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Comment by fleitz | Hacker News Reader

Other than the serial killer thing and lets face it the army spends good money finding 100% sane people willing to kill lots of people, I just don't get what the big deal about psychopathy is. Most people want to feel loved or whatever the cues are for that emotion and lets face it, there is no way to "know" whether someone "loves" you. All you see are outward displays which are highly mediated by the culture in which the display occurs. Also, you're going to need people at the top with the emotional capacity to know that it's better for the group to fire 1,000 people today, rather than shut the whole concern down in 6 months.

Aren't most people just failed social actors who are rather poor at picking the signs in which to display their emotional communication? Psychopathy actually makes me think far more of vulcans than ted bundy.

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> "there is no way to "know" whether someone "loves" you. All you see are outward displays which are highly mediated by the culture in which the display occurs."

Wow. I can't think of a way to rebut this without diving into personal accusations... but it seems that you've missed out on a lot in life.

Knowing that culture mediates action does not prevent you from enjoying it. You cannot understand human behavior without understanding the often artificial nature of outward displays.

I think in fact it is you that have missed out on a lot in life if you do not understand that when he says there is no way to "know" whether someone "loves" you, he is referring to the fact that he chooses to believe so anyway.

When you feel loved is it not the neurons in your own brain generating that feeling? That was my point.

You may also want to consider the evolutionary pressure to love certain people in your family.

Do you think it's mere coincidence that massive amounts of oxytocin are necessarily for lactation, giving birth, released after birth, released after orgasm, and that this drug also just happens to create loving emotional bonds?

Seems that evolution is also manipulating our romances and the loves of our lives. On the other hand it's probably good for society that we're chemically manipulated in this fashion. My point is not that 99% of these feelings aren't "real" my point is more of a skeptical nature in that it becomes impossible to figure out how much is "real" and how much is chemical or other mechanisms of signalling.

> "impossible to figure out how much is "real" and how much is chemical or other mechanisms of signalling."

I don't see the need to make the distinction at all. So what if consciousness is just a bunch of electrical impulses, or that love is a giant dose of oxytocin - I'm not sure what would lead you think that these things are not "real" simply because they have some evolutionary/chemical basis.

I can have a delicious lunch today - but does the food actually taste good? Or is it adulterated by mental conditioning? Maybe I only like broccoli because of childhood mental conditioning. Or maybe it brings back a fond memory. Or perhaps it only tastes good because of the presence of certain chemicals?

... Does it matter?

Yes, it matters - both in food and in relationships. With modern chemistry unhealthy food can taste as good as what evolution has shaped us to detect as good food. With a psychopath a fake relation can feel as good as a true one.

In both cases you will know the difference, just not immediately.

That would justify vigilance and caution, not outright dismissal of all emotion as socially-conditioned, non-real constructs.

Certainly it would not justify something as cynical as this:

> "Aren't most people just failed social actors who are rather poor at picking the signs in which to display their emotional communication?"

which was the part that really rubbed me the wrong way.

>> "Aren't most people just failed social actors who are rather poor at picking the signs in which to display their emotional communication?" > which was the part that really rubbed me the wrong way.

But, aren't they?

Not actor in the sense of a script/a lie, but in the sense of trying, ultimately imperfectly, to convey how we feel to the world around us?

How often do you think you nail the perfect smile, the perfect handshake, the perfect snuggle, to demonstrate happiness, but not too much, familiarity and strength without being overbearing, and tenderness without clinging?

Combine that with the imperfect feedback you get from others and we have really have no idea about the finer details of anyone but yourself.

Not just that you can't detect lies but that we have no way of telling if our perceptions of red are the same, let alone a hug or a complex thought.

You're right and have a point - the question is, do our imperfect expressions of emotion somehow rob them of their reality, intent, or genuineness?

It seems to me (perhaps this is a misreading of the post) would have us dismiss emotional expression as inherently untrustworthy, or somehow unreal. I disagree vehemently.

Sure, our expressions, and the way they're perceived, is colored by brain chemistry, social conditioning, and a myriad of other factors... but I maintain that it simply makes them more complex, not less real.

"...but in the sense of trying, ultimately imperfectly..."

There is a broad range between trying imperfectly and being a failed social actor.

I think you are conflating two things here.

@potatolicious is comparing the experience of a tasty meal to the experience of love/happiness/whatever, and saying that it doesn't matter what the underlying cause of it is, it's the experience that matters. I think it's a reasonable point.

You're saying that the experience could be 'fake' because it's based on a fake stimulus. Just in the same way that a loving experience is could be based on a fake interaction by someone else (say a psychopath).

But from /your/ perspective, is there a difference in the experience between the fake and the real? If the inputs are the same, the experience is the same, whether they are triggered by chemicals or some kind of higher-level mental state that we can't adequately explain via chemistry or biology.

The OP seems to be denigrating the human experience based on the chemical 'fakery'/self-deception involved. But that's a different kind of fake--that's your body 'faking' it. [And I totally disagree with that by the way; I agree completely with @potatolicious].

If you are unable to distinguish from these "feelings", you could potentially be unable to tell if you are in love (persons your soul mate/personalities go really well/want to spend the rest of your life with that person) or if you just have good sex, which can allow a bad relationship to linger for years.

I think he's saying that if you're expressing such skepticism and cynicism about the subject because of lack of scientific objectivity, you're probably incapable of experiencing it or giving it. And I think that is what he thinks you're missing out on, the experience of really giving and receiving it.

If you want to call it a fairy tale and say the emperor has no clothes... the logical conclusion would have society be unable to have real examples of trusting love, and it would subsequently break down into a series of make-believe emotional transactions.

The societal and circumstantial evidence does not seem to corroborate your premises, even though there may be no scientifically tested objective data.

He can correct me if I'm wrong.

If everything is just matter, there isn't even a category of "real." Everything is just as real as everything else.

The outward displays are exactly how you know someone loves you. These is no private language of love, since love is ostensitvely defined.

Not at all. You can enjoy what you feel when other people do what they call love without having to believe you know incontrovertibly what their personal experience of the world is.

You're off base. Vulcans aren't psychopathic precisely because they care about the whole group-- which, if you actually think about it, makes them more empathic than most humans who only care about the people who are right around them.

A psychopath would pretend to care about the group, if that's what helped them out the most personally. They would also kill the group if that's what helped them out the most personally. I mean nuke the world if it sets me up for life, cuz hey, why should I care?

That's the last person you want as a leader.

You have it completely backwards. A psychopath would likely claim that she/he cares about some "larger" common good while backstabbing all of the closest partners.

Well, there's nothing about psychopaths which makes them inherently more predictable than everyone else. That's what the article was about, yeah?

It's by the definition of psychopath as someone who lacks empathy that my argument follows. It is not a normal human condition to feel empathy for large/abstract groups of people. Most people I know do not feel deeply and profoundly sad for millions who died during a war or a famine, while most of them do experience intense sadness when a person close to them or one they identify with dies. Any empathy expressed for large groups of people is typically of an intellectual kind, a political/machiavellian tactic undertaken only when observed by others, something quite close to what a psychopath would do.

The difference matters in terms of predicting future behavior.

If someone loves me, I can safely predict that they won't betray me and will treat my well being as a priority. If they are merely faking it, they might throw me to the wolves (steal from me, kill me, use me, scapegoat me, etc.) whenever it becomes expedient.

Your argument is based on false premises. Psychopaths aren't more rational than other people. They're just more selfish.

The TV notion that psychopaths don't feel any emotion is off the mark. They certainly feel annoyance and anger.

They appear not to feel remorse because they're very good at rationalizing their impulsive/selfish actions.

"100% sane people willing to kill lots of people"

How is such a thing logically possible?

Are you implying soldiers are not sane?

I am suggesting that one cannot at the same time be "100% sane", and be willing to kill lots of people. So no, soldiers are not completely sane.

That's a peculiar definition of "sanity" (not that there's an objective way to define it anyway). Humans have been fighting wars since ever, just like other animals in herds. There's maybe an evolutionary advantage to it. Nations create armies to protect themselves and assert their territory (ok, nowadays it's interests). Since "sanity" is a socially defined construct, there's nothing wrong with the soldiers.

People have be psychopaths since the beginning of recorded history to... Hell, there probably is a good deal of evolutionary reason for it.

I would wager both probably heavily involve genetic material having a leg up on others thanks to hundreds of thousands of years of genocide and rape.

None of this will factor into a reasonable definition of "sane".

I think you have underestimated how much culture determine people's attitudes.

Consider a normal guy from my home country a few hundreds of years ago. He believed that he will only go to Heaven if he dies well in battle and is hence really scared of dying from disease. He wasn't a psychopath; he loved people and would die for his friends etc. He is normal for a clan society.

The same genes sit in me, which sincerely hopes never to have to maim or kill anyone in my life. Those human genes program us to be very programmable with the present culture. A powerful tool can often be misused.

The trick is to make the culture stay "nice". And to not have neighbours from clan cultures.

Humans have been fighting, yes. Fighting things humans understand, and for traditional human reasons, at their discretion.

What's new-ish (5-10k years) and completely against individual success, is a large and largely unwilling army driven to kill for reasons they don't understand or are lied to about.

It's slavery, or at best a cult, pure and simple.

If you are looking for a mass delusion we all participate in but understand little, look no further than the money in my pocket. OT, this article has some interesting insights on how organized states (and armies) actually led to less violence historically: http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

I agree on both counts.

My problem with armies is that we have these essentially slave-cults for protection and we call ourselves free. Better off, sure. But not really free because we've got this slave system (Military justice/prisons) to enforce discipline in our enslaved warriors (they might have chosen to serve, but you can't reasonably give consent for personality breaking) without whom we're unsafe - or so goes the theory.

I simply feel that each and every one of us needs to tote a gun through mud, and know why we're willing to do it, to live in a society that practices war. Not only so that we choose wisely, but so that we're really safe - not just under guard.

There's a bit of a difference between "willing to kill lots of people" and "driven to kill lots of people"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tibbets

I do not believe that sanity is a black or white issue. It is possible to be insane while still being less insane that another.

Sanity does not include one specific moral system. For humans, it also does not include being bug-free given some morality,

What would make you think so?

The apprehension people feel about killing others is a fairly universal thing that I don't believe to a purely social construct like "morals" (whatever that is).

I am fairly comfortable labeling "doesn't mind killing people" as sufficiently abnormal to be called "ill".

The apprehension people feel about killing others is a fairly universal thing that I don't believe to a purely social construct like "morals" (whatever that is).

Well, once you've thrown away morals, it's true that all you have left is the hope that others will refrain from killing others due to not feeling like it.

Morality is just the portion of goals that humans in a given culture share, but I'm not sure you should be so quick to dismiss it as a positive force.

I think what we call "morality" probably has a biological basis as well. Humans are social animals. Hence, we're going to have selection pressures towards behaviors (and the internal thinking required to produce those behaviors) that preserve social groups. If we didn't, human groups wouldn't survive, and we wouldn't be social animals. I think we can point to other social animals as examples. There's also support in the fact that there are broad similarities across cultures about what is moral - for example, murder is wrong. If there was no biological basis, I think we'd see far more variation in what we call "morals."

Parent said willing, not "doesn't mind." The difference is important.

>"doesn't mind killing people" //

You're not correctly quoting the parent comment (I'm not sure you're quoting anyone, it looks like you're erecting a strawman), he said "willing to kill".

There is a lot of ground between being willing to kill, for example to save the lives of others, and not minding killing.

Since we're on the issue of psychopaths... The armed forces are grandfathered in societally. Examined critically there's nothing sane about the institutions or those they recruit, in theory or practice.

Think of what they do. They actively recruit young and impressionable children, by promising them huge rewards (toys) in the immediate future and no consequences. They use us-vs-them jingoistic propaganda and compliance tricks such as forced sleep deprivation to break the very critical thinking and will to question unreasonable authority that makes us what we regard as truly human. Ultimately they turn a once peaceful person into an executioner - willing to instantly utilize lethal force on command.

As long as we feel the need to legitimize lethal force we need to take a multi-pronged approach to it to ensure good soldier-to-society feedback, educate everyone in the reality of war, and train everyone to function alone (while still serving societal needs). But not just at the convenient war machine level, these people would also by necessity of training intelligent people, have self-driven goals at all levels from picking up trash to spotting crime, entrapping corrupt officials, and when needed, wielding lethal weapons in defense of the innocent, at home or abroad.

A society where war is called for and legitimized by those who haven't fought and aren't currently willing to, is a sick one. After all, the draft is only the polite grandfathered-in name for slave armies.

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