Since my previous blog article on this crime episode https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-1515066.html, couple of things that were bothering most readers of the news including myself are these: Who is the shooter? And what are his motivations for committing this series of seemingly unrelated crimes?  Now with news report from NY Times and Boston Globe, the answers to these two questions are emerging. Written below are 1. My version of the answers, 2. Insight and lessons I learned. Both of these represent my own thinkings to make sense of the events. They may or may not be correct ultimately when more facts are known. I welcome comments and/or disagreements.

First, here are more facts reported in the latest newspapers: (1) The shooter and the MIT professors killed are both immigrants from Portugal and in fact went to the same university in Portugal in about the same time. (ii) The shooter was a doctoral candidate at Brown University for a short time, But he left Brown in 2001 under unhappy circumstances and as far as news report he never got the advanced degree anywhere else in the US or elsewhere in the world.

Based on these, here I form my own versions of the story behind these crimes. First, being recognized as a top student (or genius) in your high school or even undergraduate in a university is not necessarily a good thing. Because this rewards you with fame too early for you as a person and your expectation may become too high for your own wellbeing or cause you not to have the right humility coinciding/consistent with your talents. Second, the skill set that let you achieve this early distinction in high school or university may not be what are needed to achieve success in the real adult world. As a result you became angry at the world and do not fit in well. Of course, if you are truly talented geniuses, you will be successful and famous no matter what. My examples of the careers of Rudy Kalman, the father of my profession, and Morris Chang , a self-made billionaire in Taiwan, are counter examples to that of the shooter (I gave a talk on the lives of these two 20^th century icons based on my personal knowledge. But the recording of the talk is not generally available. However, both of them are famous enough that you should be able to find enough info on Wikipedia).   

On the other hand, being good but not necessary exemplary gives you the right incentive for later success.  My own life example is a testament to this claim. In China and high school, I was always ranked #5 in class never higher. The number one student in my class also came to the US for graduate studies and in the academia later. But I never heard more and lost track of him. I don’t even remember the names of the #2-#4 in my class. But #6, Weido Ni, became my best friend in high school. He remained in China and was sent to USSR for university and graduate studies by the government. He later achieved distinction in Chinese Academia and elected to membership in Chinese National Academy and became the VP of Tsinghua University (the MIT of China). I also set my goals step-by-step. When I first arrived in the US alone at age 16 for university study, my main concern was survival and succeed/complete my studies. After receiving my BS degree, my goal is to be financially independent and find a job. Next came the goals for graduate studies and decide my life profession and the goal of receiving tenure. It is only after achieving tenure that I began to think about reaching for various honorific rewards of my profession.  This step-by-step approach has the advantage that my next goal almost seemed within reach. If I failed there was no one to blame but myself. On the other hand, if one aims for a lofty goal that is way above one’s current position, one can often blame the failure to reach it quickly on unfairness of the rest of the world and became angry which can easily turn into seeking revenge. Once a person starts on this vicious cycle of blaming others, difficult to live with, and more disappointments with the world, it is difficult to self improve and more prone for violence and self destruction. It is this reasoning, I believe, that caused the behavior of the shooter at Brown university and MIT – perceived wrongs by Brown and envy of the success of his compatriot with the same background at MIT .  He feels the world has unfairly discriminated against him and angry that he didn’t get what  he feels was his  ENTITLEMENTS.