Does Anyone Else Worry About Psychopathy?

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That's fair enough. I have a question though - how much do you enjoy life, as it is?

I'm somewhat content. I'm not happy in the long term (I have a nagging feeling of loneliness) but I am doing as good as one who is as twisted as myself can reasonably expect too.

Yeah I guess I'm more or less the same. I generally like life, but I have a lot of demons.

I actually disagree with this...... And not even on a moral level, though Ill get into that later. Logically however:
How does one stop being human for pressing a button, pushing a handle, Taking something that wasn't originally theirs et al? We've all done each of these, and yes, I simplified each of these examples for a reason. Those simple acts do not make us less human then we were before. Further, I can pretty much promise everyone here has done at least one of those three acts in ignorance, or in mistake...... Though I would wager it unlikely that any here has ever done so with legal repercussions to the degree that we put our convicts through.

A simple metaphor would be something like "A tiger doesn't cease to be a tiger, or any less Feline, when it eats another Tiger's Cubs, regardless of its need to survive or not". A more complicated one would be "If you don't teach kids about guns, and then hand two kids one loaded gun and one dies as a result is the survivor really any less human?". To even further complicate things, what should we really do about someone that, was born in poverty, was raised in abuse, neglected by the world around them, and then has gone on to molest someone because it was the only source of comfort they felt they had at the time? Or someone that killed because they honestly could only see their net gain as a result? Or like some of the Serial Killers that have been caught, if they honestly didn't get that their victims felt pain, or didn't want to die? Does any of these shortcomings really make them less human? I agree it makes them wrong, because I value a Right To Live, and Freedom to do essentially as you wish so long as they don't impinge on others right to do the same (Which is a large, complicated, and more then anything else messy idea), but I disagree that any of the above makes people less human...... IMHO, being born a human is the only requirement for being a human, and this is a status and a label irremovable or changeable until death (At least perhaps until technology reaches a point that can separate Personality from Biological Containment or something, but thats a can of worms for a future generation). Finally for this point, are all "Criminals" painted equal? If yes, where do we draw the line? If not, where do we draw the line(s)? Who decides?

Finally, the reason we don't perform medical experiments on living people anymore is that there really isn't much left to be learned..... Beyond drawing blood, Marrow, *Perhaps* Spinal Fluid, and Sperm/Ova, there is no academic forwarding to be gained by experimenting on live people, bar Virology, and if you're looking for volunteers for that, we already have plenty thanks..... The areas in which medicine is making advancements now tend to be on the Cellular level or smaller, and by the time you take one cell and tear it apart enough to actually do anything with it, the original donor has already replaced it probably at least twice over.....


The Moral side of it gets more complicated still......
Where do your beliefs of what makes up humanity and human rights come from when you can then accuse better reciprocal behavior as being misguided? Isn't the "Moral Highroad" that being something along the lines of "We're better then having to resort to behavior like what you did?". And though I won't say as much here, the philosophies involved tend to carry alot more weight with those that study them.

I could even quote your Sig back at you:
"There are some bridges not to be crossed, and some battles not to fight."

Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu wasn't just a Military Philosopher mind you......

Finally, on Josef Mengele for those that seem to have been debating the "merits" of his "work":
Most of Mengele's work was tainted by a bias towards aryan beliefs of supremecy and what not. What work he did, though valued for its data, was largely pointless. About the only "productive" that came directly out of his work was better Nerve Gas, oh boy, as though we couldn't already kill ourselves fast enough. Indirectly his work has been checked in many areas, but because it was so "misguided" to begin with, few actual improvements in medical understanding can actually be traced back to it...... After that, its debatable whether anything he did actually helped any medical proffessional, though I do believe *SOME* of his work with Identical Twins was later used as a starting point for searches into Gene Theory, and dropped as soon as they could be......

http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/bi ... ngele.html
Id site Wikipedia here as well, but they're down today to protest PIPA and SOPA, and I heartily support their protest (Imagine a world where we'd have to pay for every visit to Wrong Planet hmmmm?)

Hope this has been interesting at the very least, and thank you for reading if you have,
Aldran

I think most people are vengeful and have zero sympathy for those who are dangerous to society. A good portion of those people even take pleasure in the suffering of such people.

I think humanity's overzealousness when it comes to righteous indignation is far more dangerous on the whole that the small psychopathic element of our species.

Kill Them Applause

Talk about psychopathy.

Humanity and being a member of the human species are different things. Humanity is why we (by we I mean humanity as a whole, on average) are shocked when we look at genocide death counts, sickened if someone beside us is shot, repulsed if we find out our neighbour was kidnapping and torturing people to death in his basement.



A child playing with a gun and killing his friend is not murder. By legal definition that would be manslaughter (murder by mistake) I believe, along with negligence charges against the parents.

Someone born in poverty, raised with abuse, etc. who molests a child for "comfort" has still made their choice. No one forced them to do it. It was their own decision to commit that crime, and the consequences of their actions lay upon them alone. Same as someone who doesn't realise that people don't to die or feel pain, they still made the decision to commit their crimes. Root causes need to be looked at, but they are not an excuse for some ones actions.



Not quite true. We still know very little about how the brain works.



My beliefs come from my own studying and how I see the world.



I don't know all that much about Sun Tzu to be honest, I just like that quote



Mengele's work was indeed tainted by his belief that the Aryans were superior and always would be, however that does not mean nothing at all came from it.

I believe the first chemotherapy drugs came about because of the Allies trying to counter his nerve gas? Not a direct result of his work I admit, but without Mengele with the Allies have been experimenting?

It was indeed interesting, I quite enjoy debating even if I'm not the best at it. Thanks for taking the time to write that all out!

indeed. somewhat troubling...

@Abacacus' Reply:

This can and will quickly devolve into a discussion of philosophy and the theological origins of certain beliefs, but before that happens, I will point out I said what I did (Which you then responded to with this), by saying I was going to approach it logically, IE without morality. Morals, or Social Values, are the things we create and place on ourselves as individuals and members of a society, in essence, your use of the word "Humanity".

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humanity
So, in essence, I was using the second definition, and you the third. But the reason why I believe it important to, at first, pull morality out of the issue, is because people that base their decisions off familar and comfortable Morals, tend to have this funny tendency to forget that we are all humans. We're all born the same way, and essentially function the same way (At a very basic and broad way, we all eat, crap, sleep, take advantage of some attempt at reproduction, etc etc). Once we can all consciously agree and acknowledge that were all equal in these areas, we can then better understand the issues were actually looking at, and the differences that cause people to be the way they are, IE, get back into the Philosophical and "Moral" issues that have created the people who we feel are so different from us, even though they're not really.....



Ah yes, but like many children that are ignorant of the consequences they are playing with, I believe that if you look at most "Convicted Criminals", there is a sort of sad ignorance to be found. Most Violent Crimes are at worst opportunistic. Very few people actually plan out a murder with any degree of consideration for reality. And that last bit is important, because it speaks to the ignorance that most people that commit these crimes are operating under.......




They might have made their choice, but the Missionary Christians did have one thing right in their relentless persecution of Ignorant Sin, that being that if one does not really know of the choices available, then one will not likely be in much of a position to choose a (Insert your Verb here, Correct, Healthy, Proper, Civil, informed, educated, et al) decision...... More and more science is proving that, though Biology can play a very important role in our Behavioral Makeup, the vast majority of it (A % as yet unproven) is a product of our experiences in life...... As a for instance, if you remove every happy or joyous moment in your life, could you not see yourself being pretty destitute emotionally and there for more likely to commit a crime? And if you say no, I will have to say I disagree with you, and that you would probably do well to review your life in its entirety and the consequences that have come from your experiences......


I disagree with this. We actually know quite a bit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience
http://www.google.com/search?q=How+does ... =firefox-a
Have a Gander at those. The second is a more broad search result, and you're welcome to peruse the results on your own. But be warned, that if you've ever done any kind of Google search on this kind of topic before, you may end up with different results then myself. For that matter my results are subject to the same problem. Google is currently using a Search Algorithm to modify our search results to profile us so it can "Serve us better", though at the unwarranted loss of diversity, and uniformity in search results..... Still, no matter your result, Im *Moderately* confident that this search should produce hours of knowledge for you to absorb should you choose to. And just a hint, there are no such things as "Portions of the brain that are dedicated to loving or hating Chocolate", and other such silly misconceptions.

Even to further our understand of how the brain works were at a point where were talking about Cellular Biochemistry, and hurting, torturing, or killing "Criminals" will serve little if any purpose........ If you continue to disagree with this, I will understand the disagreement only with citation of someone smarter then either of us in the area of neuroscience and what we might learn by such "Explorations", serious subject matter only please (IE No "Dr" Mengele types please).


An obvious truism if ever there was one. Id offer you a candy if we were in each others Physical Presence. That being said, you didn't really answer my questions......


Might I suggest learning a bit more about quotes, and the people that made them, and why they were said in the first place before quoting them? I admit I am not familiar enough with his works to be able to fully debate what his specific meaning might have been, but I am familiar enough with the concept of what he's implying to feel confident in where it can be applied. And I believe I could easily apply it to a Moral Discussion of why we should treat prisoners Humanely......




http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/NaziMedEx.html
This site contains a list of research conducted by the Nazi's that are still in use today. Honestly I disagree for their reason of making this list (To protest the use of knowledge gained by the Third Reich at the expense of Jewish and Gypsy lives), and though I do agree what the Nazi's did was horrendous, AND that it should never be repeated (Part of why Im posting here), I disagree that using knowledge gained from an atrocity commited in a time where the majority of the world knew about it or was able to stop it, would be in some way better then to use it. I feel to use it would be a much better way of remembering where the knowledge came from, then to in some unspoken way attempt to uninvent that knowledge. On a side issue, this is the last time I will be doing your research or citations for you, unless it honestly piques my interest.

Specifically his research in the procedures of Chemotherapy came from reproducing Gas-Grene (I have no idea what this specifically is) in living Jewish Prisoners, and then trying to create a chemical treatment to cure it. I believe, though I may be wrong, that the research taken in this specific regard would have been more of procedure, then of genuine innovation, as he also tried this with Strep and Tetanus, but neither are currently treated with Chemotherapy, but rather by Vaccination or Immunization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
If this on its own, does not prove to you the essential pointlessness of Mengele's "Experiements", I don't know what will..... Suffice it to say though, many agree, myself included, that Mengele was really nothing more then a deranged lunatic put in power for some kind of believed benefit to be gained by Hitler himself, and though he accidently discovered a few later mildly useful things, the world would have been a better place if nothing of what is currently known of Mengele had come to pass.


Quite alright. Glad you did find it interesting. I could suggest following any of the links I have provided, or even just spending a few hours on Google or Wikipedia (or both), doing some research to further your own understanding of the world (Not to suggest you're specifically lacking, but that in the pursuit of knowledge we might make more of ourselves then we are today). Again, I hope its been interesting, and thanks for reading if you have,
Ta, Aldran

Edited to fix some errant Quote Commands.