[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Miss Absynthe

There's no need for the snarky pants.

Are... are you TONE POLICING (ZOMG) me?

To characterise my posts as being solely driven from personal experience is a nice derailment. It's true that I've touched on my own experiences of having mental illness, but that has been a very minor part of my conversation.

My opinion in this matter differs from yours. Why do you ask if I was reading the thread? Is your assumption that I think differently from you has to be due to failing to experience the same data that you experience, and that if I had then my opinion would have to mirror yours?

Your contribution has been based on fear and bias and a sense of entitlement.. throwing in a wiki article doesn't make that any less so.[/color]

Mental illness affects the minds of people suffering from them, hence the name. Conscious actions follow decisions. Decisions are mental processes. You're making it sound like it is some fantastic leap in logic to assume a connection between the result of a mental process and the mental processes that construct it. It's where the decisions come from in the first place!

In the same way that some people without mental illness will cause violence, it is true that some people with mental illness will cause violence.

The factor behind the violence isn't that they are mentally ill - if it were then we would rarely see people without mental illness being the perpetrators of violence.

The factor behind violence is the decision to enact it. Where do decisions come from?

The irony of this one appearing in a conversation about guns quite amuses me..

Are actual bullseyes just unrelated manifestations of pure random chance? How do you prove it? http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/284...accounting.png

So you do not accept there is a link between psychological illness / damage in the example of John Muhamad or his abusive relationship with Malvo, and their actions. Their decisions were made in a void unrelated to their psychological makeup? All context is incidental?

Why do you think that they are considering something needs to be done now? Gun violence in the US is not a new thing..

Because an event occurred that is causing people to look for possible preventative measures to try to prevent re-occurrences. The deaths of a lot of children in one horrible tragedy apparently affects people. Crazy.

Yes, it is EXACTLY like your example.. and as you've just pointed out - CORRELATION DOESN'T MEAN CAUSE.

This completely eludes me. You keep saying CORRELATION DOESN'T MEAN CAUSE like it is a mantra. Do you think all correlation is inherently useless? That correlated data HAS to be flawed because there is a correlation?