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I'm not trolling. Why does this girl deserve attention? Why did she get it? I genuinely can't come up with a reason. Are you guys prepared to contribute to th

I'm not trolling. Why does this girl deserve attention? Why did she get it? I genuinely can't come up with a reason. Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Because this is absolutely not out of ordinary, and I've personally seen a 12-year-old expelled and nearly charged with a crime because his mother packed him a steak knife without realizing the school's zero-tolerance policy. I wish this girl the best and she deserves a fair trial, but sometimes I wonder if society's tack of showering money on people's legal fund merely because they made news puts incentives in the right places... If you down vote, can you explain why? I'd like to have an objective conversation about this without drive-by downvotes to shut me up.

jonathanjaeger 13y ago
There are grave injustices every day in this country (or any country, really). It's impossible to give everything the attention it deserves without solving systemic issues. However, that doesn't mean people should ignore any one particular event because other bad events happen in the world too.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  If you notice, I never advocated for ignoring it. I wondered why we're aware of it in the first place.
marshray 13y ago
The campaign is currently at $1332. That hardly counts as "showering money" upon someone who is facing two felony charges and needing legal representation. This girl does not deserve a fair trial. She deserves an apology. The responsible staff at the state attorney's office deserve to be laughed out of office.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  And you reached that conclusion based on what evidence? Good thing we don't need evidence to determine guilt in a court of law, since it sounds like you've got the findings figured out already based on what you've read in the news and in statements. I'm not saying anybody is lying. There is just usually more to these stories.
  - marshray 13y ago
    Based on the police report and media interviews with the school officials. Even if you assume she did everything in the most damning interpretation of all accounts, she is guilty of enclosing toilet bowl cleaner and bits of aluminum foil in a small plastic bottle and observing that the slowly released gases cause the bottle to rupture.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    The facts, as best as any of us can tell, are that no one was hurt and no property was damaged. That alone is enough for me to conclude that the penalty is WAY out of line with the "crime", and that this girl deserves our support. Now if all the various media reports are actually wrong, and somebody was injured, then fine... somebody shows me some evidence of that, I'll accept that she deserves a harsher punishment. But if that had happened, I find it very hard to believe that it wouldn't have been widely reported already.
derrida 13y ago
Curiosity is not a crime. Court is a resource war. The true cost of a legal defence can easily get into the $100k range I donated to make sure that their was a fair trial, or else we will have someone pleading to a felony early for a school science experiment. > Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Yes, if I am aware of it & can afford it.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  I'm not sure where you pulled that number from. I've successfully defended against multiple charges in my life, unsuccessfully others, and the only money I was out was a couple forms and bail, which I got back. The charges I got out of involved a public defender. When I hired a lawyer, I was convicted. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the criminal system from people that have never been through it and, by the very nature of how the criminal system works -- especially if you end up in front of a jury -- it's impossible to predict how anything will play out. I'm more concerned that people are donating to a legal fund after reading news statements and, possibly, the police report.
  - derrida 13y ago
    > I'm not sure where you pulled that number from. I have never been convicted. I have been through 5 court cases in my life time, including reaching the Supreme Court both as a plaintiff and as a defendant. I am 26.
    - tiredofcareer 13y ago
      So one's civil -- a completely different ballgame -- since you don't reach the Supreme Court as a plaintiff for a criminal case. Is the other civil or criminal?
    - lobotryas 13y ago
      Are you saying that your appeals to SCOTUS were heard both times or that they were merely considered and later rejected?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
aethertap 13y ago
I'm far from a legal expert, but here's why I'd do it: I don't like to see this kind of abuse by people like the school administrators, etc. If this case is well-funded and successful, it might become precedent for many others, and thus weaken the whole concept of "zero-tolerance" by providing a relevant case for future victims to use in their defense. If she loses, then the opposite will be the case (there will be precedent for draconian punishment) and it'll grease the skids for future convictions. That's my (possibly ill-informed) reason, I'd be interested to hear if other people here think it is valid or not.
smsm42 13y ago
>>> Why does this girl deserve attention? Because injustice is being done to her and we know about it. >>> Why did she get it? No idea. Luck? >>> Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Not all of them. But probably some of them. >>> she deserves a fair trial Actually she doesn't deserve any trial. What she deserves is a talk with her science teacher about how to conduct experiments safely and maybe two-day suspension for scaring the crap out of couple of adults and wasting police's time. And a subscription to a couple of science magazines from her parents.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  And you have all the facts, then?
  - chc 13y ago
    We have enough to conclude that with a high degree of confidence, yes.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    I don't know "all the facts". No any person does. I know enough to make my conclusions. You want to challenge them? Be my guest, but do bring your facts and arguments with you.
  - HCIdivision17 13y ago
    At least some of the facts, as noted above: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest The report is sketchy, which is good: not a lot if contamination, and no one's had much time to get their 'story straight' yet. My impression is that see knew something was going to happen, but did not think it through. (If it smokes in a closed bottle... Where'd that pressure go?) that at least jives with the testimony, but there's no evidence for criminal intent there, so more testimony is needed to confirm her character.
michaelhoffman 13y ago
> If you down vote, can you explain why? I always downvote comments that contain complaints or predictions about potential downvotes. Your opinions should stand on their own merits, and let the upvotes or downvotes come as they will.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  What a great blanket policy, regardless of the rest of the comment. On the accounts I've had downvote privileges with, I've reserved them for cases where the comment doesn't contribute anything or is disruptive to the discussion; no wonder I get downvoted a lot, there must be a lot of people misusing downvoting as you are. And yes, I'm aware of the guideline. That you've turned a guideline into a blanket downvote-all is pretty depressing, particularly since I didn't complain or invite, as the guidelines specifically say. I made a request since I've left comments before that have hit the toilet bowl rather quickly, merely because I went against the grain of this sort of feel-good philanthropy. There was no other reason to downvote those prior comments other than disagreeing, which I think is misuse of downvoting. I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button. I wish pg would implement a feature where a downvote costs you a karma point. That would be great. Between refreshes I can watch every comment I've left in this thread lose another point, because someone comes through and blanket downvotes everything I've said. Which, obviously, I interpret as trying to shut up (now that graying has been implemented) an opinion that people find unreasonable, rather than letting their own opinion stand on its own merit, as you say, as a reply to mine.
  - michaelhoffman 13y ago
    According to pg, it has always been OK to down vote comments you disagree with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 > I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button. You can make whatever requests you like, but people are not obligated to accede to them, and I'm letting you know that such requests are generally counterproductive.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  I made a request that if you downvoted you explained why. Thank you for heeding my request. You and someone else have already mentioned that merely saying the word "downvote" in a comment is an insta-downvote trigger, which is completely inappropriate since I made but a simple request that you seemed to handle just fine. Your extrapolation of the very ambiguous guidelines into mental rules for downvoting people is disingenuous and harmful to discussion, and you are not the only person that does it. It's one of the diseases endemic to this community, and it was only made worse by pg implementing grayed-out comments. Now it's just an opportunity to censor. I'm glad you consider my opinion preposterous, because that's an opportunity for discussion. I'm annoyed you think that because my opinion is preposterous, I must be trolling. That's the biggest example of groupthink I've ever seen; "he's way out in left field, he must be here to disrupt the community for his own sick pleasure!" No, people do disagree with you for what you consider to be preposterous reasons. Just look at the gun control debate. There are preposterous things on both sides of that. My underlying concern here is that we were called to this girl's attention via international media, we're relying upon very little actual demonstrable evidence, including media statements and a police report, and we've already made the determination that the charges were unfair, people in power should apologize and be voted out, etc. The girl changed her story once in the police report. That's cause enough for me to say 'hm, I'll wait for the facts.' This sort of thing segues into a bigger, disgusting trend of people on the Internet donating to causes like this so they can philanthropically feel good about themselves. The girl didn't even ask for a legal fund, potentially might not need one, yet here we are. Calling the person who prefers to take the long view and wait until all the facts come out a troll. Yay, Internet.
  - gruseom 13y ago
    I wouldn't have deleted my comment if I'd seen your reply. But this is clearly the wrong kind of conversation to be having, so it's probably best that I did.
    - 13y ago
noonespecial 13y ago
>Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Hell yes. We should get involved. Every. Single. Time. This stuff thrives on people just shrugging their shoulders and moving on, reminding themselves to keep their heads extra down. If we made a stink every time, there wouldn't have to be many times. When you donate, or even just take the time to get involved, think of it as raising your own taxes just a smidge to actually make the system better.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  I don't think of it that way. I think of it as giving money to someone I don't know, so that person can forward (with my trust) it on to someone else who didn't ask for it and potentially doesn't need it (what if her family are billionaires?), to defend against charges that I don't have the full story on (and it's part of my DNA to wait for the facts, sorry if you guys are a little more hasty), for a person I'll never meet and who will be fine from this either way. Making the system better isn't a legal fund for a kid. Making the system better is a legal fund for anybody that ends up in this situation. That's my point, but apparently I'm not allowed to share it since I wasn't educated in private school[1]. I'm not fiscally conservative, but donating to someone's legal defense personally doesn't sit right with me in the general, even more so if the only reason most people are doing so is because the news made them aware of it and dictated the story that you heard. I think to a lesser extent there's a little bit of overcompensation going on here since it was revealed posthumously that Aaron Swartz needed money for his legal defense but couldn't ask for it. A Cmd+F of his name around this thread should provide that evidence. All I ever advocate for is caution. If you see a news story and go "wow, that sucks, I'm going to give her some money," the news media successfully manipulated you. I used to work in print; there are Hollywoodesque people that will send press releases to news organizations on behalf of families in this situation, with promises of tearjerking interviews. I'm serious. I'm just advocating for caution, and in the more broad the trend of Internet lynch mobbing and culting that potentially cost a missing Brown student his life recently. The Internet is graduating into a much more powerful force, particularly here on Hacker News and other sites like Reddit, and I worry about the long-term consequences of acting without full facts of a situation. I'm really tired of this thread. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5653912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5653912
rayiner 13y ago
God this is what private school is for.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  Come again? Can you elaborate on what you mean?
chc 13y ago
> I've personally seen a 12-year-old expelled and nearly charged with a crime If you actually mean to compare "nearly charged with a crime" with "charged with two felonies," I don't see how we can have a productive conversation, because that is just too bizarre to wrap my head around.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  Then it's good that I didn't mean to compare them, and instead illustrate that overreaction is common.
ScottBurson 13y ago
It's ridiculous to suggest that we should do nothing about an injustice that comes to our attention just because it's not the only injustice in the world, and we're not going to do anything about most of them (not least because we don't know about them). Some injustices we care more about than others, and we need not justify ourselves to you. That said, if you see a news story about a 12-year-old expelled because his mother packed him a steak knife, feel free to submit it. I can't promise it will be upvoted onto the front page, but it's worth a try. I will probably read it if I notice it. Not to justify myself, but to satisfy your curiosity, I will attempt to answer your question. This girl's situation attracts attention here on HN, I surmise, because her intent was scientific in nature. Okay, it's a teenager's science experiment, but still, she was exploring the physical world. This is something that a lot of people here can relate to.
- tiredofcareer 13y ago
  It's ridiculous to suggest that I'm implying we should do nothing now that we're aware of it, since I damn near typed verbatim "why are we aware of this?" as the thesis point of my comment. Reactions to my comment are all over the place, this has been a net karma sink for sharing an unpopular opinion, and there's someone mocking my education for sharing it. So much for civil discourse, and congratulations on being on the "right" side of this opinion, I guess (as disappointing as it is that there is a "right" side).
GhotiFish 13y ago
I guess the same reason that everyone gave Aaron so much attention. Over-reactions from political chest thumping ruins lives and damages society. The general public needs to understand that concept. The best way to communicate that to the primitive ape like creatures milling about on our rock in space is to tell them a personal story. Basically, it's public manipulation, with blessing because it's manipulating the public in the right direction.
duncan_bayne 13y ago
This: http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Unrugged_Ind.pdf http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Unrugged_Ind... "... benevolence is a commitment to engage with others, to participate in society, in order to achieve the values derivable from other human beings. This commitment is based on the belief that one’s interests are not in conflict with those of others, but in basic harmony. It involves the expectation that one will be able to like, respect, enjoy the company of, or at least profit economically from exchanges with, most of the people around one—that they will make a positive contribution to one’s life."

jonathanjaeger 13y ago

There are grave injustices every day in this country (or any country, really). It's impossible to give everything the attention it deserves without solving systemic issues. However, that doesn't mean people should ignore any one particular event because other bad events happen in the world too.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
If you notice, I never advocated for ignoring it. I wondered why we're aware of it in the first place.

marshray 13y ago

The campaign is currently at $1332. That hardly counts as "showering money" upon someone who is facing two felony charges and needing legal representation. This girl does not deserve a fair trial. She deserves an apology. The responsible staff at the state attorney's office deserve to be laughed out of office.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
And you reached that conclusion based on what evidence? Good thing we don't need evidence to determine guilt in a court of law, since it sounds like you've got the findings figured out already based on what you've read in the news and in statements. I'm not saying anybody is lying. There is just usually more to these stories.
- marshray 13y ago
  Based on the police report and media interviews with the school officials. Even if you assume she did everything in the most damning interpretation of all accounts, she is guilty of enclosing toilet bowl cleaner and bits of aluminum foil in a small plastic bottle and observing that the slowly released gases cause the bottle to rupture.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  The facts, as best as any of us can tell, are that no one was hurt and no property was damaged. That alone is enough for me to conclude that the penalty is WAY out of line with the "crime", and that this girl deserves our support. Now if all the various media reports are actually wrong, and somebody was injured, then fine... somebody shows me some evidence of that, I'll accept that she deserves a harsher punishment. But if that had happened, I find it very hard to believe that it wouldn't have been widely reported already.

derrida 13y ago

Curiosity is not a crime. Court is a resource war. The true cost of a legal defence can easily get into the $100k range I donated to make sure that their was a fair trial, or else we will have someone pleading to a felony early for a school science experiment. > Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Yes, if I am aware of it & can afford it.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
I'm not sure where you pulled that number from. I've successfully defended against multiple charges in my life, unsuccessfully others, and the only money I was out was a couple forms and bail, which I got back. The charges I got out of involved a public defender. When I hired a lawyer, I was convicted. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about the criminal system from people that have never been through it and, by the very nature of how the criminal system works -- especially if you end up in front of a jury -- it's impossible to predict how anything will play out. I'm more concerned that people are donating to a legal fund after reading news statements and, possibly, the police report.
- derrida 13y ago
  > I'm not sure where you pulled that number from. I have never been convicted. I have been through 5 court cases in my life time, including reaching the Supreme Court both as a plaintiff and as a defendant. I am 26.
  - tiredofcareer 13y ago
    So one's civil -- a completely different ballgame -- since you don't reach the Supreme Court as a plaintiff for a criminal case. Is the other civil or criminal?
  - lobotryas 13y ago
    Are you saying that your appeals to SCOTUS were heard both times or that they were merely considered and later rejected?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

aethertap 13y ago

I'm far from a legal expert, but here's why I'd do it: I don't like to see this kind of abuse by people like the school administrators, etc. If this case is well-funded and successful, it might become precedent for many others, and thus weaken the whole concept of "zero-tolerance" by providing a relevant case for future victims to use in their defense. If she loses, then the opposite will be the case (there will be precedent for draconian punishment) and it'll grease the skids for future convictions. That's my (possibly ill-informed) reason, I'd be interested to hear if other people here think it is valid or not.

smsm42 13y ago

>>> Why does this girl deserve attention? Because injustice is being done to her and we know about it. >>> Why did she get it? No idea. Luck? >>> Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Not all of them. But probably some of them. >>> she deserves a fair trial Actually she doesn't deserve any trial. What she deserves is a talk with her science teacher about how to conduct experiments safely and maybe two-day suspension for scaring the crap out of couple of adults and wasting police's time. And a subscription to a couple of science magazines from her parents.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
And you have all the facts, then?
- chc 13y ago
  We have enough to conclude that with a high degree of confidence, yes.
- smsm42 13y ago
  I don't know "all the facts". No any person does. I know enough to make my conclusions. You want to challenge them? Be my guest, but do bring your facts and arguments with you.
- HCIdivision17 13y ago
  At least some of the facts, as noted above: http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest http://www.scribd.com/doc/138927259/Wilmot-Arrest The report is sketchy, which is good: not a lot if contamination, and no one's had much time to get their 'story straight' yet. My impression is that see knew something was going to happen, but did not think it through. (If it smokes in a closed bottle... Where'd that pressure go?) that at least jives with the testimony, but there's no evidence for criminal intent there, so more testimony is needed to confirm her character.

michaelhoffman 13y ago

> If you down vote, can you explain why? I always downvote comments that contain complaints or predictions about potential downvotes. Your opinions should stand on their own merits, and let the upvotes or downvotes come as they will.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
What a great blanket policy, regardless of the rest of the comment. On the accounts I've had downvote privileges with, I've reserved them for cases where the comment doesn't contribute anything or is disruptive to the discussion; no wonder I get downvoted a lot, there must be a lot of people misusing downvoting as you are. And yes, I'm aware of the guideline. That you've turned a guideline into a blanket downvote-all is pretty depressing, particularly since I didn't complain or invite, as the guidelines specifically say. I made a request since I've left comments before that have hit the toilet bowl rather quickly, merely because I went against the grain of this sort of feel-good philanthropy. There was no other reason to downvote those prior comments other than disagreeing, which I think is misuse of downvoting. I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button. I wish pg would implement a feature where a downvote costs you a karma point. That would be great. Between refreshes I can watch every comment I've left in this thread lose another point, because someone comes through and blanket downvotes everything I've said. Which, obviously, I interpret as trying to shut up (now that graying has been implemented) an opinion that people find unreasonable, rather than letting their own opinion stand on its own merit, as you say, as a reply to mine.
- michaelhoffman 13y ago
  According to pg, it has always been OK to down vote comments you disagree with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 > I've already accrued more downvotes on the comment than there are followup comments, so people are ignoring the request anyway, and probably not even making it that far in the comment before clicking the button. You can make whatever requests you like, but people are not obligated to accede to them, and I'm letting you know that such requests are generally counterproductive.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

tiredofcareer 13y ago
I made a request that if you downvoted you explained why. Thank you for heeding my request. You and someone else have already mentioned that merely saying the word "downvote" in a comment is an insta-downvote trigger, which is completely inappropriate since I made but a simple request that you seemed to handle just fine. Your extrapolation of the very ambiguous guidelines into mental rules for downvoting people is disingenuous and harmful to discussion, and you are not the only person that does it. It's one of the diseases endemic to this community, and it was only made worse by pg implementing grayed-out comments. Now it's just an opportunity to censor. I'm glad you consider my opinion preposterous, because that's an opportunity for discussion. I'm annoyed you think that because my opinion is preposterous, I must be trolling. That's the biggest example of groupthink I've ever seen; "he's way out in left field, he must be here to disrupt the community for his own sick pleasure!" No, people do disagree with you for what you consider to be preposterous reasons. Just look at the gun control debate. There are preposterous things on both sides of that. My underlying concern here is that we were called to this girl's attention via international media, we're relying upon very little actual demonstrable evidence, including media statements and a police report, and we've already made the determination that the charges were unfair, people in power should apologize and be voted out, etc. The girl changed her story once in the police report. That's cause enough for me to say 'hm, I'll wait for the facts.' This sort of thing segues into a bigger, disgusting trend of people on the Internet donating to causes like this so they can philanthropically feel good about themselves. The girl didn't even ask for a legal fund, potentially might not need one, yet here we are. Calling the person who prefers to take the long view and wait until all the facts come out a troll. Yay, Internet.
- gruseom 13y ago
  I wouldn't have deleted my comment if I'd seen your reply. But this is clearly the wrong kind of conversation to be having, so it's probably best that I did.
  - 13y ago

noonespecial 13y ago

>Are you guys prepared to contribute to the legal funds of everyone who is expelled and charged with crimes for unfair reasons? Hell yes. We should get involved. Every. Single. Time. This stuff thrives on people just shrugging their shoulders and moving on, reminding themselves to keep their heads extra down. If we made a stink every time, there wouldn't have to be many times. When you donate, or even just take the time to get involved, think of it as raising your own taxes just a smidge to actually make the system better.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
I don't think of it that way. I think of it as giving money to someone I don't know, so that person can forward (with my trust) it on to someone else who didn't ask for it and potentially doesn't need it (what if her family are billionaires?), to defend against charges that I don't have the full story on (and it's part of my DNA to wait for the facts, sorry if you guys are a little more hasty), for a person I'll never meet and who will be fine from this either way. Making the system better isn't a legal fund for a kid. Making the system better is a legal fund for anybody that ends up in this situation. That's my point, but apparently I'm not allowed to share it since I wasn't educated in private school[1]. I'm not fiscally conservative, but donating to someone's legal defense personally doesn't sit right with me in the general, even more so if the only reason most people are doing so is because the news made them aware of it and dictated the story that you heard. I think to a lesser extent there's a little bit of overcompensation going on here since it was revealed posthumously that Aaron Swartz needed money for his legal defense but couldn't ask for it. A Cmd+F of his name around this thread should provide that evidence. All I ever advocate for is caution. If you see a news story and go "wow, that sucks, I'm going to give her some money," the news media successfully manipulated you. I used to work in print; there are Hollywoodesque people that will send press releases to news organizations on behalf of families in this situation, with promises of tearjerking interviews. I'm serious. I'm just advocating for caution, and in the more broad the trend of Internet lynch mobbing and culting that potentially cost a missing Brown student his life recently. The Internet is graduating into a much more powerful force, particularly here on Hacker News and other sites like Reddit, and I worry about the long-term consequences of acting without full facts of a situation. I'm really tired of this thread. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5653912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5653912

rayiner 13y ago

God this is what private school is for.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
Come again? Can you elaborate on what you mean?

chc 13y ago

> I've personally seen a 12-year-old expelled and nearly charged with a crime If you actually mean to compare "nearly charged with a crime" with "charged with two felonies," I don't see how we can have a productive conversation, because that is just too bizarre to wrap my head around.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
Then it's good that I didn't mean to compare them, and instead illustrate that overreaction is common.

ScottBurson 13y ago

It's ridiculous to suggest that we should do nothing about an injustice that comes to our attention just because it's not the only injustice in the world, and we're not going to do anything about most of them (not least because we don't know about them). Some injustices we care more about than others, and we need not justify ourselves to you. That said, if you see a news story about a 12-year-old expelled because his mother packed him a steak knife, feel free to submit it. I can't promise it will be upvoted onto the front page, but it's worth a try. I will probably read it if I notice it. Not to justify myself, but to satisfy your curiosity, I will attempt to answer your question. This girl's situation attracts attention here on HN, I surmise, because her intent was scientific in nature. Okay, it's a teenager's science experiment, but still, she was exploring the physical world. This is something that a lot of people here can relate to.

tiredofcareer 13y ago
It's ridiculous to suggest that I'm implying we should do nothing now that we're aware of it, since I damn near typed verbatim "why are we aware of this?" as the thesis point of my comment. Reactions to my comment are all over the place, this has been a net karma sink for sharing an unpopular opinion, and there's someone mocking my education for sharing it. So much for civil discourse, and congratulations on being on the "right" side of this opinion, I guess (as disappointing as it is that there is a "right" side).

GhotiFish 13y ago

I guess the same reason that everyone gave Aaron so much attention. Over-reactions from political chest thumping ruins lives and damages society. The general public needs to understand that concept. The best way to communicate that to the primitive ape like creatures milling about on our rock in space is to tell them a personal story. Basically, it's public manipulation, with blessing because it's manipulating the public in the right direction.

duncan_bayne 13y ago

This: http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Unrugged_Ind.pdf http://www.atlassociety.org/sites/default/files/Unrugged_Ind... "... benevolence is a commitment to engage with others, to participate in society, in order to achieve the values derivable from other human beings. This commitment is based on the belief that one’s interests are not in conflict with those of others, but in basic harmony. It involves the expectation that one will be able to like, respect, enjoy the company of, or at least profit economically from exchanges with, most of the people around one—that they will make a positive contribution to one’s life."