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Psychopaths Have Brain Structure Abnormality
mmmscience writes "A group of scientists has identified a structure in the brain of psychopaths that is abnormal when compared with controls. The change is found in the uncinate fasciculus, a bridge of white matter that connects the amygdala (emotion/aggression brain region) and the orbitofrontal cortex (decision making region). Interestingly, the greater the abnormality in the region, the more severe the levels of sociopathy in a subject. The results were published as 'Altered connections on the road to psychopathy' in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial." The study's results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.
It would be interesting if you could fix sociopathy with a knife.
Well, you can but firearms are generally more effective and easier to employ ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not sure where you got that from. The difference in terms can be traced back to different theoretical perspectives on the same set of symptoms. Over time, the pendulum has shifted back and forth regarding whether the symptoms were the responsibility of the individual or the social environment the individual was raised in. If you think antisocial personality disorder is the result of individual choices or some sort of illness, you may be more likely to use the term psychopath. If you think that the symptoms are the result of a person's social environment, you may be more likely to use sociopath. The terms themselves do not denote two recognized different disorders. Check out DSM for definition of Antisocial Personality Disorder, or there's always Wikipedia.
A researcher on the team suggests the finding could have considerable implications in the world of criminal justice, where such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial.
My response:
"There is a tendency... today to explain human behavior, to remove purpose - motive - from serious consideration. We tend to accept the notion that mechanical, not purposive, causation accounts for the things people do. Joe Sinister is a criminal because his parents beat him or because of a chemical imbalance in his brain or because of a genetic disorder that removed the function we call conscience... These explanations of human behavior may be accurate... but the issue of accuracy is, in fact, quite irrelevant to human societies. A human community that uses mechanical causation to account for human behavior cannot survive, because it cannot hold its members accountable for their behavior. That is, no matter how you account for the origin of a human behavior, a community must continue to judge the perpetrator on the basis of his intent, as near as that intent can be understood (or guessed, or assumed). That is why parents inevitably ask their children the unanswerable question: Why did you do that? Terrible as that question is, it at least puts the responsibility back on the child's head and forces the child to ask himself the question that society absolutely requires him to answer: Why do I do the things I do? And how, by changing my motives, can I change my behavior?... We must believe in motives for human behavior, or we cannot maintain community life."
~ Orson Scott Card, from the Introduction to "Cruel Miracles".
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Ok, why is the increased sale of ice cream correlated to the increased number of shark attacks? Or murder? ...
Sharks really love ice cream, and can smell it in the water from miles away. So called "educational" shows like to say blood instead, to prevent people from freaking out.
It's meaning was dramatically narrowed in 1928 when the psychologist Partridge redefined it to mean people who were anti-social, egocentric, manipulative etc. In 1930, Partridge further proposed that it be replaced with the term "sociopathy". He later proposed that that the two terms could be used to disctinguih between people who had a genetic disorder (psychopath) or an environmentally produced disorder (sociopath).
(From: The psychopath By Hugues Hervé, John C. Yuille).
The terms aren't used diagnostically, at least not where I am. In my neck of the woods, it's "narcisistic personality disorder" for those who have no criminal activity and "antisocial personality disorder" for those who do. Which I find very much a 19th Century way of looking at it - a diagnosis based on a moral distinction.
1) It shouldn't matter if anyone is a sociopath as long as they do not break any laws.
That is an interesting hypothesis, but I do not concur. Our economic system, the free market, relies on good faith intent to operate efficiently. Not an intent to be good, mind you, but an intent to faithfully fulfill the agreements into which one enters. If one enters into such agreements in bad faith, it results in either distorted transactions, the inefficiency of court proceedings, or both. The law is neither a cost efficient tool for guiding the free market nor a precisely targeted one.
The goal of the free market, and its free hand, is to minimize the need for government interference by leveraging one inherent aspect of humanity; greed. That is a worthy objective because the law is known to be a blunt weapon, guided as it is by masses, influence peddlers, and politicians. Actors in bad faith can distort the legal system, and its use is costly even when it reaches the correct conclusion.
The solution to the dilemma between bad faith actors and inefficient laws in the free market is to allow corporations which are directed by actors in bad faith to fail. Perfect information, losses incurred from treating with a company that fails, and the stigma of failing the stockholders takes care of the rest. It might be considered a brutal system in some regards, but it is widely held as being relatively efficient -- when it is allowed to correct itself.
Enter the practice of not allowing banks to fail. When we engage in such inhibition of the free market, it loses its ability to correct actors in bad faith. Then we have a problem.
So, there are at least two options; find a way to make it tolerable to let banks fail so the free market can correct bad faith actors, or find a way to prevent actors in bad faith from running banks. A third path is to allow actors in bad faith to take advantage of such a system, and suffer the consequences as we did last Fall. Yet another is to establish that there are no actors in bad faith running banks.
I'm not suggesting which of those solutions is the right answer, nor that those are the only possible answers. All I'm trying to do is to establish a serious and complicated problem one must solve in developing and maintaining a healthy free market economy.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Incorrect. They are related disorders, but the criteria is not the same. From wikipedia, which lists the DSM-IVTR:
APD - 3 or more of the following
NPD - A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
Note that the DSM-IVTR, more appropriately, is not the be-all end-all of diagnosing but is more of a guidebook and a way to standardize diagnoses. Notice that criminal activity is not necessarily a factor in rendering either diagnosis. Next time, inform yourself before spreading misinformation. NPD is characterized more by a self-centeredness, APD is characterized more by a willingness to hurt or use others for personal gain. These are not the same things.
Lots of laws themselves are antisocial; the Jim Crow laws in the US in the early 20th century, for example. As Spock's dad would scream when he's got the Vulcan alzheimer's, "ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! *sob*"
There's a distinction in the English system between "mala prohibita" and "mala in se". The first is laws like 'smoking a joint is wrong'. The second is 'killing your neighbor is wrong'. The second were the laws that made Common Law.
When the phrase "ignorance of the law is no defence" was coined it referred to "in se" crime, and I can't find the original quote at the moment, but it went on to explain that nobody could possibly be expected to know all of the prohibita law (which is orders of more difficult today).
My God, it's Full of Source!
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