> I agree that death is an unlikely outcome, but i beg of you, never bet your life on the rationality of petty criminals who engage their "fight or flight" reflex.
This seems a pretty unhealthy attitude. Basically you're saying to never, ever attempt to protect your belongings from a petty criminal.
If you have reason to believe that your life is truly at risk (e.g. you're in a dark alley, criminal has a gun), sure. You should probably surrender your property. If you do not believe that you are in danger, there's no reason to give up your property. You're just sacrificing your property for nothing, and emboldening those same criminals. Sitting in a crowded Starbucks with a couple of guys who are not visibly-armed is not a high-risk situation.
There's always some danger to your life. A random person on the street could snap and kill you for no reason. You can't dedicate your life to avoiding it. Don't make yourself powerless.
This seems a pretty unhealthy attitude. Basically you're saying to never, ever attempt to protect your belongings from a petty criminal.
Well now, we are going in an interesting direction. I live in Toronto. I am happy that we do not have as many firearms as you might find in Texas. There is a massive and somewhat difficult chasm to cross between the two cultures around the question of "Protecting your belongings from petty criminals."
I'm willing to engage you on this question, but I fear that the HN server will run out of disk space before we can find a common ground.
Whether you're in Texas or Toronto, the situation described in the article is unlikely to result in death or injury. Even in a situation where the criminals have guns, they are extremely unlikely to shoot you in the middle of a Starbucks for no reason.
And yes, I do mean "no reason". There is literally nothing for the criminals to gain by shooting you. They would change from petty thieves who simply lose the laptop and may yet go unpunished to murderers with many witnesses to the crime. This is a major loss, with no upside. Being a petty criminal indicates that they aren't the smartest, but it doesn't indicate that they are completely insane.
I feel that you must be drastically overestimating the danger in this situation to justify simply surrendering the laptop. There's not even a threat of violence here. You're making a chain of assumptions that takes you from "petty thieves" to "willing murderers". That's a hell of a leap.
This seems a pretty unhealthy attitude. Basically you're saying to never, ever attempt to protect your belongings from a petty criminal.
If you have reason to believe that your life is truly at risk (e.g. you're in a dark alley, criminal has a gun), sure. You should probably surrender your property. If you do not believe that you are in danger, there's no reason to give up your property. You're just sacrificing your property for nothing, and emboldening those same criminals. Sitting in a crowded Starbucks with a couple of guys who are not visibly-armed is not a high-risk situation.
There's always some danger to your life. A random person on the street could snap and kill you for no reason. You can't dedicate your life to avoiding it. Don't make yourself powerless.