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Why? Why would no reasonable person fear for their lives?
It seems pretty clear that Neely was a bad dude with a history of violence. While the people on the train likely didn’t know that, violent weirdos give off an aura.
Second his language certainly indicated he was willing to do extreme things.
Third, people read of crazy people like Neely doing crazy dangerous violent things.
When someone says they "feared for their life" I expect there to have been a reasonable chance that they would die. Now I'm at best a middle-of-the-road martial artist, but I'm not a malnourished psychotic either. Compared to Neely I'm a force of nature. In a train car with a dozen people I doubt I could do enough damage to kill someone before being stopped. Maybe? Call it under 10%, fixating on one person with the sole goal of killing.
Now one might contort the phrase to mean "needed to do something to reliably avoid a lethal threat". That might well be the case here, but it's a dangerous equivocation: after all, by that standard one "fears for their life" constantly while driving a car.
People are both more resilient and more delicate than you can imagine. You can be pushed and hit your head on the ground in the wrong way, and you're dead.
Dealing with sketchy public transit on a daily basis, my main death fear is getting stabbed, though. I've only seen a crazy threateningly brandish a knife on the bus a couple times, but it's always terrifying. And knives, contrary to popular belief, are every bit as deadly as guns, and pretty much everyone can get a hold of one. Someone who's in a particular mental state can plausibly turn into a threat to your life in a second. (So can sane people, but the threat they pose is always more calculated and directed toward some end e.g. mugging you, which if you don't resist isn't usually a life thread.)
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All it takes is a hard to see knife or gun and someone could be dead in seconds.
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How do you know he doesn’t have a knife? What if you are an older woman? The dude already punched out a 60+ year old woman. A single punch especially to an older woman could be fatal.
The guy was acting in a very threatening way. He made comments clearly indicating imminent and dangerous violence. He apparently took off his jacket a little before (thereby putting himself in a better situation to carry through on his threat)
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Okay but this is the comment you're replying to:
Bystander effect aside, you can be an MMA fighter and still be paralysed by the fear factor in such circumstances if you've never been in one in the first place. Very important to keep in mind that one is a contained, monitored environment where everyone has to follow the same rules and medical help will be readily available when necessary. One the other hand, a young man raised in the slums of Rio and who had seen stabbings, people being beat to death, etc. and had to fight for himself a few times would still stand a better chance than the big macho guy who does MMA on the weekends if it was an unexpected, deadly encounter. Because he won't be as prone to hesitate or be paralysed with the fear response. And he will be be more prone to reflexively use his environment and to fight hard and dirty instead of trying to follow a mechanistic, paint by numbers system.
[ @The_Nybbler makes similar points ]
To clarify, can you answer 2 questions?
How common are killings in similar circumstances -- a single, unarmed individual kills complete strangers on a modestly crowded bus/train after exhibiting unfocussed threatening behaviour?
In light of your answer to (1), and the unfortunate common presence of disturbed individuals on public transit, how do you estimate the probability that any given passenger (other than Neely) would have died on that trip?
From this side of the screen:
I was unable to find any examples in a brief search -- plenty of cases of group violence, armed killings, or direct person-to-person conflicts, but none resembling the facts at hand. Presumably it's happened -- just due to the huge numbers of encounters.
Given that I can't find any examples, and that this type of thing must happen thousands of times a year, I'll put the individual death probability at < 0.01%.
If you can get a better handle on (1), then I'm happy to update.
I'm not sure I follow. Perhaps I'm misreading your post and if so, apologies in advance.
Are you asking whether it's rational for one to fear for their life given the stats that show how many civies actually die in these situations? It's a hostile scenario, you're in a crowded train where everyone could very well go into panic mode and make your ability to maneuver that much harder. Even if you remember the stats at the face of your fight or flight instinct, that's no guarantee that things won't escalate to fatal proportions in this situation. A crazy person going crazy in the middle of a crowd is not being rational, so if you don't already have any experience subduing crazies amidst a crowd, odds are you'd act irrationally too just to save yourself.
People have fears disproportionate to actual threats all the time. For example, some people won't go to the beach because they're convinced sharks will eat them. And when they're reported to fear for their life when a wave breaks over their feet, we acknowledge that, but with a footnote that the fear is irrational, and sharks aren't really a danger of much magnitude in that situation.
There is an urgent societal need to (as much as possible) ground such feelings in reality, in part because mortal danger justifies a lot of otherwise forbidden behavior. One's dog phobia, for example, does not justify shooting your neighbor's pet when it barks.
Exactly, and this is why traditional common law construct of "reasonable man" exists.
If you end before a court worthy of this name, judge and jury would not ask: "were you afraid" but "would reasonable man in this situation be afraid of death or great bodily harm?"
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They usually do the killing in the station, where it's easier because they can just push people onto the tracks. On the train its harder to successfully kill someone.
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I'm unsure if this framing illuminates much. If I, without your consent and neither any pressing need nor benefit to you or anyone else, performed a procedure on your house that gives it a <0.01% p.a. chance of spontaneously collapsing the tiny probability of something happening in your lifetime would not be a convincing defence. That the risk is small doesn't matter when there is no reason why anyone should tolerate being exposed to it in the first place, which is a significant difference to things like driving which you brought up in the post above.
Agreed. My issue is with the casual use of "fearing for ones life", which cheapens and reduces our ability to del with what should be very serious issues. In the case at hand, it seems reasonable for the passengers to have restrained Neely, as some violence was arguably reasonably anticipated from him. Shooting him, for example, would not have been justified though, and we should, IMO, calibrate our language to maintain respect for human life.
I don't understand your objection. "Calibrating our language to maintain respect for human life" is exactly why "fearing for your life" is such a powerful argument these days.
Exactly. It should be a very powerful argument, because preservation of life is a central social value. Like any powerful tool, it must be guarded against abuse.
Even killing someone, ordinarily one of the most forbidden actions available, is often accepted under such circumstances. But we attempt to prevent abuse by some combination of conditions that the threat be, for example, immanent, articulable, and clear to a reasonable person.
The last 3 years of sociofinancial policy disaster pursuant to Covid is a recent lapse proving otherwise.
Catastrophism (an attack on what it means to be "reasonable") works; that's why the last 40 years of social policy have been primarily driven by it- "if you let your kids outside they'll get kidnapped", "deadnaming is literally killing trans people", etc.
"Preservation of life" has transitioned from being a social value to an overriding social value, and appealing to it has improperly elevated those claims to veto power.
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What about "fearing for one's life or grievous bodily harm"? Would that make any difference? Pointing out that only so many people are actually killed by such criminals misses the point.
GBH is certainly relevant to the conversation, but the central point was limited to the statement "we were scared for our lives", so to that end focusing only on those killed is indeed appropriate. Danger of grievous bodily harm and danger of death ought to correlate very well though.
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I’m surprised you couldn’t find any, I think some twenty-five people got pushed onto tracks in NYC last year with several casualties. There was also the widely publicized mass shooting last spring, which somehow everyone survived but is exactly the kind of “unstable person trying to kill people” story that sticks in people’s head.
Odds are still very low, but normal people don’t pull out the calculator and reason probabilistically when a crazy person starts yelling at them. Being trapped in an enclosed space with an aggressive, unstable person is pretty scary for most people, especially if they haven’t had years of exposure to combat situations like yourself.
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No, a malnourished psychotic is closer to a force of nature. No inhibitions.
OK, now suppose no one's trying to stop you except the victim, and you get to choose the victim. Because if no one being reasonably in fear of their life precludes physical defense of others, then you shouldn't be including others stepping in when you're deciding if such fear is reasonable.
Agree. people think that bigger means stronger or better fighter. Outside of weight classes in which skill is controlled for, this is hardly true. Someone enraged and on drugs can have considerable strength, way more than suggested by appearance alone . Studies show considerable variance of grip strength for males even controlling for weight, with many smaller, lighter guys having more grip strength than bigger, heavier guys. It's also unlikely he was actually malnourished or even hungry. Someone who has been professionally homeless for a decade cannot find a foodbank?
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Hollywood has lied to you. Inhibitions don't mean shit against 90 lbs and a full caloric load.
Meth, on the other hand...
Actual meth isn't out of the question when faced with any given malnourished psychotic, but I think "crazy" can have similar effects.
I mean, yeah, usually it boils down to either "hysterical strength", "ignores pain", or both, and in both cases it's a mental phenomenon that can be achieved without drugs (indeed, the former is literally named after hysteria often producing it).
Not sure whether it's in play here, but practice being in pain (e.g. self-harm, possibly also long-term injection drug use) also increases pain tolerance to unusual levels (permanently?).
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In my experience it absolutely has the same effects. Crack psychosis or regular psychosis, people who have lost touch with reality can do amazing and terrible things, things that don't seem humanly possible - that make you start to wonder if they even are human any more, haunting you for the rest of your life. Drug psychosis is usually where you see guys peeling skin off their face, because the drugs affect your nervous system more than sheer determination, but sometimes determination is enough.
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Yeah. Knife/gun potential far bigger consideration than anything to do with his bare hands, IMO.
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