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The subject of psychopaths comes up frequently on Soylent in many contexts, so this story caught my eye:
How do you think a psychopath can be affected despite all that has been written about the psychopath being so devious etc.? I am sure there are weaknesses which one can dig into to break him 'psychologically'. I read somewhere that they are basically people who are very insecure and they love to control people so that they feel they have a power within themselves.
I know of a psychopath who insists on people doing what he wants and anyone defying him will see his vengeful self lashing out. But I am sure there must be something that can break such a psychopath. How about belittling or bring him to shame?
The first part of the answer is to be able to distinguish a narcissist from a psychopath:
I agree with the other post that points out that the person described is a narcissist, not a psychopath. Psychopaths are very secure and they to not seek control for the sake of feeling powerful, nor are they vengeful or spiteful. You could say that psychopaths are very practical, they want pure gain for the sake of the gain (e.g. money, a sexual favor, special access to something such as convince) rather than the ego stroke or prestige. A smart psychopath would probably keep things as low key as possible, as to maximize potential gain and minimize the danger of being caught. They are cool and calm, unlike the person described who lashes out for personal reasons.
Read the rest of the article for the takeaway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:28PM
The replies all seemed to have confused goals. Some focusing on how to get retribution. Some on advice to avoid them. Some focused on how naughty the questioner was for having any opinions or judgment or goals with the usual appeals to (their) glorious authority. Some talked about the recovery process for psychopaths as though pulling one over on them was somehow the logical first step in the recovery process. No one talked about practical and useful stuff like "how to make sure Hillary doesn't win thereby destroying us (us as in us or as in the USA, either way works)"
No one made any interesting automobile analogies which is too bad. "How do I psychologically break the Ford company in retribution for not making the kind of car I want?" Well thats easy, you don't, pretend they don't exist.
It reminds me of the flip side of /r9k/ guys asking "how do I make specific dream girl X like me despite her not liking me" and the answer is you don't. Find another, there's only 3 billion women on the planet, or do the switch hitter thing and try the 3 billion males, but there's no way to brainwash a chick into liking you anymore than you can brainwash a psychopath into non-objectifying you (or anyone else). Unless you're like Dr PHD and even they fail all the time.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:44PM
I have brought it up before, but there appears to be an underlying assumption that being a psychopath is worse than neurotypical behaviour.
Some diversity is probably a good thing for society.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:59PM
Given the oft-reputed ability for psychopaths to seemingly rise to positions of power and wealth, it seems to me as though they are the better evolved human for living in the modern world. Perhaps we should incorporate training on how to be one to better enable the rest of humanity to be able to compete. This may even allow for some of the natural psychopaths to be hedged out of their current positions if a learned psychopath happens to be more suitable for the job. Diversity is truly wonderful.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:35PM
Maybe it would be better for everyone else to eliminate the psychopaths who rise to power and wealth.
Maybe just eliminate the people who rise to having a significantly disproportionate share of the planet's resources. That way the resources would be spread more evenly. Money is simply bottled up labor and goods. Nobody does anything that deserves the levels of obscene wealth that some people have.
Maybe use that as the test and ignore whether they are a psychopath or not.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:52PM
There might be useful discrete applications for them. For example, if you need cannon fodder, a platoon of psychopaths might be just the thing. They will be able to keep their calm under fire because they'll be immune to worry about their own safety or the shock of their comrades falling around them. And when it comes time to storm the enemy barricades, they won't hesitate to kill the enemy.
I agree they ought to be removed from general circulation, though.
There is a test that can establish that a person is a psychopath by monitoring his brain. It should be administered to politicians, CEOs and the like so that those that test positive can be disqualified from holding that position.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:17PM
For example, if you need cannon fodder, a platoon of psychopaths might be just the thing. They will be able to keep their calm under fire because they'll be immune to worry about their own safety or the shock of their comrades falling around them. And when it comes time to storm the enemy barricades, they won't hesitate to kill the enemy.
Its pretty much the anti-Trump protestors there in the streets.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:38PM
Just gotta bring it back to politics... we all know why this article popped up, but of course Mr. GlassHouse here wants to start up the flamewar.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:57PM
What too early for a laugh? I'll wait another week. It'll be funny someday.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:51PM
Ah, so the military is to be filled with psychopaths, and the civilian population won't have any? Do I have time to make popcorn before the authoritarian bloodbath starts, or are the tanks rolling over the countryside already? This sounds like the ending of Blindsight [wikipedia.org] , where (SPOILERS) vampires are an extinct species of human that are cloned for their usefulness (Homo vampiris is extremely intellignt and non-empathetic) and end up taking over the world and murdering all of the Homo sapiens.
Srsly tho, forced labor programs are a dark path to go down, especially when the slavery is for sake of war. Biometric data being used as a legal qualifier for public office sounds sketchy too -- imagine if the tables were turned, and they made a law against having too much activity in the sympathetic areas of the brain. "We can't have some pinko hippy in charge of the launch codes, Halderman!" How do you feel about sociopaths voting? Is that a different line than serving office, in your eyes?
I'm guessing that we developed a pretty helpful hawk/dove ratio in prehistoric times, and that modern society -- particularly the advent of large cities and easy transportation between cities -- has made sociopathy more beneficial to the individual than it has prehistorically been. I feel less comfortable saying whether that increase has yielded a net positive or net negative for civilation as a whole, but I would err towards "net negative."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:08PM
Given the oft-reputed ability for psychopaths to seemingly rise to positions of power and wealth, it seems to me as though they are the better evolved human for living in the modern world.
Reminds me of the saying, "the rich aren't like you and I. They have more money." Objectifying the rich as psychopaths seems to be par for modern society.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:28PM
I find it annoying that there's a whole soft science of Philosophy focusing on "what is the right way to live?" (and other questions...) yet all we get is I like money and they're rich so I either want to hate them or eat them or clone them.
Could give them a good solid dose of "they're aggressively anti-social so they aren't compatible with a stable culture" or "they reduce the total net happiness of humanity" or "they kill too many people for no net positive reason"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:34PM
Could give them a good solid dose of "they're aggressively anti-social so they aren't compatible with a stable culture" or "they reduce the total net happiness of humanity" or "they kill too many people for no net positive reason"
But then you'd have the problem that the rich aren't that sort of problem in the real world. Some being such a problem aren't all being such a problem. Most philosophers at least have the common sense to avoid positions that can be readily rejected by empirical observation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:59PM
Oh here we go. I was intending to imply the psychopaths not the rich as the Venn diagram despite considerable overlap isn't quite 100%. But whatever close enough.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:00PM
Given their habit of abusing that power and wealth to the great detriment of others, as a society we're better off incorporating training in how to recognize one and block their rise to power. We do NOT need more Enrons. We don't need another chainsaw Al [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:32PM
We don't need another chainsaw Al.
I misread that lowercase "L" as an uppercase "i," and briefly thought that somebody had given an AI control of a chainsaw drone. [youtube.com] It would be on-topic, assuming that nobody gave HAL<9000 empathy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:01PM
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:13PM
The Palo Alto Chainsaw Massacre has quite the appeal
Hey guys, I found one; khallow is a sociopath! BURN THE WITCH! Internet psychiatrist/judge/jury/executioner, to the rescue...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:33PM
You should read his comment history.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:50PM
How do you know he is a witch?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:10AM
[What makes you think he's] a witch?
Well, he turned me into a gewg_!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:31PM
I thought he meant Al Pacino from the movie Scarface in '82 which might predate him a bit. It was a classic 80s action movie. Probably couldn't politically be made today. Oliver Stone was on coke when he was directing it, which makes a weird kind of sense.
In case you kids on my lawn ever wondered why first person shooters inevitably have a chainsaw as a weapon, you can see its first application in "Scarface".
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:59PM
Scarface doesn't even predate The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Evil Dead, let's not pretend it's the first use of a chainsaw as a weapon. Also, it came out in '83. Dear old people: Millenials often remember the pop-culture media of your middle-age better than you do, in part because we were exposed to it more recently. You can stop talking down to us about shared cultural legacies any day now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:18PM
The problem is that we have a lot of laws that aren't well-considered. If you construct laws on the basis that people will ignore a reward because getting it would involve immoral actions or the expectation that they'd get caught, then you're going to have people that do it anyways.
The trick is that we shouldn't be punishing bad behavior in most cases, we should be rewarding good behavior. Psychopaths are mainly a problem when their real or perceived self-interest conflict with other people. Psychopaths don't particularly care about right and wrong, they care about whether or not they're going to get what they're looking for.
Sociopaths, OTOH, are a completely different problem and by and large don't live in society without causing problems. You can't really negotiate with them as they're just in it for the lulz. Psychopaths can usually be negotiated with if you haven't already pissed them off the the point where all their interested is your head on a platter in a literal sense.
But, as for the topic, you're not likely to get one up on a psychopath unless you yourself are one.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:17AM
But, as for the topic, you're not likely to get one up on a psychopath unless you yourself are one.
That's why my suggestion. Most of the games psychopaths play involve having enough people fooled that they can turn them against you. If nobody is buying in, they're powerless.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:58PM
Psychopaths can be useful for society at large, but usually aren't.
The good part is that, in the classic "Do I flip a switch that kills 3 people, but saves 30" ethical question, the psychopath flips the switch immediately, without hesitation (this is actually one of the standard things psych pros use to determine if someone is a psychopath). That kind of thinking is very useful in certain situations, which is why these kinds of people do well in situations where cold-hearted life-or-death thinking is exactly what's required such as the military or some kinds of emergency response. They are also good in situations where resisting a crowd is a good idea.
The bad part is that because the psychopath can't evaluate the consequences of their actions on others, they can very easily turn, well, evil. By which I mean that they can and will harm others to get what they want if they lack a strong sense of morality with internal enforcement (rather than the fear of some sort of external entity like the government or social pressure or religion keeping them in line). Using that "kill 3, save 30" question above, the evil psychopath will kill the 30, just because it's fun or they just don't care, unless they're one of those 30.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:17PM
"If you flip the switch you kill 3 people and save 30, and if you don't flip the switch you kill all 33 but get an ice-cream"
"Ooh! What flavour icecream?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:27PM
I took your post above to mean, the test is whether they hesitate, not which option they pick. I can see arguments for both: If I flip the switch more lives are saved, but I'm personally involved with the taking of the fewer. If I back out of the situation without flipping the switch, am I still responsible? They have a whole thing about this called the Trolley Problem, but you probably know that already.
I would imagine that "normally-calibrated" people, even if they were previously aware of the problem, would probably hesitate when presented with it in real life, versus the psycho/sociopath just saying "eh whatever, let's do this" right away.
Or was that not what you were saying?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:26PM
That is precisely it. And for those who have to handle those kinds of life-and-death situations quickly, making that decision without hesitation is valuable.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by nethead on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:10PM
Mass casualty triage comes to mind.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:17PM
If someone does not hesitate in flipping the switch it could be simply that they have already considered this situation previously and already know what course of action they would take.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:47PM
This again?
If you want look for practical and useful stuff about what is going to destroy you, look at the present, not the past.
You have plenty to look at, especially if you are standing in front of a television or a mirror.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:49PM
Yeah, confused alright. "Bring down" sounds vengeful and cathartic. Either psychopaths can learn to be nicer, or they can't, their nature is fixed. Which is it? If the latter, as seems to be the consensus, then a goal of curing them is unrealistic. In which case, what is a realistic goal? To protect yourself from them? To limit the damage they can do? Or punish them because it makes you feel better?
I am very wary of punishment. Too often I've seen unfair judgments used as justification for punishment. The fake moralizing and umbrage dished out to the victims is particularly infuriating and nauseating. Someone asked for a car analogy? Well, it's not an analogy, but cars are in it. For example, the red light camera. A car owner gets punished, and it's all bull because they weren't even driving or the duration of the yellow was tampered with, and the real goal was never safety, it was revenue. It's seriously infuriating to be lectured for running a red light, talked down to as if you're a naughty, reckless teenage driver or a rule breaking hardened criminal who's gotten away with it for far too long, and you deserve to be punished, and that officials hope you have learned your lesson, when they unfairly rigged the light and they know it! I've come to realize that parking meters are primarily run as a racket and a trap, and will go to great lengths to avoid such parking spaces. Another that angers me no end are the excuses banks fabricate to charge their customers penalty and service fees of various sorts.
One thing to do is fix the power imbalance. If you are dependent upon a psychopath for anything, you're in a world of hurt. Free yourself of the dependencies, whatever they are. And never let them walk over you. In the case of red light cameras, I boycott the cities that use them (hi there Plano, Texas, and your slimeball contractor, Redflex, #1 city on my shit list for red light camera banditry), and have requested hearings so that they can't profit from trying to rob me. Though I prepared good evidence that they cheat, I was not in the least surprised that the hearing was a kangaroo court and my evidence wasn't even examined let alone considered. Of course the idea of destroying the camera with a baseball bat occurred to me, and I wouldn't shed any tears over the property loss if someone had an auto "accident" that resulted in the camera getting run over and crushed, but that is getting close to the sort of violence that Gandhi and MLK understood does not work because it plays into the hands of the enemies. Another route is refusing to pay their fake fines. Have to check carefully whether they have the teeth to force payment, or not. The bad banks I deal with by closing my accounts with them.
It's not easy-- so many people seem to feel they can't find the time or it's not worth the trouble, and go right on taking abuse for the sake of convenience. Fighting back against this sort of injustice is more than fighting on my own behalf, it is or should be everyone's civic duty. Wish people wouldn't take so much lying down, but I understand there's a lot of fatigue.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:45PM
PhD in psychology only confirms dedication to the field, dedication that usually derives from internal personal problems that the degree seeker is hoping to learn more about; in other words: no correlation to competence or effectiveness.
You can, indeed, convince people to change their minds - even girls that don't like boys can be convinced to reverse position. The problem is: will the new state be stable, or was it based on deception, falsehoods that will be revealed, or un-natural acting that cannot be sustained? More experienced women are not as easily fooled... which is probably why nature kicks their libido into overdrive as they approach 35 years of age.
🌻🌻 [google.com]