Myth of free will?

[napoleon_in_rags]

8. Maybe the intell community will take the lead.

You hear this talk, of wanting to disrupt this stuff "to the left of (before) the boom", not after. Maybe that entails looking at the circumstances that lead up to the violence, looking at the external influence. You're totally right, that any after the fact rehabilitation for these serious crimes is a political impossibility, even if it was effective.

But yeah, the deterrence clearly doesn't work. I mean what is the message society hears from the punishment of somebody like this? The message (external stimulus) is that if you do this kind of thing, you will be in a bad situation until the end of your days. But what is the message (external stimulus) that leads a religious fanatic to do it in the first place? The message is that if you do this thing, your earthly days will end, and you will have eternal paradise. If you don't do it, you will live your life okay, then face eternal punishment in hell. These forms of religion play on the exact same behavior modification paradigms that crime and punishment systems do. Of course the intelligent among us believe in the prison cell as being more probable than the 47 virgins, but these guys weren't rocket scientists, and there are no shortage of people like them in the world, sadly.