I was reading about killing sprees the other day. Among a few other interesting items, I came across the article on the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs. For those of you too lazy to read the whole thing (it is pretty long) here’s a summery: two older teenagers randomly decided to kill people. 21 people were murdered before they got caught trying to pawn off a victim’s cell phone.
The interesting part, however, is not the murders. From Wikipedia:
By the eighth grade the three suspects had found some more common ground. “Me and Igor [Suprunyuck ] were both afraid of heights, and we were afraid we’d be beaten up by bullies”, Sayenko stated during questioning. Suprunyuck went looking for advice on getting rid of their fears, which led the two boys to stand on a balcony of their 14th floor apartment for hours, hanging over the railing. This reportedly had a positive effect on their fear of heights.
This, to me, is… well, pretty cool. It’s the logical, scientific way they set about to conquering their fears that impresses me. It’s self-improvement, in the most direct sense — pretty much the base of the post-humanist movement that I’ve been drawn to.
Now, from Wikipedia again:
Hanzha was reportedly the most squeamish of the three. He had blood phobia, and would even refuse to give a bath to his kitten, afraid he might scald it. Suprunyuck suggested tackling the fears by torturing stray dogs. The boys would capture dogs in a wooded area near their house, hang them from trees, disembowel them, and take pictures standing next to the corpses.
Again, logic. This might be poetically called “cold, calculating logic” but it’s still logic. So am I still impressed? I asked myself that question, and myself answered back with another question: can you torture a computer program?
A brain is a lump of organic material carrying electrical signals. These signals form thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. The Blue Brain project has mapped and emulated a rat’s neocortical column, “which can be considered the smallest functional unit of the neocortex (the part of the brain thought to be responsible for higher functions such as conscious thought).”
If I whipped out a rat and tortured it to death at a party, I think most people would be kinda grossed out. But if I whipped out my computer and tortured a simulated rat — even if the simulation was accurate down to the molecular level and, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as real life — who would really care?
Indeed, who should care? All I’m doing is flipping bits. But when I torture a real rat, am I doing anything more then that? I’m just creating electrical signals in the rat’s brain that tell it to squeal, squirm, die…
So what’s my point? That we should all go out and torture dogs? No. Most people who engage in animal abuse end up doing what two of those kids ended up doing — extending their disregard for life to humans, as well. This is a bad thing, primarily because the more murderers exist in the world, the greater chance of there is of me getting murdered. I plan on staying alive for a long time.
Anyway, I can’t think up a decent conclusion to my ramblings that don’t make me sound like a potential mass murderer, so I’m going to stop right here, and go out and hang off the edge of my balcony.
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