voice testing...

[anysay]

I encourage you to bear in mind that cognitive psychology and common sense abolished the 'irresistible impulse' defense from every rational court of law. You understand what that says about your implicit abduction of me.

I'm not here to tell you what you should do. Only that you have no excuses for doing it.

Comments

[sociability]

We're going to keep splitting hairs on that one, aren't we.

[anysay]

Do you think I take enjoyment from it?

[sociability]

Do you? [ You should know by now — he doesn't actively try to read people he has to work with. Those boundaries aren't for anyone's comfort but his. ]

[anysay]

In other people's pain and suffering, and in the work that creates? No. We catch sadists. We don't become them.

[sociability]

My job is to be them, Jack. You don't have to be nice about it around me. What was it you said, the last three of them, I caught? Or is that giving myself too much credit?

[anysay]

Your job is to catch them through whatever means available to you. You can't possibly be arrogant enough to think a five, or ten, or twenty minute special viewing of psychopath cinema means you can hone the dysfunction, the cruelty, or the occasional brilliance these men and women take years to develop.

You're a voyeur. They're the first class performers. And if you don't do your part, that show will go on.

[sociability]

You know how these guys start out, Jack. They start with what they see. Everyday. Then something breaks, and then something else breaks, and the next thing you know is we're chasing them across state lines and you know what looking at all of this does. The thinking doesn't switch off.

[ To say that it grows like cancer would be too distasteful, but then we all know what happens down the line, don't we? ]

[anysay]

That is the theory driving every parent who's lobbied against violent video games: 'once my child's seen something, he can't help himself.' We know better, Will. There has to be something already there for it to grow.

[sociability]

Parents use that as an excuse for bad parenting, adults use that in court of law to justify crime. We have whole trees of behavioral analyses on the issue of exposure and stimulus intensity— what do you even want to hear, Jack?

[anysay]

That you will come in tomorrow, and you will do your job. And you will come in the day after tomorrow, and you will do your job. And the one after it. And we will not have this conversation again.