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+1 It's sad how effective social engineering is. I wouldn't put it past psyops to do something similar.

0) It's not moral equivalency. You misunderstood.

1) Read the link, and try to understand the social phenomenon it is describing. Obviously, since you are caught up in it, it won't be easy. Make an effort.

2) Do you think it's healthy that 40% of news stories are about paedophilia? (Obviously, I'm pulling a number out of my ass, but whatever it is, it's extremely high.)

3) Do you think it's healthy that such a large percentage of conversations is about paedophilia?

4) Etiology. Ever heard of it?

5) DSM. Ever heard of it?

6) Psychology. Ever heard of it?

7) Psychiatry. Ever heard of it?

8) Since you're most likely a "moral atheist," three free exit questions: How would Jesus treat the mentally ill? How would the average "moral atheist" treat the mentally ill? Who's more superstitious, when you get down to it? (And when answering the second question, don't be disingenuous. We already have sufficient empirical evidence to know the truth.)



Something written by stupid people. Probably wouldn't interest someone as brilliant as you.



P.S. Long live the Police State. It's the only thing that can keep our children safe from the mentally ill. (Who are evil. Mentally ill people are evil, never forget that.) And long live Government regulation of the Internet. It's the only thing that can keep our children safe from the mentally ill. And long live complete/total surveillance of every citizen. It's the only thing that can keep our children safe from the mentally ill.
Try to thing things through, retards.

And yeah, I'm replying to myself because it's a reply to all of you myopic, single-minded retards, not one of you in particular.

Is the only solution to force them to feel exactly like their victims?

No, the solution would be to diagnose them correctly and treat them accordingly. The current DSM-IV term is Antisocial Personality Disorder. Unfortunately the prognosis does not seem to be good. On the other hand it seems that many people suffering from this mental illness end up incarcerated, so maybe there is hope in this case.

Your example seems to indicate there is no 'hey, maybe I did unto others...' moment for sociopaths, so will they ever truly learn from their mistakes?

Antisocial Personality Disorder is deeply seated in the individual's psyche and is unlikely to react positively to such an experience.

I have never seen any creditable study
made up shit on pro gay sites
but the truth is

A plethora of credible studies are available literally at the touch of a button, many of them suggesting a biological component to homosexuality. I suppose your findings are dependent on your definition of credible, and since you declare that you know "the truth", you may not be open to contradictory evidence.

Here are a few I found just now, but I'm sure you can let your fingers do their own walking if you are interested.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3008-homosexuality-is-biological-suggests-gay-sheep-study.html

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/scotts/ftp/bulgarians/nih-ngltf.html

http://allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality.html

Wut? Go and read some psych definitions. OCD is not an addictive disorder, it's different. There is some overlap, but that's SOP for psych stuff. It's not black and white.

Actually (with my emphasis):

Psychopathy is a psychological construct that describes chronic immoral and antisocial behavior. The term is often used interchangeably with sociopathy. In the ICD-10 diagnosis criteria, the terms antisocial/dissocial personality disorder are used.

and

psychopath is defined by an uninhibited gratification in criminal, sexual, or aggressive impulses and the inability to learn from past mistakes.Individuals with this disorder gain satisfaction through their antisocial behavior and lack remorse for their actions.

from: Wikipedia

Also check out: allpsych.com

for the lazy:

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Category: Personality Disorders

Etiology: This disorder was previously known as both psychopathic and Sociopathic personality disorder.

This book makes a fascinating case that genius is a function of time and not giftedness, validating both Edison's famous saw about 98% perspiration and Feynman's claim that there is no such thing as intelligence, only interest.

First off, the Edison quote is "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." This is not to say that inspiration (presumed here to be a product of giftedness) is somehow dispensible. Both are required, so you can't really say that the 1% component is somehow irrelevant.

The difference is shown to result from an astonishing lack of charisma and a sense of what others are thinking in Langen, and an extreme personability in Oppenheimer, which is said to show that success is not a function of hard work or even genius but more of likability and the ability to empathize.

Sounds like Langen may have had Asperger's Syndrome, or another similar disorder. It also sounds like Gladwell is cherry-picking his anecdotes to amplify his point.

The fact that Asian languages in many cases use shorter and more logical words for numbers confers a strong early advantage[...]

Shorter, I can buy. More logical is a subjective assessment based on criteria we're not privy to. As this is being debated in other threads, I can only conclude that I'm not the only person who finds this claim suspect. While some are attempting to play the role of apologist for this viewpoint, it's not clear to me which of their arguments is the one that Gladwell is using to justify this statement. Furthermore, the comparison with metric units vs. English units isn't very illuminating -- lots of people I know would prefer doing engineering calculations in English units rather than metric, and in truth, the ease of unit conversion in the metric system isn't such a huge advantage in the real world when doing such calculations. The problems always seem to come in when conversions are happening between systems of units (e.g., going from English to metric).

It is bound to bear out in the minds of many Prof. Richard Feynman's assertion, which we may modify to say that giftedness and IQ are not inherent but conferred by accidents or benefits of culture, or at least via mechanisms that are not obvious.

Which also completely ignores many studies that show that there is a genetic component to IQ. While IQ is variable, with environment playing a substantial role, it's well established that environment is not the sole factor in intellectual development. According to some studies, the contribution of genetics to IQ is as much as 75% (i.e., 75% of all IQ variances can be attributed to genetic differences). I think the reviewer here may be conflating "success" (what the book is about) with "intelligence" (i.e., giftedness and IQ, which seem to be prerequisites for success but which the book argues are not the dominant factors).

It has also been said many times, here on Slashdot and elsewhere, that IQ is the best single predictor of future success -- this seems to be derived from The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray. This claim has been attacked numerous times, so I'll leave it to the statistics folks to argue that one. But you can't just ignore the study altogether.

On a closing note, the review could stand a few extra commas in strategic locations, and maybe some thoughtful reordering of a few sentences to make them clearer.

To be fair some are harder to see than others; I had to try a couple times for this one. I was showing the circle and dot one to a friend and I had to coach him through part of it; he saw it eventually but I don't think he got how intently he needed to stare at the red dot. I don't doubt some illusions don't affect some people though.

Anyway, my contribution to this thread: http://allpsych.com/opticalillusions/images/jesus.jpg

Stare at that for thirty seconds or so then look at a blank wall and blink a couple times.

Genetic:
You can find the same behaviour in animals (from fruit flies, where it can be controlled through gene manipulation, to the big apes, our nearest relatives). There's also been studies which confirm that male homosexuals' brains respond differently to the testosterone (http://www.livescience.com/health/ap_050510_pheremones.html)

Psychological/Physiological debate:
This article makes some interesting points and has references, didn't read it completely though. http://allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality.html

It's there, but under a different name. It's in the DSM-IV as Antisocial Personality Disorder

One of my favorite topics. Many of the people that Moses freed from slavery wanted to go back to slavery, and Americans today would rather have the government take care of them than make their own decisions.

Erik Fromm added a lot to my view of the subject.

You can see how politicians and others take advantage of this by promising security in exchange for people's freedoms.

Anyway, I wish I could have a beer and some conversation with all you MS and Bush bashing, Linux and freedom-loving geeks!

I am not sure how useful the Martians will find Wi-Fi. I thought they had telepathic abilities.

We could always use it to play heavy metal music or such to make the Martians go insane and come out of hiding, such as part of psychological operations.