What kind of crap is this? It's like candid-camera racist edition. Talk about entrapment, so if you stage a murder or rape and then ask why people didn't intervene or praise them for jumping in is that ok? I don't think so. Go find stores where this is happening, tape them, expose them and demand justice!! Don't create some made of situation and get people worked up over your "experiment". Life is too short. What a pile of absolute contrived crap.....

When I watched this, the part that struck me as ironic was the last line.

The word "terrorist" is used as a synonym to "enemy", but it literally means something else.

In this case it could reasonably be used to describe secret police who stalk and attempt to entrap people, and use extra-judiciary means to extract information. In the literal sense not "one of those guys", but all of the officers can be described as terrorists.

hehheh. I like his honest melancholy look of: =/ Yeah. I was - I was definitely gonna do all that..

heh.
Tho that's gotta be some sort of entrapment.

I'm pretty sure he'd have been at home fappin' to cat fancy if not for Operation Imaginary Teen Beasty Girl. For cereal! =/

@NetRunner . There is a difference!!!! finding a $20 bill in the street is not stealing. Taking the bike from in front of the store is. Its very simple, no need for confusion.What a person does after finding the money is a seperate moral decision. I dont think that guy took the bike home and then tried to go find the rightful owner, even if he did, he still stole the bike in the first place. You ask "why is there a difference?" I say, There just is.... Why ask why?

As far as me bringing up race. Gimme a break. I was bringing up species. There is a big difference. Clearly this video is a race arguement waitng to happen, but I was not going there. I really was tring to say that man and beast are completly different, and reject the comparison of tempting a man with a kids bicycle to a piece of cheese in a rat trap.

I dont think everything has to be taken to the extreme. Nobody got murderd, blown up or decapitated. So we dont have to discuss this video like those things did happen . And I think most of the world agrees with that.
Your arguement that tempting people to break the law should net a person shared responsabilty with the criminal wont be very popular with a scantily clad rape victim.


>> ^NetRunner:
@csnel, I started typing "I'm not saying there's no difference", but as soon as I wrote that I thought, "why is there a difference?"
I mean, unless I thought I dropped the $20, it's taking someone else's property. Why doesn't that condemn me to whatever trap the owner of the $20 bill laid for someone who stole his money?
I do understand that we don't tend to think of bills of currency as a piece of our property, since we don't care which $20 bill we have in our wallet so long as we have the total amount we expect in there, but still unless you think you're the one who dropped it, what right do you have to take something that isn't yours?
Anyways, back to the animal comparison, you did actually bring race, or at least genetics, into it when you said:

You are suggesting that he is just geneticly unable to not take the bait, Not smart enough to leave it alone.

I'm suggesting that humans are animal enough to be susceptible to temptation. A bike wouldn't serve as bait for me, in part because I don't need a bike, but in large part because I'm not in a situation where I think stealing it meets my threshold ratio for risk vs. reward. From my point of view, it's a huge risk for almost no reward at all, so it doesn't even tempt me as an opportunity to exploit, much less wrestle over the morality of it -- I just wouldn't even be tempted. Other people's assessments might be very different, and an unattended bike might be a big score for them, and they may have already found their own moral justification for taking it (e.g. it's his damn fault for leaving it unguarded!).
I'm not saying the guy stealing the bike is blameless, I'm just saying he's not the only person engaged in a criminal act in the video. The booby-trap filmmaker should be on the hook for any injuries he inflicts on his victims.
To me, there's a scary implication in holding the filmmaker blameless -- it opens you up to a situation where we're saying there's no moral prohibition on actively trying to trap and harm people who're susceptible to temptation. Once you open that door, it's easy for me to see that anyone could be tempted into stealing (or breaking some other libertarian-approved law), provided you offered a large enough incentive, or created a situation that reduced their perception of the risk. If you're also free do incur as much damage as you like on victims that you entrap, then you're effectively legalizing murder.

@csnel, I started typing "I'm not saying there's no difference", but as soon as I wrote that I thought, "why is there a difference?"

I mean, unless I thought I dropped the $20, it's taking someone else's property. Why doesn't that condemn me to whatever trap the owner of the $20 bill laid for someone who stole his money?

I do understand that we don't tend to think of bills of currency as a piece of our property, since we don't care which $20 bill we have in our wallet so long as we have the total amount we expect in there, but still unless you think you're the one who dropped it, what right do you have to take something that isn't yours?

Anyways, back to the animal comparison, you did actually bring race, or at least genetics, into it when you said:

You are suggesting that he is just geneticly unable to not take the bait, Not smart enough to leave it alone.

I'm suggesting that humans are animal enough to be susceptible to temptation. A bike wouldn't serve as bait for me, in part because I don't need a bike, but in large part because I'm not in a situation where I think stealing it meets my threshold ratio for risk vs. reward. From my point of view, it's a huge risk for almost no reward at all, so it doesn't even tempt me as an opportunity to exploit, much less wrestle over the morality of it -- I just wouldn't even be tempted. Other people's assessments might be very different, and an unattended bike might be a big score for them, and they may have already found their own moral justification for taking it (e.g. it's his damn fault for leaving it unguarded!).

I'm not saying the guy stealing the bike is blameless, I'm just saying he's not the only person engaged in a criminal act in the video. The booby-trap filmmaker should be on the hook for any injuries he inflicts on his victims.

To me, there's a scary implication in holding the filmmaker blameless -- it opens you up to a situation where we're saying there's no moral prohibition on actively trying to trap and harm people who're susceptible to temptation. Once you open that door, it's easy for me to see that anyone could be tempted into stealing (or breaking some other libertarian-approved law), provided you offered a large enough incentive, or created a situation that reduced their perception of the risk. If you're also free do incur as much damage as you like on victims that you entrap, then you're effectively legalizing murder.

You make good points. I think the intent of the prank makes all the difference.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree that if someone steals a piece of property that can be inherently dangerous, and gets hurt because the brakes don't work or because the chain on the stolen chainsaw was lose (or whatever), there's no one else who should be considered at fault. You take your chances when you do that, and the consequences are yours to bear.

However, we have video evidence of the sabotage, and the intent to hopefully injure someone for stealing. It's like entrapment combined with reckless endangerment combined with vigilantism.

It'd be nearly impossible to prove...unless you had video like this available as evidence.

In reply to this comment by Psychologic:

He didn't destroy or deface the bike, he just knocked it over.>> ^That1Swede:
Is vandalism is no longer a crime?
>> ^longde:
You hoping its a crime doesn't make it so. >> ^That1Swede:
And neither is tipping someone's car over, amirite?
>> ^longde:
Knocking over a bike is not a crime. >> ^burdturgler:
Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

Is vandalism is no longer a crime?
>> ^longde:
You hoping its a crime doesn't make it so. >> ^That1Swede:
And neither is tipping someone's car over, amirite?
>> ^longde:
Knocking over a bike is not a crime. >> ^burdturgler:
Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

You hoping its a crime (so you can brand the guy a criminal) doesn't make it so. Please explain how knocking over a bike is a crime.>> ^That1Swede:
And neither is tipping someone's car over, amirite?
>> ^longde:
Knocking over a bike is not a crime. >> ^burdturgler:
Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

And neither is tipping someone's car over, amirite?
>> ^longde:
Knocking over a bike is not a crime. >> ^burdturgler:
Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

The bike was there for at least an hour (by the movement of the shadow of the street light pole); so he didn't just walk in for a quick trip.

Knocking over a bike is not a crime. >> ^burdturgler:
Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

Leaving your bike to go into a store isn't entrapment. Is it entrapment if I don't lock my car now? Was it entrapment that made the first scum bag knock the bike over and leave it there?

The kids are not dedicated bike thieves. The situation that is set up is completely contrived and morally gray in my book. The protagonist just put an unattended bike haphazardly on a random street corner for a few hours. Nobody does that. It's a completely unrealistic situation. I could lace a 50 dollar bill with the flu virus, and then find a sidewalk in a poor trailer park or ghetto and have the same effect. I hate it when police try to entrap people, and I like it even less when regular citizens try to get into that act.

From the title, the hostility of the viewer is supposed to be towards dedicated bike thieves; the kind that from my memory prey in parks and college campuses (or beaches) and cut bike chains. The loser of a filmmaker probably spent hours combing the places where bike thieves usually prey, with no luck. So, he found a poor neighborhood, and abandoned his bike there. Even then, it still takes a while before the kids actually take the bait.

How do you know what the sabotage of the bike would do? Neither you nor the filmmaker are certified sabotage engineers. The injury it would cause is unpredictable. In my book, injuring a human being weighs more on the scale of justice than stealing a bicycle.

>> ^rottenseed:
Right they're not career bike thieves. It's just their hobby along with building ships in bottles. This was quite simply a prank...and a prank that you can be sure the victim deserved more than most other pranks. The bike wasn't set up to disassemble and the brakes weren't cut so there's really nothing the prankster did to put their lives at risk. He even made it so they can't ride fast.
All of that though, doesn't even matter. So what if you bring cops into it? You think the bike thief would rather meet up with a cop that'll make him do community service, pay fines, or worse yet, do time? Hell no, he'd prefer to fall on his ass and be laughed at compared to your alternate solution to sting bike thieves.
Also, I hate how you make stealing bikes seem like it's a mistake anybody could make now and again.>> ^longde:
Nothing to do with race in my case, and everything to do with reckless pseudo-vigilantism. If the filmmaker put a tracer on the bike and then confronted the thief with some cops, I wouldn't have a problem with the concept. But this way, he can hurt not only the would-be thief, but innocent people who don't expect to have to dodge an out of control bicycle.
Plus the whole Compton angle is so contrived. If you abandon a bike in a busy intersection for hours, what do you expect but someone will pick it up. Those kids are not the 'career' bike thieves the cameraman is supposed to be targeting.

This whole news story sounds like a bait and switch tactic that the FBI put out to either scare people or bring people in who've downloaded illegal content...not necessarily child pornography. Just like Max stated above; you think they'll just forgive all the other haX0red applications/games/music/movies you ALSO happen to have (because come on, everyone does) on your computer?

The FBI has also employed a "honey pot" scheme to entrap individuals into child porn, etc. It just really seems like they are a lazy bunch of assholes who don't know how to do any real work.

Although...I'm sure the only morons that would willingly bring their computers to the police and have them confiscate it for weeks are the very same people who DON'T download illegal software, etc. because they don't know how.

Wow, they certainly go around in circles a lot. My head was spinning by the end.

Dawkins approaches this interview with the idea to convince someone who is unconvincable about the fact of evolution, which is just not the way to do it - He presents the evidence to her and she simply denies that it even is. Instead, he gets caught in her loopy illogical fallacies.

For example, why didn't he counter her entrapping question of, "Does a completely mentally disabled person have a soul?" with, "Why would a loving god inflict such a condition upon a child?"? The presence of severe disability is not proof that god put a soul in there, it's proof of how inperfect the replication process is and how mutations occur!

These people don't want to use evidence of their own to disprove evolution, all they want to happen is for some seed of doubt to be planted in the minds of the uninformed.