was not the case.
dreamcompiler 8y ago
I think you missed his whole point. He admits he absent-mindedly committed a petty crime and failed to communicate with a minimum-wage worker. For these mistakes, he was presumed to be a hardened criminal and no attempt was made to see if maybe--just maybe--this nebbishy-looking guy with his family might merely be an ordinary person having a bad day in an airport who made a simple mistake because he was stressed-out. A few words of respectful human communication on the part of the cops could have saved everybody a lot of grief. But that option never occurred to them.
- jdoliner 8y ago
  > he was presumed to be a hardened criminal and no attempt He was presumed to be a petty criminal by police because they're required to do so when someone reports a petty crime. And in this case they were correct in their presumption. > A few words of respectful human communication on the part of the cops could have saved everybody a lot of grief. If Aaronson was capable of respectful communication then when the smoothie person got angry at him he would have considered the possibility that the anger was warranted and he had done something wrong. And probably would have pretty quickly realized: "oh wait I'm putting down money on this tray that I just picked up money from... that doesn't make any sense." But instead he immediately jumped to: "there's something wrong with this smoothie shop worker" Everyone would have been saved a ton of grief if Aaronson had any respect for the people around him or any self awareness. But he has neither.
  - dreamcompiler 8y ago
    Sounds like you have a beef with Aaronson that goes beyond this blog post.
    - pdabbadabba 8y ago
      Not the GP, but this blog post is basically the only thing I know about Aaronson, and I had exactly the same reaction. The core of the problem here to me sounds like it was Aaronson's, perhaps isolated, inability to respectfully interact with the smoothie bar workers.
breck 8y ago
Agreed. The title made me hope this post was going to be about some new unbelievable quantum breakthrough. Instead....he stole from a tip jar???! That is one of the most despicable crimes one can commit. I am surprised the police didn't use more force. Generally if you steal from a tip jar and the staff sees you, you should pray the police show up to protect you. I have also never in my life heard of someone accidentally stealing from a tip jar. That is bad luck for him. My opinion is he should change this story from a melodrama to a lighthearted comedy and count his blessings he still has all his teeth.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > count his blessings he still has all his teeth. It was $4. Is that really worth physical violence?
  - breck 8y ago
    Probably not for $4--except maybe if you weigh deterrence--but whether or not it's worth it's the natural reaction I'd expect (depending on where you live, IME two decades ago in Boston, anyway).
- cafard 8y ago
  I would say that he "took money" from a tip jar, rather than "stole" from a tip jar, since by his account there was no intent to take what was not his. "One of the most despicable crimes one can commit."? I do not respect persons who steal tips, but on a scale of criminality, it strikes me as a long way from the top of the despicability index.
  - breck 8y ago
    YMMV but my despicable ranking puts the crime of stealing from hard working low-income workers at about a 9/10. That's why this story could be so great as comedy, since he committed a rare and evil crime accidentally. But the way it's told now I think is very off-putting.
- edanm 8y ago
mcphage 8y ago
> as if the officers hauled him off to an interrogation room And if they had done that—well, he did accidentally steal $3, didn't he? And then you'd be right here saying "...as if the officers locked him up for the night". And if they had done that too—well, he did accidentally steal $3, didn't he? I wonder what you'd be saying here then.
edanm 8y ago
I mean, I think most people can (and should!) reasonably expect to go through life without being placed in handcuffs. I think it's a fairly extraordinary circumstance that found a geeky CS professor in handcuffs. Over accidentally "stealing" $4. Maybe you can't imagine how someone could be so absent-minded. I certainly can, since I've been close to this absent-minded before - especially in the middle of a long flight with a child, which tends to make people espcially unfocused. Seriously, it seems like you're giving him 0 benefit of the doubt. If a friend was telling you about this crazy thing that happened to him where he was placed in handcuffs because he accidentally took 4 dollars from a tip jar thinking it was change, would you really be acting this way?
- jdoliner 8y ago
  I have no problem imagining absentmindedness of this sort. It's the deafness to the people around him that I find astonishing. Throughout the story anytime Aaronson was presented with a social interaction that would have allowed him to realize his mistake, he didn't pick up on it, and I feel that's because he can't respect the people around them or their point-of-view for long enough to get out of his own bubble and realize they might not be completely crazy. If a friend told me this story I'd tell him that yes, it was a bit crazy, but that he also had done several things to bring this upon himself and that he should learn from this rather than blaming everyone else.
  - edanm 8y ago
    > It's the deafness to the people around him that I find astonishing. I mean, you could characterize it this way. Or you could just say "some people aren't paying full attention to cashiers, especially when they're tired/stressed/traveling with children. Really, I'm not saying he was OK to "steal" something, but are you really so shocked at someone not paying the most attention to a routine encounter like paying money? That part is completely standard behavior.
deleted 8y ago
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rwcarlsen 8y ago

He went through a traumatic experience with aggressive, armed officers not knowing why. He wasn't trying to rob anybody. Have you ever accidently almost crashed into another car - but because the other person was paying attention, you both were spared? - or maybe we should all be severely punished for our mistakes. The world is a much better place if we can work together and be understanding of mistakes (especially petty ones like this) - we all make them.

jdoliner 8y ago
> He went through a traumatic experience with aggressive, armed officers not knowing why. Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic. > maybe we should all be severely punished for our mistakes This qualifies as severely punished? > The world is a much better place if we can work together and be understanding of mistakes Completely agree, that's why Aaronson complete inability to understand his mistake is so gross. Even after it's explained to him and he's back home writing a blog post about it, he still doesn't understand his mistake.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > Talking to police officers for 5 minutes after you commit a crime is the cost of being part of society. It seems very reasonable to me and I wouldn't call it traumatic. Did he commit a crime? What he did isn't a crime in England.
  - jdoliner 8y ago
    Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US. You're allowed to take from tip jars in England? That doesn't sound right to me. But I don't know much about English law.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Yes... stealing money is a crime in the US. Theft in the US generally involves intent, not merely taking. There was certainly probable cause to arrest for petty theft, but a taking under an honest mistake of ownership is not theft, so, if one accepts Aaronson’s account, he did not, in fact, commit theft. OTOH, whether a jury would believe it plausible that not only did he initially forget that he had paid by card and mistake the tip jar for change but, when told that the container from which he had just taken money was for tips, still did not realize that the money he had taken was tips and not his change is another question, so I wouldn't have been surprised if, if this had gone further, he had been convicted of theft even if his narrative of th facts external to his mental state were accepted as true.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      In England theft requires dishonest appropriation with the intent to permanently deprive the owner. I'm not sure what he did meets all of those tests. I'm not sure it meets "dishonest" - it sounds like it was a simple mistake.
      - jdoliner 8y ago
        I think the amount stolen here probably precludes prosecution in most jurisdictions. But I have trouble believing that if it was a larger amount he'd be able to just say: "I was mistaken, I thought their money was my money." I'm not a lawyer but that seems like far too abusable of a defense.

pitt1980 8y ago

"in a liberal democracy, as long you know you did nothing wrong, even if you got arrested, frisked, detained, there’d probably be no real need to panic. All you’d need to do is calmly clear up the misunderstanding and be back on your merry way." This probably is a poor assumption about living in a liberal democracy, but it seems ironic that he was actually able to resolve this relatively on the spot (he doesn't have to appear in court, or use the services of a lawyer to resolve this) Kafka this isn't

pitt1980 8y ago
fwiw - 'In Dana’s view, what I saw as an earnest desire to get to the bottom of things, came across to grizzled cops only as evasiveness and guilt. She says it would’ve been far better if I’d categorically denied: “no, I did not steal. That’s completely absurd. Please release me immediately.”' fwiw, its seems pretty likely to me that this isn't true, and that had he done that, this situation would have been more expensive to resolve

F_r_k 8y ago

Of course he was in the wrong, but in other countries, you would have the manager come to you and tell you you mistakenly took some cash of the tip jars. It seems surreal to me that you would have the cops called on you for 3 bucks.. what happened to human interaction (for real) ?

smacktoward 8y ago
It sounds like the officers didn't know that the amount taken was so small. From the post: > After many more attempts to intimidate me, I was finally informed of the charge: “that smoothie place over there says you the stole cash from their tip jar.” Huh? How much? One of the officers returned from the smoothie bar, and said, a bit sheepishly: “they say it was $4.” So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do, so they roll up on him hard out of disgust that anyone would do such a thing. Then they talk to him and discover that what actually happened is that he absent-mindedly took $4. That's a very different class of violation, but it's not like they can take back the aggressiveness of their initial approach. The damage was done. In theory, the officers could have avoided the mistake by questioning the manager for more details before making the stop. Look at it from their perspective, though -- one of the people you're employed to protect is telling you that he's just been robbed, and if you futz around too long, the perpetrator gets on his plane and gets away with it. It's not surprising they would decide to stop the guy first and work out the details once they could be confident he wasn't going anywhere. I feel bad for the author, but I feel bad for the officers too, who (by this account, anyway) were put into a pretty awkward position by the actions of the smoothie shop manager.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do Also, apparently what he actually did: his story of mistaking the contents for his change don't make any sense unless it was the entire contents.

mrob 8y ago

In most jurisdictions, the crime of theft requires intent to deprive the owner of the thing being stolen. According to Aaronson's report, this was not the case.

dreamcompiler 8y ago

I think you missed his whole point. He admits he absent-mindedly committed a petty crime and failed to communicate with a minimum-wage worker. For these mistakes, he was presumed to be a hardened criminal and no attempt was made to see if maybe--just maybe--this nebbishy-looking guy with his family might merely be an ordinary person having a bad day in an airport who made a simple mistake because he was stressed-out. A few words of respectful human communication on the part of the cops could have saved everybody a lot of grief. But that option never occurred to them.

jdoliner 8y ago
> he was presumed to be a hardened criminal and no attempt He was presumed to be a petty criminal by police because they're required to do so when someone reports a petty crime. And in this case they were correct in their presumption. > A few words of respectful human communication on the part of the cops could have saved everybody a lot of grief. If Aaronson was capable of respectful communication then when the smoothie person got angry at him he would have considered the possibility that the anger was warranted and he had done something wrong. And probably would have pretty quickly realized: "oh wait I'm putting down money on this tray that I just picked up money from... that doesn't make any sense." But instead he immediately jumped to: "there's something wrong with this smoothie shop worker" Everyone would have been saved a ton of grief if Aaronson had any respect for the people around him or any self awareness. But he has neither.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  Sounds like you have a beef with Aaronson that goes beyond this blog post.
  - pdabbadabba 8y ago
    Not the GP, but this blog post is basically the only thing I know about Aaronson, and I had exactly the same reaction. The core of the problem here to me sounds like it was Aaronson's, perhaps isolated, inability to respectfully interact with the smoothie bar workers.

breck 8y ago

Agreed. The title made me hope this post was going to be about some new unbelievable quantum breakthrough. Instead....he stole from a tip jar???! That is one of the most despicable crimes one can commit. I am surprised the police didn't use more force. Generally if you steal from a tip jar and the staff sees you, you should pray the police show up to protect you. I have also never in my life heard of someone accidentally stealing from a tip jar. That is bad luck for him. My opinion is he should change this story from a melodrama to a lighthearted comedy and count his blessings he still has all his teeth.

DanBC 8y ago
> count his blessings he still has all his teeth. It was $4. Is that really worth physical violence?
- breck 8y ago
  Probably not for $4--except maybe if you weigh deterrence--but whether or not it's worth it's the natural reaction I'd expect (depending on where you live, IME two decades ago in Boston, anyway).
cafard 8y ago
I would say that he "took money" from a tip jar, rather than "stole" from a tip jar, since by his account there was no intent to take what was not his. "One of the most despicable crimes one can commit."? I do not respect persons who steal tips, but on a scale of criminality, it strikes me as a long way from the top of the despicability index.
- breck 8y ago
  YMMV but my despicable ranking puts the crime of stealing from hard working low-income workers at about a 9/10. That's why this story could be so great as comedy, since he committed a rare and evil crime accidentally. But the way it's told now I think is very off-putting.
edanm 8y ago

mcphage 8y ago

> as if the officers hauled him off to an interrogation room And if they had done that—well, he did accidentally steal $3, didn't he? And then you'd be right here saying "...as if the officers locked him up for the night". And if they had done that too—well, he did accidentally steal $3, didn't he? I wonder what you'd be saying here then.

edanm 8y ago

I mean, I think most people can (and should!) reasonably expect to go through life without being placed in handcuffs. I think it's a fairly extraordinary circumstance that found a geeky CS professor in handcuffs. Over accidentally "stealing" $4. Maybe you can't imagine how someone could be so absent-minded. I certainly can, since I've been close to this absent-minded before - especially in the middle of a long flight with a child, which tends to make people espcially unfocused. Seriously, it seems like you're giving him 0 benefit of the doubt. If a friend was telling you about this crazy thing that happened to him where he was placed in handcuffs because he accidentally took 4 dollars from a tip jar thinking it was change, would you really be acting this way?

jdoliner 8y ago
I have no problem imagining absentmindedness of this sort. It's the deafness to the people around him that I find astonishing. Throughout the story anytime Aaronson was presented with a social interaction that would have allowed him to realize his mistake, he didn't pick up on it, and I feel that's because he can't respect the people around them or their point-of-view for long enough to get out of his own bubble and realize they might not be completely crazy. If a friend told me this story I'd tell him that yes, it was a bit crazy, but that he also had done several things to bring this upon himself and that he should learn from this rather than blaming everyone else.
- edanm 8y ago
  > It's the deafness to the people around him that I find astonishing. I mean, you could characterize it this way. Or you could just say "some people aren't paying full attention to cashiers, especially when they're tired/stressed/traveling with children. Really, I'm not saying he was OK to "steal" something, but are you really so shocked at someone not paying the most attention to a routine encounter like paying money? That part is completely standard behavior.

deleted 8y ago

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