davie355

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...92656609000658

Agreeableness and psychopathy correlate r = -.62. For the behavioral sciences that's a huge effect and this is a high impact journal.

Carl Johnson

There's a break in the chain of causation. She didn't decide to stop the whole plane. It was the idiot airline and airport people who stopped a plane and delayed everybody for two hours because somebody was writing something.

All idiot woman did was tell what she saw, and that it made her suspicious. But her saying she was suspicious didn't compel the others involved to give weight to her suspicions.

She didn't do anything, or force anybody to do anything. it's the idiots who actually did these things who are responsible. And not just to the professor either - to everybody who was delayed. Actually, maybe to every American, because we have to live with the shame of being citizens of a country in which this sort of thing can happen.

economyplusfan

You're all missing the suspicious part of the story. It wasn't the differential equations. It was that he was flying to SYR to connect to a flight to Ontario to go to Queen's University. That would be PHL-SYR-YYZ-YGR with an overnight in YYZ. Anyone but a terrorist knows that it is faster to get a car in SYR and drive three hours to Kingston!

FlyingUnderTheRadar

So your theory is that someone who is curt is disagreeable thus a falls into the dark triad ...

mvoight

The man was working. Why should it be suspicious if he didn't want to engage in idle chit chat with the idiot?

mvoight

5 percent said he shouldn't be doing math equations?
I am a bit confused. What danger to the flight is a man writing anything?

mvoight

Nonsense. You seem to be saying that someone willing to chat should not be considered a terrorist... I am still stuck on the point about the guy is writing numbers and symbols... How is that a danger to this passenger?

cbn42

No, I didn't say that. I suggested that there is a correlation between curtness and malintent. The key word is correlation. That does not mean that someone not willing to chat is a terrorist, nor does it mean that someone willing to chat should not be considered a terrorist. It simply means that, all other things equal, someone who is curt and refuses to make eye contact is (very slightly) more likely to be up to something that someone else. CBP catches many smugglers along the Mexican border by applying this rule.


I have no idea. Maybe she saw Greek symbols and thought they were Arabic? Maybe she thought he was calculating the timing of the detonation?

GUWonder

The prejudiced woman that created the stink on the flight thought the UPenn prof may be Arab/"Middle Eastern". That woman is a disagreeable person and a psychopath/sociopath to boot.

So he was using some Greek symbols and Arabic numerals in his mathematics work? That is really scary stuff for the math challenged, more so for those with extreme prejudices beyond that involving just math.

Boggie Dog

Where was it stated that he refused to make eye contact? Seems that you are trying to make apple pie from nothing. And why would Arabic symbols pose any kind of threat or concern?

This is a perfect example of an untrained person who has been told by government to trust nothing and report everything acting without cause.

GUWonder

[sarcasm]Or try not to have dark, curly hair, olive skin and speak with an exotic foreign accent. Or try not to be a man if you're a man. [/sarcasm]

s0ssos

Maybe add bigot and ignoramus, and then it would be more accurate.

GUWonder

The correlation between curtness and malintent is a canard.

CBP also catches and spends time on many non-smugglers your way, and CBP also fails to catch many smugglers your way. So talk of correlation is but a canard to justify paranoia.

WillCAD

That's a load of poodoo. The "totality of circumstance" argument is a ridiculous fallacy created to justify suspicion of the non-suspicious. It holds no water.

Math is not suspicious. Under any circumstances, in any situation. Not even on an airplane.
Being reluctant to speak to strangers is not suspicious. Under any circumstances, in any situation. Not even on an airplane.
Being Mediterranean-looking is not suspicious. Under any circumstances, in any situation. Not even on an airplane.
Being Mediterranean-looking and being reluctant to speak to strangers while doing math on a plane is, therefore, not suspicious. At all. There's your full context.
Actually, wait, the full context is, 30-ish blonde American woman was suspicious of a Mediterranean-looking man being reluctant to speak to strangers while doing math on a plane. Alas, her suspicion is unfounded, based on stupidity and perhaps bigotry, and is thus completely unfounded and should have been ignored in its entirety.

Where the sam hill did you ever get the idea that answering curtly to a stranger who is trying to chat you up while you are clearly and obviously engrossed in a complex mathematical problem increased the probability that you're a terrorist?

Cite, please, some professional article by a licensed psychotherapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or mental health professional that indicates that "curt behavior" is ever an indication that someone is a terrorist. Anything. Anything at all. Well, except for TSA's BDO checklist, which we all know is bunk.

She wasn't "concerned about our collective security", she was being paranoid and stupid, and everyone else on the flight suffered because of it.

You're spouting SPOT nonsense; observation of behavior by anyone other than a psychiatrist with years of professional training and experience simply doesn't work. It's so unreliable that those trained TSOs who stink up the airport with their BDO literally have no better outcomes than random selection.

We cannot accept security or behavioral evaluations from anyone who is not knowledgeable about security or human behavior. Doing so is foolish; it's like accepting a cancer diagnosis from a carpenter.

The 5% who don't side with the Professor X^Nth are merely parroting the "better safe than sorry!" carp that is always espoused by those who fear the ordinary and innocuous out of ignorance, paranoia, and stupidity. It's the same garbage that gets Sikhs harassed because people are too stupid to realize that Muslims don't wear turbans, or Indians harassed because people are too stupid to know the difference between a hijab and a sari.

There is NO correlation between curtness and malintent. Just because the two occasionally cross paths doesn't mean correlation; neither one appears every time the other does, or even most of the time.

There is a correlation between curtness and wanting to be left the heck alone.

Refusal to make eye contact can also be a sign of respect or subservience, a sign of nervousness or fear, or a sign that the person is ignoring you because you're interrupting or distracting them. The idea that you could use that behavior, outside of the context of a grilling by an armed, uniformed LEO, as an indicator of being "up to something" is another symptom of the intense and often violent paranoia in which this country has been wallowing, reveling, drowning itself for the last ten years. As an American, I am sickened and shamed by this paranoia and fear. It diminishes our national soul, turning us into a nation of frightened, squabbling mice instead of the brave, rugged individualists who came together to found our country.

BH62

Reminds me of an earlier thread (a year or so ago) about a big todo for reading a book about airplanes when on an airplane.