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Comment by Posibyte | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if there's an analogous group of women that behave this way as well. The article didn't really dive into motivations, so I wonder how much of it is cultural and how much of it is related to general mental health. And if it is related to the latter, is it possibly a universal condition that also afflicts women as well, in such that it may not be sexual, but that small groups of women can have these predispositions to the worth, behavior, and attitudes towards men with little remorse for their ultimate actions against them.

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You'll find that a lot of predators (serial killers, sexual predators) were abused as children. Poverty seems to be a factor, but that alone doesn't usually cause such a lack of remorse later in life. Something like extreme affluenza seems to cause it in some people, too. That's probably more about having control over someone else and being used to get your way, even being rewarded for it.

Wiki's got lots of information on the topic if you don't mind seeing how people can turn into animals.

The poverty thing could well be sampling bias, I'm sure rich folks have a much easier time avoiding convictions.

The root cause (whether nature or nurture) seems to be a lack of empathy.

Could you detect empathetic capabilities with fMRI? If deficient, would you mandate treatment? Besides therapy, is there a treatment?

There are scientists who claim psychopathy can be detected on brain scans. And since 1-4% of the population are estimated to be psychopaths (most of which end up in prison, and the rest works their way up in society), this could well be a very impactful avenue of further research.

>an analogous group of women that behave this way as well

Not by action perhaps, but by inaction certainly. Sadly, there exist women who deny this behaviour or engage in the victim blame. I say this as a woman, I've experienced women saying in private that another woman "deserved" it. It's not a simple issue but I believe it is related to cognitive dissonance and finding a way to justify the prejudice a person has experienced in her or his own life. The patriarchy affects us all.

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