On a blog with the funniest header graphic. And he does have my position correctly pegged: rape, along with other physical crimes against another person, should be a capital offense at the attempt stage.
Minor quibble: I’d estimate the number of sociopaths as much lower than 3-4% of the population. 2% would be my guess for the number of people who just don’t play well with others for various reason but aren’t full-blown sociopaths. Stupidity and lack of social skills are more frequent explanations than psychopathy.
“never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained as stupidity”
someone
“never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained as stupidity” Appears to have originated with Heinlein as “You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity”.
Don’t forget to include Congress when counting sociopaths.
1-2% full blown psychopaths. Maybe.
Estimate is, 15% of others are psychopathic to a degree, that is, they have psychopath like traits in some areas. Unless you talk about amputees, there are no clear ‘boundaries’ that define people.
Don’t forget narcissists. Psychopaths, if they bother, can ‘see’ things as they are.
Narcissists don’t. Furthermore, psychopathy is genetic, but usually triggered by enviroment. Look up James Fallon, a neuroscientist whose brain apparently looks like that of a psychopath, and who comes from a family with a lot of murderers. Apparently, he isn’t destructive, nor causes much suffering in others.
Narcissism… on the other hand possibly doesn’t need the genetic component:
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2009/04/21/narcissism-epidemic-why-there-are-so-many-narcissists-now
^^I hope the book-authors are wrong.
They’re as dangerous as psychopaths, perhaps even more, because psychopaths are in the end, ‘reality’ based people, if often grade A jerks.
Narcissists are not, they believe their own lies. You see the difference .. Lenin was likely a psychopath.
When socialism failed to revive economy, he allowed the NEP. I don’t believe he was a dogmatic of the ‘If someone disagrees with me, they are evil’ school.
Stalin, on the other hand was a narcissist. If some idea failed to work, it had to have been treason.
Where amorality is concerned, narcissists are as dangerous as sociopaths, because they display the same blindness to suffering they cause.
Is there also the problem that psychopath and sociopath aren’t really defined except as a collection of traits? It’s not diagnosable like depression or other diseases are. I was reading somewhere that it’s really just a set of behaviors that our society says are abnormal. (The Psychopath Test maybe?) I’m not a psychologist and it was an airplane read so I am not sure…
ASPD is a diagnostic tool… that ignores physiology but only looks at behavior.
99% of people don’t care about semantics. Psychopaths is used as loosely as ‘fascist’.
Generally, scientists in the field use “psychopathy” to label people who have no conscience and lack certain emotions, such as remorse.
Psychopathy can be defined better.. there is a measurable physiological difference in fear reaction and structural differences in the brain..
Also, it’s not a ‘disease’. It’s an evolutionary adaptation that’s unpleasant for the rest of us.
Corporations, which have the rights of persons under the law, are by definition sociopaths.
And conservatives think this is a good thing.
I think it was L. Neil Smith who said that he favors capital punishment if administered by the intended victim at the time of the crime. That’s a good rule. I think we’ve seen it in effect recently a number of times (in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arizona).