Monday, June 4, 2012

In-group altruism

I happened upon two articles about the emergence and explanation of altruism within groups.  There was this New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer (sorry, not fully available to non-subcribers), which discussed the origin and development of the inclusive fitness theory.  Inclusive fitness basically holds that you are willing to be altruistic to another person in proportion to the advantage it will give your own genes in survival.  In other words, you share half of your genes with your siblings so you should be more willing to help them then, say, your cousin or even your nephew.  Here are some selections:


Charles Darwin regarded the problem of altruism—the act of helping someone else, even if it comes at a steep personal cost—as a potentially fatal challenge to his theory of natural selection. After all, if life was such a cruel “struggle for existence,” then how could a selfless individual ever live long enough to reproduce? Why would natural selection favor a behavior that made us less likely to survive? In “The Descent of Man,” Darwin wrote, “He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature.” And yet, as Darwin knew, altruism is everywhere, a stubborn anomaly of nature. Bats feed hungry brethren; honeybees defend the hive by committing suicide with a sting; birds raise offspring that aren’t their own; humans leap onto subway tracks to save strangers. The sheer ubiquity of such behavior suggests that kindness is not a losing life strategy.

For more than a century after Darwin, altruism remained a paradox. The first glimmers of a solution arrived in a Bloomsbury pub in the early nineteen-fifties. According to legend, the biologist J. B. S. Haldane was several pints into the afternoon when he was asked how far he would go to save the life of another person. Haldane thought for a moment, and then started scribbling numbers on the back of a napkin. “I would jump into a river to save two brothers, but not one,” Haldane said. “Or to save eight cousins but not seven.” His drunken answer summarized a powerful scientific idea. Because individuals share much of their genome with close relatives, a trait will also persist if it leads to the survival of their kin. According to Haldane’s moral arithmetic, sacrificing for a family member is just a different way of promoting our own DNA.

The idea of group altruism is interesting to me.  My father grew up in a large family and he has always prized a certain submission to the will of the group.  I quickly learned to speak in terms of "maximizing utility" for everyone concerned, in a very Bentham/Utilitarianism type of way, and my family would follow my plan over others.

Of course, as a sociopath I'm supposed to be a "cheater" -- someone who pretends to work for the good of the group while secretly not pulling my weight or siphoning off a disproportional amount of community output.

But I don't, or not always.  I guess it's because unlike bats or bees I'm not surrounded by idiots half the time.  Especially when I'm with my family or close friends who know better, it would be very difficult to defraud them consistently.  Maybe because I'm human and not a bat or a bee I can make higher cognitive determinations like it is better for me to be part of a group in which I support them and they support me in turn.

Could there be another reason why I engage in this sort of in-group altruism?  Is it because I don't just need specific things from the people in my group but actually need to associate with people in general?  From this Psychology Today post:

The idea that humans have a need to belong to social groups is so fundamental in psychology that one of the seminal papers on this topic has been cited 2572 times since its publication in 1995. Belonging doesn't just feel good — it's often essential for our very survival, even in modern times.

Do I also have an evolutionary drive to "belong"?  I actually think that I do, or at least I can feel in-group loyalty.  How about others?

174 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Nope. Erst, not ein.

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    2. Plenty of (malignant) narcissists act like they are loyal to a group or want to belong.

      The lack of a conscience and tendency to reason in a morally utilitarian fashion can lead to narcissists taking brutal and extreme action - as Himmler suggests in one of his most extreme speeches ever:

      One basic principal must be the absolute rule for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.

      We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals.

      But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When someone comes to me and says, “I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them”, then I would have to say, “you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood”.

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    3. All of this was clear enough for every tribe member in the history of mankind. Expressing it in words is somehow ridicule. In its obsession to put into words what was so simple, so elementary and animal-like, Nazism reached the peak of ridicule: if this one is to be the ultimate use of words, words are unnecessary, human being is unnecessary.

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    4. Jose, your words are usually ridiculous, unnecessary and trite simplifications couched in pidgin English, in the hope that those few readers here of low to average intelligence might think you're a clever, deep thinker.

      You're not. You are a buffoon.

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    5. The main drive behind Nazism is simplification. "Let's Go back to the old gods, to the time of the old warriors"; but then warriors couldn't use Wagner. The very fact that Wagner came into existence meant the end of the time of warriors and the impossibility of their coming back

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    6. Wrong, Jose. The Nazis used their back to the land, blood and soil along with pagan beliefs to craft a religion out of a failing political movement. That was the deliberate and cunningly executed vehicle in which the drove to power.

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    7. Rediscovering the past is an academic feat. You cannot derive any political or historical value from such discovery: Much less can you base on it the whole revamping of a nation’s structure, or the new order of a continent.

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    8. What? Did you really just claim that there is no value in the study of history?

      LMFAO. Case closed. You are a fucking imbecile.

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    9. All I see in the Nazi ideology is a simple-minded bid to gain the favour of the masses. They never really managed to convince the majority of the population; Hitler was appointed Chancellor because of the general social chaos in which Germany was immersed by the time.

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    10. History as an activity has no historic value. A point of view on history is not an historic fact in itself. Is that to hard for you to understand?

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    11. History as an activity has no historic value.

      LOL!

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    12. You simply don't have it in you, don't feel guilty for that.

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    13. He is against history, science, psychology, and anything else that you have to be educated on because theu threaten his uneducated ignorant view of the world.

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    14. History as an activity? Umm... what?

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    15. josé javier
      History as an activity has no historic value. A point of view on history is not an historic fact in itself. Is that to hard for you to understand?


      jose are you trolling?

      of course history is a matter of perspective. there is no absolute history, there is no absolute anything. there is only point of view. but the value is in understanding how we got from there to here. it gives us a sense of who we are and the potential to learn from mistakes. to say there is no value in understanding history to me implies that you believe there is no value in analysis and reflection in general.

      are you an artist jose? not to insult the artists here, but i've run into that attitude with the more narcissistic of your kind who insist on existing in a kind of perpetual in the present thought bubble.

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    16. history as an activity = we are making history, now, as we breathe

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  2. Giving up things for a group..what an idiotic concept. The reality is would they do s*** for you?....and the answer is NO. Then why do we have to be so "good"? That being said there are always exceptions to the rule maybe the five people I care about and to be honest one of these people I self sacrificed for completely f**** me over and didn't deserve it. we no longer speak he opened my eyes to the fact that although I have very negative opinions about human beings in general I am rarely wrong in them;-)

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  3. Altruism is non nonsensical

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  4. I love to take an animal model so as to get a better grasp of human behaviour. Dogs are great as a model. They are well known by the general audience and comparatively easy to understand, because they interact with us all the time. I think we can agree that dogs are not very sociopathic; they want to belong to the group as much as the most empathic, or even more, and they are little suspicious of cold calculation or secretly balancing the pros and cons of unlawful behaviour. This said, dogs show incomparably more closeness, attention and obedience to those members of the group that take physical care of them, taking them out for a walk, feeding them and checking their health. They won’t ignore the members that do less for them, but their preferences when it comes to decide, are very clear. I don’t think we can infer from that that they calculate coldly what behaviour will bring them the biggest advantage; they simply follow their natural social drive, and evidence shows this drive is by no means selfless.

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    1. Dogs are loyal for people, because people provide food, comfort and enterntainment :)

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    2. And they trained dogs to be loyal

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    3. The ancestors of dogs, wolves and the like live in a group and their loyalty and self-sacrifice is extreme: enough as to forgo reproduction in favour of the alpha male and female.

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    4. Wolves are social predators; that is, they are killers but at the same time they are perfectly able to share, take care of the cubs, self-sacrifice and the rest of the social pack. Human beings have this in common with them. We are also social predators, and we, too, have these two natures in ours, which renders useless to decide which of the two will overcome. No matter your decision, the outcome will depend on circumstances, so it is basically unpredictable.

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    5. Great point, Jose. However, I would add that individuals can overcome circumstances, as did Edith Stein. However, it is very, very rare.

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    6. On a general basis I wouldn't say individuals overcome circumstances. Death is a circumstance, so is birthplace, life experience. You don't overcome them; you need them to exist, either if they are positive or negative.

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    7. Jose, you are a moron. You talk about a pack animal as simplistic a slave to stimulus and response as the dog (you've heard of Pavlov, haven't you?), and attempt to extrapolate generalisations and simplifications relevant to specific human traits.

      If you had tried to use a primate model for purposes of illustration you might not have sounded so stupid and desperate to impress with your sub-par intellect.

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    8. An animal in a laboratory is not an animal in its natural environment. Especially if we are talking about a social animal. There's not a single word in your comments thas has any value.

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    9. It's a good show of puny intellect to believe that Pavlov dog could be of any use when we are speaking of social interaction. You need to go back to your cave and have a sleep; obviously.

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    10. An animal in a laboratory is not an animal in its natural environment

      By God, how could I have not seen it. Quick. We must alert the scientific establishment. All laboratory conducted experimentation is invalid. All results should be thrown out as worthless.

      Luddite fool.

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    11. You can cut an animal into pieces as small as you please: you won’t find its social drive in any of them; only a half-witted ape like you would think of investigating group structures in a laboratory.

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    12. I am really surprised that literate individuals can write blunders like those.

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    13. We have in ourselves not merely two natures, but tens of them, and that's why we survive in complex environments like cities.

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    14. We have in ourselves not merely two natures, but tens of them

      More gibberish that means nothing.
      hahahahaha

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    15. Any little child would understand it.

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    16. You'll be resorting to I know you are, but what am I? soon, jose.
      You uneducated, simple-minded fool.

      hahahaha

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    17. You are real bad at insulting, and insulting is the only thing you do. You should get yourself a coach as soon as possible. You'll never improve without help I'm afraid.

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    18. You have no objection against what I said; now it’s plainly clear you have nothing in your mind, you have understood nothing, not even read anything. You are one of those puny guys that think that the Internet was invented for you to spend time showing you have no real ability to offend anyone.

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    19. josé javierJune 4, 2012 5:44 AM
      On a general basis I wouldn't say individuals overcome circumstances. Death is a circumstance, so is birthplace, life experience. You don't overcome them; you need them to exist, either if they are positive or negative


      jose pay attention! a circumstance is a situation, like being hungry or jobless or ill that requires an event to change it. a dinner party, job offer, or consuming medicine are events. similarly death is an event, not a circumstance.

      events alter situations!

      now given that, i'm not sure what point you are trying to make. why do we need the events of birth and death in order to exist? we can't exist without being born, but why do we need death to exist? or are you just saying that's just the natural order of things?

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  5. Replies
    1. You ALWAYS have to be different.

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  6. I don't HAVE to be, I just am...

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    1. TRUE in the best of all possible ways *sigh*

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  7. Sociopaths are generally not very autonomous, many of them lead parasitic lifestyles because they are not able to take care of themselves. I think certain people FEEL the need to belong where as sociopaths don't care if they belong but often realize they need to be a part of some group in order to benefit from the advantages that being part of a group offers. The sociopath needs you more than you need them, but they're desperate to convince you the opposite is true.

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  8. To determine if we empathize with someone or attack them, all we need is to know whether they are members of our group or aren't. That's the uncertainty which gives rise to the "sociopath problem". You have this problem if you fail to integrate people in a group which is, in turn, also socially integrated.

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    1. More stupid generalisations. The FBI's study of serial violent offenders showed that victims are almost always chosen from the same racial group as the offender.

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    3. You mix race with group (only a Nazi would mistake one for another), and have no idea what my comment is about. My advice is: don't even try.

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    4. But you're hilarious, Jose. You're the new village idiot at SociopathWorld.

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    5. If your are not fit for an argument you shouldn't try to go into one.

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    6. ha ha ha. You're the one backpedaling like crazy every time I trip you up and you just end up with your foot wedged in your mouth again. Shit, Jose, did you even finish secondary school?

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    7. You haven't got the slightest idea what the drive to belong to a group is, or how does it work, do you? Why then going into a subject that is completely foreign to you? You will only lay yourself open to ridicule more than you have already done.

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    8. And yet it is you who has been ridiculed by nearly everyone here for weeks as not knowing what he is talking about. But do go on. Lets hear some of your impressive knowledge about groups. I'm having a ball laughing at you trying to sound educated and intelligent.

      hahahaha

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    9. I don't think you are a match, not only for me, but for the most of the regulars.

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    10. I'm no match for you in comedy value. You're right there, Jose. You didn't answer my question. Did you even manage to complete your secondary education?

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    11. The natural environment for a human being is the small community. But evolution goes on, and now no small community can survive. That's why moral becomes a problem, to assimilate you belong to an entity made up by millions of people you have to understand solidarity, feeling it is not enough.

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    12. But evolution goes on,

      More meaningless rubbish. Homo sapiens has not evolved into anything other than what it was when it first emerged.

      and now no small community can survive.

      Well, Jose. You must have never seen or know anything of the world apart from some big city, because there is no shortage of small communities in many countries.

      More poorly thought out rubbish from you.
      hahahaha

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    13. You blockhead: human being is the species that changes the deepest and fastest in the entire animal kingdom. No other animal has undergone so many changes in their living conditions like we have in our existence on earth and especially in the last few hundreds of years.

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    14. All primitive tribes are doomed to extintion (Only a primitive tribe is a small comunity, if they have TV they are NOT a small comunity, stupid)

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    15. It's always the less gifted who dares go further. Nothing as daring as ignorance: not the first time I see it, and not the last, for sure.

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    16. You didn't say living conditions. You said evolution. I realise you have a very limited education, but stop making a fool of yourself by trying to sound intelligent.

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    17. Only a primitive tribe is a small comunity, if they have TV they are NOT a small comunity, stupid

      Oh! Possession of a television is the defining factor for 'small community'. Hell, Jose. Better write to the journal of social sciences and pass on that pearl of wisdom. This could revolutionise the whole discipline.

      lmfao. hahahaha

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    18. Effective social integration means today that we should feel a part of many different structures. Only well processed information allows us to know these structures and being able to feel we understand the way they work and interact with each other. Some people who lack this possibility are condemned to feel confused forever and therefore angry, like Felicious is because he can't understand what others say.

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    19. Elicious, I am not *attempting* to be persnickety or contentious in correcting you on this minor point, but most anthropologists believe that *modern* humans (Homo sapien sapiens) evolved from archaic Homo sapiens, who in turn evolved from Homo erectus.

      Although archaic and modern homo sapiens share overlapping cranial capacities archaics are distinguished from anatomically modern humans by a thick skull, prominent brow ridges and the lack of a prominent chin.

      Sometimes Neanderthals are labeled as Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, but they are also labeled as a separate species; Homo Neanderthalensis.

      Or so the theory goes, in its current state.

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  9. I think you have to be altruistic in order to be happy. This seems counter-intuitive, but I think we need to feel as if we have something to give others and to do so, freely, in order to ever feel truly happy. We can have pleasure doing it the other way, but not the depths of joy.

    Look at the people who have everything and spend it all on themselves, and they are miserable.

    If self indulgence and self involvement made people happy, these people would be happy.

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    1. Being altruistic is not enough to be happy, neither is being selfish. Happiness is a far more complex matter than religion admits.

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    2. Please, explain your POV, Jose.

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    3. Every circumstance brings out something that is in you, some of them bring more some of them bring less; happiness is, from my "POV" feeling nothing is left inside and everything has been brought out.

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    4. happiness is wanting to be exactly where you are

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    5. Zoe I read a children's book the other day on what is the right way to be. That lesson was in there. I mean if you do not angst, then you are happy. I guess that is enough. How did some of us learn that at a young age and others not? How does that happen?

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  10. A good point here would be when altruism has got a sense and when it is meaningless. The answer lies in the context. Altruism is meaningful within a group; a limited, close knitted, territorial group, like a tribe, or a gang. It becomes difficult to justify when it is directed to an abstract entity, made up by thousands of millions of individuals, like a country, or, a race, or mankind; in the army, the correct procedure is promoting solidarity in small units, where every soldier takes care of their four, five close associates, not of the entire unit, much less of the army or the country. That way you can take solidarity and self sacrifice for granted. If you propose abstract concepts like God, King, Country as motives for sacrifice and altruism, you are bound to have a very small audience and even fewer positive answers.

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    1. Funny. I had wondered why TNP's old blog was altruistic. I found the people there generous. It was hard to believe they were sociopathic. I suppose maybe they only had empathy for what they understood, for what they can relate to. An in group.

      That was not exactly empathy? Are we not empathic here?
      I mean sure we snipe here and don't do it elsewhere (I don't anyway.)

      I've experienced altruism here and I know I've done it here. Is that not considered empathy because it has only been because we can relate to one another? I thought it was empathy.

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  11. so is ME an aspie?

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  12. Jose
    With all due respect, your theories are not practical, for day to day life, which is where we all live. If a theory cannot be honed down to practice, it offers little imo.

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    1. I don't theorize; I mere describe what happens in real life, in real human groups, in real personal experience. Most people just don't want to see it.

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    2. Jose, you generalise and pontificate based upon a smattering of general knowledge. You make vague, airy-fairy statements full of faux-wisdom. It won't fly on this blog where most of the posters are far more intelligent than you are.

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    3. Could you say something with any sense, for a change?

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    4. Jose is a narcissistic simpleton. How's that?

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    5. You don't have an opinion to defend. No idea what the game is about. Just boredom and dim-witted sentences to waste.

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    6. jose. All you have is opinions. You have no knowledge to back them up at all. You don't value or understand science or history. You're a fucking joke

      hahahahaha

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    7. In fact you are a good example of mindless will of “being there”. You don’t take into account that to intervene in a thread you need a basic knowledge of the matter discussed within the thread. Here, the aim is see the truth about sociopaths in the frame of group dynamics. You don’t even imagine such a thing can exist, and you show it plainly all the time.

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    8. You don’t even imagine such a thing can exist

      How can you know what I imagine? Unlike you I don't spew poorly thought out, uneducated rubbish on subjects I only got a basic high school introduction to. You're clutching at straws now, Jose.

      hahahaha

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    9. I can see you don't know what you are talking about because you run away from the main subject and try to get personal, without success.

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    10. Can you be good or evil out of a group? Try to answer that question and then come back. By the way, being out of a group is not going on vacation by yourself. You're welcome.

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    11. Yes, you can be good or evil outside of a group, if you have a higher standard by which you live, which puts forth the guidelines.

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    12. Can you be stupid and uneducated outside of a group? I think maybe a Jose can. You didn't answer my question. Did you complete your secondary education? You flap your trap about nothing all the time. What do you have to back it up, jose?

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    13. Bible Anon: That you are out of a group means that you don't have a context for your actions, you don't even have a language, because you don't need it. No standard exists without a group to establish it, let alone guidelines.

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    14. Different problems arise from the fact that our behaviour is naturally attuned to that of the group. One of them is that a great majority of the population never get to be owners of their moral sense. They go along with the group, the small group, in most cases. When they teach their children they don’t explain; they transmit their feeling that ultimately it is the group, through its leader, who decides what’s good and what’s bad. They are coherent with the atmosphere of the group, not with their own decisions and principles. If a child cannot perceive and share this atmosphere, which is overly emotional, they will live virtually in a world without moral, because they are not given the reasoning tools that would allow them to build a moral system from their experience.

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    15. This means that for those that are uneducated, for those that get no access to training in the big general set of concepts and their connections that we call culture, not only professional options are severed but also personal life is impoverished; something we don’t normally talk about.

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    16. This means that for those that are uneducated .. not only professional options are severed but also personal life is impoverished

      Awww Jose. Are you playing the sympathy card now? It's not too late to go back and get some education. I can see how important appearing to be smart is to you. Why not give it a go. Come back to the blog in a few years once you've graduated. High school that is.

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    17. I feel sorry for the uneducated people like you. Really. If you had been born somewhere else, maybe helped by someone, things would have been different for you.

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    18. I don't need an education to know that nearly everything you say is empty rubbish tricked up to make it appear to the casual glance that it might contain something of substance. You are a charlatan and you came to the wrong place to sell your bullshit, Jose. You are a joke and you don't have the intelligence or education to pull this scam off here. Try your luck at TeenSpainWorld. You might convince them there that you know something. Here I'm just laughing at you.

      hahahahahahahaha

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    19. Your attitude is a confirmation of my being right in the initial comment. Attacking or not doesn’t depend on what the target says or does; it only depends on the identification of them as “ours” or “foreign”. That is the only thing that counts for the emotional brain, which seems to be the only one that you have left.

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    20. josé javierJune 4, 2012 11:59 AM

      Bible Anon: That you are out of a group means that you don't have a context for your actions, you don't even have a language, because you don't need it. No standard exists without a group to establish it, let alone guidelines.


      This is 100% wrong, Jose.

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    21. That was me.

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  13. I am so bored that I could take an AK47 and go kill an entire school! Who's with me !!! ???

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  14. Tell something about yourself no one knows.

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  15. josé's real name is not really josé, is it?

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    1. No one has a real name. We should all have different names according to circumstances, like people do in Myanmar or in Thailand; when they want to start a new life or run away from their past, they change their names.

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    2. In that case, SW is perfect.

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  16. Where is UKan, the court jester, when you need him?

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    1. I am having a hard time with cramps.

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  17. Yeah, altruism is evolutionary. It came to be by the people that cooperated and survived and managed to pass the genes. The fact that they shared with others in a community gave them more of a chance to survive and shiz.

    That being said, don't put much value on altruism. Altruism is just another form of egoism. Every altruistic action has an egoistic reason even if it's just to make yourself feel better. Like, if you love someone and think you do something for them which is purely altruistic, it is also egoistic cause it gives you a shitty reward emotionally. Imagine if you felt like doing that and forced yourself to not do it. It makes you feel like shit. You do it for yourself. Plus there's a power thing involved in that. You make them owe you stuff the moment you make them feel grateful, even if they don't realize it, they will do something back for you! It's all just a trade. Power, whatever...

    When I first started researching sociopathy I stumbled upon a site which explained how to BECOME a sociopath. One of the steps was to go buy stuff from the supermarket for about 25 dollars and give it to a beggar. The overall point was to make yourself emotionally desensitized. Anyway, funny thing was that I used to do that before I read it haha. I used to walk the street and when I saw a beggar I went to him and just gave him a cigarette. Most of them were high and were looking at me with wide eyes and shiz thanking me and really fucking with their mind. They were like so surprised and disoriented like telling someone on the street they won a prize. It's fucking awesome! You should fucking try it! Haha.

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  18. In tribal times, when the only necessary thing was fidelity to the group, concepts like good and evil were utterly needless. People lived on nature then, they admired animals and tried to be like them, they dressed up like them and adored them as gods, but then cities started to grow, writing appeared, civilisation engulfed tribes, and it was necessary to make a difference between good and evil, between my own gods and my nation gods, between my duty to my family and my duty to the city. It was then that devil appeared, that is, when fields, valleys and hills were no longer the residence of gods, but temples and sanctuaries. Devil was carved out of the god of the fields, the god of the cattle, the innocent god with horns and split hooves: a faded souvenir of paradise. But this was made out of a mere wish to send evil out of town, to push it back to the wilderness, where very mistakenly it was supposed to belong; in fact it belonged in the city, in the temple, in the church and among the priests.

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    1. Yeah, good and evil are concepts created by religion exclusively to manipulate the masses. Nobody struggled with that before. Good was whatever helped you and bad was whatever was an impediment. It was all subjective. Now, behind the hypocrisy of the church, good and evil have put on costumes and disguise themselves as universal. Also globalization. CNN and all that shiz.

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    2. People prefer inconsistent behaviour to moral preaching; you cannot call hypocrite an inconsisten individual.

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    3. What do you mean religion is inconsistent? Religion is the most consistent son of a bitch on earth. They haven't changed their basics for 2000 years.

      Also, sure you can call an inconsistent individual a hypocrite. It depends what they do. The individual can present an inconsistent behavior that has nothing to do with hypocrisy and suddenly, in the same inconsistent pattern, to show hypocrisy.

      Elicious was right... You are dumb...

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    4. I never said religion was inconsistent.

      Delete
    5. Right, now I got what you said there. But still, to this day, people prefer religion.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

      Delete
    6. The concept of good and evil was in tribal society, jose. Fail again. Religion is older than recorded history.

      How do you end up wrong on everything, but still continue to spout your rubbish? I guess when ypu reach a point when you are so delusional that you think you know better than scientists, historians, psychologists, and sociologists while having no education yourself nothing can really penetrate the fantasy land you created in your head.

      Delete
  19. Jose said: "The ancestors of dogs, wolves and the like live in a group and their loyalty and self-sacrifice is extreme: enough as to forgo reproduction in favour of the alpha male and female."

    That is idiotic. They forgo reproduction in favor of the alpha male just because IT IS the alpha male. That means that it is the strongest and can beat the others and none of the others would dare try challenge the alpha male. Also, the pack uses violence to stop other individuals in the pack from reproducing besides the alpha male and female.

    Also about dogs, they don't "love" the guy that takes care of them the most. They "love" the most whoever spends more time with them and poses as their master. I could have a dog and be with it the whole day and act as it's master and let someone else feed and care for it. It would still prefer me cause he spends the most time with me.

    You know about horse whisperers? They use certain body language to train horses. How? They use the language the horse alpha male uses to make them believe that the trainer is the alpha male and shiz. It's all about power Jose.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No animal is forced to live in group. Most felines hunt alone; living in society means self-sacrifice. You have to be real moronic to think that wolves make groups because some of them are "stronger"

      Delete
    2. Nope, they make groups cause it helps their chances of survival.

      Yeah, felines hunt alone. But only in some cases. Cases in which it must mean that hunting alone helps them most... I don't think an animal would choose a path that doesn't favor it. If there is such an animal it must be extinct...

      Delete
    3. No animal is forced to live in group

      They're pack animals. Their very nature forces them to live in a group. You imbecile.

      Delete
    4. are they? Well, thanks for the information.

      Delete
  20. You haven't even got what you yourself are talking about. I shouldn't have bothered to answer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha! How did you reach that conclusion? Did you get what I was talking about ?

      Delete
  21. ME should really put up a Thumbs up/Thumbs down system around here so we can make idiots like Jose shut up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you could think you could do it without external help. It's a pity you can't

      Delete
    2. thumb puzzled

      Delete
  22. Human nature was a lot closer to the way people lived in the middle age; when the Pope was at the same time a feudal lord and a spiritual leader people understand much better this figure than the latter image of purity and virtue. They respected the pope as long as he was openly a predator but could switch quickly to behave like a saint. Ever since he wanted to show himself to the world as a man wearing one and only sublime face, that lived his life for the good and service of others, the decadence of the church started, and so the multiplication of Christian churches, because only then could he, the successor of St. Peter, be rightly accused of hypocrisy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. More meaningless rubbish. You obviously have no knowledge of the Roman Catholic church and it's history. You are full of shit that you pull out of your arse and smear on the pages of this blog. You are an idiot.

      Delete
  23. The interesting thing about human aggressiveness is that it becomes very easily a behaviour in itself. It creates a short circuit inside the brain and it prevents the individual to think clearly. All the energy is concentrated in the basic level and none is devoted for more complex uses. In a forum, aggressiveness is a very boring phenomenon and prevents interventions and participation. After showing that there was no intellectual position to be revealed in the babblings of “fellicious” I think any further attention bestowed on him is useless.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bollocks jose. Aggressive behaviour in here carries this blog. Its been here from the start and the worse it gets the more readers have came and stayed here. As soon as there's no idiot like you to kick around this place is a ghost town of monica talking about her feelings. Of course i'm sure your idea of fun is mental masterbation.

      Delete
    2. Dr Franklin F. Fomentile Phd got SW up to over 500 comments, UKan.

      Delete
    3. //As soon as there's no idiot like you to kick around this place is a ghost town of monica talking about her feelings//

      lmfao

      Delete
    4. Eden puts Monica to shame.

      Delete
    5. You are right on that score, Snake.

      Delete
    6. Dr Fomentile sucks, too.

      Delete
  24. Now Jose started babbling by himself! Dude! Seriously! A life? Think you could get one of those?

    PS: Elicious seems to be a girl from what I can tell.

    ReplyDelete
  25. I thought Elicious was Raven, but Elicious actually has some natural wit.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Jose- tell us something interesting about yourself. What draws you here? Was there a socio in your past who messed with you? You don't seem to be a socio. Your ideas and responses don't fit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, please do!

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. A lot of punishment going on in here today. Need some lube for your ass Jose ?

      Delete
  27. Dr Eric Fomentile PhdJune 4, 2012 at 3:08 PM

    Jose
    My fraternal twin brother, Franklin F Fomentile Phd, is well known at SW for his perspicacity. He has too high of a patient load, at present. I can offer some assistance, as I have been a long time lurker.

    Each SW resident will be tested. His inner mettle will emerge, or he will be cast out by a pack of wild, rabid dogs, in common parlance.

    You have come in as an ersatz authority on a subject that many know, as they LIVE it. You presume to know about things of which you have little understanding, as is obvious from many of your comments.

    My suggestion is to show some humility. If you are not a sociopath, then listen to those who can tell you about what it means to BE a sociopath, from experience, not theories with as many holes in them as Swiss cheese.

    Sincerely
    Eric F. Fomentile Phd

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dr Franklin F Fomentile PhdJune 4, 2012 at 5:42 PM

      Hello Eric

      Delete
    2. Hi Dr. Fomentile would you categorize yourself a sociopath?

      Delete
    3. Dr Eric F. Fomentile PhdJune 4, 2012 at 6:20 PM

      No, I am not a sociopath. I have my issues, though ha ha

      Delete
    4. Dr. Eric Fomentile - what draws you here? what do you think of the people who post here? Do you find us disturbing, interesting, case studies? Does it help you in your practice?

      Delete
    5. Dr Eric F Fomentile PhdJune 4, 2012 at 6:29 PM

      A few are disturbing, but not terribly so. Not so far. I have my own issues. Mom always liked Dr Franklin F Fomentile Phd better.

      Delete
    6. Eric - you are funny;-). I have a question can someone become a sociopath over time..some thing they are not necessarily born with but develop more into over time..given the right circumstances? Where empathy decreases greatly, emotion fades into a memory, you begin to "see" really see people for what they are and realize you have blinded yourself by wearing rose tinted glasses your entire life.

      Delete
    7. Dr Eric F. Fomentile Phd.June 4, 2012 at 8:26 PM

      I cannot give an opinion based on those loose facts. I am sorry. It would not be right of me to do so.

      Delete
    8. Anon 6:39, the answer you seek in Google hidden is...
      (It's possible)

      Delete
    9. Anon 6:39
      No one ever became extremely wicked suddenly

      Delete
  28. So whats so good about being a frigging psychopath ? Does it do anything for you in life ??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What do you mean?

      Delete
    2. Anon 5:13 - is that you Jose;-)?

      what's good about being a frigging psychopath? who said anything about pyschopaths? just because someone doesn't register emotion in the same way or processes it differently or not at all doesn't mean they are violent. It's all about free will.

      What good is it being a sociopath on the other hand is an interesting question..I would say there are a great many benefits actually. The ability to do what you want without regard to other people's opinions is a nice perk, not fearing consequences (within reason), allows people to move past those barriers that hold some people from taking the kind of risks that can really pay off...as opposed to always playing it safe. For instance, some of the best attorneys I've worked with were 100% sociopathic without a doubt in my mind. Some of the top traders same...

      Not all sociopaths are geniuses or anything like that..some of the time they are just more successful because they don't suffer the "I want to be nice" "I care that other people like me", etc., etc.

      A sociopath who can hold certain impulses in check and maintain a facade can go far though. But another who is addicted to risk taking, instant gratification, and gives in to their darker impulses will certainly go TOO far, further than a normal person would. So there are more extremes positive and negative.

      Delete
  29. I think Jose is Jason. If anybody remembers him LMAO

    ReplyDelete
  30. What was Jason like?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Full of the devil

      Delete
    2. Check out posts from July 31 2011 backwards. On comment section. If you want to know who Jason was...

      Delete
  31. Well this place has picked up a bit. The format still sucks

    Heres a Theme for Monica... play this while I fuck your ass

    ReplyDelete
  32. That's not TCO. He doesn't have that vibe.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Was that you. TCO? You don't have that rotten, mean vibe. So, I thought it was someone else like a UKan or Eden.

    ReplyDelete
  34. M.E.

    Will you do a post on lying the way it relates to paranoia in pds? I mean the kind of lying I may see in others and not tell them.

    I often just don't say I see them lying because it makes them afraid of me and I don't exactly want that.. not until I am done with them. Then they will tell others I am paranoid when they are the fucking liars but didn't know. I am the only one who "knows" (and that isn't even true a bunch of times. -I know I do the borderline projection a lot)

    I'm forced to tell them no they cannot possibly understand; I am not a witch I am just don't believe that eventually they are going to merge with their lies and see themselves the way I saw in the beginning.

    I cannot have the energy to maneuver every step. I am forced to see their lies and go along like an idiot or control stuff.

    I am too tired and don't have the patience. Or I make them prove beyond a reasonable DOUBT they are truth telling and only then I will allow them to be with me. That's pretty harsh!

    The borderline paranoia is different from the sociopath paranoia, yes? It as to do with our abandonment issues i think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You have to stop being paranoid. It is a cement block on your necklace. You will never have intimacy with the rock. Can you cut it off?

      Delete

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