The reason for the attack in Aurora by James Holmes

As the subject line says, this email explains why James Holmes carried out the attack in Aurora and why he set up explosives in his apartment without knowing whether they would go off.

Assuming that his reasoning was correct (if he was insane, he would not have to think he could contribute to answering this question), the question he was trying to answer was "are the reason for problems in the world because people are stupid, or because they are evil?"

This can be best seen with this poll: http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/264795-the-resource-issue-informal-poll.html

As it sums up,

"So we would have less people in prison, less homeless people, and less 'suffering' overall, but gasoline would become more expensive.

Is this worth it?"

0 replies, no one else voted.


Not mentioned in the below email: It's possible that his first exposure to the idea was from this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3941316412

It has been reported that James Holmes played World of Warcraft, one person who knew him even said that they thought he "wanted to become his game character". It has also been reported that he cheered for the villains in movies.


It would be best if you did not keep this information about his motives secret.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [name]
Date: Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 8:25 PM
Subject: The reason for the attack in Aurora by James Holmes


This email goes beyond what is mentioned in the subject line. In this email I have included recipients' email addresses in the To field to communicate the broad distribution. One person has previously asked not to be included in these mass emails so I have put them in Bcc but no one else has objected.

A partial explanation for James Holmes' actions can be found here: http://9gag.com/gag/5689283

What that post did not do was explain why James Holmes was so interested in determining the intelligence of the average person.


Some background. If people in the upper half of the income distribution were to work less, we could fix many problems such as unemployment, war, poverty, and hunger, as well as focus more attention on climate change.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/666/562/858/end-hunger-poverty-and-war-through-economic-innovation/
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-climate-change-priority-20121114,0,1745357.story

People do not work hard because they feel they need the material goods or services which it allows them to purchase.
http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/

Some people will still object to this notion because they think the US does not have enough wealth. The easiest way to counter this misconception is to explain who owns the US national debt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ugDU2qNcyg

Why this was not discovered before:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/2012102915021526447.html
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/urging-economists-to-step-away-from-the-blackboard
http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-problems-in-the-economy-are-not-new-they-are-o/ (the concepts of NAIRU and the Phillips curve, which prevented economists from even trying to think of a solution that would reduce unemployment below a certain level.)

Previous efforts are summarized here: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-end-of-age-of-warfare.html


With that in mind. You will notice that the email address for Paul Krugman, the most influential economist associated with the liberal/progressive/Democratic ideology, is included in the distribution.

If I had not created the blog, http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/, James Holmes would not have killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora. However, James Holmes did not do this to help me in some way, as he considered me as not needing any help. The reason he felt it was necessary was because Paul Krugman, as the most influential person with enough expertise to understand the idea, had not openly supported it yet this inaction had not caused anyone else to support it either.

The shooting was to convince Paul Krugman that the idea was important, and that it was worth James Holmes risking his life to provide Paul Krugman with more information on its viability. If Paul Krugman does not take action on it, 12 people died for nothing.

I have included the email address for the FBI office in my state, as well as the only California office that lists a contact email, in case they are interested in the reason for James Holmes' attack. At least one news article several days after the attack quoted a police chief saying that they had called in FBI behavior analysts to determine the motive, so this should help.

It is possible that Paul Krugman has avoided supporting the idea precisely because it could be considered a reason for other people to hide this connection. It is now as public as it can reasonably be made, so this is no longer an excuse.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [name]
Date: Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 5:08 AM
Subject: Re: The reason for the attack in Aurora by James Holmes


On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:16 PM, [name]	 wrote:

    "If I had not created the blog, http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/, James Holmes would not have killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora."
    Whoa there. Ego much? Your 9Gag post makes similar unsupported assertions ("The reason for James Holmes' attack... was to determine if the average person was more or less intelligent than he was") but it seems highly unlikely that you are correct. Crazy people do crazy things for their own reasons, most of which don't involve Paul Krugman.

    It's great that you have a hammer, but James Holmes isn't a nail.
[name]

    P.S. As an aside, there's no real need to use a URL shortener for an already-short URL like "jobcreationplan.blogspot.com", especially when the link isn't clickable. Using the URL shortener just makes it harder to remember/type, and less likely to be visited.

___

The evidence consists of two things.

1. That the attack was unusual or unique with its lack of apparent or stated motive, an attacker who was otherwise successful in life before the unusual behavior leading to the attack, and expressed no desire to die to, or even fight against law enforcement.

2. Coincidences in timing that link his actions leading up to the attack to the blog.

I will just go down the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_Americas ; many of the other categories such as workplace and school massacres are aimed at people the attacker knew personally.

(Keep in mind that the basic argument is that an intelligent person would have anticipated the form of the attack, and that intelligent people would have been enjoying themselves in that way only if they were confident that other people in the audience were prepared to group up to fight an attacker instead of running away. So the fact that people in the audience generally did not know each other is important.)

1. Delgado Morales, Campo Elias
Blamed his family, as well as experience in Vietnam. Not someone who had a 'successful' life.

2. Hennard, George Pierre
"an unemployed merchant seaman who was described by others as angry and withdrawn" ... ended up killing himself as well.

3. Huberty, James Oliver
Employment problems, ignored by mental health center. Not a 'successful' life.

4. (No Wikipedia article)

5. Wong, Jiverly Antares
Blames police in letter sent on day of shooting.

6. Unruh, Howard Barton
Harassed; said to police it was because his front gate had been stolen.

7. Holmes, James Eagan
He did fail an exam... but university officials were willing to let him continue the program, especially since his previous performance had been so outstanding. Declined and dropped out with no explanation.

8. Pough, James Edward
History of crime, not a 'successful' life.

9~12, no Wikipedia article

13. McLendon, Michael Kenneth
Relatives were first victims, not a 'successful' life.

14. Starkweather, Charles Raymond, Fugate, Caril Ann
Employment problems, conflict with girlfriend's family (first victims).

15. No Wikipedia article.


Other than James Holmes, there is a clear sense of a grudge against society or against specific people. In rare cases, such as Anders Behring Breivik, the stated motive is to help a certain group of people by harming a different group, even if the situation leading up to the attack is more complicated. (For how people can feel a sense of freedom after surviving a dangerous event, see http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/reprieve/ ... it's possible people who were not in danger themselves could feel the same way, but the reason people might lack confidence that 'the system is broken' too complicated to describe here of course)

The actions of James Holmes have only a superficial resemblance to the typical pattern, and the blog (and things that happened, or did not happen elsewhere) remains the best explanation. The thing is he was trying to plan for both possibilities: 1) that people in the theater would stop him and his neighbors at his apartment would open the door and trigger the explosives, or 2) No one would stop him and his neighbors would allow the disturbance to continue.

If the reality was #1, he wanted to go down in style. The question that explains the actions of people in both locations is, "Do people have enough confidence in themselves and other people to stop bad things from happening that affect people other than yourself?" (This is the same question that explains support of petitions on the idea of working less, after eliminating other possibilities.)

The timing coincidences:
From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/27/us/before-gunfire-in-colorado-theater-hints-of-bad-news-about-james-holmes.html?pagewanted=all

    As the graduate students reached the end of their second semester, wrapping up coursework, finishing lab rotations and looking toward the oral exam that would cap their first year, some noticed a change in Mr. Holmes. If possible, he seemed more isolated, more alone.

    His smile and silly jokes were gone. The companions he had sometimes been seen with earlier in the year had disappeared.

    On May 17, he gave his final laboratory presentation on dopamine precursors. The talks typically ran 15 minutes or so, but this time, Mr. Holmes spoke for only half that time. And while in earlier presentations he had made an attempt to entertain, this time he spoke flatly, as if he wanted only to be done with it.

This might have been related to this post, also on 17 May: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/05/alternative-to-socialism.html
Around 1pm Mountain time, give or take an hour. This post pointed out how being insensitive to prices because you have too much money hurts poor people (best seen with the 18 million empty houses in the US, despite homeless people).

On the same day, around 2pm (?) Mountain time: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/05/feedback.html

As well as notes. However, the first post was made on the OWS forums several days earlier, the most likely way for him to have discovered the site.

21 May, post explaining why the lack of feedback was not proof that it was incorrect, or even that people did not understand it: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/05/need-for-reality-interpretation-in.html

22 May, James Holmes purchases a pistol.

Don't want to speculate on whether his purchase of the second weapon six days later was related to anything; I don't know if he was actually reading Paul Krugman's blog (where Paul Krugman, unusually, mentioned in advance that he would be visiting Seattle, causing me to be distracted by Chinasmack since I didn't feel like trying to talk to Paul Krugman).

June 6, the post explaining how the middle class is to blame for the government not creating jobs: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/06/traitors-within-us.html

June 7, James Holmes fails oral exam and purchases rifle. The idea though is that he was trying to see if his assessments of his own ability were accurate; he expected to fail the exam, and was proved right. Maybe wrong, but this is probably why he took the exam at all. From the NYTimes:

    Mr. Holmes took his oral exam on June 7. The [female] graduate student sent him a message the next day, asking how it had gone. Not well, he replied, “and I am going to quit.”

    “Are you kidding me?” she asked.

    “No, I am just being James,” he said.


One thing that might contradict this explanation for the shooting is this quote:

    Prosecutors said in court filings released last week that Mr. Holmes told a fellow student in March that he wanted to kill people “when his life was over.”


There is nothing about his academic performance deteriorating at that point, and if this was out of character for him it could weaken the connection. The blog was started on 24/25 March, with a post made on the OWS forum around that time. But continuing...

24 June: after OWS did not respond to the provocation "Are you going to let Wall Street win?" which followed an explanation of how Wall Street obtains its profits legally without requiring any government corruption, announced that OWS was not going to support the solution and then this post on the blog: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/06/villains-by-necessity.html

The first line was "Why do I feel like this blog hasn't provoked anyone to action?" It explained how the world was broken to the point that people could feel it was the morally correct thing to kill another person.

25 June, James Holmes emails application to join a gun club. Owner calls back and gets the weird answering machine message several times.

There were reports that a neighbor saw James Holmes frequently leave with his rifle bag to practice somewhere, but I don't know if this was ever confirmed and it wasn't at that range.

July 4, post which suggested the widespread extent of knowledge of hidden problems in the song "Love The Way You Lie" (parts 1/2): http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/07/ideals-of-freedom-and-independence.html

July 5, James Holmes creates profiles on Match.com and Adult Friendfinder (http://i.imgur.com/f0RiZ.jpg) ... not saying that it was that closely related, the idea is that he did not especially 'want' to kill a bunch of people but was not able to convince himself that people would otherwise end up using the idea of working less and therefore felt obligated to continue following the blog and its updates.

Second pistol purchased on July 6. That would have been before this post: http://jobcreationplan.blogspot.com/2012/07/limits-of-trust.html

Which may have been related in some way to Paul Krugman making a post in which he said it was fine for rich people to work less (if not for lower taxes paid according to his post), or who knows maybe it wasn't related: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/what-you-add-is-what-you-get/

Those are the events mentioned on Wikipedia. I think the May 24/25 events have the strongest connection. I don't expect James Holmes to have done anything to point specifically at the blog; another post, made without any knowledge of James Holmes, stated this:
"The method by which decisions are made is, of course, timing. This provides plausible deniability to all parties."

Suppose that sometime between July 10 and July 15, some influential person had decided to support the idea, and as a result everyone suddenly realized that unemployment, poverty etc. can be easily fixed. James Holmes would have bought four weapons, as well as dropped out of school, and yet there would be no benefit to society from him carrying out an attack. This would be a clear cost to him as a direct result of the blog's existence and whatever caused someone to not support the idea initially but later do so in the July 10~15 timespan.

It is possible that knowing about this cost could have affected me, or someone else, and so we would not expect him to have provided any indication of the connection other than timing, to the extent that this correlation can be made.

These coincidences, such that they are, would not be enough to link the attack to the blog if there was not such a complete lack of any other explanation for why someone in his position would carry out such an attack, and then tell police officers about his trapped apartment so that they would not die.

Oh, and this from the 24 June post:

"I can't really say I expect this post to have any effect, but <u>if I had a completely accurate assessment of the distribution of ability in the world I wouldn't have needed to start this blog, would I</u>	? So I hope I have proved that basically all problems in society are the result of stupidity, and that refusing to support <b>the accelerated work week</b> is equivalent to saying that you are prepared to defend yourself against attack by a random person who feels that it is the morally correct thing to do."

The connection to the idea that James Holmes was trying to determine if the average person was more or less intelligent than him should be apparent.

Apologies for the long and spammy email.