Inferring rates of psychopathy from someone’s desire to kill small animals seems subject to a variety of confounding factors—most notably, many people feel little or no empathy for (some) animals, not because they are incapable of feeling empathy, but because of their model of animals does not feel pain (because they aren’t conscious, and I don’t feel pain when I’m unconscious!)
Our society is unusually empathetic towards animals; remember, setting a cat on fire was a popular form of entertainment in the middle ages! Not to mention cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and that thing where they put a bunch of rats in a pit with a dog and place bets on how long they’ll last … whatever that was called.
Inferring rates of psychopathy from someone’s desire to kill small animals seems subject to a variety of confounding factors—most notably, many people feel little or no empathy for (some) animals, not because they are incapable of feeling empathy, but because of their model of animals does not feel pain (because they aren’t conscious, and I don’t feel pain when I’m unconscious!)
Our society is unusually empathetic towards animals; remember, setting a cat on fire was a popular form of entertainment in the middle ages! Not to mention cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and that thing where they put a bunch of rats in a pit with a dog and place bets on how long they’ll last … whatever that was called.
An example would, of course, be this commenter