Analyzing Tweets To Identify Psychopaths

nonprofiteer writes "Researchers presenting at Defcon next week have developed a psychopathy prediction model for Twitter. It analyzes linguistic tells to rate users' levels of narcissism, machiavellianism and other similarities to Patrick Bateman. 'The FBI could use this to flag potential wrongdoers, but I think it's much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities of people,' says Chris Sumner of the Online Privacy Foundation. Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.' So, um, yeah."

Comments

There's a rumor going around

[Dunbal]

I hear that if you measure their skulls you can also spot murderers. I will call this science phrenology!

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear that if you measure their skulls you can also spot murderers. I will call this science phrenology!

The difference being that phrenology measures a person's physical attributes (like classifying someone as a criminal because they're black), whilst this system classifies people based on their actions and ideas (content of their character).

Re:There's a rumor going around

[alphatel]

Your Amativeness and Causality lead me to conclude a great reduction in your Alimentiveness and Form, therefor life in prison for you, my Philprogentiveness friend!

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is absolutely ridiculous and I pray it is shot down my mainstream psychologists because it's not fair at all. I am a law-abiding citizen who works a full-time job and spends much of my downtime educating myself and hanging out with friends. I have hobbies, I have a beautiful family, and I am a very good person. Many of the things in this article have applied to me throughout my life and I am disgusted that they would even begin their psychopath search in this manner.

Fucking incredible.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Charliemopps]

No, this system tries to predict the future by reading posts on twitter. Could a certain percentage of people who commit violent crime share the common trait of psychopathy? Certainly. Do all? No. In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives. Far more people that are not psychopathic commit crimes than those with psychopathy.

The end result of this research is rather clear: Watch what you say on the internet, the FBI might flag you. And that's a far more dangerous threat than a few psychopaths walking around. If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[ivoras]

Of course, the real insight is Reverse Phrenology! Kicking people in the head to make them better people!

Re:There's a rumor going around

[postbigbang]

Having regrets over all of those nasty and violent tweets, are you? Should've thought about what might happen if you babbled about listening to those voices, and where to get that ammo online.

Time to get back into therapy now, and start taking those meds that you've eschewed all this time.

Or they'll nail your ass. Is that them knocking at the door? Did you hide everything?

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Oligonicella]

"whilst this system classifies people based on their actions and ideas"

No it doesn't. There's no follow up going on to match the words to people's subsequent actions. And please, the use of periods? What does that indicate? Grammar? How about my immediate excessive use of the question mark?

"(content of their character)."
Even further horseshit. There's no correlation betwixt grammar and character.

Asimov had it wrong, there is no such math.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[fatphil]

> Do all? No.

That's actually not the failure that makes this useless. The failure is that the dangerous psychos are such a small minority of the population that even if you throw away 99% (and I'm being generous) of the relatively normals, you're still left with a huge pool of normals with just a few pschos in it. You've not made the problem of actually finding the psychos significantly easier. Now 99.99% of the people who seem suspicious are dangerous rather than 99.9999%.

This is exactly the same flaw as the face scanner tech they were proposing at airports which Bruce Schneier et al. ripped to pieces when it was first proposed.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you intentionally trying to tick all of the psychopath boxes, or did it just happen that way?

What movies are you planning on seeing in the near future? ;)

Re:There's a rumor going around

[AngryDeuce]

But how many people have an online persona that is vastly different than they're real life one? I have friends that act like they're Che Guevara on their social media postings that, in real life, will bitch and cry and complain for an hour if the person at Starbucks takes too long to prepare their non-fat mochaccinolatte, and don't even get me started on all the people that bitch and complain about "freeloaders" and "people living on the government teat" that I know for a fact are collecting government services themselves or have benefited from them in the past....that's another particularly LOL-worthy demographic these days. And then, of course, there's the "I'm ME and I don't care if anyone likes my opinions or not!" posts I used to see all the time, written by people that are, without a hint of irony, obviously searching for positive reinforcement from their social group.

The number of people I know that are actually 'themselves' on the internet, and not some idealized version of themselves that they invented to be popular, is quite slim. I don't bother with social media anymore because I got tired of dealing with cartoon characters and hypocrites. If people actually had to be themselves on the internet, warts and all, I bet the number of social media junkies out there would plummet overnight...

For those reasons, I fail to see the value in this...

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Dunbal]

Yes and we have a rich background of tweets from murderers and serial killers on which to base models. This is just bullshit science. Phrenology was merely an example of one of many pseudo-sciences, but I guess you missed it.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[hey!]

Well, the test of something's value shouldn't be whether it strikes you as silly.

The difference between this and phrenology is that phrenology is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption: that the external shape of the skull is correlated strongly to the size of medium scale anatomical structures of the brain. It's easy enough to debunk phrenology by looking at few skulls and comparing the interior to the exterior. In contrast it's quite plausible that a personality trait would be *correlated* in some way to answers on a questionnaire.

So what we need to know is whether the methods and assumptions of the researchers stand up to critical scrutiny, which is something more than making a few hand-waving analogies.

Presuming this idea stands up to scrutiny, the problem with it is that the people who might want to use it (e.g. law enforcement) don't have enough mathematical education to be trusted to use it correctly. Most people treat tests like magical oracles. Cops aren't the only ones who do this. My daughter's pediatrician wanted a certain uncomfortable test done on her. I asked him what the prevalence of the condition being tested for was in the general population. He didn't know. I asked him what the false positive and false negative rates on the test were. He didn't know. In other words, he had none of the information needed to interpret the results of the test, and even if he had that information he lacked the mathematical skills to do it.

Proof of anything requires developing independent lines of evidence; in the hands of the mathematically uneducated even a far more reliable test than this one is bound to be trouble. Drug screening tests are reliable enough to have considerable value, but I think that most drug screening programs are garbage because those programs are mandated, designed and administered by statistical ignoramuses. A test like this is bound to be a lot less credible in itself than testing somebody for opiate use, and if cops and corporate HR departments can't be trusted with *that*, then they certainly shouldn't be entrusted with *this*. Still, an idea like this could plausibly be useful to somebody who actually knew how to reason from data.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Maxo-Texas]

I've been using a lot of voice recognition to IM lately.

SO I called someone and got voice mail.. and I said...

"Okay, I got your call and I'll see you later today PERIOD".

I was face slapping as soon as i hung up.

Oh and for the benefit of NSA and twitter type scanners...

I don't know what this shit is. Fuck that. I HATE it when they scan my posts. Period.
I mean blah blah blah, yada, yada. I mean, I don't give a flying fuck, um, what they think.

Thanks--- I was, ah, feeling psychopathic, and um, didn't want to put that in a separate post.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[__aaltlg1547]

If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while.

That doesn't mean they weren't psychopaths, does it?

Re:There's a rumor going around

[bill_mcgonigle]

Could a certain percentage of people who commit violent crime share the common trait of psychopathy? Certainly. Do all?

Right. There are psychopaths who are perfectly fine and functional members of society. People often regard them as 'a bit off', but there is more to the psychology of a dangerous psychopath than just being a psychopath.

Check out this BBC Documentary about the neuropsychology of it. The documentary turns out more interesting than would be initially expected (not going to give it away).

That said, when designer babies are feasible, I doubt anybody is going to consciously select for psychopathy. Well, outside of the dystopian scifi realms anyway.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[__aaltlg1547]

Even further horseshit. There's no correlation betwixt grammar and character.

... that YOU know of.

A normal (non-narcissistic) person is aware that there are things known to others that are not known to him.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[__aaltlg1547]

Don't forget the frontal lobotomy and electroshock to control behavior.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Jeremy Erwin]

my evil plans are too complex to fit in 140 characters. The lambs can be so very naive.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[sco08y]

But how many people have an online persona that is vastly different than they're real life one? I have friends that act like they're Che Guevara on their social media postings that, in real life, will bitch and cry and complain for an hour if the person at Starbucks takes too long to prepare their non-fat mochaccinolatte

But that's pretty much how Che Guevara did act in real life. The guy was a pampered rich kid who, when he couldn't hack it as a doctor, decided to play soldier. After a string of pitiful failures, he tried to prove how tough he was to his men by personally executing bound prisoners, or shooting his men in the back when they tried to get away.

and don't even get me started on all the people that bitch and complain about "freeloaders" and "people living on the government teat" that I know for a fact are collecting government services themselves or have benefited from them in the past..

We know that the IRS tracks donations to the treasury and there are virtually none. Therefore, people who want higher taxes don't actually donate to the treasury, they just vote for higher taxes. So their actions demonstrate the acceptable standard: play by the rules as they are, and vote for how you want them to be.

Thus the pro-taxers have clearly established that as long as you vote to eliminate government handouts, it's perfectly fair to take the benefits while the law stands. And even that's ignoring that you've already paid taxes for those benefits anyway.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[LaminatorX]

Most psychopaths are simply called "Boss."

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Jeremy Erwin]

The governments who indulge in that sort of thing rarely speak of "victims", for that would encourage compassion and sympathy.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[reub2000]

Do all? No. In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives.

Figuring out who is a psychopath would probably have usefulness outside of just finding criminals. Probably don't want to hire a psychopath or marry one.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[antdude]

I am an ant in both real and virtual lives. :P

Re:There's a rumor going around

[garyebickford]

It also conflates correlation with causation. The supposed fact that they were government officials could be the result, not the cause - psychopaths are likely to be attracted to positions where they can wield power, whether in social, tribal, corporate or government environment is just a matter of convenience and availability. Also, it's hard to say whether Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great would rightly described as 'government officials'. Or a large number of ancient Roman Caesars - as often as not they came up through the military, and often achieved the emperorship by means of social manipulation as well as the use of force. I don't know of a single Caesar who came up through the bureaucracy, which would be the province of 'government officials'. So I'm inclined to disagree with the parent's proposition entirely. The only one I can think of offhand was Hitler, who did manage to get himself elected.

A recent NY times article discussed work on discovering psychopathic tendencies in young children. It's early days but there seems to be some pretty good evidence that this problem can be diagnosed and eventually possibly treated early. Psychopathy is apparently about 80% inherited. The childhood 'calculating unemotional' (CU) syndrome is strongly correlated with later psychopathic behaviors, but about 1/2 of those with the syndrome seem to grow out of it or learn how to behave in their teens, so it's unfair to stigmatize them early on and this leaves hope that the percentages can be improved.

IANA evolutionary biologist, but the fact that psychopathy and leadership are so strongly correlated, and that the syndrome appears to be solidly 1% of the population (up to about 4% in high leadership positions according to another study) implies to me that there is an evolutionary advantage both individually and for a given population as a whole. Perhaps this characteristic, or some components of it, make it more likely that a particular tribe will succeed against its neighbors (such as success in war); or maybe psychopaths' manipulative abilities improve their chances of having offspring.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[CanHasDIY]

boss, Your Honor, Mr. President, The Distinguished Senator/Representative...

Pick your poison.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[BeanThere]

This also represents basically a new class of monitoring, that of continual monitoring of ALL human action by AI's (since that's basically what this is, being watched by an AI). It takes society to a whole new "Welcome to the Panopticon" level.

Algorithmic monitoring will soon be behind all mass-surveillance, e.g. automatically scanning every CCTV image to see if what you're actually doing might be considered 'suspicious' (e.g. looked at a young girl for just a few seconds too long? look 'fidgety'? look 'angry'? etc.). Algorithmic real-time monitoring of all over-the-wire voice conversations (e.g. telephone, cellphone, VoIP) will all very very soon be a possibility. AI's behind automated flying drones will be watching you in the streets, reporting you to authorities if you seem 'suspicious'.

The future is arriving very quickly, and we need to deal with this head-on and not blithely dismiss it, before it becomes widely entrenched - we need to be asking serious questions NOW about what kind of world we really want our children and grandchildren to grow up in, and how to achieve that. We need to be asking, who are all these technologies REALLY trying to protect - you, from the common street criminal, or will the kleptocratic financial cartels still be stealing billions care-free?

Re:There's a rumor going around

[s.petry]

Most psychopaths are not dangerous, the desire for a so called pseudo-science of trying to cure something obviously not broken is odd. Just like most people have some type of phobia, have narcissistic tendencies, some type of rational paranoia, etc... We don't run around trying to make magic bullets trying to fix it all for several reasons.

First, most of those traits are healthy and responses to the environment. Second, most people do not experience those tendencies for extended durations of time. If the environment is messed up, so are the people.. it's called a coping mechanism. Trying to fix the "problem" without really fixing the problem is something us humans have an extremely poor habit of doing, and the results are often much worse than working on the root cause (environment, education, social influences, etc...)

Instead of trying to fix symptoms, we should be trying to fix the problems...

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Afecks]

people that bitch and complain about "freeloaders" and "people living on the government teat" that I know for a fact are collecting government services themselves or have benefited from them in the past

The more money you take from a thief, the better libertarian you are. The fact that libertarians even realize that taxation is theft puts them miles ahead of anyone on the left or the right. The only way they would actually be hypocrites is if they had an opportunity to abolish the state and refused to do so. I recommend that libertarians put as much burden on the state as legally possible in order to speed things up. Take every dime you can from a thief.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[ultranova]

Figuring out who is a psychopath would probably have usefulness outside of just finding criminals. Probably don't want to hire a psychopath or marry one.

Just what we needed: yet more ways to be judged and ostracized through no fault of your own.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[ShanghaiBill]

Now 99.99% of the people who seem suspicious are dangerous rather than 99.9999%.

If the suspect pool is the general public, then cutting it down by 99% still leaves way too many people. But what if the suspect pool is much smaller? What if there is a serial rapist in a town of 5000? You can use this test to cut the suspect pool down to 50. Of those 50, 20 are female, another 15 have solid alibis, 10 don't fit the description. Of the remaining five, three agree to voluntary DNA testing to eliminate themselves from the suspect list. Does this mean that one of the remaining two did it? Of course not, but focusing some resources on investigating them might be a better option than checking out the other 4950.

I am not claiming that this test actually works. I am just pointing out that a test that is wrong 99% of the time can still be useful under some circumstances.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[ultranova]

A normal (non-narcissistic) person is aware that there are things known to others that are not known to him.

A normal (non-narcissistic) person also demands pretty extraordinary proof before letting people be put on FBI databases because they used a period in a Twitter post. In fact, a non-narcissistic person might object to such practices even in the presence of definitive evidence that this is a sign of psychopathy, seeing how another poster already speculated on making this list public so you could be kept unemployed and ostracized based on it.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[artor3]

And every single one of those government officials was a psychopath, or sociopath, or similar. Maybe if we were better at recognizing the symptoms, they could have been helped when they were young, instead of letting their disease fester.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Stoutlimb]

"If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while."

Most politicians use twitter these days. This should be interesting.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Jiro]

There's a better answer to that: those things have good effects (people can use them) and bad effects (money is taken from people so other people can use them) and you oppose them because you think the bad outweighs the good. You can't really "choose not to take them" because you can only choose not to take the good effects, but you can't choose not to take the bad effects. Refusing to take a college grant isn't going to get you a life without taxes that go to college grants.

Like the example goes, if the government confiscated $100 from everyone and used it to give everyone a $95 check, you would not be barred from taking the $95 check.

Not to mention that there are more negative effects than just directly being taxed. Perhaps by setting up X the government distorted the market and crowded out a private version of X that would have been more efficient. You certainly can't choose to take the private version; taking the less efficient government version is not hypocrisy, it's just cutting your losses.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Em Adespoton]

The big flaw I see with this test is that the only reason a person with psychopathic tendencies would have to post anything on twitter would be to manipulate others... and so they're going to pose as someone else, including all those telltale signs that make them not look like a psychopath. Being psychopathic doesn't make someone stupid. The only people this would flag would be stupid psychopaths... which of course is a definite first place to check when a crime has been committed, but you likely already know who they are, as they aren't covering their tracks to begin with.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Em Adespoton]

Do all? No. In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives.

Figuring out who is a psychopath would probably have usefulness outside of just finding criminals. Probably don't want to hire a psychopath or marry one.

I thought being a psychopath was a required character trait to be a successful CEO or politician? Useful in lawyers too. Psychopaths live the most normal lives when they're at the top of the power structure. Of course, in such positions a psychopath would function best if others knew of their psychopathic tendencies, as that would instate some checks and balances that would prevent them from using their disassociation for evil purposes.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[davester666]

Then, for the remaining two suspects, you run parallel independent trials to get them both convicted for the same crime.

Safety over liberty is America's new credo.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[garyebickford]

To my mind that's just putting pragmatism as a philosophy or value system ahead of libertarianism. :)

Of course, real life does intrude on every philosophy, making it impossible to behave purely with regard to the philosophy. For example, as I understand it, the Jains (used to?) believe that killing even the smallest bacterium is bad, and make great efforts to avoid killing anything. When bacteria were discovered the most extreme believers began wearing masks so as to avoid inhaling and inadvertently killing bacteria that floated in the air. One wonders what they think now, to discover that by count our bodies contain 10 times as many bacterial cells as human cells, and zillions of those bacteria die every day in this very accelerated ecosystem that we call the 'gut'.

This is just one example that every 'ism' is wrong - 'isms' are an attempt to impose a rational structure on reality, which is inherently arational - or if you prefer 'beyond rational'.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[fatphil]

Alas your test failed in this case - the rapist actually lives the next town over, but grew up in your town of 5000, and liked to go back there as he hated the daughter of the woman who ran the post office, who jilted him in high school.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[phantomfive]

all the people that bitch and complain about "freeloaders" and "people living on the government teat" that I know for a fact are collecting government services themselves or have benefited from them in the past

There's a certain personality type that will criticize others for what he most fears is his/her weakness.

I knew a guy who went around calling people government freeloaders, when he was a freeloader.
Then he called people 'old-cat-ladies', but only after he had 4 un-housebroken cats himself.
On and on like that. It was really hilarious, but I felt sorry for the poor guy. It was some kind of defense mechanism.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[1s44c]

"If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while."

Most politicians use twitter these days. This should be interesting.

Not really. Most politicians have people to handle their media image for them. They are too busy abusing their position for all they can get.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably don't want to hire a psychopath or marry one.

My wife loves being married to me. She did learn to tame me though, once she realized that sometimes I'm more like a beast than a man. She also has used me for protection from her family, who have dangerous criminals among them.

Plenty of women have dangerous dogs for protection with no problem to themselves. Human regularly tame animals far larger, stronger and more dangerous physically by applying fairly simple, easy to understand training methods. There is no reason why a woman can't marry a psychopath and be very happy, so long as she is prepared to dominate skillfully, rather than with the nagging, whining weakness that many men put up with. I'm much more capable than a dog, even though I require similar training.

I have defined winning the battle of the sexes as keeping my stuff, getting regular sex and in home access to my children in a world where the woman can at her whim move the battle to court and automatically remove all that. With this perspective, I am able to satisfy my emotional need to WIN by making her happy, since when she is happy she won't move the battle into court where I lose. As a friend remarked when I described this to him: "She probably doesn't even know she's losing".

I'm actually really good at pushing happy buttons. Much better than you, since I do it deliberately, consistently and with ruthless efficiency. It takes me about 30 seconds to turn the situation around if she's in a bad mood, face to face, by which I mean her throwing her arms around me in excitement. If you have a psychopath convinced that their self interest lies mainly in your happiness, you are in for a very happy life.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Jane Q. Public]

"Well, the test of something's value shouldn't be whether it strikes you as silly."

Yes, it should. Truly silly things are quite valuable.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Jane Q. Public]

"Second, most people do not experience those tendencies for extended durations of time."

But that's the thing... true psychopathy is not a temporary reaction to conditions. It is a persistent personality disorder.

Given that, though, your point does call into question the predictive ability of such analyses.

For example, there was a time when I have no doubt that I would have met just about any test's criteria for (the popular understanding of) paranoia. But, as it turned out, there really were people "out to get me". Now that situation has changed, and my behavior is back to... as normal as it will ever get.

At that time, I have little doubt that I could have been diagnosed with a mental illness, and the kicker is that I couldn't prove that my experiences were real (else I would have had the offenders arrested).

Since then, some of them have been arrested, and the others have learned that messing with me was not a good idea. And I can get back to a more-or-less normal life.

I have learned something from that: if you THINK you're going crazy, you probably aren't.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Ol Olsoc]

The more money you take from a thief, the better libertarian you are.

Which in turn makes you a thief.

As Ayn Rand took Social Security benefits under the name Ann O'Connor, we do indeed gain insight the dedication to principle that Libertarians have.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[sjames]

Actually, the psychopaths that manage to either not break the law of not get punished for breaking the law tend to be quite harmful in other ways. A psychopath who merely seems a bit off but is otherwise fine and functional would be very rare indeed.

The psychopath CEO for example may not provably break the law but causes billions in economic damage in order to gain millions himself while inflicting considerable emotional damage on the people around him.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Maritz]

No, most aren't dangerous, but you generally don't want one in your life. They have a tendency to lie and manipulate incessantly, sponge and steal off people etc. They don't feel empathy and aren't really someone you can count on for help in a pinch. For the most part, they're dickheads.

I think they could be an evolutionary artifact of human 'domestication' i.e. most individuals have the traits that help to build a reasonably pleasant society, but within the population there's a niche for people who aren't subject to those tendencies (empathy etc) who are going to do quite well. There's also the risk of being caught doing anti-social things and shunned, so I think there's probably a bit of bouncing around with these traits (numbers wise) over long time scales.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Grishnakh]

The only people this would flag would be stupid psychopaths... which of course is a definite first place to check when a crime has been committed

Depends on the crime. If it's something like a robbery, home invasion, etc., then definitely, any test that looks for stupid psychopaths should be useful. However, if you're looking for someone who's perpetrated billion-dollar fraud schemes, or paid off their psychopathic friends in Congress to make bad laws favorable to them, it's not going to help.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Grishnakh]

I disagree. Coming up through the military is just as valid a way to be a "government official" as rising through the bureaucracy. You're just trying to paint it as different because ancient governments were markedly different from our own, but it's really no different: lots of government officials right here in the USA rose through the military, not bureaucracy: Ulysses ("useless") S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, Colin Powell, even George Washington. Three of those were Presidents, the highest a government official can get in the US. "War heroes" frequently cross over into powerful positions in government; it's been like that throughout society.

Some more famous names of soldiers becoming government officials: Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Finally, being elected isn't necessary to be a "government official", though this was the case for the three Presidents I named above. A government is a government, no matter whether it's elected, some kind of cabal (like in China), or simply seizes power militarily (like Myanmar, Pakistan, Cuba, and lots of other places now and in recent history). So Genghis Khan is certainly a "government official"; the fact that he placed himself in that position with his own military power is irrelevant, he was the de facto government in that part of the world at the time.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Afecks]

Which in turn makes you a thief.

No, it doesn't. Theft is taking property from the rightful owner. A thief isn't a rightful owner. You should, of course, return the money to the rightful owner if they can be identified, minus a fee for your time and effort. I'm glad you agree that taxation is theft, though. That's a start.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. Or, they go to work on Wall Street and destroy the nation's economy; we call those psychopaths "bankers" (or sometimes "banksters").

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Grishnakh]

The most useful thing would be if it was really hard to be put on the ballot for public office without having a psychopathy test. Of course, it might be hard to find anyone willing to run for office if this happened...

Re:There's a rumor going around

[reub2000]

True. But you don't want to hire psychopaths as peons. If the low level employees are stealing from the company, what's left for the CEO to steal?

Re:There's a rumor going around

[reub2000]

There are plenty of non-psychopaths running for office. It's just that they're not very good at creating the bullshit that voters expect from their elected politicians.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[s.petry]

No, most aren't dangerous, but you generally don't want one in your life.

So you want me to believe that you have never shown traits that would lead you to be diagnosed as psychopathic? Tell the truth or don't say a word. I'll recommend that you go read the symptoms before making any such claim. Are you naive enough to believe you have to have more than one symptom to be diagnosed as Psychopathic, or are you being delusional?

How about I give a nice example of mass induced psychopathy: Email from CEO goes out to all employees stating "Due to financial issues we will be reducing the work force by 20%, we will be monitoring people to determine who is the best to keep and who is the best to dismiss."

Yes, just that easily we have mass induced psychopathy and even a high level of paranoia. People's mechanism for coping is normal and even expected. This is just one example of countless possible, and it does not make the person a "dickhead" as you state.

Without those responses, people do go insane. Trying to suppress normal responses is when we have things like Post Office shootings and the Uni-bomber.

Honestly, I think I realize what is broken in your logic: There is really no way of determining when someone is showing temporary symptoms or permanent symptoms, you only have a way of testing for symptoms. Such testing is not possible by the way, just like there is no way of looking at Genes to determine if people will have it because everyone has the potential and even does show traits from time to time (at least).

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Grishnakh]

Maybe at the local levels, but that's probably about it. Above that, it's very hard for a non-psychopath to compete. At best, they might get on the national ballot as a third-party candidate, but then everyone says "you'll waste your vote if you vote for him" so he doesn't get elected.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[Maritz]

Thanks for the overly hostile reply, I would regard psychopathic traits as traits rather than symptoms. You assume I've never read about these. I wouldn't claim to be an expert, I did some sporadic reading about psychopathy after reading John Ronson's highly amusing book 'the psychopath test'.

The Bob Hare checklist is a pretty widely used method of diagnosing psychopaths, and in addition there are structural neurological differences between psychopaths and 'normal' people, particularly in the amygdala. If your position is that it doesn't exist and is all a mislabelling of things people sometimes do as a result of their environment, then I'm afraid you might well be the naive one here. Also, if you're assuming that I'm behind this study or its conclusions you're also mistaken, I think the idea of diagnosing psychopaths from tweets is idiotic.

There are, however, people who don't feel empathy or guilt for genetic/neurological reasons. That much I would accept and I think any reasonable person should.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[uninformedLuddite]

I am one of those strange people that likes to sing to his dog. This is one of the songs to the tune of 'Lola - she was a showgirl'(dont know real title) His name was Humphrey His head was bumpy A phrenologist's delight He gave the doctors all a fright +5 gets you another verse

Re:There's a rumor going around

[reub2000]

They have a hard time competing even at the local level. But when you start talking about wasting your vote, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. If nothing else by voting for a third party you're making the statement that democrat or republican it doesn't make a difference.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[s.petry]

My apologies if you took my words as "Hostile", it was meant to be more "direct" than hostile.

What you seem to have missed completely is how it would be possible to distinguish temporary symptoms from permanent, which is an obviously large issue with using "Tweets" to diagnose someone.

Look at your last statement for a moment, then compare to what I previously stated. How many environment issues could cause a person to have a variety of those symptoms? They are incredibly numerous. Guy steals your neighbor's bike and gets hit by a car, do you feel any empathy for the person? What if he was stealing the bike to sell for money to feed his family since he can't find a job and unemployment ran out? Do you feel the same empathy if your neighbor was abusing his wife or kids, or sold dope?

I don't take issue with people having tests or knowing symptoms. What I take issue with is that someone could be labeled permanently in some database as psychopathic due to a state of mind that is almost always subjective and temporary.

From TFA remember that you are not talking about someone doing this labeling because of an extensive test, but rather due to 1-1024 characters of text. This would remove things critical such as base lines and responses to at least dozens of subject matter areas.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[electrons_are_brave]

No, this system tries to predict the future by reading posts on twitter..

Why is there always such a knee-jerk reaction against these studies on Slashdot?

It's interesting that people's tweets reflect their personality. And before you say "well, duh!" to that, the way that people with different psychopathologies use language helps give insights into the part of the brain affected and helps map cognitions. There has been a lot of work on schitzophrenia and language, and I for one find it interesting that some personalitiy types might use more full stops when writing. Who knows, that little piece of information may add with other little bits to help psychologists discover something.

Could a certain percentage of people who commit violent crime share the common trait of psychopathy? Certainly. Do all? No.

No, but it's about 40-75% of those who are in prison for violent crimes.

In fact, a rather large percentage of the population are psychopathic, yet lead normal, non-violent lives. .

True, if by large you mean 2-7%

Far more people that are not psychopathic commit crimes than those with psychopathy.

The majority of people who commit crimes are not psychopathic, but if you are talking about violent crimes, then I would think the number of people with (a) empathy deficits and (b) exploitative attitudes to others then the proportion would skyrocket.

The end result of this research is rather clear: Watch what you say on the internet, the FBI might flag you. And that's a far more dangerous threat than a few psychopaths walking around. If you look at the biggest mass murders in human history, every single one of them was a government official. Think about that for a while.

This bit I agree with you.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[electrons_are_brave]

What I take issue with is that someone could be labeled permanently in some database as psychopathic due to a state of mind that is almost always subjective and temporary.

From TFA remember that you are not talking about someone doing this labeling because of an extensive test, but rather due to 1-1024 characters of text. This would remove things critical such as base lines and responses to at least dozens of subject matter areas.

While I do agree with the broad point you are making, I think it is the misuse of science outside of the group of people who really understand the science that is the problem here. The fact that science may be misused doesn't make it bad science.Psychology is quite adept at understanding that (a) everyone is capable of "psychopathic" behaviour at times (b) in some situations behaving psychopathically is the expected, normal and sensible way to behave but (c) this doesn't change the fact that some people behave psychopathically with such consistency across situations, and in such inappropraite situations that a diagnosis is appropriate. While culture, learned behaviour and the environment all play a role, current knowledge strongly suggests that some people are "born psychopaths".

Re:There's a rumor going around

[electrons_are_brave]

Psychologists would never diagnose just from a "test" - that's the sort of crap that employers do because they want simplicity and psychology is a complex field. A diagnosis from a psychologist often includes tests, but this information is contextualized into a persons broader life. For example, one thing a psychologist would look at it of you turned up at hospital raving that google was spying on you would be how suddenly this belief started, since this type of paranoia could be a sign of anything (drug use or withdrawal, a stroke or brain tumor, a relapse into schitzophrenia, a personality disorder, chronic stress) all of which have a different pattern of onset. Family history, job history, medical records etc are also looked at. Plus they also ask you questions.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[electrons_are_brave]

To be pedantic, the Hare checklist isn't used to diagnose psychopaths per se given that "psychopathy" isn't a mental illness under the DSM. I'm not sure that the DSM has it right in this instance.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[electrons_are_brave]

Thanks for that link.

Re:There's a rumor going around

[s.petry]

While I do agree with the broad point you are making, I think it is the misuse of science outside of the group of people who really understand the science that is the problem here.

This statement is absolutely fallacy. First, it's not a broad point. It's a very specific point. "Science" has a criteria defined by the Scientific Method. There is no possible way that this is Science, and claiming it is science would require a completely new definition of Scientific Method.

Second, it's not about misuse at all. This relates to what is stated above, it is not and can not be science. If it is not Science, there can be no such thing as "misuse of science". Most pseudo science, such as this would be, is almost _always_ misused (and calling this pseudo science is an over statement).

Psychology is quite adept at understanding that (a) everyone is capable of "psychopathic" behaviour at times (b) in some situations behaving psychopathically is the expected, normal and sensible way to behave but (c) this doesn't change the fact that some people behave psychopathically with such consistency across situations, and in such inappropraite situations that a diagnosis is appropriate.

If one could use actual "Science" on the subjects I might agree with you. Reviewing a string of text limited to 1024 characters makes it impossible to perform any Scientific experimentation or analysis. Even if you had 100 of these strings for the same person, it would be a failure without knowing numerous key elements required for the Scientific Method.

While culture, learned behaviour and the environment all play a role, current knowledge strongly suggests that some people are "born psychopaths".

I never stated that this was impossible to be born that way, I stated that the majority, meaning 99.999% of people, can be diagnosed with any number of psychological disorders ranging from being a psychopath, to a sociopath, to paranoid, etc.. etc... and so on and so on at any given time (based on coping mechanisms due to the environment). There is no current testing to determine if someone is permanently or temporarily any one of those things, and measuring someone's "tweet" is not the way of performing such testing! In order to do such testing, tests would have to be against biology, not a "tweet". Tests would also have to meet the criteria for the Scientific Method, which is impossible to do based on someones "tweet".

Good-Bye Civil Rights

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this not ending well. Just another nail in the coffin

Re:Good-Bye Civil Rights

[craigminah]

Try doing this with skin color, religion, race, sexual preference, etc. and you'll quickly find an angry torch-wielding mod at your front door. Switching things up to look at parameters perceived to be under the control of the person and it's ok. Kind of ironic people don't see this as an even bigger potential threat to civil rights than anything else. Like anything, this will start of with good intentions and be limited in scope (e.g. Twitter) but soon, if funded, it will be used for evil and be linked to Google's database to refill prisons around the USA. Yay.

Re:Good-Bye Civil Rights

[ganjadude]

I wonder if a discrimination on the grounds of the style of speech on chooses to use could be attempted if someone from the ABC of your choice arrested you for tweets

Re:Good-Bye Civil Rights

[ganjadude]

*one chooses to use

Re:Good-Bye Civil Rights

[AngryDeuce]

As soon as they try to implement it in earnest it will end up being slapped down. Almost everyone I know on social media isn't acting as themselves, they're acting as the idealized version of themselves that they want other people to see.

They'll bring in some angry basement dweller chan-tard based on his online persona, and they'll quickly find that he's just a scared, immature little fuck-wit, and this will all go out the window. Either that, or some politician's son or daughter will set off a few triggers and it'll end up squashed that way.

Either way, I'm not very concerned.

Re:Good-Bye Civil Rights

[craigminah]

I already reported your type to be analyzed as a possible threat to mankind. Please report to the disintegration chamber immediately.

Using Periods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Using periods is simply properly using the English language. (And expletives have their proper place as well--although this one is more ironic than angry :) )

Re:Using Periods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Using periods is simply properly using the English language. (And expletives have their proper place as well--although this one is more ironic than angry :) )

Fucking.a.right.

Re:Using Periods?

[cheekyjohnson]

What are you, some sort of psychopath? Flag him!

Re:Using Periods?

[kenh]

I agree, to me this points out the trivial nature of their 'research' - can I safely assume that a slavish insistence that all the words in your tweets be spelled properly is the hallmark of a feeble mind, and that truly intelligent users have mastered so-called TXT-speak?

Re:Using Periods?

[AchilleTalon]

Notice from your favorite social media staff: I'm sorry, but due to your inappropriate use of periods, you are banned from our social media. We found you are in fact just asocial.

Re:Using Periods?

[AchilleTalon]

Notice to your favorite social media staff: I'm sorry, but due to your inappropriate use of profiling methods, you are banned from my list of social media. In fact, I just found you are an asocial media.

Re:Using Periods?

[Tibixe]

Are you two schizophrenic?

Re:Using Periods?

[swalve]

My guess is that in an environment where brevity and casualness is the norm, using fully structured sentences and grammar is something that identifies the twitterer as A.B.Normal. (IE, failing to adhere to the social norms of the environment.) That trait itself doesn't mean anything, but combined with the other ones it can (presumably?) identify someone as being a psycho.

Re:Using Periods?

[__aaltlg1547]

i think the lack Capitalization and lack of Proper punctuation may be more Useful in Finding people suffering from Various Mental Disorders on the other hand it may merely Indicate a shortcoming In the posters education isn,t it obvious that when some one fails to Use punctuation and Capitalization correctly that they are a Tragedy in Waiting clearly the fbi is Onto Something or at least they Think They Are it cant be simply a case of people Being too lazy to punctuate their sentences or find the fucking shift key many messages on twitter come from mobile devices where it can be pretty damned inconvenient to apply capitals and punctuation marks as compared to a proper keyboard

Re:Using Periods?

[CanHasDIY]

i think the lack Capitalization and lack of Proper punctuation may be more Useful in Finding people suffering from Various Mental Disorders on the other hand it may merely Indicate a shortcoming In the posters education isn,t it obvious that when some one fails to Use punctuation and Capitalization correctly that they are a Tragedy in Waiting clearly the fbi is Onto Something or at least they Think They Are it cant be simply a case of people Being too lazy to punctuate their sentences or find the fucking shift key many messages on twitter come from mobile devices where it can be pretty damned inconvenient to apply capitals and punctuation marks as compared to a proper keyboard

What you did: it's there, and I see it.

Really?

[WrongSizeGlass]

The ability to predict psychopaths in under 140 characters? What have all these mental health professionals been doing? All these face-to-face interviews, "sessions" and observations. Maybe if they submitted their reports in only 140 characters they would have figured all this out a long time ago. /sarcasm

Re:Really?

[reub2000]

Probably is bullshit. The twitter responses where compared to a survey. In other words they calibrated their instrument by simply asking people if they're a psychopath. Lets see, one of the most well known trait of psychopaths is their tendency to lie.

Re:Really?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Lets see, one of the most well known trait of psychopaths is their tendency to lie.

Is that true ... or are you just a psychopath?

Re:Really?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Did I see a PERIOD there you psychopath stop Off to the happy home with you stop That is if the FBI do not come calling first stop

Re:Really?

[reub2000]

yes.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. If somebody uses Twitter, he can’t be right in his head in the first place. ^^

(There are only two types of "people" that use Twitter: 40+ midlife-crisis people who want to be "cool" again, and marketing companies posing as celebrities. No exceptions.)

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The ability to predict psychopaths in under 140 characters?"

***Psychopath test***
You think your crap is worth following? Check!
You follow the crap of strangers you have never seen? Check!

If one or more of the above are checked, congratulations, you're a Psychopath.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to predict psychopaths in under 140 characters? What have all these mental health professionals been doing? All these face-to-face interviews, "sessions" and observations. Maybe if they submitted their reports in only 140 characters they would have figured all this out a long time ago. /sarcasm

I have a crazy idea... Maybe they use multiple tweets? Mind blowing, I know, but 2 tweets add up to 280 characters! Maybe you could even use 3! Or even more?!

A longitudinal tweetment?

Re:Really?

[AchilleTalon]

Who says this profiling is using only a single tweet? It uses far more than 140 characters.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets see, one of the most well known trait of psychopaths is their tendency to lie.

And that's why many of them become politicans.

Don't dare to mod this as funny.

Re:Really?

[LurkerXXX]

He's not a psychopath. He doesn't come to any of the meetings.

Re:Really?

[Paul Slocum]

Ah, you must not have used Twitter before. It lets you tweet more than once, what a cool feature!

Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

By these qualifications, every twelve year old is a psychopath. Also, seriously, using periods? You mean, as in proper fucking writing? What else, proper capitalization of sentences and pronouns?

Re:Bullshit.

[Black Parrot]

By these qualifications, every twelve year old is a psychopath. Also, seriously, using periods? You mean, as in proper fucking writing? What else, proper capitalization of sentences and pronouns?

Maybe "anal retentive" is a slippery slope toward "psychopathic".

Re:Bullshit.

[azalin]

By these qualifications, every twelve year old is a psychopath. Also, seriously, using periods? You mean, as in proper fucking writing? What else, proper capitalization of sentences and pronouns?

In my experience being twelve and hitting puberty won't exactly result in stable persona. It takes them a while to get used to the changes in their live.

Re:Bullshit.

[hcs_$reboot]

Maybe the same algorithm should be applied to AC comments on /. ...

loudbot

[HighBit]

oh dear, I wonder what would happen if they ran the model against loudbot - http://twitter.com/loudbot -- it'd probably score off the charts

Analyzing myself

[KiloByte]

> Curse words.
Hardly any, but mostly due to many years on a MUD with strict rules. Abusing "damn" and so on, though.

> Angry responses to other people
Hell yeah.

> including swearing and use of the word "hate."
Got a bigger vocabulary, but yeah.

> Using the word "we."
Check, to a big extent.

> Using periods.
You mean, so those with no punctuation are not morons but normal people? Blah. Check.

> Using filler words such as 'blah'
See above.

> and 'I mean'
Check.

>and 'um.'
"hrm", "hmm" and "ghrmblah" (see also two paragraphs above)

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Re:Analyzing myself

[WrongSizeGlass]

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Sure there is. First, you'll seek twitter therapy and twitter assimilation resistance resistance. If that succeeds your tweets will be indistinguishable from 99% of the population (and most of your followers will finally be able to understand them).

If your TT&TARR fails you'll have to go to twitter court (most trials are very short) or simply go to twitter confessions and throw yourself on the mercy of 12 randomly selected twitter addicts. Once you're sentenced to twitter prison (where all you say and read are tweets) you'll be able to start paying your debt to the twitterverse. When the time comes for your parole review they'll analyze your tweets during your sentence to determine if you're ready for early tweetlease or if you need to try harder.

So yes, there is hope for you ... though not much hope for society at large if we're making DSM-V quality diagnoses based on twitter (unless we're determining that those who use twitter really have too much time on their hands).

Re:Analyzing myself

[KiloByte]

First, you'll seek twitter therapy and twitter assimilation resistance resistance.

No sane, or insane-but-ok person reads twitter already. Nullroute the blighters. I meant mailing lists and IRC. Twitter is hardly better than Fecesbook.

your tweets will be indistinguishable from 99% of the population

Since 99% of world's population doesn't use twitter, this is already done.

Re:Analyzing myself

[hort_wort]

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Just don't use Twitter and you'll be fine. That's the biggest thing I got out of it.

Re:Analyzing myself

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Did you have a happy childhood? If so, you'll probably be fine, even if you're a functional psychopath.

If you grew up in an abusive/broken home, you might want to go in for the PET scan and talk to a neuropsych doc about warning signs of impending trouble, especially if you have a bad life event happen.

If you've been through training to enhance psychopathic traits in normal people (e.g. military, politics, corporate ladder-climbing) you might also be at a higher risk.

There are support groups and decent pharmaceuticals that can help.

Re:Analyzing myself

[Culture20]

I just tell them it's like Ultima Online but with a Zork interface. They know what Zork is, but I have to explain Ultima Online as a 2D WoW.

Re:Analyzing myself

[Ghubi]

So, you mean, is there any hope for me?

Yes, you will do well in politics or investment banking.

What a dumb idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right, have these people looked at the comments posted on youtube ?
Freaking criminals, all of them. :)

as my last therapist advised

[aheadinabox]

Psychotherapy and analysis is as much art as it is science. So in light of that little gem of info, why not analyze tweets. Might as well read tea leaves.

Re:as my last therapist advised

[azalin]

Well better tea leaves, than the intestines of small animals. Even though the later practice has been quite popular in Europe in the days before tea leaves were widely available, it is somewhat frowned upon today. Performing hepatoscopy on a regular basis, might even flag you as an psychopath these days.

Re:as my last therapist advised

[Anonymous Coward]

When any evidence can be used to support any theory, it's all art and no science. It's why real scientists have no respect for it. Post-1980s psychological theories and therapies (e.g., CBT, DBT, etc.) are a little better, but not by much -- just look at their refusal to use real placebos or direct comparisons to other talk therapies in studies. Psychiatry's the best of the bunch, but that's really not saying much.

Re:as my last therapist advised

[UpnAtom]

As a psychotherapist, I can say "spot on".

On the other hand, in order to eliminate variables and attempt the holy grail of double-blind testing, treatments are dumbed down into near uselessness.

Thus the interventions which are getting recognised by science are those which are ultra-simple: EMDR and CBT.

Of course, it's impossible to do any skilled face-to-face intervention as a double-blind experiment. When the scientific community recognises this, we'll be comparing therapy to therapy, or even therapist to therapist.

Re:as my last therapist advised

[beaverdownunder]

As an aside: the problem with CBT is, to paraphrase AA, it "only works if you work it".

I went from being cripplingly OCD and agoraphobic to functional enough to do some pretty extraordinary things from that perspective entirely on the back of CBT, with no medication. But I WANTED to, and I think that's the real key with CBT.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled Slashdotting...

Re:as my last therapist advised

[swalve]

You can't do tests with placebos and controls because every person is different, and every problem is different. What would seem like removing variability is actually increasing it. How do you know your control really isn't a crazy person who doesn't know it yet? You can't figure out why someone is depressed without treating them, and that invalidates the control.

Narcissism?

[humanrev]

rate users' levels of narcissism

If Twitter users are anything like Facebook's, then if you're trying to use narcissism as a rating for psychopathic behavior you're gonna get a LOT of hits.

Re:Narcissism?

[jaymemaurice]

My awesome facebook profile is narcissism free. I only use facebook to show others me doing the awesome things I have done so they can comment in ways that make me feel good... but the band Carcass is good, just not interesting as me.

Re:Narcissism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Narcissism isn't just "hey, everybody, look at me!" It's a severe mental disorder brought on by a deep-seated sense of self-loathing. A narcissist finds himself so repulsive and unworthy of love that he creates a facade, a fake person and pretends to be that in order to hide from himself. But it's generally not good enough to do this alone, he needs to rope in other people to help convince him. These people will eventually catch on and stop feeding his ego, so he kind "uses up" people and has to move on to new ones all the time. And woe to anyone who gets too close to him -- close loved ones will be allowed to see behind his mask, and once they've done so they will slip inside his circle of loathing, and become targets of his self-hatred.
  The narcissist is actually fairly easy to spot compared to many other mental illnesses. The narcissist is emotionally immature (because his real self never develops -- all his time and energy is devoted to maintaining the facade); he tries to appear perfect in every way, better at you in everything (though it will be nearly all talk), and can never admit fault. A narcissist hates "I'm sorry" more than any other phrase and will do anything possible to turn all conflicts into somebody else's fault.

  Narcissism is like an addiction, in that the narcissist rides a continual rollercoaster of emotion; up when he's got people buying into his fake persona, when suddenly he's perfect and all-competent, but inevitably the facade cracks and shatters, and he's forced to confront the sad, neglected thing at his core, and he falls into depression. At this point he can begin the long, slow, difficult task of integrating himself and becoming a real person, or take the quick, easy, feel-good route and start rebuilding his mask. He will likely do the latter, dozens of times before he eventually dies.
  The worst thing is that narcissism effectively negates the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment; such things require that the patient want to get better, and the narcissist doesn't want to get better -- he's perfect right now, see?

  (I myself was a narcissist. I'm recovering, whereas my 40 year old narcissist brother-in-law still hangs out at strip clubs because strippers, being desperate for male attention, are easy to get admiration from. Especially true if you give them nearly every dollar you get. You should see his facebook account, it would be comical to anyone who didn't know him well enough to know how sad it is. His profile is stunningly grandiose, even for facebook. He makes himself out like some kind of comic book villain, while his commenters are all young women who post incredibly dumb shit. Even for facebook. If it weren't for all the emotional abuse he puts my sister through, I'd just laugh, but I can't. So yeah, sometimes you realy can tell just by looking.)

90% of people who post online Psychopaths

[Seizurebleak]

Almost all the comments I see on the internet are narcissistic and/or angry.

The use of the period doesn't really surprise me, the biggest internet wankers absolutely relish in using perfect grammar, probably because it makes them feel superior to everybody else.

Re:90% of people who post online Psychopaths

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't expect psychopaths to post very many angry comments, primarily because they cannot feel anger.

Re:90% of people who post online Psychopaths

[jaymemaurice]

The use of the period doesn't really surprise me. The biggest internet wankers absolutely relish in using perfect grammar; probably because it makes them feel superior to everybody else.

Um, yeah, right, so... every teenager in the world

[divisionbyzero]

will get flagged as a psychopath. Nice. What a stupid idea.

Re:Mitt Romney @MittRomney

[Black Parrot]

Ron Paul’s “Audit The Fed” bill is a reminder of his tireless efforts to promote sound money and a more transparent Federal Reserve.

Now *that'* is indicative of a psychopath.

I especially note your use of rsquo, ldquo, and rdquo, and the absence of lsquo. We'll send *two* padded wagons to pick you up.

Bruce Sterling - Distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Sterling had an excellent take on this kind of technology in his book "Distraction". The US government had software to profile potential nutters, which they also lent to some less-than-savoury friends. These friends compiled their own lists of nutters, but instead of using it to track them they spammed the nutters with emails telling them to go and attack political opponents. So anyone these friends disliked had a steady series of violent and deranged people trying to kill them.

Re:Mitt Romney @MittRomney

[value_added]

I especially note your use of rsquo, ldquo, and rdquo, and the absence of lsquo.

I don't keep up. Is that Portuguese or Esperanto?

Re:Um, yeah, right, so... every teenager in the wo

[azalin]

will get flagged as a psychopath. Nice. What a stupid idea.

Well it's about time, puberty is officially recognized as a mental illness.

Blah, blah, blah

[Anonymous Coward]

We. Hate. Using. Periods.

Re:Mitt Romney @MittRomney

[Anonymous Coward]

They are ISO character entities, without the amps. They can be used in Portuguese, Esperanto, English, and most other languages.

SEO guys will open a second business

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

These Search Engine Optimization guys are well experienced in gaming the search engine algorithms. It will be child's play for them to game this twitter psychopath detection algorithms. They will branch off into side business,

"Are you afraid your tweets will trigger the FBI psychopath detection hot buttons? Are you afraid the Government jack booted thugs are going to knock down your door? Don't despair! Don't log off!! Tweet to your heart's content! Just subscribe to our UTR [*] service for just $9.99 a month and we will unobtrusively intervene and moderate your tweets! Your message will get through! FBI would not know. Subscribe now.

[*] UTR is the registered trademark of Under The Radar technologies, all rights reserved."

Now we won't be back to the square one. We would be back to the square negative 10. FBI is overloaded with the false positives. The real psychopaths are laughing at you too.

I Fucking Hate...

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucking hate stupidity like this being passed off as "sciency". I mean, next up they'll claim to use palm scanners to determine my future actions. Blah! We need to vote these types of articles down. It's worthless shit!

I guess the only thing between me and a psychopath is that I don't use The Twitter.

Idiots!

So, basically, speaking English.

[Arancaytar]

Some of the Twitter clues: Curse words. Angry responses to other people, including swearing and use of the word "hate." Using the word "we." Using periods. Using filler words such as 'blah' and 'I mean' and 'um.

Speaking English either formally or informally and either without emotion or with emotion. I have also heard that almost all of them breathed regularly and wore clothing. Those are relevant clues that might help recognize the next one early.

On the other hand, that they all owned assault weapons is purely a coincidence.

Re:So, basically, speaking English.

[BlueStrat]

"On the other hand, that they [psychopaths] all owned assault weapons is purely a coincidence."

So I guess all the slashers, stranglers, people who drop someone off a building, hit them with a car, set little kids on fire, or cops that kill somebody they've arrested while the victim is in handcuffs and face-down, or leaders that convince an entire nation to commit mass genocide (after first disarming the populace) are all shining beacons of sanity.

Gramps, who owns and carries an AR-15 sport carbine on his large ranch in the S.W. needs to be institutionalized. Same for Yukon Bob living in the Alaskan wilderness carrying a sport carbine.

Got it.

Strat

Re:So, basically, speaking English.

[Anonymous Coward]

A tendency to vehemently attack any criticism of private gun ownership are a common theme as well. I'll make a note to steer clear of any movie theaters you frequent.

Full stops

[Roger W Moore]

Using periods is simply properly using the English language.

Not quite, if you are properly using the English language (and not American) you can only use periods to identify female psychopaths.

Re:Full stops

[Culture20]

But I thought male Englishmen were so womanly that they have periods too.

Re:Full stops

[Roger W Moore]

But I thought male Englishmen were so womanly that they have periods too.

No, you are thinking of the female Englishmen. ;-)

Implying those qualities are illegal

[loufoque]

So basically, they're implying that if you're narcissist or machiavellianist, which are both valid of traits of human nature, you should be arrested?
What a nice display of tolerance.

Re:Implying those qualities are illegal

[artor3]

No, they're not implying anything of the sort. You just made up the part about getting arrested to feed your own victim complex.

Re:Implying those qualities are illegal

[loufoque]

I suggest you look up what "implying" means.

Um, so I don't get this fucking article at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, we all know what these assholes at the FBI are all about. Its idiots like those that are ruining the god-damned internet. Blah! I hate when they do stuff like that!

Son of a Gizwagg

[gishzida]

Um... I've been found out... but who cares? After all, trees live in a forest. I live in /.

What do you do with the data?

[seven of five]

All right. So the business about scanning tweets is kind of silly. But identifying dangerous psychopaths has value, if we can prevent things like mass shootings. What if some other technique worked? Would you put the names in a database? Lock people up just to be sure? If the FBI had this magic information, what would they do with it?

Psycho-tweet

[roman_mir]

There is nothing wrong with psychopaths, it's the so called 'normal' people that we should be all wary about.

wow, so relevant

[eyenot]

Now, I'm not going to read the article, because the poster decided to make a reference to a fictional character. Patrick Batman isn't a real person, and has no bearing on any kind of studies of any relevance to any subject that might be of any use to actual criminal studies except in some oblique, culturally related way. Could watching too many movies make you do stupid things, even kill people? Yeah, I'm 88% certain of it. Does knowing that make me a criminal psychologist? No, no it doesn't.

Thanks a lot, there, SHERLOCK HOLMES!

well

[Titan1080]

according to some of those clue words, the entire republican party is a psychopath.

Phew!

[Psicopatico]

Good thing I don't use Twitter then.
I think.
Um, yeah.

Why not expand the field a bit?

[Minwee]

DrDave Dave Holden
@leon You are in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down...

Re:What's the predictive power?

[UpnAtom]

What the heck is MCAP? Surely they're not using a sample where 80.657% are 'psychopaths'?

people you want to see analyzed

[indy_Muad'Dib]

i would love to see them analyze the goddamn batman https://twitter.com/god_damn_batman

Oh NOOOO

[cleveralias]

no no, I am not a psychopath. I just work with a herd of alpha males and have to speak fluent alpha to interact with them.

Using Periods?

[Steve1952]

Oh great, after years of grammar in er, grammar school, now I'll have to unlearn ending sentences with a period

Do we want pre-crime?

[trout007]

Instead of the gun/anti-gun debate I think it would be more appropriate to talk about if we want to live in a surveillance state where our every action and word is scoured to see if we are a threat. I would prefer to have the police and courts concentrate on catching, prosecuting, and detaining people that have already committed a crime. The reason these types of crimes receive attention is because of how random and pointless they seem. But many more lives could be saved more cheaply if we would concentrate our efforts on keeping people behind bars that have been convicted of a violent crime and release everyone convicted of non-violent offenses.

Um

[badzilla]

I don't understand why Slashdot posts with "um" annoy me so much, but they do. Um often seems to accompany a reply when not only disagreeing with someone but implying that they were stupid as well. Maybe there is something to this research. Anyway, um-people, please put yourselves on the psycho list.

1984

[wbr1]

Big brother is watching you....140 characters at a time.

We're boned

[emag]

Well, um, I am. I mean, I fucking swear all the god damned time on Twitter. So, yeah, I also use periods (and other punctuation). I'll respond angrily to people... I hate this shit...

Re:Mitt Romney @MittRomney

[camperdave]

They are ISO character entities, without the amps. They can be used in Portuguese, Esperanto, English, and most other languages.

Specifically: right and left single and double quotes. Which is which is left as an exercise for the reader.

Fuck this!

[VikingOfNorth]

We hate this piece of shit system! It's, um, a breach on our privacy, or some other blah blah blah. I mean, I wish we just could beat the living shit out of the guy who came up with this and stuff.

It's not the psychopaths.

[Anonymous Coward]

Psychopaths cause minimal damage to society We should be looking for the sociopaths in government and business.
They are the true terrorists.

Twitter meets Precrime

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if you're using model that contains an algorithm which attempts to measure a personality trait like narcicism, which has no defined metric in psychiatry (according to Nassir Ghaemi), what does it say about the validity of the overall attempt?

Perhaps it's a bit hubristic to believe this effort has a realistic chance of success. On the other hand it might also be an attempt to manipulate the perception of the attempt in order to elevate the researchers in the eyes of their peers. Either way, if law enforcement comes to believe they should allocate funds toward the development of such technology, at least they picked a target rich environment.

I'm all a twitter with anticipation of the first successful PreCrime incarceration. Of course I'm assuming that habeas corpus will still be in suspension and that the suspect won't just be remotely targeted for summary judgment by drone.

Re:Twitter meets Precrime

[garyebickford]

So, if you're using model that contains an algorithm which attempts to measure a personality trait like narcicism, which has no defined metric in psychiatry

Umm, it appears to me that such a metric definition would result from research, possibly including (not solely, but additionally) this work.

Of course, IMHO the DSM-type definitions of behavior and psychological syndromes is based on a very problematical fundamental model. Psychology is presently still laboring in a paradigm similar to chemistry or biology in the 18th century - descriptive but not structural. If we look at plants or animals, for example, to some extent we can track both the genetics and the influence of hormones, enzymes, etc. during development to predict how the plant or animal will look in the future. In a few areas we are now starting to be able to see how low levels of cortisol during embryonic development might affect the size of a particular area of the brain; and we are beginning to get a handle on how different parts of the brain interact (it's a lot more like a republic of rather cantankerous voters than the smooth-running single machine we always considered it to be).

As we learn more, we'll get past the 'talking cure' for most psychological issues. It's possible that adjusting hormone levels and behavioral work on CU (calculating-unemotional) children will reduce greatly the percentage who grow up to be Ted Bundy - or Bernie Madoff. OTOH - it's arguable that the society needs a certain percentage of Bernie Madoffs. If not, why are they there? Or are those folks just an extreme case of a useful characteristic?

They never heard of Jon Ronson

[cellocgw]

"The Psychopath Test" author Jon Ronson pretty much makes the case that there isn't any test.

So, um, yeah.

[darkain]

So, um, yeah. Apparently we, erm, I mean I am a psychopath because of a few fucking words I like to say? blah. I hate articles like this.

Oh. Oops.

[Johann Lau]

I don't use Twitter, but I'd be surprised if my slashdot post history wouldn't score me a cool 10 out of 10 the psycho chart :(

Not saying I'm not a psycho, either. Mainly just shrugging. The way I see it, people who go along, don't mind, and sleep tight are quite the monsters, too. As Erich Fried said, "don't doubt those who say the are scared, but be scared of those who say they have no doubts". Gimme the confused, the psychos, the angry, the frustrated -- at least they're salvageable. Because, to be sick of the heart, you first have to have a heart. PERIOD... and no amount of blah blah can change my opinion on that.

I do NOT wanna be a sociopath, though. I'd be scared of, but interested in, "checklists" for that. I'm pretty sure they don't say "fuck" or "blah". They keep kill lists, they keep them nice and tidy, and they have their vests washed by lawyers. Personally, I hate that. You know them maybe, you surely pay their security guards. The scientists also know them, they're riding their dicks after all. Soooooo...... when will we see some *real*, daring research? Uhm.

Re:Um, yeah, right, so... every teenager in the wo

[divisionbyzero]

will get flagged as a psychopath. Nice. What a stupid idea.

Well it's about time, puberty is officially recognized as a mental illness.

LOL. :-)

Bipolar people are not psychopaths

[eggstasy]

And they hate everything all the time, as a result of passive-aggressiveness during the depressive phases, or mere aggressiveness and grandiosity on the manic ones, or simply a tendency to hyperbolize their description of the world based on their own extreme feelings and disinhibition. They will also, of course, get into angry arguments.

Go Fuck Yourself Federal Bureau Of Intimidation !

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that will put me on the hate list. Oh yeah, also Fuck Mr Bush who started a war on a pretext. He just killed 100000 people because he was a fuckwit your buddies now protect.

Goddammit!

[Mister Liberty]

Mean I hate these kinds of 'studies'.
Arent' we all. I mean, um, potential wrongdoers!

FUCK, I thought Twitter was gone.

[arkane1234]

I thought Twitter was gone, I haven't heard anybody hear me talking about it.
Oh well... let the pool of people who use it have their fun.

Re:FUCK, I thought Twitter was gone.

[arkane1234]

s/hear/near/ ;)

It'd be more interesting if it were more personal.

[jonadab]

> I think it's much more compelling for psychologists to use to understand large communities

Yeah, okay, sure, that could be useful, potentially, after fifty years of study.

But, on a personal note, I'd be much more immediately interested in the technology if I could easily find out what my own numbers are and how those compare to the collated stats (mean, median, standard deviation, etc).

Re:Also, Mr Hitler

[Grishnakh]

It's not just tyrants who rise to power militarily through violence; this happened right here in the USA too. A group of influential people decided they didn't like being ruled by the English crown any more, managed to convince a bunch more people to violently rebel, they had a war, managed to win the war, and afterwards the top general was elected President for two terms. Luckily, he wasn't much of a tyrant; he refused to seize power and become dictator even though he probably would have succeeded, and he refused to serve more than two terms, and is generally regarded by historians as one of the best Presidents in US history. (Too bad we can't get anyone else even a tenth as good as him these days.)

This is just BS

[tgv]

If this were serious, they'd present it at an APA or CogSci conference. Instead, they present it at DefCon. And while narcism and psychopathy are, "Machiavellian" is not a personality disorder.

Anyway, this is never going to be practical. Even if this method would have a false positive rate of 0.1%, it would flag over 500,000 people. That's way more than there are seriously dangerous psychopaths out there. And in reality, the error rates are a lot higher for this kind of techniques.

It's the silly season on SlashDot...

favstar

[whimmel]

Could have saved themselves a lot of research time just going here:

http://favstar.fm/recent_most_faved/100-favorites

Re:Steps to Slashdot Success

[Ghubi]

Step 4: ... Step 5: Profit