Psychopathy

I won't pretend I don't find that amusing.

Victimless crimes are not the same as no crimes. We cannot make being born with a mental disorder illegal.

To the "laws are designed to prevent crime" idea, which, somewhat logically, means we should pre-emptively lock up/execute psycopaths, the law is designed to stop crime.

That is, imminent crime.

Self-defense, for example, only applies to an immediate and manifest threat. You can't shoot someone who's a jackass, and you also can't shoot someone who owns a gun but doesn't have it with them and is actively attacking you.

If you want to use your "we have to get them because they could be a threat" argument, we'd have to execute everyone who owns a weapon. Since almost all kitchen utensils are weapons.

Stupid idea is stupid. You can lock them up when they do something to warrant it. Until then keep your self-righteous falsehoods about how "all psychopaths are murderers" out. Most are just anti-social people who don't do anything, I imagine. We only hear about the ones that do lash out.

Lack of empathy =/= Omnicidal Maniac...

Well typically any psychopath killed is going to be a [[Jerk Ass Victim]] can we agree on that at least? How often do you shed a tear when a total jerk dies. That'd be the best and brightest of psychopaths. The most innocent of psychopaths is a jerk at best. So....I really wouldn't care if an "innocent" psychopath was killed....this is all hypothetical of course.

My point is even the best psycho is just a piece of Sh*t. So regardless of whether they're a threat I don't care if they die.

I could qualify you as a psychopath for wanting to kill people for thoughts they have no control over, rather than actions that they do.

Depends on what they did. I try not to judge people entirely on their opinions. Action makes a person who they are, not words, and not thoughts.

Would you say that about people with Down's Syndrome? People with autism can also sometimes be very unsympathetic and selfish to others. Would you say that they're all 'jerkass victims' who deserve to die? Psychopathy, I will say it again, is, like Down's Syndrome and autism, an innate mental condition. People cannot help it. I don't know whether you're a psychopath yourself for thinking that we should wipe them off the face of the earth for having the bad luck to be born with a medical disorder, but you are without a doubt being one of the most prejudiced, vicious and/or thoughtless people I've ever encountered.

Let's keep this away from personal attacks shall we?

Also, this isn't about not having a choice about your mental state. No one is advocating killing all people with Autism simply because they have Autism. The point he's trying to make is that he thinks psychopaths deserve to die because they are only handicapped in one particular area, but otherwise are completely functional and intelligent. This area that they are lacking: "When a normal person sees someone else in pain or distress, he instinctively feels distress as well, but a psychopath never does. Thus, psychopaths can commit acts of stunning cruelty and callousness because they are not deterred by any unpleasant reaction to their victims' suffering."

edited 16th Sep '11 3:16:35 PM by ViralLamb

Non-psychopaths are also capable of acts of unspeakable cruelty and callousness: I doubt the genocidal Hutu were all psychopaths. Should we just lock up everyone?

Last time I checked, the poor were more likely to commit violent crimes: Should they be locked up?

Psychopaths who ain't done anything serious deserve to be left the Hell alone like anybody else.

"If you want to know how a criminal psychopath feels about people, take a look at how people react to them."

edited 16th Sep '11 6:55:02 PM by mailedbypostman

But seriously, with psychological conditions often people don't fall exactly on one side of the spectrum or the other. Do we give more or less surveillance to people with 75% psychopathy? Do we ease up counselling for people with 50%?

edited 16th Sep '11 7:01:58 PM by mailedbypostman

There is a Psychopath litmus Test. IF the test were 100% accurate, we should shoot the telepaths.

But if the test is 60% accurate, then lock up the psycho for the first week if he hasn't murdered anyone, then he has one hour per day free and two hours per day in the third week. If he don't murder anyone then treat him as a regular Citizen.

I strongly suspect that if you put someone in prison for no reason, then let them out for an hour and put them straight back in jail again after that hour, they're not going to do anything good during that time.

Please explain to me why that is a logical conclusion.

edited 16th Sep '11 11:06:41 PM by cityofmist

I think anyone who wants to lock up non-offending psychopaths should go in right next to them, because they're just as much a psychopath.

Also, the Stanford Prison Experiment. Prison makes people more violent, even if they were otherwise normal. You'd draw a false equivalency from psychopaths getting violent in prison when it's the prison, not the psychopath.

That would set a bad precedent.

Very bad.

I have very personal reasons to be concerned about this.

"

Please explain to me why that is a logical conclusion."

I meant "handicapped" in the area that lets them empathize with other's.

Also, I don't actually have a stance on this issue. I think pyschopaths are potentially dangerous to just roam about, but aside from that, I can't think of anything to do about it that I'd feel comforatable with.

edited 17th Sep '11 1:41:44 AM by ViralLamb

This convo is a sterling example of He Who Fights Monsters.

edited 17th Sep '11 2:25:32 AM by MRDA1981

One thing I'd like to add to this discussion is that psychopathy isn't just one characteristic. It isn't just "a lack of remorse" or "a lack of emotion" but a bunch of other things. Hence why it is possible for someone to be, say 70% or 50% of a psychopath. According to [[the Other wiki]] the PCL-R items used to define a person of psychopathy (for research purposes, NOT clincial) are:

Aggressive narcissism

Glibness/superficial charm

Grandiose sense of self-worth

Emotionally shallow

Callous/lack of empathy

Failure to accept responsibility for own actions

Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom

Parasitic lifestyle

Poor behavioral control

Promiscuous sexual behavior

Lack of realistic, long-term goals

Impulsiveness

Irresponsibility

Juvenile delinquency

Early behavioral problems

Revocation of conditional release

Many short-term marital relationships

Criminal versatility

Psychopaths are not dangerous not because they lack empathy or lack emotions or lack responsibility etc, but because they have ALL of them at once. Personally I think that it is extremely difficult to treat psychopaths due to the way that they game the system, but I need more proof that it is entirely, unarguably impossible.

edited 18th Sep '11 8:52:43 PM by IraTheSquire

Psychopathy is, at present, largely beieved to be impossible to cure. Not just because of how they game the system, but because it's rather difficult to explain to someone why they should care about people for the sake of caring. For the most part, functional psychopaths think we're the crazy ones. Why should anyone give a shit about someone else if there isn't any practical reason to do so? We don't care how many ants we step on to get from one place to another, so why should they care about some random person whose life pretty much equates to the same end?

The thing about the argument that psychopaths need to be locked up, destroyed, monitored, etc., is that a lot of the time, they're not wrong. Psychopaths, by and large, are immune to the same Appeals To Emotion that normal people fall prey to. They don't care that this 63-year-old widow is about to lose the house her husband left for her and her 4 orphaned grandkids. She spent their mortgage on gambling debts, so she's fucked. Unless there's a convincing reason why she should be given an extension, a psychopath will send her ass right out the door without any remorse.

Like I said, that sounds rather harsh to us, because we can be swayed by pity, agony, sorrow, or a host of other emotions. They won't. However, it works both ways. We can feel genuine joy because someone in our company is happy and we can feel uplifted by creating joy in another person. A psychopath doesn't feel that. They can feel a sense of pride or ego from successfully manipulating another person's emotions (like, seducing someone they're sexually attracted to and emotionally gaming them so that they stay loyal and submissive), but they will never feel love genuine joy just from inducing those emotions in others.

edited 18th Sep '11 9:06:49 PM by KingZeal

That . . . really doesn't sound so different from some of the stuff I've heard said by tropers whom I don't think are psychopaths.

edited 18th Sep '11 10:30:58 PM by feotakahari

You don't need to be a psychopath to have lack of empathy, but you need to lack empathy to qualify as a psychopath.

As I said, a psychopath is more than just a lack of empathy.

No, the way people think is a major part of who/what they are. However, most have much stronger barriers against doing actual harm, and would not seriously want to hurt anybody. Others, including plenty of psychopath simply find it more advantageous to not act upon it unless they can get away with it.

How well they succeed in life is not some sort of automatic badge of virtue, just a combination of ability and social circumstances. However, how much of an effort they make to behave well is.

Anyway, evil as such tends to be more about seriously malicious premeditated ideology rather than momentary reactive self-defence/survival instincts.

Also, at the very least sociopath as a term originally had nothing to do with evil. It was a crippling mental handicap preventing people from self-organising and learning from mistakes. It is probably not fun at all for the people with an actual problematic handicap and normal levels of conscience and compassion to be called evil anyway all the time.

Psychopath is iffier, but it is also a wide spectra. It can either mean calculated, manipulative, compassion- and conscience-deprived ideological sadist with genius level EQ and insincere acting skills and casual ability to slaughter thousands of innocent people for kicks or casual indifference.

Or just be the polar opposite/traditional sociopath definition: Somebody with no manipulation, self-organisation, or ability to learn, and not necessarily lacking empathy or conscience. Or a combination/thug gang leader. At least going by what wikipedia seems to say.

So, it seems like a very iffy definition at best, and most evil people don't really have any disorders.

This...doesn't jive well with me. Not one bit.