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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @02:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the mind-games dept.

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.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:44PM

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:44PM (#427004)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:59PM

    by dyingtolive (952) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @03:59PM (#427012)

    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

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:35PM (#427029) Journal

      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.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:52PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @04:52PM (#427040) Journal

        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

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:17PM (#427054)

          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

            by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:38PM (#427060)

            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

              by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:57PM (#427195)

              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

          by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:51PM (#427068) Journal

          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

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:08PM (#427046) Journal

      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

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:28PM (#427056)

        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

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:34PM (#427057) Journal

          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

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @08:59PM (#427197)

            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

      by sjames (2882) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:00PM (#427076) Journal

      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

        by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:32PM (#427096) Journal

        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

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:01PM (#427115) Journal
          The Palo Alto Chainsaw Massacre has quite the appeal: co-ed dorm packed with hot babes and hunks near shadowy military research facility studying hand-to-hand AI combat. Hilarity ensues.
          • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:13PM

            by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:13PM (#427119) Journal

            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

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:33PM (#427215)

              You should read his comment history.

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:50PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:50PM (#427223) Homepage Journal

              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

                by JNCF (4317) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:10AM (#427289) Journal

                [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

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:31PM (#427213)

          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

            by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:59PM (#427286) Journal

            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

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @09:18PM (#427209)

        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

          by sjames (2882) on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:17AM (#427376) Journal

          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

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @05:58PM (#427074)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:17PM (#427085)

      "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

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @06:27PM (#427094)

      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

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @07:26PM (#427135)

        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: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:17PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:17PM (#427510) Journal

        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.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.