Thursday, July 18, 2013

Senseless violence

Under the headline "Teenagers arrested for decapitating homeless man, playing soccer with his head":

Two teenagers have been nicked for allegedly decapitating a homeless man before playing soccer with his head. The pair, who were said to have taken a dislike to the man before killing him, then allegedly left his head in a bin.

"Allegedly" played soccer with his head, The Sun clarifies:

The suspects could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of murder. A spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee later cast doubts on reports that the teenagers had used the head as a football. He said a “full picture” of what had happened was still being established.

Humans are capable of every sort of barbarism. Why?

bethjohnson888@yahoo.com Beth Johnson

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Children = creepy monsters

I have often said that sociopaths are not difficult to understand, they're basically four year olds in an adult's body. They manipulate like four year olds. The world revolves around them like four year olds, but they can also be genuinely interested/curious about the people and things around them like four year olds. They can be surprisingly naive about certain things and tactlessly blunt. They don't have a great understanding of their own emotional worlds or the emotional worlds of others, nor do they have great emotional regulation. They will throw tantrums, sometimes violent, and they can sometimes be hard to reason with, but they still rationally respond to incentives. Four year olds can be incredibly cruel and devious. They can also be very creepy, as illustrated by this BuzzFeed article, "The 13 Creepiest Things A Child Has Ever Said To A Parent," from a longer reddit thread.

Worth reading in their entirety, some of my favorites include:

  • "I'm imagining the waves of blood rushing over me."
  • "I was tucking in my two year old. He said "Good bye dad." I said, "No, we say good night." He said "I know. But this time its good bye.""
  • "My 3 year old daughter stood next to her new born brother and looked at him for awhile then turned and looked at me and said, "Daddy its a monster..we should bury it.""
  • "Death is the poor man's doctor."

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Freudian look at psychopaths?

This was a sort of interesting, Freudian influenced approach to explaining psychopaths that may resonate with some of you, J. Reid Meloy (author of "The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment") with subsequent commentary by Donald Carveth. He is a little bit more on the Hare side of his understanding (i.e. not too sympathetic), but it is a pretty decent overview of some of the more famous studies of sociopaths.





Monday, July 15, 2013

Famous sociopaths: George Zimmerman?

So George Zimmerman. I get that some people think that he is a soulless sociopath who stalked Trayvon Martin like a predator might stalk his prey (especially since he didn't show the proper remorse?). Or maybe he just made a bad judgment call. Because I think everyone agrees that there are times when killing is "good" or efficient, e.g. death penalty, police using deadly force, or war. Moreover, many people can imagine a situation in which they themselves would kill (preschool class hostage situation?). And I think a lot of people think that this wasn't an efficient kill, but let's think about why. First we have to think about how to value someone's life.

Maybe it's their net benefit to society minus their net cost in terms of raw production/consumption. Several years ago one of my friend's mother died after a lengthy illness. I could not help but notice what I thought were efficiencies in this situation, with all of her stuff being divided up amongst her children.

Maybe we are more generous and we just look at production, so lifetime earning potential. For someone like Trayvon Martin, who was on his third suspension from school of the academic year at the time of the killing, maybe $1M and change? And I don't know much about Zimmerman, but he was living in a gated community, so maybe twice that (although he was 12 years older than Trayvon)?

Or maybe we think a better method of valuing life value of a statistical life ("VSL"). This is calculated by looking at how much of a monetary premium people require before they engage in risky behavior, like being an underwater welder. Using this valuation, the value of Trayvon's life would be significantly greater, probably closer to $10M than to $1M. And when you put it that way, it's hard to think that Trayvon's killing was worth $10M. Because let's guess that the risk of Zimmerman dying from the altercation was 20% (which I think is pretty generous). And when Zimmerman shot the weapon, risk of Trayvon dying was something like 40% (also generous to Zimmerman)? So now we have an expected loss of $4M for an expected savings of $2M (assuming that Zimmerman's life is roughly worth the same as Trayvon's). Not a good deal. So there turns out to be a huge social and personal cost to killing particularly as the standard of living has risen, which is maybe why we have see a big decrease in killing over the past 100 years? (See, even sociopaths know that killing is bad).

So yeah, Zimmerman seems to have exercised poor judgment. But once it got to the choice of pulling the trigger, didn't he probably just do what "felt right" in the moment? But this is the problem with empaths confusing objective assessments of the right/wrong thing to do with their own personal feelings on the matter. Because unless you believe the stalking sociopath theory of George Zimmerman, isn't he just a guy like you who acted on his feelings and turned out to be "wrong"? And his intentions were good, right? That should count for a lot? So no, I'm not surprised he got off because he did something that normal people do every day (well-intentioned acting on his gut), and if that were wrong than everyone would be wrong.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Empath song: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I was listening to this song the other day and thought it was a perfect example of the sort of self-justifying stories that empaths tell themselves about how they're not really "bad people" even though they admit that they do bad things.


Baby you understand me now
If sometimes you see that I'm mad
Doncha know no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong, you see some bad

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Ya know sometimes baby I'm so carefree
With a joy that's hard to hide
And then sometimes it seems again that all I have is worry
And then you're bound to see my other side

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

If I seem edgy
I want you to know
I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems
And I get more than my share
But that's one thing I never mean to do

Cause I love you
Oh baby
I'm just human
Don't you know I have faults like anyone?

Sometimes I find myself alone regretting
Some little foolish thing
Some simple thing that I've done

Don't let me be misunderstood
I try so hard
So please don't let me be misunderstood

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