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Hans Reiser is above and beyond all a fucking psychopath. It is obvious to me that the cloning story is just a ploy for him to make some money. It seems ridicul

• foljs 16y ago
  I don't know about Hans, but a 5 paragraph, 300 word rant about him and his "evil plot" in a HN post, seems a little kooky to me too.
• kiba 16y ago
  How do you know that Hans Reiser is a pyschopath? Maybe it's just a ploy for him to make money, or maybe that's his way of remorse.
  • res0nat0r 16y ago
    If he is really remorseful how about asking the public to donate to a fund that goes directly towards his children?
    • kiba 16y ago
      A pyschopath don't feel remorse, therefore it doesn't matter what he ask the public to do. Remorse is an internal state. It would be like telling children to apologize without the children actually feeling bad for their action.
  • hristov 16y ago
    Because he has continued to show any lack of remorse. Let's look even at this story. He did not say that he wanted to clone her to try to reverse the terrible thing that he did (i.e., murdering her). Or to try to give her life back that he took away. He said he wanted to give her the happy childhood that she missed. I am not sure whether Nina had an unhappy childhood, but if she did that was clearly through no fault of Reiser's because he met her when she was an adult. So even in this he cannot bring himself to admit that he did something wrong.
    • pjscott 16y ago
      The way you put that is kind of creepy. A clone of someone is a completely different person, who just happens to share DNA. To think of a clone as "Nina, reincarnated" or some such thing is not just wrong; it's potentially harmful to the emotional welfare of the clone in question. Cloning someone can not reverse murdering them. Cloning someone can not give someone back any life they may have lost. Cloning someone can not give them a happy childhood. I know this is academic now, but if (when?) there are human clones walking around, this kind of thinking is going to be a problem.
      • omarchowdhury 16y ago
        I think what you fail to see here is that the "creepiness" is built in to Reiser's ideology.
      • starpilot 16y ago
        I'm going to say something sounding terribly naive: It's almost as if Reiser thinks humans are essentially genetic code that can be duplicated to produce exact copies. It's like he's objectified people as physiological analogs of his own work.
        • jonhendry 16y ago
          He wants to make a symlink to Nina.
• triffidhunter 16y ago
  It's easy to identify with wrongly convicted people. It happens, and it's widely reported, but it's rare. Many people are so horrified by the thought of going to prison for something they didn't do that they forget how unusual it is. Because he was a programmer, contributing to Linux, people on /. and elsewhere wanted him to not be guilty. They identified with him on some level. As the evidence started to mount against him, it made people look for crazy ways in which he could not be guilty. I agree with you, he's a psychopath. This new story is just further confirmation that he's lost touch with reality. All you have to do is go back and read his postings to linux-kernel to realize he's also a huge dick. Oh, and reiserfs sucks.
  • MichaelSalib 16y ago
    It happens, and it's widely reported, but it's rare Why should we assume that? Based on incentives, one would expect false convictions to be rather common: after all, when false convictions are discovered, there's no punishment meted out to the judge, jury, prosecutors, police and forensics experts that helped wrongly convict in the first place.
    • tptacek 16y ago
      There's a statistical bias in this argument; we remember the cases in which we've learned people were convicted on shoddy evidence, but pay little attention to the overwhelming vast majority of uneventful cases in which justice is (at least nominally) served. I think it's facile to suggest that false convictions are common, and I think it's possible to point that out without arguing that we should be any less vigilant against false convictions.
      • MikeCapone 16y ago
        I would think that most mistaken convictions happen to cases that receive very little scrutiny, including by the media (think poor uneducated ethnic minority with state-provided overworked lawyer).
      • binarybits 16y ago
• evo_9 16y ago
  I think if he really wanted to try to hold onto and milk his supporters he would have never taken the police to the spot he buried his wife - instead clinging to the story he was an innocent man. I think he's just f-n nuts (or possible brilliant and nuts).
  • tptacek 16y ago
    Had he not led the police to the body, he'd have gotten life without parole: he was convicted of a particularly heinous first degree murder. It is still unlikely that he'll ever be released. But after revealing the body, he has, as a formality, a chance at eventual release. I don't think the tea leaves you're reading really say anything about his mental state.
  • hristov 16y ago
    Well he did get a sentence reduction out of that. He was initially convicted to first degree murder which carries 25 years to life minimal. For showing the body he got the sentence reduced to second degree murder which carries 15 years to life. So 10 years of life behind bars would probably have been a higher priority for him than milking his supporters. Of course I doubt any of this matters, because it is doubtful he will get paroled. But hope spring eternal.
• js2 16y ago
  For those who don't appreciate exactly what psychopath means, see http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    Thanks for that link, it wasn't the most pleasant piece I've read in the last month but certainly one of the more interesting ones. Especially the bits about the fact that it's not a disease per se but more of a natural variation and the fact that it occurs as much as 1% of the time are quite something to absorb. The first implies that there is no cure, the second that you probably know at least a few of them, even if they're of the 'subclinical' (according to the article) variety. I think I've worked for one.
  • lambda 16y ago
    An interesting read, but I will note that the linked article is from Robert Hare's own website, and it reeks of pop-psychology and pop-science (lots of anecdotal evidence, and claims of him being a misunderstood pioneer, not much in the way of actual verifiable arguments or even proper citations). I know that the idea of the psychopath, the unrepentant criminal or person without the ability for empathy, has become popular recently, but I am skeptical of some of the claims I've seen about the nature of the condition itself, the diagnosis of the condition, how common it is, and the possibility of any sort of rehabilitation.
    • jacquesm 16y ago
      It's on his site because he asked the author apparently if it is ok to reproduce it, but it's written by one 'Robert Hercz', it was the cover story of the Sep. 8th 2001 issue of Saturday Night magazine. That's not exactly a scientific publication either, but it is not as if he wrote it himself.
  • superkarn 16y ago
    Here's a blog that I ran into a while back. Lately the updates have been few and far in between. But it's still an interesting read. http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/ http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/
• shasta 16y ago
  > (Notice that he did not say that he wanted to give her her adulthood which she missed because he killed her). Maybe he wants to kill her again.
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    That was uncalled for I think. It's not even remotely humoristic and if it was not meant as humor then this comment is probably a new low for HN. The bit where he writes in this letter about wanting to raise her with his children to me clearly indicates the man is out of his mind, far more than his crazy plan of resurrecting her does (and as if murdering your wife isn't indication enough in that direction). I don't see any evidence that Reiser wants to kill his wife again but I do think that when he has served his sentence and is released that he probably should be placed in a hospital of sorts. Of course his plan doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of working in the first place, clearly he has lost whatever marbles he still had. Involving the kids in his minds view of this scheme is particularly painful, I think they'll need all the healing they can get without this sort of weirdness, they've been scarred for life already.
    • brendoncrawford 16y ago
      > That was uncalled for I think. It's not even remotely humoristic Come on, you didn't even give a small chortle?
      • code_duck 16y ago
        No, I shook my head and pondered how clearly mentally unbalanced Reiser is.
    • shasta 16y ago
      > clearly indicates the man is out of his mind I'm not a psychologist, but I think you may be on to something here. Thanks, you've talked me out of donating.
  • jonhendry 16y ago
    At the very least, I think it shows that he wants a version of his wife that could be controlled and manipulated. Really not a healthy mindset, I don't think. And that's not even getting into sexual issues.
• njharman 16y ago
  guiltyness and fair treatment by justice system are orthogonal. just saying, without commet as to this particular case. if ones rights are trampled to prove their guilt then that guilt must be put aside / go unpunished. otherwise authority has very little incentive to abide your rights and very much incentive to violate them.
• Confusion 16y ago
  Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows that this will not work It's interesting how people will acknowledge the guy is insane and in the same breath accuse him of being sane enough to understand something doesn't work. Arguments based on that premise can't hold: if someone is insane, all bets are off. Especially because you can't know how this huge failure (being incarcerated is losing the 'get-what-you-want'-game big time!) affected his mind. I'll offer an alternative 'explanation': his mind does in fact contain all kinds of 'feeling guilty' thoughts, but it doesn't know how to handle them. Hell, the appropriate pathways may be missing. As a response, his mind comes up with some plan to restore her to life. Never mind his justifications: they may just be made up by other parts of his mind, so it can ponder a narrative that seems coherent/consistent to itself. He may just ve trying to silence nagging guilt in the only way he can.
  • JshWright 16y ago
    hristov never said he was insane, he said he was a psychopath. Psychopaths are often _exceptionally_ rational people. (Note: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with histrov, I'm just saying that calling a psychopath "smart and practical" doesn't contradict his argument)
    • Confusion 16y ago
      Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with hristov either. I'm just arguing that psychopaths are not just rational people and are known to behave in what are generally considered to be 'insane ways'. The idea that psychopaths are often exceptionally rational people is a misconception, popularized by the common depiction of the 'accomplishments' of highly intelligent psychopaths. Most psychopaths are not highly intelligent. Moreover, as far as psychopaths seem to function as normal people, it's because they employ rational methods of thinking to know how to behave to get what they want. However, that their behavior is mostly based on rational ways of thinking, does not necessarily mean they are actually any good at those ways of thinking. Only the highly intelligent are. And even then: point in fact: murdering your wife is hardly ever, and certainly not under the circumstances Reiser did, a rational thing to do. Psychopaths behave in insane ways, specifically because they only employ rational modes of thinking, which are necessarily insufficient to make proper decisions about 'how to get what they want'. Why is that? Because you always lack enough information to make proper rational decisions. I can't rationally decide whether to eat another cookie.