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There are no psychopaths (aeon.co)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/longreads@sh.itjust.works

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An alternative answer to this question that has so far received little attention is the possibility that psychopathy may be an instance of what scientists colloquially refer to as a zombie idea: ideas that have the quality of being intuitively appealing, but the idea itself is essentially a fallacious misconception of reality. Just like zombies, when these ideas have been falsified – shown to be dead ideas – they somehow still manage to stubbornly stick around in the halls of prestigious universities, only to once again infect another generation of young scientists.

There are many historic examples of zombie ideas, such as phrenology, race theory, or the geocentric view of the Universe. What these ideas have in common is that they were all widely accepted by scientists, even for decades after they were thoroughly refuted by scientific research. And this gets to the core of a zombie idea: those who are infected always fail in the strangest ways to realise that the idea is dead. As such, zombie ideas appear to be upheld by strong biases where the idea itself is rarely questioned, even when the scientist who believes in them is faced with obvious evidence that suggests the idea is wrong. Fortunately, zombie ideas are relatively rare in the sciences, but they truly are a peculiar phenomenon.

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[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

This is intellectual-dishonesty.

Is it valid to insist that ear-deafness is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that eye-blindness is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that arithmetic-disability is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that dyslexia is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that dysgraphia, writing-disability is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that colorblindness is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that autism's social-process-deafness is an actual human condition?

Yes, right?

Is it valid to insist that broken mirror-neuron-system, totally-missing empathy, is MEASURABLE in very young children?

Yes, it actually is.

THAT is psychopathy.

Quit gaslighting us.

Brain-diversity DOES include no-empathy as an actual condition.

Go read "Snakes in Suits", if you want some non-academic stuff, & pay attention to the guy who diced-up someone when he was let-out for a day,

& couldn't understand why that would be a problem, because it had been years since he'd done it last-time .. & understand that diversity-of-brain-wiring goes THAT fucking deep.

Quit gaslighting us.

That psychologist who studied the Nazi accused in Nuremburg identified non-empathy as THE key trait characterizing them,

& that's exactly what true-psychopathy is: inability to ever understand it, because it's a MISSING sense, in that sentience.

( I'm calling sociopathy psychologically-induced incapacity-of-empathy, and psychopathy intrinsic-wiring incapacity-of-empathy, btw, which may differ from the psychologists' definitions )

I'm NOT claiming that the pop-psychology tests, or even the psychologist-tests, are valid or nonvalid,

but I AM claiming that psychopathy's an actual-condition, & that there are brain-scan differences between them & us, & that if you look at who the serial-killers ( not serial-murderers, where the murders are the point, .. but the people who just can't value any life, so they kill again & again & again, lives who were "in their way" ), you will find that statistically-significantly-too-many of them are psychopaths, for it to be "mere coincidence".

Correct-framing vs disinformation: the greater the grip/control of disinformation, the less-viable WE are, the less-viable humankind is, this century.

ESPECIALLY this-century: it's final, this time.

Don't tolerate disinformation to pretend authority/validity on issues like people getting butchered for kicks, or because they were "in the way".

& pretending that people like Putin are just "repressed" or something, instead of actually-incapable-of-human-empathy, when the evidence sooo completely contradicts that, is insane.

This is an issue which has fundamental consequences for actual lives: many of them, as some country-leaders are psychopaths, right now.

I'd at this point want to see any proof that Netanyahu isn't one, rather than seeing proof that he is one, given the 0.1 MILLION murders he's had his "Israel" enforce ( & Hamas's genocide-attack that "justified" Netanyahu's genociding of Palestine isn't either clean or innocent, either: ALL countries have unclean histories, this is only a punching-the-world-in-the-face example currently, is all )

Gaslighters gonna gaslight, obviously.

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