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Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath

92 pointsby winstonsmithover 11 years ago

12 comments

mcguireover 11 years ago
In this article, I learned,<p>* that the &quot;warrior gene&quot; thing == psychopathy,<p>* that your genes determine your personality, except when they don&#x27;t,<p>* that your behavior is determined by your biology, except when it isn&#x27;t,<p>* that lack of affect == Buddhism,<p>* that &quot;looking at brainscans&quot; is a valid step in judicial sentencing,<p>* that you can claim to be a person who suffers from an impairment of empathy, who at the extreme, might well not see the difference between a person and a block of wood, and <i>still</i> be taken seriously when you say &quot;that genetics were very, very dominant in who people are—that your genes would tell you who you were going to be&quot;,<p>* that neuroscientists aren&#x27;t all that spectacular about keeping their data sets neat and orderly; in particular, they don&#x27;t see a big deal mingling the results of several different experiments, and<p>* that claiming to have a Big Evil background, that you have to struggle with every day, is <i>still</i> a great way to get publicity.<p>I laughed, I cried, it changed my life. Two thumbs up.<p>By the way, have I mentioned that I am of somewhat Nordic descent; every day, I have to fight off the urge to raid the coastlines of Europe, to pillage and plunder the tender and peaceful farmsteads and towns?
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lutuspover 11 years ago
An interesting but scientifically useless account. Psychiatry and psychology will become useful to science only when such stories are validated by an effort to connect effects with causes -- to try to <i>explain</i> what has only been <i>described</i>. To date, these fields have gotten by with descriptions of things they cannot explain. Once explanations are proposed, they can be validated or falsified using empirical evidence, but until that happens, it&#x27;s not science, it&#x27;s anecdote.<p>Interestingly, the director of the NIMH has recently taken the same position, ruling that that DSM (psychiatry and psychology&#x27;s &quot;bible&quot;) can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content:<p><a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nimh.nih.gov&#x2F;about&#x2F;director&#x2F;2013&#x2F;transforming-dia...</a><p>Quote: &quot;... each edition [of the DSM] has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity.&quot;
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tokenadultover 11 years ago
Since several of the comments here revolve around what we know now and could possibly know now about brain differences related to behavior, I&#x27;ll link to a book, <i>Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience,</i>[1] that examines for a popular audience how much science is behind the latest &quot;neuroscience&quot; and how much of it is just hype. Just because brain scans are involved doesn&#x27;t mean the explanation is any more valid. I think you will find this book interesting and helpful for understanding yourself and understanding the world.<p>I heard about the NIMH director&#x27;s letter on research priorities[2] first from behavior-genetics-informed research and clinical psychologists whom I meet in a &quot;journal club&quot; weekly during the school year. The DSM framework involves a lot of log-rolling among various kinds of psychologists and psychiatrists, several of whom depend for their living on being known as &quot;experts&quot; on &quot;disorders&quot; that may not have any real existence. That said, there is an active research program all over the world based on a variety of different paradigms, with very widely followed journals, trying better to understand healthy human behavior and debilitating human behavior that results from brain abnormalities, diseases, psychological stress, and other causes. Straight-up psychology still has a lot to contribute to this study. The psychologists I know best are very aware of critiques of their own discipline[3] through the readings we discuss in the journal club, and more generally aware of the general critique of the current conduct of science,[4] so they redouble their efforts to do their science better, and to check their methodology as they try to tease out the complex web of causes of human behavior.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nimh.nih.gov&#x2F;about&#x2F;director&#x2F;2013&#x2F;transforming-dia...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;opim.wharton.upenn.edu&#x2F;~uws&#x2F;</a><p>[4] <a href="https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/john-ioannidis?tab=publications" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;med.stanford.edu&#x2F;profiles&#x2F;john-ioannidis?tab=publica...</a>
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wololoover 11 years ago
&gt; This is a classic example of poor scientific journalism and I believe it became so popular due to widespread deficits in scientific literacy. You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to see that there are huge problems with his story. You simply have view this story objectively have a healthy dose of skepticism without quickly deferring to the authority figure. There are simple questions which are never addressed here. What experiment was being done during each PET scan? If the psychopaths and Dr. Fallon were both completing a morality task and they both had low activity in certain regions, THEN that would be something more tangible. This is simply showing a brain picture and not asking questions. We know that people are much more likely to believe something if there is a brain picture associated with it and this is further proof.<p>-- <a href="http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/pseudoscience-psychopathy/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.skepticalraptor.com&#x2F;skepticalraptorblog.php&#x2F;pseud...</a>
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Tychoover 11 years ago
Whenever I read about diagnosed psychopaths in the mainstream press, they always seem to be married (with kids). I find this interesting. What were their spouses thinking? Wouldn&#x27;t &#x27;total lack of empathy&#x27; rather preclude starting a family with someone? Were they that good at faking romance, or were they different when they were young? Or is the &#x27;cold as steel&#x27; personally attractive? Were they just willing to marry anyone who asked them? Actually, a general study of &#x27;why people decide to get married&#x27; would probably be even more interesting than studies about psychopathy...
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alteroover 11 years ago
This is just bullshit. A few decades ago psychiatrists were deducing personal traits from shape of skull. This imaginary is kind of similar.<p>There are 100 000 000 000 neurons in brain, we can not even count number of connections. We are very very far from understanding it.
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xivzgrevover 11 years ago
Karen Franklin had an interesting critique of his book, as well: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R28SZH62Q6Y6AD/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&amp;ASIN=1591846005&amp;nodeID=133140011&amp;store=digital-text#wasThisHelpful" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;review&#x2F;R28SZH62Q6Y6AD&#x2F;ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...</a>
mtdewcmuover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m curious to get some people&#x27;s reactions to this guy: he mentioned his dangerous actions more than once; do you think he&#x27;s truly dangerous, or just exaggerating?<p>After he kept mentioning it, I was curious and a bit skeptical as to what horrible things he could have admitted to and yet still be free and employed. The incident with the Marburg virus is pretty chilling, though, if you think it through. It&#x27;s the sort of thing only a brilliant psychopath could come up with or be proud of. I&#x27;d keep my distance, frankly.
j_bakerover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m not convinced that the brainscan patterns uniquely identify psychopaths. There are lots of things that frontal lobe dysfunction is also correlated with: ADHD, Bipolar disorder, and psychopathy. I suspect comorbidity (meaning: how likely you are to have the other diseases given you have one) is quite high, but I&#x27;m not convinced that frontal lobe dysfunction implies any or all of these disorders.
dinkumthinkumover 11 years ago
Is anyone else nonplussed by this? I&#x27;m not saying its wrong or I don&#x27;t believe the brain scans mean anything, but without a lot more details particularly from people not invested in this research program being a success, I find this hard to take seriously and it seems very naive.
sleepyKover 11 years ago
I think this one&#x27;s a repost.
poolpoolover 11 years ago
Look at any CEO. Many are very successful.