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That may be good enough. A psychopath doesn't necessarily have to understand the rules of society intuitively, it would suffice if he accepted and followed them
by VMG 15y ago
That may be good enough. A psychopath doesn't necessarily have to understand the rules of society intuitively, it would suffice if he accepted and followed them.
- xal 15y agoRight, this just sounds like a more extreme version of introverts who have learned to "act" extrovert in huge crowds. E.g. Nixon
- emcl 15y agoThat's true. We all do it in different ways to counter our own psychological quirks. To say that our social behavior is a reflection of our true tendencies would be a lie. A psychopath is more honest when he is acting one than when he is pretending to be like the rest of us. People are different from each other. Some more so than others. It's evolution at work. Acknowledge it and get over it.
- FaceKicker 15y agoI don't know much about psychopathy, but is it generally accurate to say that psychopaths don't "understand" the ethical rules of society or the motivation for having said rules? I thought it was more that they didn't feel any sense of personal moral obligation to follow these rules or any sense of guilt when they don't follow them (while they still might completely understand the rules and their philosophical justifications, and may even be completely in favor of these rules existing and everyone else following them). (Like I said though, I know very little about the disorder and am mostly conjecturing based on superficial familiarity)
- VMG 14y agoThere is an extremely interesting podcast episode about that topic. I recommend it to everybody who is interested in a scientific discussion of this topic: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/the-moral-judgment-of-psychopaths/2926530 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszon... From the transcript: So we all start by mimicking but by the time we are adults we can tell why rape is wrong. Rape is wrong because of the horrible suffering that it inflicts on the victim. And psychopaths, even when they're adults, will say 'of course rape is wrong', they don't really understand that it's wrong or why it's wrong. They are just saying that because other people have told them that and it helps them get along in society to mimic.
- zanny 15y agoWe lose so much potential in these people to change social norm from conventions nobody else is willing to question. Especially when you drug them from a young age into a continuous waking stupor. A lot of aged traditions that will not mesh with an instantaneously connected, constantly communicating and sharing global society will not work in the next several decades, and some of the textbook "unbalanced" will hopefully be the ones to push change to match changing realities.