"I make sure that my life is purposeful. Every time I invest myself into someone else, I free a part of myself. A part of me will leave here with you. I'm going to love people so passionately until a part of me will always live outside of the gates of Angola."

Wow.

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AstroBen 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The thing in the back of my head is that everything they say is tainted by the crimes they committed

How do you empathize, or trust that it's not just a ploy to try to get out?

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munificent 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is a real, hard question. Two things are true:

1. Most people are generally good and while some have made catastrophic mistakes, those tend to be outliers over generally decent behavior.

2. Some people are consistent predators who have no compunction about harming others for their own benefit.

The people in set #2 really want to appear to be in set #1. It's good to be mindful of that fact. At the same time, set #1 is an actually much larger set of people.

Navigating this is probably one of those things where there's no perfect solution, just very difficult compromises.

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Schiendelman 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you're flipping the burden that way, I challenge you: flip the burden that way on everyone around you. "How do you empathize, or trust that it's not just a ploy to try to pay rent?"

I think you'll find that you're making assumptions that it would benefit you to avoid making.

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AstroBen 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The stakes are very different, both for themselves and society at large if they're set free. They're fighting for their life and freedom, not just a relatively small rent payment

These people have also already shown their character, at least at one point in their life. They're capable of heinous acts and being deceptive is pretty in line with that

It's a much higher bar for them to clear than everyone around me needs to

	▲	goodmythical 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Must be nice to be so unencumbered that you think paying rent is not a life and death issue.