He went to jail for stealing someone's identity, but it was his all along

Something similar happened to one of our sons. Unfortunately he has a history of drug use that landed him in legal trouble. The local police recognize him. He had a minor fender bender. The police tested him for alcohol there, clean. But then given history they detained him and took him to the nearest ER for a battery of drug tests -- for which the hospital billed our son, and for which our son is on the hook. It's bonkers.

For people from most places outside the US, I bet such stories from US's medical system sound totally crazy. It is crazy for a medical system to function like this charging somebody for being involuntarily treated, and even more for no medical cause.

What would have happened, to the hospital's part, if they had declared that you were not intoxicated and you should not have been brought to the hospital, and sent you on your way? Would the police have had to justify dragging you to the hospital, and pay for your examination? I suspect that going along with the police may have been the decision with the simplest and most profitable outcome for everybody (apart from you) and that the hospital side was incetivised to go along with police's story rather than against, but I am not sure how things there typically work in such cases.

Being skeptical about authority figures is always a good thing, it always surprise me to see populations so deferent to them like americans are to law enforcement.

How are people surprised that Luigi Mangione is considered a hero?

They can force you to pay when you don't consent to treatment?

You should talk to a no fee lawyer or three. Financial & Emotional damages can help assuage the anger you have.

Authority bias is very real, very problematic, and very well documented. As a consequence, those in authority must always be held to a high standard. Always doubt an assertion by authority unless accompanied with sufficient evidence.

It is a weird twist on the fairy tale. What if you had a medical condition that compelled you to cry “Wolf” all the time? Obviously the townsfolk can’t spend all their time responding to false wolf sightings, but there is no lessoned to be learned when The Boy actually believes he sees a wolf every day.

I have been close to multiple people who made similar paranoid allegations while psychotic. It is sometimes hard for people to understand the allegations are false or part of an illness. This can include judges and mental health professionals.

Someone I know who has a psychotic illness was telling people “my dad is having an affair”. And people didn’t believe her because they just assumed it was another one of her delusions

Then guess what we find out a few months later? Yep, her father really is having an affair, and her mother has just discovered it and is now filing for divorce over it

Shouldn't he be on a long acting injection?

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> For the experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at various psychiatric institutions

How did anyone volunteer for this? Isn't there a risk of actually getting stuck at the asylum, or failing to clarify it was an experiment to have it removed from your records?

"The meds are working"

Yes! This is divorce in America right now, if one party is willing to make up a series of lies, no matter how unbelievable the court will just default to the one making the accusations because its too much work to even try to sort out truth from lie, thats why the lawyers call it, "Liars Court" because the biggest liar wins.

This is in most small civil law areas and even summary criminal cases. They simply aren't important enough for the people in power to do their due diligence or give a shit. Nobody can force them to do their jobs either.

Imagine if some member of the bin Laden family was high on something and had rumors of their cousin's shenanigans and were spilling them out on some IRC channel or BBS or whatever, and that guy happened upon them and tried to alert the police, only to be dismissed as a lunatic and end up in prison for unrelated reasons while the disaster happened. That would be a true Kafkian nightmare.

No, i don't think so. I have an older friend that is persuaded to have seen something most people don't believe in back in the 90s. He just won't claim it publicly, and don't talk about it all the time, it's not a core part of his personality. Even if some people make fun of him for it (i don't think it happen nowadays, but it might), they can, and probably will believe him on other subjects (he is a very precise and knowledgeable in electronics, and have really interesting philosophical point of views).

Evaluating things people say in the context of their general credibility and character is pretty evergreen.

The contrapositive of which is just because you’re right does not mean you are not crazy.

> Even more scary: without any living relatives,

I wonder if that is at all possible. Could there be someone alive today who has no blood kin ( father, mother, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins 1st, 2nd, etc )?

Are fingerprints no longer viable?

> Could his father not have identified him?

Probably. That assumes that the father was still alive and of sound mind. Also assumes that the father had much contact with the son.

If they have become strangers to each other a long time ago he might not even be able to tell who is his real son, but his DNA still can provide evidence.

How it got to this level, abridged: a generic lack of accountability, shit work ethic, and qualified immunity.

> Could his father not have identified him?

Well, Woods discovered the issue when he was age ~50, homeless, and 2000+ miles away in another state, so it's plausible to think there was some breakdown in relationships.

Exactly. The crime is fraud on the bank. Nothing was stolen from me.

The responsible party, in the case of the Federal government failing to provide a national ID, is the contingent American citizens who are rabidly against the idea of national ID.

We have these little things called elections for doing that. Parts of the government would love to have this perfect registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.

The US government isn't responsible for that failing. The people of the US generally do not want a national ID, and elect their representatives accordingly.

He was homeless and likely lost his ID and the papers needed get a new one. Then the identity thief obtained an ID and birth certificate.

Unless you are suggesting that the government take biometrics. Except that wouldn't have helped in this case, cause the identity thief would have shown up with ID and gotten scanned.

I mean it’s pretty easy to get, probably less so if you have mental issues

When he first started using someone else's identity, the crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once you start doing something like that and have established a life under the assumed identity, it's not easy to go back.

The real problem here is the attempt to maintain permanent one-to-one mappings between ID numbers and humans. The legitimate purpose of a government ID is so you can e.g. go to the bank, open an account and then later establish to the bank that you're the same person who opened the account. If you want to get a new ID number and start over, you shouldn't have to steal someone else's in order to do that, you should just be able to go to the DMV or the social security administration and get a new ID under a new name that isn't already somebody else's.

The hypothesis that this would help criminals is pretty thin. They're already going to use an assumed name, which is why law enforcement uses photos/fingerprints/DNA to identify suspects rather than a government ID that people aren't actually required to carry regardless.

Same happened to me. Someone stole my ID (diplomas, driver license and biometrics) to escape history.

>I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he is long-winded – repeating himself many times about the same thing.

I think you've identified why I don't particularly like his videos. His takes are usually interesting and they are usually interesting cases, but he spends 10 minutes talking about something that is worth 2 minutes at best.