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Wisdom from Psychopaths?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#21

Post by anthonyb »

dkarl wrote: post #10

I was expecting to read an article about understanding human nature without morality and respect clouding your judgment. Instead I read that psychopaths are clever at thinking up nefarious schemes to get what they want. I don't buy it as "wisdom." Anyone can think of evil ways to get what they want, as long as the situation is hypothetical. Just yesterday I posted a comment describing how if I ran a dating site I wou…

That's a very shallow reading of the article, and given your comments about violence, you seem to have missed the main point, which is that there's a continuum of mental states, from flat out psychopath to neurotic and everything in between. The lawyer mentioned on the first page would appear to be high on the scale, but not enough for him to not care about risking going to jail.

And your 'screwing over customers' is vague in the extreme. How exactly are you going to keep people on your hypothetical dating site but without them meeting people? Withhold phone numbers? On the other hand, the asbestos example given in the article is concrete and specific and seems pretty plausible to me - certainly enough to be worth trying (once you've exhausted other, less risky solutions).

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#22

Post by nnq »

How would the psychopath's lack of empathy differ from the autistic / asperger's lack of emapthy?

It reminded me of the axis of hypo-mentalist hyper-mentalism from here http://edge.org/conversation/the-imprinted-brain-theory (second figure, ignoring the genetics parts for this discussion) ...but I don't know where would autism and psychopathy would relate and differ. They are certainly very very different things, but I can't think of a simple conceptaul framework that would show their similarities and differences.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#23

Post by dschiptsov »

barry-cotter wrote: post #3

The following review article by gwern gives a much better overview of psychopathy. http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/ If the Scientific American article is representative of the book the world would probably have been better off had it never been written. For psychopaths other people are means, not ends. If wrecking your life will get them a more pleasant afternoon with no/small chance of danger to the…

This is just bunch of words. la-la-la.

practice at lying, cheating and stealing - this requires lot of self-control, which is considered a virtue.

They are ruthless because to them other people are objects - this is an emotion management, another virtue.

They are not focused on any long term goal. Their focus is very much on the now - and this is called spontaneity, a top of Maslow hierarchy.

So, you call it wrong?)

The point is, there are never been any study of so-called extreme cases. Get your test subjects from slums - you will get different psychology. It does't matter what experts think they will find. They will find what they don't expect.

The common-sense psychology text-book says that family doesn't matter. Well, if it is an average mediocre family, it doesn't, indeed. Children were shaped by their social network - by the street.

Now consider being raised in a family where you father died in an accident and mother became mentally ill, without any treatment, or even diagnosis. What common-sense psychology will say? "We probably would see some systematic differences"?

This is yet another bell-curve. Common-sense psychology studying mostly those 75%. Yeah psychopath is different.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#25

Post by mitchty »

chii wrote: post #16
Zenst wrote: post #14

A very nice read and if anything too short, want to read more. The ability to abstract oneself from the problem in a way that enables you to think about the problem is certainly something many would wish to be able to do better in at least one area in there lives. I find it easy to handle most things but anything personal, well I just end up like most and think about every negative permuation more than resolving the…

> When a bank reposses a house do they send in councelors and break the news over a hot beverage, no they do it in a letter and with that are about as cold as any psycopath could ever come up with. interesting that you mention this, because a "bank", or in general, a corporation can be considered a psychopath. If you watch the documentary "The Corporation" (freely available on thepiratebay), it shows you the criteria…

The myth that a company only has a goal to make money for its shareholders is wrong. Or to do only what they desire for that matter.

http://hbr.org/2010/04/the-myth-of-shareholder-capitalism/ar...

I'll extract the money quote:

Oddly, no previous management research has looked at what the legal literature says about the topic, so we conducted a systematic analysis of a century’s worth of legal theory and precedent. It turns out that the law provides a surprisingly clear answer: Shareholders do not own the corporation, which is an autonomous legal person. What’s more, when directors go against shareholder wishes—even when a loss in value is documented—courts side with directors the vast majority of the time. Shareholders seem to get this. They’ve tried to unseat directors through lawsuits just 24 times in large corporations over the past 20 years; they’ve succeeded only eight times. In short, directors are to a great extent autonomous.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#26

Post by DanBC »

hayksaakian wrote: post #4
Xcelerate wrote: post #2

I find psychopaths incredibly interesting. Probably because I recognize that I am about the furthest thing from one. I incessantly worry about the future and the consequences of what I'm currently doing. I always wonder what people are thinking, what they are thinking about others, and what they are thinking about me. It takes me 50 minutes to type a short email because I'm constantly playing out the scenarios of how…

is there a term for the opposite of psychopaths? why is intense concern for what others think of you and how you react considered normal?

It's hard to talk about opposite.

Some people with borderline personality disorder have a hyperactive amygdala - this means they're hyper aware of perceived risk and what people think about them, and what they think about themselves.

BPD has a high correlation with various eating disorders and with attachment problems.

Sometimes people with BPD can be involved in horrific deliberate self mutilation, but without wanting to die at that point.

I guess that comes quite close?

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#27

Post by chmike »

This raise the question if the best entrepreneurs should be psychopaths. Investors seam to favor the psychopath personality characteristics (taking risks, focus, bent rules to reach goal = hack the system, etc.).

It also seam that people with moderated psychopathy might be socially and professionally advantaged and might thus, in the long term, become the dominant humans and the future product or our on going evolution process.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#28

Post by Tichy »

It almost sounds as if she wants to be killed (stuff like that has happened before, prisoners taking their therapists hostage, for example). What a silly idea, sorry.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#29

Post by chmike »

barry-cotter wrote: post #3

The following review article by gwern gives a much better overview of psychopathy. http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/ If the Scientific American article is representative of the book the world would probably have been better off had it never been written. For psychopaths other people are means, not ends. If wrecking your life will get them a more pleasant afternoon with no/small chance of danger to the…

I think that their fundamental characteristic might be reduced to a very low emotional response. This explains their lack of empathy and lack of fear. The ruthlessness, charm and cold manipulator behavior are just by product resulting by the need and desire to reach their goal as any normal person have. The lack of empathy, fear and apparent consciousness make them more efficient but also less socially fit because they are deaf to other people's pain.

Re: Wisdom from Psychopaths?

#30

Post by jos3000 »

nnq wrote: post #22

How would the psychopath's lack of empathy differ from the autistic / asperger's lack of emapthy ? It reminded me of the axis of hypo-mentalist hyper-mentalism from here http://edge.org/conversation/the-imprinted-brain-theory (second figure, ignoring the genetics parts for this discussion) ...but I don't know where would autism and psychopathy would relate and differ. They are certainly very very different things, bu…

This is a very naive generalisation, but, as far as I understand, psychopaths can be very good at assessing other people's mental state, but do not /feel/ it like most people do. People on the autistic spectrum find it very difficult to recognise what other people are feeling.
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