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You're welcome! It is fascinating, isn't it? I should have clarified, I'm no Jo Cameron. I'm no different from your average person in how I feel physical pain

You're welcome! It is fascinating, isn't it? I should have clarified, I'm no Jo Cameron. I'm no different from your average person in how I feel physical pain and empathy. It's extremely rare to have what she has, I think there are only a handful of people in the world that have that. What's far more common, and what I believe I have (and what a few other people in this thread have) is a double FAAH mutation. (That makes up the relentless positivity and lack of fear parts of her personality.) I can't find any estimates on the frequency of that, but around 20% of people have the single FAAH mutation that is basically a less strong version. The discussion about empathy is an interesting one. But I think treating it like it's some genetic binary thing is completely the wrong way to see it. Empathy, in some ways, is a cultivated skill. The Nazis were elected. Does this mean that Germans were born with less empathy, unable to empathize with the Jewish, disabled, Roma, queer, etc? No, it just means that society succeeded in turning them into an Other who nobody could empathize with. That is to say, I think that if you gave two identical twins entirely different upbringings they would end up with different kinds of empathy. So I think sure, perhaps Jo Cameron doesn't have some of the genetic material for things we may associate with empathy, but she seems to have taken on many empathy-adjacent values like selflessness and really caring about others. I think the thing with the daughter is just teenagers being teenagers. Having been a teenager once myself, I wouldn't read too far into it :)

raducu 6y ago
If I had to speculate, I'd say the lady has 90% of the hardware that enables empathy, just that she doesn't feel pain, she cannot empathize with pain and things deriving from pain, just like I can't empathize with bats using ecolocation. Perhaps she empathizes with other, more positive emotions. However, psychopats surely do feel pain, but they lack the hardware to feel the pain of others and much more. And sure, there's the fact that you can learn to voluntarily turn off your empathy.
rpiguy 6y ago
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation-causes-some-people-to-feel-naturally-high https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation... Some area of Africa is estimated at over 40% I am also almost sure I have the same double mutation. Positive all the time, pot never got me high, very even mood, always optimistic. But I am also very empathetic.

raducu 6y ago

If I had to speculate, I'd say the lady has 90% of the hardware that enables empathy, just that she doesn't feel pain, she cannot empathize with pain and things deriving from pain, just like I can't empathize with bats using ecolocation. Perhaps she empathizes with other, more positive emotions. However, psychopats surely do feel pain, but they lack the hardware to feel the pain of others and much more. And sure, there's the fact that you can learn to voluntarily turn off your empathy.

rpiguy 6y ago

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation-causes-some-people-to-feel-naturally-high https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q8kb4/this-gene-mutation... Some area of Africa is estimated at over 40% I am also almost sure I have the same double mutation. Positive all the time, pot never got me high, very even mood, always optimistic. But I am also very empathetic.