311–320 of 347 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So because a person is not themselves a perfect altruist, they are no better than a person who has no empathy or morality whatsoever?
No the point is that it's far more complex than that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to either over-demonize or underestimate the nature of actual psychopathy if you've never encountered it. By definition, a pure psychopath feels absolutely no remorse, no guilt, and has an unshakable egocentric view that does not change. They're effectively intelligent rational agents without the natural mammal-evolved desire to benefit the group -- they only seek to benefit the self. They would stab you in…
If they're rational agents, then they should understand the results of the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and understand that screwing people over doesn't pay, remorse or no remorse.
"the director of the agency finally took me on herself, and to our mutual surprise we got along extremely well." Birds of a feather?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thing is, in their mind, they're not rambling. They believe they are saying something intelligible. They have thoughts, sometimes mixed up, and feelings, and try to express them - but something in the delivery smashes it to bits. So the interesting thing to me is how you can read these ramblings and actually extract feelings and intentions from them, even though they make no sense. Usually it's very sad and lonely.
There is a fascinating internal logic underneath it all. I had a schizophrenic guy send me regular e-mails for about two months. For reasons still unknown to me, he decided that I was the one person in the world that he could trust. The first e-mail was very short and looked like spam. It was a brief note about how the death of some professional wrestler wasn't an accident. Then they got longer and longer, and finall…
>"Sorry about him hassling you, he's back on his meds now."
and not
>"Sorry about me hassling you, I'm back on my meds now."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was discussing the period when we humans evolved. Not so large groups then. Evolutionary pressure creating psychopaths from a group evolutionary basis seems unlikely (these generally need quite specific circumstances to work). (Your argument also miss that psychopaths manipulate and damage the direct environment around them most.)
Perhaps psychopathy is like being bald - no real advantages, perhaps a small disadvantage, but it doesn't disadvantage you enough to stop you having a few kids so the genes get passed on anyway. Indeed, if psychopathy is a combination of traits ('feels no empathy' and 'good at faking empathy') perhaps the survivors had a combination of traits that helped them to survive, while those with one or the other failed to su…
There are large effects on behavior of psychopathy, people that are affected by a psychopath will mostly -- at a minimum -- make a point of warning everyone else they know. That is very detrimental for the psychopath. (Note that how we communicate really applies evolutionary pressure. Just check the number of muscles in a human face compared to most anything else. This is not a small effect.)
Also, psychopathy seems to be partly environmental and partly from genetics. And exist in most populations.
All this suggests an evolved behavioral strategy.
Researchers need to check for your hypothesis (the large different effects almost cancels each others out in many types of historic societies(!), so it is just a random genetic drift) since afaik it is a standard hypothesis, but it does seem very unlikely.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your position is that all convincing self-accounts by psychopaths are themselves only convincing because the psychopath is somehow 'tricking' you, then you can take that statement and s/psychopath/any group you care to name/ and you'd never know the difference. Don't believe me? Try substituting various bogeymen of the twentieth century: crack dealers, pedophiles, etc. You see what I mean? It always works: You s…
Hmmm, no. One of the elements of being a successful human being is being a convincing liar. "Does my bum look big in this"? "Hi, wow you look great...." And so on. Humans lie. If they didn't, they'd be in constant conflict.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your position is that all convincing self-accounts by psychopaths are themselves only convincing because the psychopath is somehow 'tricking' you, then you can take that statement and s/psychopath/any group you care to name/ and you'd never know the difference. Don't believe me? Try substituting various bogeymen of the twentieth century: crack dealers, pedophiles, etc. You see what I mean? It always works: You s…
Hmmm, no. One of the elements of being a successful human being is being a convincing liar. "Does my bum look big in this"? "Hi, wow you look great...." And so on. Humans lie. If they didn't, they'd be in constant conflict.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still have no idea what you're trying to say. I don't have an abundance of trust for psychopaths, pedophiles, or crack dealers. I've worked very closely with psychopaths (one was also a pedophile) in an institutional setting in the past. I had to assume that every interaction was a manipulation. Even being extremely careful, it was easy to get caught from time to time particularly when I was understaffed (i.e. 1 st…
Everyone lies and manipulates you, not just psychopaths.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're rational agents, then they should understand the results of the iterated prisoner's dilemma, and understand that screwing people over doesn't pay, remorse or no remorse.
Aside from the fact that life isn't a restricted theoretical game theory puzzle and rational doesn't mean educated (thus aware of prisoner's dilemma), this would assume that the people they're screwing over are also rational actors and are capable of cooperating.