what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

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Atla
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Atla »

By the way this might be surprising, but the most giveaway sign of psychopaths is usually the pity play. If we find ourselves often feeling sorry for someone, often pitying them, wanting to help them, even though objectively they don't seem to be doing bad, that could be a psychopath's appeal to our pity. Pity is like a backdoor to people's minds, a psychological blind spot, psychopaths use this to gain access and then dominate/destroy the person.
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 8:07 am I wonder if psychopathy is a condition that somehow confers some evolutionary advantage?
One theory is that it's simply a sexual adaption, psychopaths can have more offspring. Psychopaths charm anyone they can, in order to have sex with them, and then they disappear. They'll also rape if they can get away with it. No responsibility, no guilt. Many women are easily manipulated by male psychopaths, because they find psychopathic traits attractive, and high empathy in men repulsive.
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Sculptor1
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

popeye1945 wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 4:55 am Psychopathys walk among us, prey upon us at their will, and most often we never recognize them for what they are. If empathy, compassion, love or just kindness, in general, were vital for the definition of what it is to be human, the psychopath would have to be considered something from another realm. This is Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, not in the form of a split personality but two aspects of a citizenry, a predator prey relationship going on everyday. psychopaths are highly represented in the prison system and responsible for the greater part of violent crimes. They also are highly represented in business, industry, and politics and even invade the churches looking for easy prey. How could one ever expect to live in a harmonious world when psychopaths are so highly represented in the halls of power, our present condition of domestic and international chaos might be the answer.

So, what would it be like if suddenly a cure was found for this disorder, it might not be as straightforward as one might think? Apparently, they perform some quite necessary functions in society, ones a normal person might not be able to do as well as psychopathy. Think for a moment, you are going into the hospital for a life-saving operation, your surgeon is a psychopath. He is the best surgeon in his field, he works extremely well under stress, mainly because he doesn't really give a dam about you, but only his ratings as a surgeon. You could opt out for a normal surgeon, but probably he does work as well under stress, which one do you want working on you? There are many examples of this in various fields, where a normal person would be inflicted with intense emotions in the preformance of a given task, and so psychopathy is indeed chosen above a normal person, it would seem that we cannot do without them. Any thoughts on the matter out there, it is a preplexing problem, one that should stir the imagination somewhat.
There has been som recently promising genetic which have identified common genes amongst psycohpaths.
Forgive me for not recalling the details but a BBC program a couple of years ago followed a psychology professor investigating this phenomenon. Curiously he tested his own genome and was horrified to identify the same genes. On questioning his family they said they were not surprised. Although he was a responsible and perfectly fucntional father to his children, they found his "compassion" was based on reason and not feeling.
He had to accept that whatever it was the made some serial killers, he shared the same cold rationalism, and lack of altruism, being cold and aloof, though very trustworthy and dependable.
Such genetic makeup is predicts high for stockbrokers, police,CEOs, serial killers, down to small time thugs and muggers. A lack of sympathy, empathy combined with a great deal of self agrandisement meant that these individuals thought a great deal of themselves, but were no better than their peers at achievement. So there seems to be no advantage to the species to have psychopaths. Co-workers generally found them distant and unfriendly.

I've been thinking about this trait in terms of a science-fiction story I have been creating. A person havinf first invented a gravity inverter and then FTL drive has the opportunity to colonise a world, but would demand a genetic test to expunge this trait from all colonial genomes.
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Sculptor1
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

Pattern-chaser wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 12:24 pm
Atla wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 10:21 am Even had another psychopath tell me once that he had no sense of self, he didn't really know what that is. Their being is mostly automatic. Some other psychopaths told me that they don't consider themselves human either.
How have you met so many psychopaths? As far as I know, they're not that numerous.
It is thought to be as much as 20%.
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Sculptor1
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

ERROR 2%
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Sculptor1
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:23 am
Nick_A wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 1:57 pm We have to eliminate these psychopaths through education to preserve the peace.
Psychopaths can no more be eliminated by education than paedophiles can be 'cured'. It is misleading, and a little bit dangerous, to suggest so.
Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

Pattern-chaser wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 8:07 am
popeye1945 wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 4:55 am Psychopaths walk among us [...] what would it be like if suddenly a cure was found for this disorder?

I wonder if psychopathy is a condition that somehow confers some evolutionary advantage?
Survival acts on the individual first. Psychopaths would not survive alone. If the whole humans race were psychopathic is would fail to cooperate and end. In this way psychopathy is PARASITIC, taking advantage of the good will of the general populace to thrive, mimicking normal behaviours.
Sadly evolution permits many variations which do not provide any selective advantage.
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LuckyR
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by LuckyR »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:25 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:23 am
Nick_A wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 1:57 pm We have to eliminate these psychopaths through education to preserve the peace.
Psychopaths can no more be eliminated by education than paedophiles can be 'cured'. It is misleading, and a little bit dangerous, to suggest so.
Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
Unfortunately for the eugenics idea twin studies show that only about 50% of what we call sociopathy is of genetic origin.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:32 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:25 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:23 am
Nick_A wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 1:57 pm We have to eliminate these psychopaths through education to preserve the peace.
Psychopaths can no more be eliminated by education than paedophiles can be 'cured'. It is misleading, and a little bit dangerous, to suggest so.
Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
Unfortunately for the eugenics idea twin studies show that only about 50% of what we call sociopathy is of genetic origin.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933872/
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:32 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:25 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:23 am
Nick_A wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 1:57 pm We have to eliminate these psychopaths through education to preserve the peace.
Psychopaths can no more be eliminated by education than paedophiles can be 'cured'. It is misleading, and a little bit dangerous, to suggest so.
Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
Unfortunately for the eugenics idea twin studies show that only about 50% of what we call sociopathy is of genetic origin.
That article is 11 years old, but the BBC prog I saw was far more recent, so I imagine more work has been done on this.
Not sure whether twin studies on "sociopathy" is relevant.
Psychopathy is fer more narrowly defined.
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by popeye1945 »

There has been som recently promising genetic which have identified common genes amongst psycohpaths.
Forgive me for not recalling the details but a BBC program a couple of years ago followed a psychology professor investigating this phenomenon. Curiously he tested his own genome and was horrified to identify the same genes. On questioning his family they said they were not surprised. Although he was a responsible and perfectly fucntional father to his children, they found his "compassion" was based on reason and not feeling.
He had to accept that whatever it was the made some serial killers, he shared the same cold rationalism, and lack of altruism, being cold and aloof, though very trustworthy and dependable.
Such genetic makeup is predicts high for stockbrokers, police,CEOs, serial killers, down to small time thugs and muggers. A lack of sympathy, empathy combined with a great deal of self agrandisement meant that these individuals thought a great deal of themselves, but were no better than their peers at achievement. So there seems to be no advantage to the species to have psychopaths. Co-workers generally found them distant and unfriendly.

I've been thinking about this trait in terms of a science-fiction story I have been creating. A person havinf first invented a gravity inverter and then FTL drive has the opportunity to colonise a world, but would demand a genetic test to expunge this trait from all colonial genomes.
[/quote]

Hi Sculptor,

I just took a test for psychopathy and was delighted to score ZERO. In the same experience however it stated this idea that CEOs are highly psychopathic is apparently a myth, perhaps we just wish the rich and powerful should be deemed evil--lol!! Something else just occurred to me, normal people identity-wise, are their experiences, but the psychopath is the constitution he was born with, luck of the draw. It is not really a good idea to identify psychopaths as distant or unfriendly, first, most of them are not like that. The other problem is that there are a lot of very gentle people who are just shy, or people lacking the social skills to be popular. These people are already in a painful social situation, they need to be understood not to be group in with the psychopath. These are very different tragedies.
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by popeye1945 »

What would it be like? Like a bonobo encampment in contrast to chimpanzees.
[/quote]

LuckyR,
There would be a whole lot of **** going on, bonobos have hit upon a survival trick that humanity and Chimpanzees might learn from, a real stress reducer ---LOL!!!
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Tegularius »

Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:24 am
Tegularius wrote: May 2nd, 2021, 7:37 pm Hardly different from the one we have. The psychopath is only around 1% of the population. The real problem are all the stupids out there which comprise a very much higher percentage who so easily succumb or believe the manipulations of the psychopaths as one major component of their collective stupidity.
So it isn't the bullies who are responsible for their actions, it's the fault of their victims, for being vulnerable?

No, I don't think so.
No idea what you're talking about. The OP refers to psychopathology not bullies...two completely different subjects.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Jake4020
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Jake4020 »

Inherit implies ownership in place of participation. Only owners could seemingly effect the rules of a game, not so much the participants. Assuming we had control to remove any perceived obstacles to whatever dreamed up desire we want to articulate would have to include the power to do away with any undesirable outcomes. I would be hesitant to assert people could even imagine what the effects of removing any chess pieces of this game would have. Any professt altruistic person desires less negativity but I'm not sure who really knows what that means. If there's no crimes there's no police and no police a potential for crimes. A dumb analogy but I think is a simple articulation of how even a simple notion of what is right could be problematic with a limited perspective of reality. And saying people have a limited perspective of reality is being nice. I mean as far as it is relevant we understand what we need to. Science itself is a declaration of presumptions, and a underlying foundation that's more like as far as we know. Wanting there to be less pain and horror in the world has no more meaning than a preference of temperature. It's subjective and ripe with possible mis calculations. I would say keep the problems so you can ask these sort of questions and can write my nonsensical responses. And so perhaps if you remove one brick the building falls down.
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by LuckyR »

Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:53 pm
LuckyR wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:32 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:25 pm
Pattern-chaser wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 8:23 am

Psychopaths can no more be eliminated by education than paedophiles can be 'cured'. It is misleading, and a little bit dangerous, to suggest so.
Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
Unfortunately for the eugenics idea twin studies show that only about 50% of what we call sociopathy is of genetic origin.
That article is 11 years old, but the BBC prog I saw was far more recent, so I imagine more work has been done on this.
Not sure whether twin studies on "sociopathy" is relevant.
Psychopathy is fer more narrowly defined.
Twin studies (measuring the prevalence of traits in identical vs fraternal twins) allows one to calculate the portion of the trait which is genetic since identical twins share 100% and fraternal twins 50% of their genetic material, and grow up in identical environments.
"As usual... it depends."
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Sculptor1
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Re: what kind of a world would we inherit if psychopathology were cured

Post by Sculptor1 »

LuckyR wrote: May 4th, 2021, 2:17 am
Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:53 pm
LuckyR wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:32 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 1:25 pm

Agreed. Though many, given the right guidance and opportunities, can live almost normal lives. I think it would be a great idea that no psychopathic doctors should perform unsupervised; not be on frontline policing; judges; child services etc..

On this specific issue I would recommend eugenics.

There is no advantage to the human race to allow the genes to persist, as they are only parasitic on normal people.
The fact that they predict high in the priesthood, stockmarket, criminals and politicians is not surprise.

I have very little doubt that Trump is one, and probably Boris too.
Unfortunately for the eugenics idea twin studies show that only about 50% of what we call sociopathy is of genetic origin.
That article is 11 years old, but the BBC prog I saw was far more recent, so I imagine more work has been done on this.
Not sure whether twin studies on "sociopathy" is relevant.
Psychopathy is fer more narrowly defined.
Twin studies (measuring the prevalence of traits in identical vs fraternal twins) allows one to calculate the portion of the trait which is genetic since identical twins share 100% and fraternal twins 50% of their genetic material, and grow up in identical environments.
I know what twin studies are.
Show me a psychopathic twin where their sibling does not share the traits!
Psychopathy is an innate disability, it cannot be learned, but it can be masked according to good upbringing.
That is how some psychopaths can be priests whilst others are crinimals. Psychopaths like Trump and Boris had privaleged backgrounds, had they been born working class they are likely to have been criminals. Some say they already are.
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