But we want some amount of psychopathic traits in most people, and a rather large amount in a sizable minority. Genetic recombination will necessarily pop out some psychopaths.
If you eradicate too many psychopathic traits, every manager will sprout pointy hair and there’ll be no cool heist movies!
psychopaths may be perfect candidates for testing post-cryogenic restoration
We have perfectly good methods of locking up people. A bit of eugenics to kill psychopathic fetuses before they be people sounds good, but using existing people as guinea pigs for cryonics? That’s cold. (rimshot)
Society needs people willing to make taboo tradeoffs and take risks with no hesitation and occasionally hurt or manipulate people. Big companies need silver-tongued managers with more than a dash of cleverness and ruthlessness. Armies need cannon fodder. Storytellers don’t need, but would benefit from, some real examples of magnificent bastards and an audience that can empathize with such.
A world of Littlefingers would implode, but a world of Sansa Starks doesn’t get very far without a few Littlefingers to pull the strings. And it’s boring.
I’m not convinced that ruthlessness is a particularly good quality for managers of big companies to have from a societal perspective. Certainly there are ways in which it helps them compete against other companies, but not necessarily in ways that make them more wealth-productive.
I finished reading this book not too long ago, and it may be that it’s primed me to be too cynical with regards to the value of ruthlessness in business, but it’s certainly the case that there are a lot of ways to get ahead in the market by putting aside moral scruples that leave society as a whole worse off.
Society needs people willing to make taboo tradeoffs and take risks with no hesitation and occasionally hurt or manipulate people.
You don’t need psychopaths to get that. And of the people actually willing to make taboo tradeoffs, take risks and hurt or manipulate people it isn’t the psychopaths who are most likely to do so in a way that benefits ‘society’ as opposed to themselves at the expense of society.
Big companies need silver-tongued managers with more than a dash of cleverness and ruthlessness.
Society doesn’t need that, I don’t need that. Big companies are better for psychopaths than psychopaths are for big companies. And once again it isn’t ‘society’ that benefits and nor is it me that benefits so I reject your ‘we want people with a large amount of psychopathic traits’ claim.
Armies need cannon fodder.
Psychopaths are going to volunteer? Or are we rounding them up and sending them to the front lines? (I’m all for this.)
Storytellers don’t need, but would benefit from, some real examples of magnificent bastards and an audience that can empathize with such.
We need(/want) because we are in the habit of telling stories about . No thanks.
You don’t need psychopaths to get that. And of the people actually willing to make taboo tradeoffs, take risks and hurt or manipulate people it isn’t the psychopaths who are most likely to do so in a way that benefits ‘society’ as opposed to themselves at the expense of society.
Just for the sake of argument… you might need the psychopaths for there to be a sufficient amount of those useful genes in the pool that make a sufficient amount of normal people to be nasty in the altruistic way.
The kind that’s not clever/manipulative/rich can’t hold most jobs or fit into society, loves risks, is violent and impulsive, desperately wants to be cool, and may have a… troubled past. Any organization that doesn’t ask too many questions (think French Foreign Legion), gives them a gun and training, tells them they’re elites, and sends them off to kill people, is bound to draw a good many of them.
I reckon the French Foreign Legion offers a great prosocial container for psychopaths. Considering the only psychological entry requirements are an IQ test (irrelevant for psychopaths) and a personality test (very relevant, but easily gamed), I reckon they could get in asssuming they meet the psychopathy indifferent characteristics.
Considering that psychopaths may indeed be prosocial or ethically motivated. They might not be very happy with regular life, so socially legitimacy in the Legion would be a superb opportunity for them to advance prosocial causes, relative to say criminal violence.
No one much joins the Lions of Rojava cause they have shit recruiting, propoganda and social media management.
I reckon people fight for the sake of fighting, not for ideology
Ahmed, who fled his town near Raqqa in June, said some of the Arab fighters would try to mix with the local population, but the Europeans and other non-Arabs never did. He said that although the Islamic State militants claimed they were there to create a better life for Muslims, they seemed mainly focused on battles with other rebel groups and government forces.
“They were always very aggressive, and they seemed angry,” he said. “They are there to fight, not to govern.”
they’re frequently described as ″oversubscribed″ and
The FFL currently has 7,700 troops. By way of comparison the California National Guard has 18,000 troops. The FFL only takes 1 of 40 qualified applicants according to their own statistics. And the large majority of those they take have previous military experience in another country.
Perhaps that explaisn the popularity of foreign fighting with ISIS
I suppose the main reason it would be unethical to recommend this line of work even to psychopaths is the rate of injuries like back pain and such, even for those who don’t go to combat (training).
It would depend on the psychopath. Some psychopaths might not care for violence. Others may feel that it represents a kind of power to them. Considering that psychopaths may enjoy therapy because they get better at manipulating, but aren’t specifically manipulating for gain within that dyad (like malingerers), I imagine they might consider it training, should they ever become unhinged and do something criminal. Dynamic inconsistency is a hell of a drug.
You don’t need psychopaths to get that. And of the people actually willing to make taboo tradeoffs, take risks and hurt or manipulate people it isn’t the psychopaths who are most likely to do so in a way that benefits ‘society’ as opposed to themselves at the expense of society.
Just for the sake of argument (see “recombination” above), you might still need psychopaths for there to be a sufficient amount of favorable genes in the pool so that normal people can get nasty in the altruistic way.
But we want some amount of psychopathic traits in most people, and a rather large amount in a sizable minority. Genetic recombination will necessarily pop out some psychopaths.
I do not want empathy-free sentient beings wandering about. Slightly-less-empathetic people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly intelligent empathetic people. I draw the line at outright criminal acts, I think. Obviously there’s a tradeoff between the diversity of brains and the number of people murdered by psychopaths but I think we should probably worry about reducing murders first and then safely explore brain diversity once we understand brains better.
We have perfectly good methods of locking up people. A bit of eugenics to kill psychopathic fetuses before they be people sounds good, but using existing people as guinea pigs for cryonics? That’s cold. (rimshot)
It’s not cold if they’re already locked up for the rest of their lives and they volunteer for cryonics. Given the choice between certain death and cryonics on the state’s dime, I know which one I’d pick (as an aside, imagine the uproar when the Blues and Greens start fighting over funding cryonics for criminals). They’re probably also the best candidates for testing restorative procedures on the brain to install an empathy module post-resuscitation. I think that solution is dramatically better than the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. Probably the definition of “life” sentences will change when we all get life extension, but most likely a lot more psychopaths will die in prison before they start getting freed for living out their multiple 99-year sentences.
I do not want empathy-free sentient beings wandering about.
I do. At least as long as they behave. If you’re intelligent enough to know (on an abstract level) why altruism and cooperation is good for humans within societies and have enough self-control to live by this principle, I don’t know why empathy remains important. I mean, as a terminal value.
Slightly-less-empathetic people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly intelligent empathetic people.
Empathetic, slightly-less-intelligent people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly empathetic intelligent people. Punishing less intelligent people just because of this appears to be just as useless and (w.r.t. my morality) immoral as punishing less empathetic people.
I draw the line at outright criminal acts, I think.
I do this for the general population.
there’s a tradeoff between the diversity of brains and the number of people murdered by psychopaths but I think we should probably worry about reducing murders first and then safely explore brain diversity once we understand brains better.
If there’s a better approach to reducing murders by psychopaths than decreasing the number of psychopaths (by hindering them from reproducing, killing them, or other other suchs means), I’d opt for that.
If there’s a better approach to reducing murders by psychopaths than decreasing the number of psychopaths (by hindering them from reproducing), I’d opt for that.
I feel I should point out that the harms of psychopathy are only rarely covered by murder.
(eg. Cleckley in The Mask of Sanity places great and repeated emphasis on how almost none of his patients ever engaged in violence worse than beating their wife, and I don’t think he mentions any murders ever, even though the case studies are otherwise a long litany of constant crime, deceit, fraud, and destruction (including a truly astonishing amount of forgery of checks).)
I do. At least as long as they behave. If you’re intelligent enough to know (on an abstract level) why altruism and cooperation is good for humans within societies and have enough self-control to live by this principle, I don’t know why empathy remains important. I mean, as a terminal value.
There’s only an argument for altruism and cooperation if an agent is certain the other agents are running a decision theory that is as good as its own and their utility functions are similar enough to cooperate. TDT will cooperate with other TDTs, but a TDT without empathy will Win against decision theories like the ones human brains use. That’s essentially the main argument for FAI. Self-control implies a terminal value with greater utility than doing whatever anti-social things one otherwise wants to do. I don’t believe psychopaths have any greater-utility terminal values than getting what they want at the expense of others. That seems to be the entire problem, in fact.
Empathetic, slightly-less-intelligent people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly empathetic intelligent people. Punishing less intelligent people just because of this appears to be just as useless and (w.r.t. my morality) immoral as punishing less empathetic people.
I’d prefer intelligent and non-psychopathic people over the others but I don’t want to punish less intelligent people, I want to make them more intelligent. I don’t want to punish psychopaths either. I want to make them less psychopathic. I can teach less intelligent people but apparently I can’t (yet) teach empathy to psychopaths.
If there’s a better approach to reducing murders by psychopaths than decreasing the number of psychopaths (by hindering them from reproducing), I’d opt for that.
Right now I don’t know of any. Therapy appears to teach psychopaths better skills at manipulating people. One potential solution would be to prevent unintelligent people from being born and train everyone to recognize and counter the strategies that psychopaths use. That would put everyone on a level intellectual playing field and it’s arguable that even psychopaths would recognize that fact and cooperate with everyone else.
train everyone to recognize and counter the strategies that psychopaths use
I like this way of thinking. By the way, there is some research about the weaknesses of psychopaths. From this article:
In this task, the participant has to decide whether to play a card. Initially, the participant’s choice to play is always reinforcing; if the participant plays the card he or she will win points or money. However, as the participant progresses through the pack of cards, the probability of reward decreases. Thus, initially ten out of ten cards are rewarded, then nine out of ten, then eight out of ten continuing on until zero out of ten cards are rewarded. The participant should stop playing the cards when playing means that more cards are associated with punishment rather than reward. That is, they should stop playing the cards when only four out of ten cards are associated with reward. Children with psychopathic tendencies and adult individuals with psychopathy have considerable difficulty with this task; they continue to play the cards even when they are being repeatedly punished and may end up losing all the points that they had gained.
Just making these weaknesses widely known, together with some simple strategies for exploiting them (something like “The Game”, just about playing your boss), could change the balance on the playing field...
With the card game in mind, I have doubts that most psychopaths can function on any executive level, and am not surprised at all that they overrepresent as prisoners.
Hare says that because narcissistic, histrionic, and obsessive compulsive tendencies are elevated in executives, it must mean that psychopaths are more common in executives as well, because after all these are “psychopathic tendencies” This is akin to saying that because someone has above-average self-esteem, they also have psychopathic traits. But if anyone really wants to pore through the data, antisocial traits (or callousness), a core feature of psychopathy, is not elevated in executives. In fact, it was lower than the other groups studied. They report the data but overlook this important fact in their paper. Looks like the authors had an agenda.
Considering what we know about the callousness of corporations and atrocities committed by cultures throughout history, it is easy to assume that psychopathy runs rampant among leaders. (and it plays on people’s envy) Of course, this relies on the assumption that “good” people are not capable of atrocities and competitive greed without the coercion of bad people. Put two perfectly normal small families in a remote island with only enough resources to feed one, and you will see how quickly morality and compassion get thrown out the window. Knowing this, it is easy to imagine this concept in larger groups, which explains the behavior we see in war or corporate competition (where letting your competitors win means losing your job). No psychopathy is needed.
a TDT without empathy will Win against decision theories like the ones human brains use.
‘Winning’ is not really the right word here—a rational decision procedure should Win by definition. Clearly, psychopaths have different goals compared to the rest of the population: for simplicity, let’s suppose that, compared to neurotypicals, they lack a terminal goal of not inflicting direct costs on others. However, punishing people for lacking certain terminal goals is not quite kosher by modern political/ethical standards. We don’t lock people up for not donating enough to developing-world charities, because we understand that the vast majority of interactions are positive sum regardless.
Whether a psychopath approximating TDT could cooperate with a neurotypical person following either TDT or some kind of informal morality—and vice versa—is an interesting question and one that probably does not have an easy answer. However, in theory, TDT-approximating psychopaths should readily cooperate with each other.
It may also be the case that psychopaths are less able to enter precommitments and abide by them due to their overall deficits, which would make them more similar to CDT agents. However, this would not make them “winners” either, in any real sense: far from it. They would stop “winning” as soon as their lack of commitment (and thus non-credibility) was perceived by other agents—which would be quite soon, especially in a more rational world with a higher sanity waterline.
There’s only an argument for altruism and cooperation if an agent is certain the other agents are running a decision theory that is as good as its own and their utility functions are similar enough to cooperate.
It also works in society, with a government enforcing law and puts forth other fines and incentives. Furthermore, humans are messy. Our immediate desires, on a lower level, can be quite different from our long-term, reflected, higher goals. It’s a matter of impulsiveness which of these wins how frequently.
I don’t believe psychopaths have any greater-utility terminal values than getting what they want at the expense of others.
Why “at the expense of others”? That’s a property of the world, not of them (which does not excuse what they do).
I don’t want to punish psychopaths either. I want to make them less psychopathic.
I apopogize for misreading you. “We didn’t eradicate malaria or polio with kinder, gentler methods. Don’t leave anything for evolution to work with.” sounds rather more… straightforward to me than you apparently meant it. I’m glad that we agree that psychopaths should be helped, whereever possible, to become productive parts of society.
Therapy appears to teach psychopaths better skills at manipulating people.
Then the current therapeutic methods are not well-suited for this task. If we want to go down the road of developing more effective means of psychopath crime prevention, therapy etc., I suggest we Hold Off On Proposing Solutions.
But we want some amount of psychopathic traits in most people, and a rather large amount in a sizable minority. Genetic recombination will necessarily pop out some psychopaths.
But we want some amount of psychopathic traits in most people, and a rather large amount in a sizable minority. Genetic recombination will necessarily pop out some psychopaths.
If you eradicate too many psychopathic traits, every manager will sprout pointy hair and there’ll be no cool heist movies!
We have perfectly good methods of locking up people. A bit of eugenics to kill psychopathic fetuses before they be people sounds good, but using existing people as guinea pigs for cryonics? That’s cold. (rimshot)
Speak for yourself or specify the particular group you speak for. I certainly don’t want that.
Society needs people willing to make taboo tradeoffs and take risks with no hesitation and occasionally hurt or manipulate people. Big companies need silver-tongued managers with more than a dash of cleverness and ruthlessness. Armies need cannon fodder. Storytellers don’t need, but would benefit from, some real examples of magnificent bastards and an audience that can empathize with such.
A world of Littlefingers would implode, but a world of Sansa Starks doesn’t get very far without a few Littlefingers to pull the strings. And it’s boring.
I’m not convinced that ruthlessness is a particularly good quality for managers of big companies to have from a societal perspective. Certainly there are ways in which it helps them compete against other companies, but not necessarily in ways that make them more wealth-productive.
I finished reading this book not too long ago, and it may be that it’s primed me to be too cynical with regards to the value of ruthlessness in business, but it’s certainly the case that there are a lot of ways to get ahead in the market by putting aside moral scruples that leave society as a whole worse off.
You don’t need psychopaths to get that. And of the people actually willing to make taboo tradeoffs, take risks and hurt or manipulate people it isn’t the psychopaths who are most likely to do so in a way that benefits ‘society’ as opposed to themselves at the expense of society.
Society doesn’t need that, I don’t need that. Big companies are better for psychopaths than psychopaths are for big companies. And once again it isn’t ‘society’ that benefits and nor is it me that benefits so I reject your ‘we want people with a large amount of psychopathic traits’ claim.
Psychopaths are going to volunteer? Or are we rounding them up and sending them to the front lines? (I’m all for this.)
We need(/want) because we are in the habit of telling stories about . No thanks.
Just for the sake of argument… you might need the psychopaths for there to be a sufficient amount of those useful genes in the pool that make a sufficient amount of normal people to be nasty in the altruistic way.
The kind that’s not clever/manipulative/rich can’t hold most jobs or fit into society, loves risks, is violent and impulsive, desperately wants to be cool, and may have a… troubled past. Any organization that doesn’t ask too many questions (think French Foreign Legion), gives them a gun and training, tells them they’re elites, and sends them off to kill people, is bound to draw a good many of them.
I reckon the French Foreign Legion offers a great prosocial container for psychopaths. Considering the only psychological entry requirements are an IQ test (irrelevant for psychopaths) and a personality test (very relevant, but easily gamed), I reckon they could get in asssuming they meet the psychopathy indifferent characteristics.
Considering that psychopaths may indeed be prosocial or ethically motivated. They might not be very happy with regular life, so socially legitimacy in the Legion would be a superb opportunity for them to advance prosocial causes, relative to say criminal violence.
No one much joins the Lions of Rojava cause they have shit recruiting, propoganda and social media management.
I reckon people fight for the sake of fighting, not for ideology
they’re frequently described as ″oversubscribed″ and
Perhaps that explaisn the popularity of foreign fighting with ISIS
I suppose the main reason it would be unethical to recommend this line of work even to psychopaths is the rate of injuries like back pain and such, even for those who don’t go to combat (training).
Does that happen? I mean, there are psychopaths who decide to ignore the tendency and act morally, but would shooting some dudes still be fun then?
It would depend on the psychopath. Some psychopaths might not care for violence. Others may feel that it represents a kind of power to them. Considering that psychopaths may enjoy therapy because they get better at manipulating, but aren’t specifically manipulating for gain within that dyad (like malingerers), I imagine they might consider it training, should they ever become unhinged and do something criminal. Dynamic inconsistency is a hell of a drug.
Just for the sake of argument (see “recombination” above), you might still need psychopaths for there to be a sufficient amount of favorable genes in the pool so that normal people can get nasty in the altruistic way.
Did you sidestep the argument about recombination entirely? What do you think about it?
I do not want empathy-free sentient beings wandering about. Slightly-less-empathetic people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly intelligent empathetic people. I draw the line at outright criminal acts, I think. Obviously there’s a tradeoff between the diversity of brains and the number of people murdered by psychopaths but I think we should probably worry about reducing murders first and then safely explore brain diversity once we understand brains better.
It’s not cold if they’re already locked up for the rest of their lives and they volunteer for cryonics. Given the choice between certain death and cryonics on the state’s dime, I know which one I’d pick (as an aside, imagine the uproar when the Blues and Greens start fighting over funding cryonics for criminals). They’re probably also the best candidates for testing restorative procedures on the brain to install an empathy module post-resuscitation. I think that solution is dramatically better than the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. Probably the definition of “life” sentences will change when we all get life extension, but most likely a lot more psychopaths will die in prison before they start getting freed for living out their multiple 99-year sentences.
I do. At least as long as they behave. If you’re intelligent enough to know (on an abstract level) why altruism and cooperation is good for humans within societies and have enough self-control to live by this principle, I don’t know why empathy remains important. I mean, as a terminal value.
Empathetic, slightly-less-intelligent people are okay but surely not more desirable than otherwise similarly empathetic intelligent people. Punishing less intelligent people just because of this appears to be just as useless and (w.r.t. my morality) immoral as punishing less empathetic people.
I do this for the general population.
If there’s a better approach to reducing murders by psychopaths than decreasing the number of psychopaths (by hindering them from reproducing, killing them, or other other suchs means), I’d opt for that.
I feel I should point out that the harms of psychopathy are only rarely covered by murder.
(eg. Cleckley in The Mask of Sanity places great and repeated emphasis on how almost none of his patients ever engaged in violence worse than beating their wife, and I don’t think he mentions any murders ever, even though the case studies are otherwise a long litany of constant crime, deceit, fraud, and destruction (including a truly astonishing amount of forgery of checks).)
Of course you are correct, thanks for pointing out. I responded to the “tradeoff between brain diversity and murders” without thinking myself.
Still, I don’t think psychopathic individuals should be prosecuted a priori, considering that they likely make up 1% of the general population.
There’s only an argument for altruism and cooperation if an agent is certain the other agents are running a decision theory that is as good as its own and their utility functions are similar enough to cooperate. TDT will cooperate with other TDTs, but a TDT without empathy will Win against decision theories like the ones human brains use. That’s essentially the main argument for FAI. Self-control implies a terminal value with greater utility than doing whatever anti-social things one otherwise wants to do. I don’t believe psychopaths have any greater-utility terminal values than getting what they want at the expense of others. That seems to be the entire problem, in fact.
I’d prefer intelligent and non-psychopathic people over the others but I don’t want to punish less intelligent people, I want to make them more intelligent. I don’t want to punish psychopaths either. I want to make them less psychopathic. I can teach less intelligent people but apparently I can’t (yet) teach empathy to psychopaths.
Right now I don’t know of any. Therapy appears to teach psychopaths better skills at manipulating people. One potential solution would be to prevent unintelligent people from being born and train everyone to recognize and counter the strategies that psychopaths use. That would put everyone on a level intellectual playing field and it’s arguable that even psychopaths would recognize that fact and cooperate with everyone else.
I like this way of thinking. By the way, there is some research about the weaknesses of psychopaths. From this article:
Just making these weaknesses widely known, together with some simple strategies for exploiting them (something like “The Game”, just about playing your boss), could change the balance on the playing field...
With the card game in mind, I have doubts that most psychopaths can function on any executive level, and am not surprised at all that they overrepresent as prisoners.
Hare says that because narcissistic, histrionic, and obsessive compulsive tendencies are elevated in executives, it must mean that psychopaths are more common in executives as well, because after all these are “psychopathic tendencies” This is akin to saying that because someone has above-average self-esteem, they also have psychopathic traits. But if anyone really wants to pore through the data, antisocial traits (or callousness), a core feature of psychopathy, is not elevated in executives. In fact, it was lower than the other groups studied. They report the data but overlook this important fact in their paper. Looks like the authors had an agenda.
http://thegrcbluebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Disordered-Personalities-at-Work-Belinda-Jane-BoardKatarina-Fritzon.pdf
Considering what we know about the callousness of corporations and atrocities committed by cultures throughout history, it is easy to assume that psychopathy runs rampant among leaders. (and it plays on people’s envy) Of course, this relies on the assumption that “good” people are not capable of atrocities and competitive greed without the coercion of bad people. Put two perfectly normal small families in a remote island with only enough resources to feed one, and you will see how quickly morality and compassion get thrown out the window. Knowing this, it is easy to imagine this concept in larger groups, which explains the behavior we see in war or corporate competition (where letting your competitors win means losing your job). No psychopathy is needed.
That makes perfect sense, thanks!
‘Winning’ is not really the right word here—a rational decision procedure should Win by definition. Clearly, psychopaths have different goals compared to the rest of the population: for simplicity, let’s suppose that, compared to neurotypicals, they lack a terminal goal of not inflicting direct costs on others. However, punishing people for lacking certain terminal goals is not quite kosher by modern political/ethical standards. We don’t lock people up for not donating enough to developing-world charities, because we understand that the vast majority of interactions are positive sum regardless.
Whether a psychopath approximating TDT could cooperate with a neurotypical person following either TDT or some kind of informal morality—and vice versa—is an interesting question and one that probably does not have an easy answer. However, in theory, TDT-approximating psychopaths should readily cooperate with each other.
It may also be the case that psychopaths are less able to enter precommitments and abide by them due to their overall deficits, which would make them more similar to CDT agents. However, this would not make them “winners” either, in any real sense: far from it. They would stop “winning” as soon as their lack of commitment (and thus non-credibility) was perceived by other agents—which would be quite soon, especially in a more rational world with a higher sanity waterline.
It also works in society, with a government enforcing law and puts forth other fines and incentives. Furthermore, humans are messy. Our immediate desires, on a lower level, can be quite different from our long-term, reflected, higher goals. It’s a matter of impulsiveness which of these wins how frequently.
Why “at the expense of others”? That’s a property of the world, not of them (which does not excuse what they do).
I apopogize for misreading you. “We didn’t eradicate malaria or polio with kinder, gentler methods. Don’t leave anything for evolution to work with.” sounds rather more… straightforward to me than you apparently meant it. I’m glad that we agree that psychopaths should be helped, whereever possible, to become productive parts of society.
Then the current therapeutic methods are not well-suited for this task. If we want to go down the road of developing more effective means of psychopath crime prevention, therapy etc., I suggest we Hold Off On Proposing Solutions.
Um. Source?