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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 ridiculous at first glance, but it has a chance of working.
You see Hans knows very well that he had a huge groups of fans and supporters and that those supporters were not very smart and supported him even after the evidence against him got more and more obvious and incontrovertible. I remember that even after he led the police to her body there were huge discussions on slashdot and some people were still talking about how he was still somehow unfairly treated by the justice system and Nina somehow brought this about on herself.
Psychopaths are very adept at using people, and I bet Hans just feels that there still are some people he can use out there. The problem is that after he showed her body to the police even his most ardent fans would have to admit that he killed her.
So he comes up with this story that he wants to clone her to give her the happy childhood that she missed. (Notice that he did not say that he wanted to give her her adulthood which she missed because he killed her).
Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows that this will not work. Even if cloning were possible, you would create a different person. It would be a different person with the same DNA but a different person nevertheless.
So yes, he is just a psychopath that wants to get another bunch of money from the fools that used to believe him.
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.
> Oh, and reiserfs sucks.
I was with you until here. T'so is quoted as writing that btrfs has a lot of the same design ideas of ReiserFS, and that he supports btrfs as the way forward (he particularly disliked Hans and Namesys, though): http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/1/217
Some distros moved to ReiserFS by default, too.
Somehow I've never found the time to properly try it out, but I never really got the impression from others that used it that it sucks. I might be wrong, though.
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.
For those who don't appreciate exactly what psychopath means, see http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html
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.
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/
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows
that this will not work
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.
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)
> (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If he is really remorseful how about asking the public to donate to a fund that goes directly towards his children?
I can tighten up the headline: "Hans Reiser: Delusional."
It is obvious he lives in a totally different world than the one most of us live in. I would call it "anti-world" because really bad things happened when it collided with "normal-world".
Poor kids. Nina is out of it, Hans serves his sentence in jail, and those kids are left without their parents and very little understanding of what the hell happened to their lives in a way that will ever make sense to them.
Seeing their father in the news like this isn't going to help them at all, it's bad enough to see their father as a former open source contributor turned murderer of their mom.
Yes, that's a 'think of the children' argument, but in this case it is very specific children that I have in mind and I think it is a valid point.
Reiser could have been out of jail for several months now, if he had accepted the first deal he was offered:
Judge Goodman essentially confirmed the nature of
the crime from the bench. He said that he initially
agreed — prior to Reiser’s trial that
began in November — to accept a voluntary
manslaughter plea deal. Goodman said he would have
given Reiser the minimum, three-year term. The
maximum for that heat-of-passion crime was 11 years.
Reiser refused the offer, which required him to
produce the body and explain the crime, the judge
said. Had he accepted, he would have likely been
released next May, the judge said. "That deal was
rejected by Mr. Reiser. He chose, if you will, to
roll the dice," Goodman said.
Defense attorney William DuBois said, "It’s beyond
me" why his client did not accept the original
offer.
The judge said he would have approved the deal to
bring immediate closure to family and friends of
the victim, and to prevent the young Reiser boy,
who is now 8, from having to testify. The judge
said it would have also spared taxpayers the
expense of a trial.
I agree with DuBois. Consider the three possibilities:
1. Gamble with a trial, get lucky, and win. Get out as soon as the trial is over, end of April 2008.
2. Take the involuntary manslaughter deal. Get out May 2009.
3. Gamble with a trial, and lose. 25 to life. Make a deal then, and maybe get that knocked down to 15 to life.
Would anyone here have rejected the deal in his situation? Remember, you know that you are guilty, so going to trial means you are betting that you did such a good job of hiding the body and other evidence that they won't get a conviction.
Well, he did do a good enough job of hiding the body. The evidence against him was circumstantial. Given what we know about his character, I have no trouble believing he believed he could explain it away. People have been found not guilty due to reasonable doubt on evidence stronger than in his case.
> The evidence against him was circumstantial.
The evidence was actually pretty good. Yes, there was no body which makes it circumstantial but the total body of evidence was such that it would have been very surprising if he had walked. Car seats don't go 'missing' just like that, cars don't suddenly get flooded and large bloodstains do not suddenly appear, and definitely not all around the moment when a person suddenly disappears.
Most explanations of these circumstances would stretch credulity considerably.
The fact that he chose #3 just shows his arrogance. Look at how he took the stand and completely turned off everyone in the courtroom. He thought he was smarter than the people working against him. He thought he'd win.
FTA: He proposes that in 12 years, when he is released, that he be allowed to clone his wife and provide her with the good childhood she missed.
There is a fine line between genius and madness. Where is the remorse for his actions?
Where is the remorse for his actions?
Weird? Yes. Uncomfortable? Yes. Not living on the same planet as the rest of us? Yes.
But perhaps that's his way of showing remorse. Give her another chance at life, one that he took away.
I'm not all that familiar with the guy or the case, but the way it reads to me is that he's implicitly saying there's no way she would've ended up with someone like him if she'd had a good childhood. As Vonnegut would say, he is a broken thinking machine, so it's difficult to ascribe motivation to any of his actions, but I do get that sense.
"Give her another chance at life"
The "her" you refer to no longer exists, and never will again (at least in this sector of the multiverse).
What he would be giving "another chance at life" to would be a wholly distinct organism that happens to share the same DNA.
That's not remorse, that's just a psychopath's idea of restitution. Thinking that you can (somehow) make up for murdering someone by cloning them does seem in my non-expert opinion to be the kind of empathy-free insane troll logic that only a psychopath could come up with.
Please excuse the grammar pedantry, but you've got something odd going on with pronouns. He wants to provide a girl whose DNA comes from Nina with a happy childhood which Nina did not have.
If I were a clone, I would be pretty miffed when people confuse me with my DNA donor, even if it's just a typo. :-)
In this case I think the line isn't all that fine.
Without a massive boost in senility, a lobotomy or way too many psychoactive drugs, isn't it kind of hard for one to become a "former genius?"
Dunno...
Is "genius" some kind of IQ score that is measured abstractly? Can one be a "genius" behind bars or homeless? Or is "genius" measured by actions, as in inventing something like a filesystem? If the latter, does one piercing insight net you the genius title for life, or must one keep it up?
I can see how one definition of the word "genius" might be the realization of creative and intellectual potential, and one could consider this type of genius a temporary title that must be "renewed" through ongoing and active creation and intellectual activity.
This particular definition seems to be in harmony with widespread HN values, namely that it is not enough to have ideas, one must also manifest them to earn full admiration. In which case, Mt. Reiser might well be a former genius for the purposes of ongoing realization of creative and intellectual potential.
Exactly. A functional description of genius, i.e. one that is applied to subjects meeting certain criteria, is the only description that makes sense. Let's not forget that genius does not describe a particular brain configuration, but rather a specific perception/archetype that exists in some cultures.
IQ isn't static, so it's quite possible for someone's IQ to dip out of the "genius" range. Interpreting Reiser's increasingly bizarre behavior as signs of internal dysfunction, it's quite possible he would no longer test as a genius. Certainly, turning down a 3-year plea offer and insisting on acting as his own counsel would be indications to this layman of sub-genius performance.
Since we're talking about a headline instead of a clinical diagnosis however, I'd suggest the author was using that phrasing as a more concise way of communicating "formerly known as a software genius, then famous as a convicted murderer, and now working on a shtick as a mad scientist."
> Reiser's increasingly bizarre behavior
Reiser's behaviour has always been bizarre by "normal" standards. It's only recently that it first tipped over (murder) and then was put under pressure and showcased to the world (investigation and trial), but there is little indication that he would he behaved more "normal" if a similar situation happened earlier in his life.
To me, genius is more a particular point in time where someone has the intelligence, aptitude, drive, and time to put something together of staggering importance. Any of those qualities could recede just as quickly as they were brought on. I suppose if one is a considered a "genius" during these times, they could be called a "former genius" after them. Though once you're recognized it seems polite to forever hold the title, kinda like President or something.
When you really wasn't one in the first place, I guess it's pretty easy. Regular media prefixes any computer dude that ends up in their pages with the word, it's not like it means anything in the context.
Actually, it's extremely easy to stop being a genius. No need to damage your brain; the only thing required is being prone to social conditioning.
If you're prone to social conditioning, you're not a genius in the first place.
genius you are, genius you stay, the dash doesn't wash up.
Maaaaaaaybe we'd better look over that Reiser FS source code, just one more. Just in case.
Reiser's lack of awareness of the feelings of others is extremely disturbing.
I hope somebody saves this article and mails it to the parole board.
W T F
Hans Reiser lecture (video) on the Reiser4 file system at Stanford in October 2005. http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/permlinks/051026.html
ReiserFS: The filesystem with killer performance.
How can someone can contribute to such a big part of the open source community and take someone's life? It's like being bipolar on some level.
I didn't know about this guy until today and now I'm freaked out about reading open source projects discussions :P