Comment by mariusor

He was far less of a mastermind than he fancied himself at the time.

If I recall, he bought a book on murder investigations and a socket set after his wife's disappearance (which was easily tracked back to him), removed car seats (blood) from his car, and willingly testified in court that it was his manly dream to sleep in the car, or something along these lines.

He could have likely gotten away with it if he kept his mouth shut. Luckily he had the arrogance of believing he had actually come up with a convincing story.

High levels of calculation in times when high levels of calculation are required to keep you out of prison are not a sign of anything.

Humans are amazing at compartmentalizing things like this away, even while they are happening.

It is impossible to know from this single datapoint if he is remorseful or not, but it is not at all outside of the realm of possibility.

As a child I merely punched my brother and I tried to kill myself afterwards because of the guilt. In the moment I could not have been more prescient about what I was about to do and what I was doing. I recalled how I had observed him fighting others, how he threw punches, how he swung his arm based on how angry he was, and I planned an arc that took advantage of his habits and clocked him. Knocked him out in one punch.

The instant he hit the floor I felt remorse like I had never felt before. Who the hell am I to take an action like that?!

Anyway, how someone feels while doing something like that does not necessarily reflect how they feel at any other time in their lives. It also may reflect how they are at all times, or anywhere in between.

There is no foolproof way to know.

> I want to believe redemption is possible, especially given how eloquent he is, but his demonstration of calculation over emotion in her murder makes me strongly question his change.

I think it would be ridiculous for me to presume that I can possibly have any view into whether or not someone has sincerely changed, but why should the fact that someone was calculating once affect whether they have changed? I could see doubting the apparent demonstration of change, because they might have calculated the appropriate words to say, but I don't see any reason that a calculating person is less able sincerely to change than any other.

Source on premeditated?

Everything I saw made it look like it was spontaneous (and then he put a lot of work and some poor planning into trying to hide it).

I could obviously be wrong, I didn't really spend that much time on it.

(Note: I know he was initially found guilty of first degree murder but it appears that first degree murder doesn't necessarily require premeditation.)

I hope you make friends with a non murderer one day.

> too jaded

I don’t think you are. The number of times the person inferring I’m jaded is later found out to be a manipulator is very high. Calling people who are perceptive of lies, “jaded”, “negative”, “pessimistic”, etc is seemingly a common tactic employed by sociopaths to socially empower themselves while simultaneously weakening those that might call them out.

> because he's not like the rest of us.

He's human and killing other humans is something a humans can do, given the right circumstances.

> because he's not like the rest of us

I don't think we can know this, and there's no point speculating. I would say that the letter doesn't read as someone who's imperfectly simulating regret.

To be quite frank, redemption isn't really for us to decide. His family, her family, they have a say in it.

We only have a say insofar as we're part of the society that determines the laws that form the judges who will decide when it's appropriate to let him back into society.

There’s “Stupid thing”.

And then there’s murdering your ex, hiding her body over two days, lying to your children that she’d left for russia and they’d been abandoned, and only revealing the location of the body so you could plea down to second degree murder (a good 18 months later mind, we’re not talking quick change of heart).

Oh and then filing a civil suit against pretty much the entire legal system, including the trial judges and your attorney.

And when sued for damage by your children’s grandmother (on their behalf) assert that you killed your ex to protect your kids (which you had basically never been there for, which was the entire reason your wife left you).

I’m not saying redemption is not possible, but I’d think some reflection and atonement would be the baseline, and I’m not aware of Hans Reiser having done any such work.

Redemption requires that a person change and provide restitution. What Reiser did wasn't a stupid mistake, it was a calculated action that he took. His only mistake was getting caught. He didn't accidentally kill someone, or do so in the heat of a unique moment in his life. He decided that he could make his life easier by killing someone else and did so with no intention of facing the consequences of his actions.

While I won't say redemption is impossible. He is going to have to serve his time and dedicate the rest of his life to helping others to even come close.

Drunk driving is a stupid thing people do. Murder is an act of evil.

> do stupid things

Yes, we've all done stupid things we regret. But this is not it. This is way to bad to fit in the "stupid things" category.

It's called the department of defense for a reason, even if in plenty of cases the military is used offensively.

Volunteer soldiers that go abroad to try to annex another country at the behest of their local overlord are looked at differently then volunteer soldiers that defend their country from annexation. It's not that the 'end result is in fact the same', it's that circumstances matter. In some cases killing another person is acceptable, in most others it is not.

That's why we have so many very specific terms to describe the different situations in which one person kills another, and which of those applies is a big factor in whether we see the killer as having acted justifiably or not. Reiser is on the extreme side of that scale in terms of not having acted justifiably, then he compounded that by his stance during the subsequent trial.

Context matters

> You realize the volunteer soldiers that enter a battle to kill other humans also fall under this scope?

Yes. And I strongly believe there's something wrong with their brains. Not so wrong as with the brains of murderers. But to let someone's words override your innate blocks against killing is some weaknes of the brain, easily exploitable with disastrous consequences for humanity.

It makes wars feasible.

Why do you think that her being a mail order bride makes it less bad?

If anything it just shows that he wanted to buy another human that he could control and, when it turned out not to be the case, he decided to kill her.

I am not going to touch on your other points as you clearly have decided your mind.

> why a mistake he committed in personal life would make his file system a taboo to touch.

He is no longer here to fix bugs or improve the file system, it is not that it's Taboo to touch per se. The benefits of ReiserFS are no longer clear compared to alternatives, there's a cost to including ReiserFS (which Reiser acknowledges), no other FS is associated with the name of a premeditated murderer.