This 16-year-old student invented a bulletproof backpack and is now a finalist at the world’s largest high school science fair [More]
Who wants to be the one to tell ’em?
Or the one to try and “persuade” psychopaths…?
I don’t suppose there’s any other common factor that careful observation could tell us might be an effective deterrent to school mass shootings…?
[Via Remarks]
Besides the bullet resistant backpack inventor, there is one student who advocates mind control instead of gun control:
“Maya Shah, also 16, from Texas, is another finalist. She found a positive correlation between psychopathy — which among other things manifests as a lack of empathy and is often an attribute of those involved in gun violence — and intellectual humility. Intellectual humility, she says, is in part the ability to change your mind based on other people’s viewpoints.
“There was a gem in my study,” she said. “This positive correlation means that you can persuade people not to pick up a gun. This means there’s a solution to the problem.””
Maya was so close. The correct approach is to arm the non-psychopaths, as superior empathy does not translate into superior powers of persuasion, particularly against the non-empathetic.
Point of fact: The 16-year-old in question may have developed a bulletproof backpack, but it’s hardly an original invention.
Bullet-proof and bullet-resistant backpacks and backpack inserts have been on sale for several years now, and various processes to create home-made bullet-resistant panels have been on YouTube for years.
The right question to ask isn’t whether he deserves to be a finalist; in my opinion, he doesn’t. It’s whether he deserves to be disqualified for plagiarism and/or copyright infringement. In effect, did he develop his own process to create an already-existing product, or did he duplicate/steal someone else’s process?