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Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

theatlantic.com

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Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#31

Post by Tycho »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #30
Tycho wrote: post #27

Whenever I read about diagnosed psychopaths in the mainstream press, they always seem to be married (with kids). I find this interesting. What were their spouses thinking? Wouldn't 'total lack of empathy' rather preclude starting a family with someone? Were they that good at faking romance, or were they different when they were young? Or is the 'cold as steel' personally attractive? Were they just willing to marry an…

Psychopaths are known for being very good at getting people to agree to things; they are described as very glib and superficially charming, which is why they excel at being con men. So it doesn't seem hard to explain how they manage to get married. What is peculiar, though, is how their spouses manage to stay married to them even after they find out the truth. There has to be some denial involved. If something like o…

I know they are good at manipulating, but you would think manipulating someone into getting married is a bit far fetched. Conning their way to a sale, an investment, a favour, a promotion, sure... but that's because they are willing to circumvent the social norms that govern shallow relationships. Marriage is supposed to be a very deep relationship so I'm not sure that manipulation is the explanation.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#32

Post by mtdewcmu »

I'm curious to get some people's reactions to this guy: he mentioned his dangerous actions more than once; do you think he's truly dangerous, or just exaggerating?

After he kept mentioning it, I was curious and a bit skeptical as to what horrible things he could have admitted to and yet still be free and employed. The incident with the Marburg virus is pretty chilling, though, if you think it through. It's the sort of thing only a brilliant psychopath could come up with or be proud of. I'd keep my distance, frankly.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#33

Post by brc »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #30
Tycho wrote: post #27

Whenever I read about diagnosed psychopaths in the mainstream press, they always seem to be married (with kids). I find this interesting. What were their spouses thinking? Wouldn't 'total lack of empathy' rather preclude starting a family with someone? Were they that good at faking romance, or were they different when they were young? Or is the 'cold as steel' personally attractive? Were they just willing to marry an…

Psychopaths are known for being very good at getting people to agree to things; they are described as very glib and superficially charming, which is why they excel at being con men. So it doesn't seem hard to explain how they manage to get married. What is peculiar, though, is how their spouses manage to stay married to them even after they find out the truth. There has to be some denial involved. If something like o…

I knew someone who I have since amateur-psych diagnosed as being psycopathic in part (not a real diagnosis). I met this person while they were going through a divorce. We worked together on a few things for a while - charm and glib is a great description. But I noticed a pattern of having no 'old friends', and also appalling treatment of women that went far beyond what someone might classify as 'rebound behaviour' as behaviour that seemed to take delight in degrading women and a need to find friends who delighted in the retelling. I moved to distance myself from this person in an unconfrontational way - I assumed they could easily turn violent if provoked. In the end I was proven correct as they assaulted their own father in a disagreement not long after. I don't know what is going on now, as mutual friends who I knew have also ceased contact.

The twist in all this story is that the divorce was initiated by him, not his wife. She was a nice and very normal person, and to her, staying married and having a father for their child was probably more important. The point is that many people will try and hold a marriage together for all sorts of reasons.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#35

Post by j_baker »

I'm not convinced that the brainscan patterns uniquely identify psychopaths. There are lots of things that frontal lobe dysfunction is also correlated with: ADHD, Bipolar disorder, and psychopathy. I suspect comorbidity (meaning: how likely you are to have the other diseases given you have one) is quite high, but I'm not convinced that frontal lobe dysfunction implies any or all of these disorders.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#36

Post by taybin »

Tycho wrote: post #31
mtdewcmu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychopaths are known for being very good at getting people to agree to things; they are described as very glib and superficially charming, which is why they excel at being con men. So it doesn't seem hard to explain how they manage to get married. What is peculiar, though, is how their spouses manage to stay married to them even after they find out the truth. There has to be some denial involved. If something like o…

I know they are good at manipulating, but you would think manipulating someone into getting married is a bit far fetched. Conning their way to a sale, an investment, a favour, a promotion, sure... but that's because they are willing to circumvent the social norms that govern shallow relationships. Marriage is supposed to be a very deep relationship so I'm not sure that manipulation is the explanation.

That is an idealized description of marriage. In actuality, marriage is a legal document that some people want very much.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#37

Post by Sakes »

mcguire wrote: post #20

In this article, I learned, * that the "warrior gene" thing == psychopathy, * that your genes determine your personality, except when they don't, * that your behavior is determined by your biology, except when it isn't, * that lack of affect == Buddhism, * that "looking at brainscans" is a valid step in judicial sentencing, * that you can claim to be a person who suffers from an impairment of empathy, who at the extr…

Did anyone else read mcguire's "==" as equivalent rather than equal to? (===) js not so good parts depending upon your perspective.

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#38

Post by lutusp »

chimeracoder wrote: post #3
lutusp wrote: post #2

An interesting but scientifically useless account. Psychiatry and psychology will become useful to science only when such stories are validated by an effort to connect effects with causes -- to try to explain what has only been described . To date, these fields have gotten by with descriptions of things they cannot explain. Once explanations are proposed, they can be validated or falsified using empirical evidence, b…

To expand upon your point, biology lucked out with Carl Linnaeus. It so happened that Linnaeus's methods of classifying and naming biological organisms happened to correspond very well to other scientifically relevant concepts (genetics, etc.)[0]. We have no similar guarantee that the same applies to classifications of behaviors. That said - and let me qualify this by saying I have many complaints with the DSM (parti…

> We have no similar guarantee that the same applies to classifications of behaviors.

Not yet, anyway. In the long term, there's hope that neuroscience will uncover root causes in genetics and other objective disciplines, thus moving beyond psychology entirely. This is a future goal, not at all something just around the corner. On the other hand, psychology has been trying to crack this egg since before the Civil War and has gotten nowhere.

Notice that, when President Obama launched his new research program, he called it the "brain initiative", not the "mind initiative". This was a not-so-subtle signal that psychology is no longer looked on as the cutting edge of mental research.

> That said - and let me qualify this by saying I have many complaints with the DSM (particularly the DSM V) - the fact that the DSM classifications may not be helpful for research purposes does not mean that they are not helpful for clinical treatment.

That's true, but clinical treatment can't go anywhere without knowing causes, which the DSM -- and psychiatry and psychology -- don't address. This issue is discussed in the NIMH link I provided in my prior post, where the NIMH director provides much detail on the problems caused by addressing only symptoms, not causes.

> The DSM provides a convenient library, but the clinician still has to identify which portions are relevant and which are not, and to write the "code" that glues those relevant portions together.

But whenever a clinician goes beyond the DSM, s/he enters uncharted territory. This subjective territory led Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, to say, "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#39

Post by lutusp »

hristov wrote: post #22
lutusp wrote: post #2

An interesting but scientifically useless account. Psychiatry and psychology will become useful to science only when such stories are validated by an effort to connect effects with causes -- to try to explain what has only been described . To date, these fields have gotten by with descriptions of things they cannot explain. Once explanations are proposed, they can be validated or falsified using empirical evidence, b…

Not true at all. Observation is very legitimate and valid scientific pursuit. We will not be able to explain the human brain for a long time but that does not mean we should not make observations about how it behaves and find repeating patterns of behavior. One parallel is that humans were able to observe and accurately predict the movement of the stars before they ever knew what stars were. In fact humans were able…

> Observation is very legitimate and valid scientific pursuit. We will not be able to explain the human brain for a long time but that does not mean we should not make observations about how it behaves and find repeating patterns of behavior.

All right, let's submit your idea to a scientific thought experiment -- let's imagine we can do without any attempt to explain an observation, and call it science. Let's say I'm a doctor who believes I have cured the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over my patients until they get better. The treatment sometimes takes a week, but it always works. It's repeatable and reliable. Since psychologists don't have to explain their results, I don't have to either.

So -- where's my Nobel Prize?

Second example. I go outside and see little points of light in the night sky. I describe this -- I write a paper and say the night sky is filled with little points of light. Another person, who calls himself a scientist, says those points of light are actually distant thermonuclear furnaces like our sun, a claim that can be tested and potentially falsified. Is my observation science, or is his theory science?

(Observation by itself is not science -- empirically testable, falsifiable theories are required.)

> Furthermore, observations can be tested and supported by empirical evidence.

Not in mind studies. The mind is not accessible to empirical observation. The brain is, the mind is not. This issue is separate from the issue of whether observation without explanation is science.

> Of course you cannot perform the types of precise tests on humans one performs with atoms, but psychology there are scientific tests and studies you can do.

False. Psychology is not science unless and until empirical, falsifiable explanations are proposed and then tested, regardless of how many white lab coats and clipboards are on display.

Let's say I'm an astrologer and I'm really annoyed that people don't think my field is a science. So I hire a bunch of scientists who perform statistical studies, for example, how many people are Geminis and how many are Tauruses -- perfectly scientific, perfectly reliable. By doing this, have I made astrology a science? Why not? Some people claim this works for psychology, so why not for astrology too?

Re: Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

#40

Post by lutusp »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #19
altero wrote: post #16

This is just bullshit. A few decades ago psychiatrists were deducing personal traits from shape of skull. This imaginary is kind of similar. There are 100 000 000 000 neurons in brain, we can not even count number of connections. We are very very far from understanding it.

Sometime in the recent past people have started substituting a reasonable skepticism about what is known and knowable for a kind of blatant dismissal of everything that is not rendered absolutely elementary and deterministic. This is especially true of the cognitive sciences and the double standard becomes especially clear when the field is contrasted with, say, physics, the most sciencey of all sciences. For instanc…

> In my experience it's usually the people who know the least about psychology or cognitive science claiming that the least can be known about psychology and cognitive science.

Perhaps, but in this specific example, the people who know the most about the topic agree that we don't know anything, and that a new approach is required. As one example, the director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...

Quote: "... each edition [of the DSM] has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."

> Of course the brain is complicated, and of course we're a long way from understanding it, and yet I could look at a scan that showed hypometablism in your anterior temporal lobes and be able to tell you with great specificity about the symptoms I would expect you to manifest ...

This is exactly the problem that the NIMH's new ruling is meant to address -- a focus on symptoms rather than causes. Until we can explain these symptoms, until we can move beyond simple description, mental research will remain a subjective dead end.

> So yeah, there are bad practitioners and bad papers and overbroad explanations, but that doesn't mean that nobody knows anything.

As long as vestal virgins can claim to have been raped and destroy their families without anyone asking some obvious questions, yes, no one knows anything: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology

> For instance, go ahead and take a quarter out of our your pocket, flip it into the air and see how it lands on the floor. It's pretty easy to predict whether it comes up heads or tails, right? Except no, it isn't ...

Of course it is, the outcome is perfectly reliable if the coin is fair -- the probably is 1/2 that the result will be heads. No clean room or robot are required. I mention this to emphasize the difference between observation and theory -- the theory is perfectly reliable.

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