What's the chance that Adam Lanza was autistic?

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08 Jan 2013, 3:34 am

... *Shrugs*

Meh. Personally, I'd rather shoot up a fertility clinic.
Kids ain't done much of anything yet. They don't even get how fvcked up the world they've been dumped in IS. People who want to breed though... THOSE bastards have it coming for wanting to inflict existence on someone against their will.

Black humour aside though... he might have been and he might not have. I don't much care, to be honest.
It is quite plausible that he might have been. Mundies do tend to treat us quite badly, often without even realising they're doing so. The average person is casually hostile towards difference of thought, and we tend to receive a lot of that hostility just for not being subject to the same flavour of idiocy that they are. As such, revenge against the neurotypicals is not an unexpected result... Also, going for that which will hurt them most. The problem with this sort of revenge is that they don't see it as such, as people in general aren't aware that they do anything wrong to justify revenge against them... SO they tend to just view it as random evil (because they're stupid enough to believe in such things).
BUT that is just one possibility of many, and at this stage in the game not only will we likely never know... but it shouldn't influence our lives anyway. I'd spare maybe a moment's pity for anyone getting worked up over this... before advising we all chill out and focus on the next meal.

Last edited by Magnanimous on 08 Jan 2013, 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ganondox
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08 Jan 2013, 9:51 am

KevinS wrote:

thewhitrbbit wrote:

There were several reports that seemed to confirm he had the diagnosis.

Honestly, it doesn't bother me. There are evil people in the world, evil AS people and evil NT people.

I'm not going to put my head in the sand and pretend that there are no evil AS people anymore than I will pretend all AS people are evil.

Well, that's if you believe in the concept of 'evil'. I don't. When he was a little baby, and his mother was holding him in her arms, there's no way you could say, yeah, that baby was "born" an evil murderer.

He was mentally ill, yes. But evil? No, I don't believe that. I don't believe in evil.

I believe there is undeniably such thing as good and evil. However, the things we label as good and evil are not good or evil. Good and evil are in everything. People aren't good or evil. They are just people. Some aspects of things might be evil, but for the most part most things are not evil.

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Chloe33
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08 Jan 2013, 11:36 am

It seems like Adam would fall somewhere on the spectrum, yet there's still so much info we aren't even aware of or know.
Maybe he just hated all people and was a sociopath (conduct disorder).
He doesn't seem to be a typical Aspie.
He never seemed to have any learning disorders. They said his elementary school academics were fine.

They blame video games, guns, it's all so ridiculous.

It's obvious the Lanza family was in denial. Ryan suspected his own brother of being the shooter prior to the public or anyone finding out who the shooter was. So i'd bet Adam showed warning signs. Why his family ignored them (Peter (the dad) and his brother) is beyond me.

It's clear the mother had her own mental issues she was dealing with at the time. The father should have stepped in to take responsibility for his son. I guess he was too busy playing favorites with Ryan, his heir.

What a sad case...

I know tons of people myself included who own guns, play COD and other video games and would never harm anyone.
The media is horrible, they just look for scapegoats.

The issue should be when is it time for non-family to intervene?
Every time the school tried to help, Nancy wouldn't let them and would insist only she could help Adam. That is irrational of her.

At what point could someone outside that family actually step in?

I think the final time Nancy pulled Adam out of HS was since they were going to intervene seriously. She didn't want that so she home schooled him at that point. If he was out of the school, then they had no say over his care.

marshall
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08 Jan 2013, 3:41 pm

It seems like social anxiety was a worse factor than AS alone.

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08 Jan 2013, 3:56 pm

Aitrean wrote:

Moreover, autism has been related to psychopathy and sociopathy, although it does not imply that even a significant percent of autistics have it.

Well it's true, but nevertheless autism is related to every other psychiatric illness and even to a whole bunch of other illnesses, so that doesn't say that much. The correlation to have both is not that high and not everyone who kills ppl is automatically a psychopath.

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08 Jan 2013, 11:59 pm

Raziel wrote:

Aitrean wrote:

Moreover, autism has been related to psychopathy and sociopathy, although it does not imply that even a significant percent of autistics have it.

Obsessive Personality Disorder, and schizoid personality disorders are commonly seen in studies of personality disorders and Asperger's syndrome, but anti-social personality disorder or associated disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder are rarely seen in individuals actually diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Anti-social personality disorder has been associated in a few cases of PDDNOS, and in the limited research that has been done with Autistic Disorder and Personality Disorders there is little association of any co-morbid personality disorder.

Difficulties with Theory of Mind and Empathy is common in others disorders such as ADHD, developmental language disorders, Schizophrenia, and right brain disorders.

Some associate Anti-Social Personality Disorder with Autism because of the word empathy, but interestingly enough the word empathy currently is not even listed specifically as a word in the DSMIV-TR diagnostic criteria for Anti-Social Personality Disorder. Aspects of a lack of pro social emotions associated with empathy such as remorse and a lack of regard for the safety of others is listed, but a lack of empathy is actually listed as a criteria trait for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissocial_ ... #DSM-IV-TR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissist ... -TR_301.81

http://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349 ... utism-.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2705351/

http://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349 ... utism-.pdf

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09 Jan 2013, 3:13 am

Adam was definitely evil, whether through a conscious or subconscious decision based on his final moments here (whether predetermined to do what he did or not based on all events leading up to it). No religious mumbo, just that "evil" can explain his final actions just as whatever mental disorder he had prior to that can explain his "odd" social behavior.

There is "evil" (and by extension evil people). Some may call it anti-social or narcissistic PD (looking at you, Cohen), whilst others may call it murder; it's still evil in the end.

No jumbo, it's just that there's bad and good in the world. Sometimes only a few are bad, sometimes the majority.

Is good and bad in everyone? Probably to some extent when pushed in the right direction (yep, that lovely "empathy" thingy people like to think is a pillar of righteousness -- nope), but there's people who're often just one or the other for most of their behavior.

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09 Jan 2013, 3:53 am

Here a study: Distinct cortical correlates of autistic versus antisocial traits in a longitudinal sample of typically developing youth.

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13 Jan 2013, 10:39 am

Sylvastor wrote:

Verdandi wrote:

That is still hearsay, unfortunately. It does sound plausible.

If you look at the Columbine shooting, several people gave false information to reporters, and there's no truly logical or rational reason why some of them did so. At this point, I'm still going to hold out on believing this until I see someone who actually diagnosed Lanza say so. This seems unlikely.

Boulevard press. I avoid it for a reason. I'm not going to pay for something that says trivial stuff like "celebrity X is now divorced with celebrity Y" or generalizes "all *insert type of people* are a possible danger to us!". The final nail in my personal boulevard press coffin was the statement "people who play "killergames" (<- idiotic term used for the shooter genre of games here in Germany) are most likely killers/mass murderers/public/school shooters".

I play them too but I never killed anybody.
So what?

I'm German, does that mean I'm a little Hitler/nazi who shoots everybody who admits he's jew?
No.

I'm most of my time at home and being busy with my obsession. Does that mean I am planning a rampage?
No.

According to media and stereotypes, I would always fit the stereotypes of a killer/mass murderer.

Here is an example. The example lists stereotypes I heard/read created by media concerning what makes you a mass murderer (warning: heavy usage of sarcasm):

I am a human - Check.
I am a withdrawn person and live my life mostly within my room - Check.
=> of course, this automatically means I am a sociopath, misanthrope, psychopath, etc. - Autocheck.
I am male - Check.
I am white - Check.
I have the hair colour of some other random mass murderer in history - Check.
I have short/mid/long hair - Check.
I think a lot - Check.
I was bullied a lot for a long time - Check.
I am single - Check.
I have just a few friends - Check.
I am ending my teenage years - Check.
=> of course, if I end my teenage years, I will fit into the other criteria: 20-something year old male white guy who was bullied - Autocheck1.
==> of course, this automatically means if I grow out of that group, I'll hit the 30-something year olds - Autocheck2.
===> I'm older than that? No problem - Autocheck3.
I am spending most of my time in front of the PC - Check.
I am definitely not normal in behaviour (and am suspected to have AS and soon am working on a diagnosis) - Check (eventually double-check later).
I have troubles socializing (in school) - Check.
=> of course, this automatically means I am considered a nerd/geek/failure/whatsoever - Autocheck.
I make checklists - Check.
I believe in a god (which, of course, automatically means I'm some religious terrorist ) - Check.
I play (first person) shooters/"killergames" - Check.
I'm a German - Check.
=> of course, this automatically means I am a (neo-)nazi and thus overly violent - BIG AUTOCHECK.
I listen to *insert music genre here* - Check.
=> in case it's more than one (x), check x times - Autocheck*x.
I actually check my checklist - Check.
I now think check as a word looks and is funny - Check.

If I had to believe media stereotypes concerning what makes you a mass murderer, I would have been dead since long (either by suicide or by police) and there would be no living people on this planet anymore (so in that case, most likely suicide). :lol:

The best you can do is probably ignore such statements and move on with your life. Time usually makes people forget that, the killergame statement was forgotten too by now. It just happened that now the trend is: Everybody who is in the slightest mentally/socially disabled (apparently even if you are additionally physically disabled and in a wheelchair) runs in danger of being seen as such a person. After the next incident it will be people who listen to heavy metal music again or some other dumb "stereotype" (you can't really call that, it has no long-livity as stereotypes do in my opinion).

Don't be silly, Heavy Metal doesn't make people kill each other, it only makes people kill themselves. It's Industrial Metal that makes people shoot up schools! :roll:

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