Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

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A few years ago a woman was murdered on the block where I worked. She was out jogging in the evening and was stabbed by a schizophrenic homeless man. The murderer had been arrested several times, they knew he was ill, but he couldn't be forced to receive treatment.

What's the solace you offer for her family? "Hey sorry your daughter got killed, but maybe people won't be unjustly institutionalized in this hypothetical scenario I dreamed up where US civil rights suddenly regresses 60 years for no reason"?

Sorry, I don't find that very compelling. I'm pretty sure we can regulate institutions better, knowing what mistakes were made in the past.

People are human, they make mistakes. Sometimes they're wrong or even malicious. Yes, some people might be harmed in institutions. But, people are also being harmed right now. There's no scenario in which there is zero harm. You try to reduce harm as much you can and evaluate and adjust along the way. That's how you make progress. If you paralyze society by demanding perfect solutions, the result is stagnation and death.

US human rights _just_ regressed less than two years ago, with limitations to access to abortion!?! Is there a need for more proof that what you dismiss as 60 years ago poor decisions is already being reimplemented?

I absolutely understand your point regarding mental illness, but so far the US don't seem to be in a good shape to handle it without SERIOUS risks to others, and on another scale than people getting stabbed randomly, which happens with our without mentally ill people (and is also a very bad thing).

All of this is common sense, frankly.

The people arguing against you are arguing from fear and emotion. You won't convince them with logic.

Thank you. These people that demand perfection are poison to any kind of progress, and one of the reasons the US is an increasing failure. Was recently in Asia, and the contrast was clear as day.

I'm not demanding perfection. I'm literally just asking "what would be different this time", and the only answer I'm getting is "we know better this time around".

Seriously: the reason asylums were so prone to abuse in the past was not because the people running them didn't know better.

You don't think there's anything different between the 1960s and today? Like, nothing at all?

For one thing, there is a history of abuses in asylums, so people would know to look out for it. I confess I don't know every detail of the history of asylums, but hopefully we can agree:

1. Asylums existed, there was abuse

2. At some point the abuse was discovered and brought to light.

3. The people in power eventually shut down the asylums, partly because of the abuse.

So we know that some mechanism for detecting abuse existed. How about we do whatever that was earlier on and formalize it? We know that there is some authority that has the power to shut down asylums, so instead of that authority shutting them down, how about it just removes people who are committing abuse? This isn't rocket science.

Like, at some point in the past bakers would put sawdust in their bread to cut cost. Obviously, this was bad and they knew it was bad. But we didn't just say "Oh well, I guess we have to outlaw bakeries. There's no possible way we could ever stop them from putting sawdust in the bread". No, we created the FDA, started doing inspections and fining people and today you can buy bread anywhere in the US and be confident that there's no sawdust in it. Clearly, problems like this have solutions if people are willing to try instead of just giving up.

Homosexual marriage is universally legal in the States, doesn't that indicate legal precedents have changed significantly in the intervening time?

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