Why do they kill?

While I agree with the conclusion, I can't follow the argument. Non-adaptive=insane, adaptive=normative?

Flaky: Non-adaptive=insane, adaptive=normative?

Yes. By definition. Otherwise the DSM would be forced to define belief in a religion as delusional thinking. Instead it specifically excludes beliefs that are part of a person's culture or subculture.

There is a recent paper on the subject: 'Mind control' experiences on the internet:
Implications for the psychiatric diagnosis of delusions, Bell et al
(link goes to PDF) published in Psychopathology.

AFAIK insanity is a legal term or concept, not a psychological concept. Mentally ill is probably the better term to use.

Adaptive doesn't mean ideal or beneficial, at least not for cultures, societies or individuals. It merely means that the heritable trait or behaviour has a higher fitness than others.

I don't know that I'd use the word amok for a planned and scouted attack. He knew what he was doing, scouted Von Maur just before the attack, and left notes explaining himself.

Whatever the nice term is, he was nuts and wanted to take people out with himself.

The Rwandan genocide shows that people do indeed walk into a church and kill people because of their ideology.

At any rate, if killing people en masse is an adaptive strategy than the fact that individuals sometimes adopt that strategy without having allies is unsurprising; the trait has no functional expression for most people that aren't military or police.

Insane? Obviously.

If one were sane and about to perpetrate such a crime, one would seek out and kill the armed guards first.

natural cynic:

...one would seek out and kill the armed guards first.

Ah, but he did. Westroads is a gun-free zone. No armed guards to worry about. He picked his target well. Von Maur is a high-end department store in a high-end mall on the "nice" side of town next to one of the more exclusive developments. (My wife shops there when we are in town.) You are not likely to run into someone carrying in that store.

There may be a difference between adaptation and natural selection. If someone dies before reproducing, for whatever reason (sickness, insane gunman, lighting strike) - that is natural selection. Doesn't necessarily mean it's adaptive. From an evolutionary perspective, an insane gunman would have the nearly the same effect as an unlucky mutation.

Hawkins may have scouted Van Maur, or he may simply have been familiar with it from having lived his entire life in Omaha. The shooter at the church in Colorado, on the other hand, apparently was not expecting an armed security guard prepared to shoot back. Preliminary conclusion: he didn't scout it out first.

That said, I will disagree with the supposition that pre-planning equates with sanity. Psychopaths engage in quite sophisticated planning; being prepared doesn't make them sane.

And I'll also disagree with the characterization of Robert Hawkins as having run amok. He walked in and calmly began shooting people. Running amok implies far less controlled behavior.

Perhaps you saw the report (subscription) in Science 26 October 2007 by Choi & Bowles, "The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War." The authors argue that these two features could have evolved jointly if conditions promoted group conflict, but neither was likely to evolve alone.

Nan:

I based my comments on comments on scouting from news reports that the security cameras showed him walking in, then leaving and then coming back with a gun.

It is clear that "Gun free" zones are dangerous. Better get you a carry permit and stay out of those places.

Hawkins actions in obtaining the gun and ammunition, in scouting the mall shortly before the shootings indicate purpose and planning. The note he left behind indicates he was well aware of the atrocious nature of what he planned. This was not insanity. This was an evil act if anything is.

Just like these.

What I wonder is, given Pickton was convicted of only second-degree murder, how many would he have had to kill before a jury decided he actually intended to kill these women? As things stand, he could be back on the street in ten years - in principle, at least.

Strange sense of justice they have in Canada.

People went amok with planning before now. It is the rage, a form of insanity, that motivates it, not the suddenness. It is tied closely to conceptions of honour and feeling slighted.

Yes, it is evil, but nobody does this because they have planned to do evil, or very few. Even serial killers like Pickton do it from a form of compulsion.

And there is a spectrum of killing that ranges from perceived personal slights through to groups working to enhance their status - I am not saying that the latter is always a group adaptation; but generally it has more to do with social status than ideology or religion.

Mark, thanks for that link. I will read it closely.

What I wonder is, given Pickton was convicted of only second-degree murder, how many would he have had to kill before a jury decided he actually intended to kill these women? As things stand, he could be back on the street in ten years - in principle, at least.

It comes down to the Crown succeeding in convincing the jury that Pickton killed the women deliberately, but not that he planned it in advance. Yes, it seems an odd verdict, but without combing through the trial transcript, I don't think you or I are in a position to second-guess the jury. (There are still dangling questions in this case -- like whether he had accomplices).

Believe it or not, the former actions are adaptive: if you follow the conventions you are accepted in your community, which raises your fitness. It's political, not ideological.

I don't find this hard to believe. Fighting to retain group identity is like fighting for scarce resources. It's about power (politics). It makes perfect sense to me.

The latter - the random killing of people by an individual run amok - that is not. So if our shooter did what he did because of religion, or ideology, or because the elves were whispering in his head, none of that is the real reason. The real reason is that he was insane.

Of course he was mentally ill. But I question how random this was. He targeted people against whom he had a grievance - an unreasonable one, which engenders hatred. Also, I do believe that the more shaming, perfectionistic, and demanding the group, the more likely it will turn out shamed, perfectionistic, and demanding disgruntled members. I don't know if that's the case here, but I suspect so. We need to look at the fact that more and more supposedly "normal" people are becoming control freaks in this nation of the "deeply religious." I don't think we should shy away from questioning how maladaptive to the larger culture some subcultural adaptations have become.

"Instead it specifically excludes beliefs that are part of a person's culture or subculture."

I find it interesting that the difference between delusion and religion is merely one of scale.

Imagine that, by some deus ex machina of a plot twist that would make any author groan, a typical modern Christian were zapped into an alternate universe where religion either never existed or is long dead. What would the atheistic inhabitents make of this person and his raving about an omnipotent supernatural figure who watches over him, judging his actions? They would send him for therepy.

Take a single scientologist, high-ranking. Their beliefs include the unshakable conviction that the intergalactic overlord Xenu set up the earth as a sort of prison colony, and that they should be able to gain superpowers through meditation and ridding themselves of engrams. Again, the only reason this person is not considered insane is that they have an army of people who think as they do.

This princible holds no matter how rediculous the belief - the craziest of nonsense will become respectable if sufficient people claim it to be true.

Do people kill because their religion or ideology tells them that nonbelievers are subhuman? Yes.

No! Not always subhuman; sometimes just evil or a threat. There is a big difference.

Do people go to war because their religion or ideology tells them it is their patriotic duty? Yes.

Perhaps, but not exclusively. You use the words "patriotic duty" as a mockery, I fear, and this does you a disservice. Sometimes people go to war because they weigh up the factors clearly and cool-headedly and decide that war is justified. Others go because those at their own level, and not just those at the top of the heap, press them into it ("white feathers").

Others go because their "ideology" (translated as strategic military and trade considerations, rather than considerations of race or culture) forbids them to stand by while neutral nations have their sovereignty and neutrality systematically violated (Belgium in 1914), their capacity to feed their own people threatened, and their allies attacked.

Do people walk into a church or missionary school and kill people because of their religion or ideology? Almost never. They do it because they are insane.

Tell that to the Rwandans.

You have confirmed my impression that the politically correct left is totally clueless when it comes to understanding why people resort to war and murder. You treat it as the unreasoning act of madmen; very frequently those who engage in war are neither unreasoning, nor ideological or relgious, nor mad.

So does suicide bombing count as insane or adaptive?