*groan
@genepool: Please respond to what I pointed out above - psychopathy, like any -pathy, is abnormal. Something which is abnormal affects a minority of people by definition. Please explain how we can all be psychopaths when, by definition, psychopathy is something that only affects a minority of us.
Clayton -
It’s the same reason why economist believes that humans are rationally selfish even though most of us are not rational. We behave as we do. Also look at my post above you for some samples.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some biologist says that cats mark their teritory to maximize their food and mates, as if cats actually know some calculus and predict that in advance. Not my cat.
All false delusions that people use to justify state’s intervention actually match their selfish interests. In fact, it’s as if deep down they know their cause is politially incorrect that they have to mask it with vague/false/undisprovable nonsense.
genepool - well I wasn’t actually arguing for any particular program (on the whole I tend towards a common law society with monarchism for common defence, but libertarian anarchism is a possibility also) but rather the role of the state in general. In fact the political program is not very important when compared to the signficance of the ideas held in society, since in the long-run the political institutions will align with public opinion (the political program does, however, influence how long this process takes).
Clayton - apparently he’s not actually arguing that most people are psychopaths, but rather that the results of their actions are akin to those of psychopaths.
EDIT:
genepool, what do you mean by rationalism? Are you aware of the difference between Misesian rationalism and the rationalism of the homo economicus?
Aristipus,
genepool, what do you mean by rationalism? Are you aware of the difference between Misesian rationalism and the rationalism of the homo economicus?
Not quit clear. I read some in Israel’s book. It seems that typical classical economic theory presume that humans are psychic and always max out profit. If they don’t, they make mistakes.
Misses, assume that humans only make mistakes if they are wrong in the short reasoning. If you know a car worth $1000 in one place and you pay $2k for it, that’s a mistake. If you don’t know a car worth $1k somewhere else, it’s not a mistake. You choose not to spend time on research. If you, based on experience, knows that research pays, and choose not to spend time on research, that’s a mistake.
Clayton - apparently he’s not actually arguing that most people are psychopaths, but rather that the results of their actions are akin to those of psychopaths.
That is correct. I mean David for example, killed 100 palestines to collect the foreskins. War and corruption can be thought of as psychopathy too. Yet 99% of politicians would do it if they can get away with it. Genocide, war, socialism, big government, are a reflection of voters’ effective psychopathy. In fact, a person doesn’t have to be a psychopath to act as a psychophat. If responsible productive acts like making honest money are punished and unproductivity is rewarded, humans are “forced” to be psycophats.
Say you want to be a responsible husband. Get rich first then get laid. Chance is you pay huge income tax. After that you have to keep paying lifetime alimony and child support to kids that’s not even yours. The amount is set proportional to man’s wealth. If you just breed and knock up babes like irresponsible studs, you get rewarded and government would pay for those. What men would not be a psycopath in their sexual life? Losers… In fact, I think being a psychopath is a normal, natural, or even moral answer to injustice. Of course, once the world is just, it’s to your best interest to be productive.
However, the idea that humans are indeed actually psychopaths may not be too wrong either.
As someone point out, all those paths are always minority. But they’re not minority because people are not like them. They are minority because social illness is unnaturally defined so that the majority is not categorized as ill.
Delusion for example, should include religions. However, delusional is defined in a way that popular religions don’t count.
The same way most humans share the same traits with most psychopaths. Most humans are selfish. Most strangers won’t honor their contract without enforcement. Most humans will justify their immorality when incentive is big enough. But the definition of psychopaths are carefully defined not to include most people.
Look at definition of exploitation for example. It can naturally mean all non consensual interaction or it can naturally mean all taking advantage of other people, consensual or not. Feminazis carefully define exploitation to mean women having sex to paying males, irrelevant of consent or not. This very unnatural definition makes arguments very difficult.
Again - by definition, a -pathy is something that affects a minority of people. Furthermore, acting like a psychopath is the definition of being a psychopath. All I see in genepool’s posts is an attempt to morally equivocate the crimes of the psychopathic ruling Elites by arguing that we’re all psychopaths! Bullshit. And it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. The whole line of argument is pathetic.
Clayton -
Again - by definition, a -pathy is something that affects a minority of people. Furthermore, acting like a psychopath is the definition of being a psychopath. All I see in genepool’s posts is an attempt to morally equivocate the crimes of the psychopathic ruling Elites by arguing that we’re all psychopaths! Bullshit. And it doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. The whole line of argument is pathetic.
Again good point / good reiteration of the same basic point:
It is - by itheir very definition (be you socialist, capitalist, or whatever) against the scope of psychology, economics, sociology, anthropology, or even biology to assume we are “psychopaths” (a very dubious term); the only thing that would have the audacity to do such thing would be politics.
So what’s the difference then? What’s the difference betwen typical psychopaths and typical normal people?
Normal politicians are corrupt. So is normal psychopaths.
Normal politicians are delusional or promote delusion. So is psychopaths.
Normal people would renege on contract if and only if they can get away with it. So are psychopaths.
What’s the difference?
Psychopaths have inflated self worth. Normal people demand minimum wage.
Psychopaths want to control others. Normal people want to control what movies you can watch and what drugs you can enjoy.
So what’s the difference?
Really… what?
If we want to explain unlibertarian moves by psychopathy, it fits data perfectly. Ganja is not dangerous, but voters want to control it anyway. If we think humans maximize wealth, we will wonder, what kind of money anti ganja advocates get? It’s not about money. it’s about power. Money is just a form of power. Humans, like psychopaths seek power. Like psychopaths they do not admit it.
I guess the idea that we are just like those we hate offend you so much isn’t it? You can’t accept that. Most humans are delusional. Are you going to say that only a minority is?
That’s a question for psychology, not economics or even politics.
“normal psychopaths” is an oxymoron… how many times do I have to repeat this?
Corruption isn’t just any moral deficiency, it is the acceptance of bribes in exchange for turning the other way while the briber hurts people. Yes, the average person has many moral deficiencies. No, the average person is not anything like the Senator accepting a deal to have an area of the city where he owns property re-zoned in order to increase its value (e.g. Jack Murtha) in exchange for securing sweetheart defense contracts (hurting taxpayers).
*shrug - I really don’t know how delusional the average politician is. The higher you go, the more keen a grasp on reality you must have. I think the whole “politicians just don’t get it” schtick is part and parcel of how politicians avoid moral responsibility for their actions. It’s much easier to forgive someone who is stupid or ignorant than someone who is smart and well-informed but simply doesn’t care.
*shrug - what sane person would bind himself to a contract that is not being enforced??
Oh, come on, this is absurd. Demanding minimum wage is psychopathy?? Seriously?
The morality police are enabled by the enormous subsidies showered on the busybody-class. Without taxpayer-funded drug enforcers and censors, these moralists would be a lot less pesky, mainly restricted to pounding pulpits and handing out tracts, which is perfectly peaceful behavior.
Money is not a “form of power.” The word “power” is not well-defined because there are so many widely different kinds of power. But the one thing that unites all forms of power is that people seek power as a means to attaining their ends, not as an end in itself.
This is the Internet. There are a zillion pictures of people doing unimaginably offensive things posted anywhere you care to look. Nothing you say can possibly offend me. It’s just that what you’re saying isn’t true and doesn’t even make sense on its own terms. It’s oxymoronic.
I think most people have a keen grasp on the unvarnished truth of politics as well as anything else. The reality is that it is the punditry and the political class that are the source of most of the smoke and mirrors. I think that people generally understand that taxes are not voluntary (even if they say otherwise), that government is not “nice” (even if they act otherwise), that democracy is still coercive (even if they say otherwise) and so on. The truth is that they generally put very little thought into these subjects because they have more pressing issues (paying their bills, feeding their kids, getting to work on time, and so on) and have no choice but to repeat what they hear from pundits and social leaders who are spouting constant propaganda. So, when you ask the man off the street his opinion, you are not getting his opinion, you are getting the opinion of some pundit that he thinks he respects and has decided to parrot.
But if you could sit down and have a really long, in-depth conversation with him over the course of, say, several months or years, I think you could penetrate most of the propaganda and eventually discover his genuine opinions and I think most people “get it”, they just can’t articulate it or figure out how to debunk all the propaganda and don’t have the time, energy or inclination to try. This sure as hell doesn’t make them psychopaths.
Clayton -
But if you could sit down and have a really long, in-depth conversation with him over the course of, say, several months or years, I think you could penetrate most of the propaganda and eventually discover his genuine opinions and I think most people “get it”, they just can’t articulate it or figure out how to debunk all the propaganda and don’t have the time, energy or inclination to try. This sure as hell doesn’t make them psychopaths.
This is where we disagree. This is where I think why most people, including libertarians are delusional. In any case, none of us are going to spend years changing people’s mind. Either because they don’t care (like psyhopaths) or because they don’t have time to care, voters do vote for their self interests irrelevant of how much misseries that vote will cause other humans.
Now look at this case. A man called cops to remove his girlfriend from HIS property. He’s the one arrested. Stuffs are broken and stolen. Do you think the girl is a psychopath? Do you think the girl behaves as psychopaths (like most girls are)
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/rgwrt/so_reddit_i_called_the_cops_on_my_gf_after_an/
Just randomly throwing a story a friend told me about him getting arrested because of a crazy ex. He was in another city when she called the cops to report that he had just left the house after beating her. He flew on a plane, so he had that evidence, along with cab fare, etc… that placed him in the city three nights before she called. When he got back, they immediately arrested him (they had some sort of stake out at his house), and held him for six days. She later recanted everything saying that she was just upset that he wasn’t answering her calls. Nothing was done to her.
Now notice that paragraph again. Look in reality. Say I said to my self, there is no right and wrong. There is only power. If I hurt people, as long as I can hurt him even more or convince him that I can hurt even more, I’ll get away with stuff. Am I wrong? In a sense, psychopaths are normal, and normal people are the one that’s simply not being realistic here. Why do we not have thousands staging demonstration complaining that the girl that lied is not charged?
No amount of sitting will change people’s mind because it’s interests and not logic that make their mind. For the sick and lazy, obamacare is indeed profitable. That’s all they care.
Perhaps a better way to measure psychopathy is to measure how much a person would deviate from their self interests to avoid hurting others, breaking the rules, or not honoring commitments. My guess is, most humans won’t deviate much.
As for delusional politicians there are 2 theories on these threats
Politicians are indeed delusional and believe that drugs are really bad. Proponent of this theory would claim that had the politician is not delusional, they are indeed psychopath. Notice that means I am correct. I am not arguing that politicians are psychopaths. I am arguing that politicians behave as if they are.
Politicians are NOT delusional, like you said. They know very well that drugs are not dangerous and that prostitution is a happy job. They prohibit anyway so they can control people. In a sense, they’re like psychopaths.
I actually like the 3rd theory:
@gene: We’ll have to disagree. I agree that politicians have a much better grasp on political and even economic reality than the commoner has. However, politicians aren’t trying to “do what is right” - whether by ending fuel subsidies or looking the other way at prostitution. Rather, they’re simply attempting to attain their selfish (to use your term) goals.
The pursuit of self-interest has long been the heel of moral philosophy. As Bastiat says, every ill known to humanity is ascribed to this wellspring of human action. What the critics miss is that this wellspring of action is also the cause of every good which humans do. So, self-interest is neither here nor there, it’s simply the urge that prods individuals to act, whether for good or evil.
Most people have very poor morality. Politicians are no better and, in addition, they have sold their souls in the pursuit of power, that is, in the pursuit of the double-standard by which they get to live at the expense of others, while everyone else has to pay their own way. That’s the primary difference.
Atop and above all political power is private power. In the old days, private power was the king and his nobility. Today, it’s less clear exactly who holds the private power but the royalty are still there, despite the propaganda to the contrary. The private power of State is the root source of most of the evil in society. It is true that kings can only rape and pillage their subjects because their subjects let them get away with it. In terms of the moral analysis, however, this is irrelevant. The people don’t morally deserve what they get from their rulers. It’s simply karmic law… if you leave your door unlocked and wide open in a bad neighborhood, your stuff will be stolen. But the thief is still acting immorally and the victim does not deserve to have his stuff stolen.
The first step to healing society from its long-running illness is to first get moral clarity about the situation. Raping and pillaging the masses simply because you can is immoral. On the other hand, leaving your front door wide open for burglars in a bad neighborhood is unwise and self-treacherous - the masses need to wise up and stop allowing themselves to be raped and pillaged. And part of this “wising up” process requires that the masses throw off the bad moral instruction that their religious “leaders” have been indoctrinating them with for thousands of years.
Contrary to the long-standing dogma that “self-interest” is the root cause of all evil, it is in fact the case that all morality flows from a right regard for the self. Right living consists of carefully pursuing one’s satisfaction (the Good) and scrupulously avoiding one’s dissatisfaction (the Evil). All other moral considerations are just sub-headings under this one rule of action. When this right moral teaching begins to re-assert itself in society and our moral teachers again begin explaining to us how to live rightly (purse the Good and avoid the Evil), our society will be able to begin the process of healing. In the meantime, this present monstrosity will continue on.
Clayton -
Psychophath mode off:
Okay I agree with you. I agree with everything what you say. That’s standard libertarian rethoric. Most people in this forum agree with it. I agree with your ideal. I disagree with your understanding of practical world.
Psychophath mode on:
Biggest difference between psychopaths and normal people is empathy. Do you want to count on people’s self interests or their empathy? For anything to work, the former is obviously the way to go. Just presume everyone is a psychopath and ignore that they have empathy. You won’t miss by far.
Says who teaching “new” morality or any kind of morality will fix the problem?
You said that your self. Voters got bills to pay. So they can’t pay too much attention to other’s people interests ruined by government intervention. In other world, they effectively don’t care. Just like psychopaths don’t care.
When nazi killed jews, they behave like psychopaths right? Yes most of them are not really psychopaths. But the thing is they don’t care. It’s jews anyway that died, not them.
If you go to a store, do you care about the processes why the stores sell meat that at $5? No. And that’s the beauty of it. Most of us behave like psychopaths that do not care about whether the meat owners’ kids can still wear shoes or not if we buy meats from wallmart instead. In fact, in western civilization, I bet you won’t even bargain for the meat. Price high you just go. In capitalism, all of us behaves as if we’re psychophats that don’t care.
And that’s the beauty of capitalism. It works even if everyone is a psychopaths. Turns out, everyone effectively is. That’s why capitalism is the only thing that works.
The same way, voters don’t care how much obamacare would hurt everyone. All they care is they get more money from government. In fact, humans are actually jealous and the mere act of hurting the rich actually make them smile.
Feminazis don’t care how much marriage actually hurt women and men. Feminazis don’t care that their anti women trafficking laws actually trap women in afghanistan and make it easy for males in other countries to oppress women. Feminazis don’t care that many women prefer to share richer smarter males than be the only one for the poor. This alone should eliminate poverty.
All feminazis care is women are not sex objects. Why? Because feminazis, like everyone else, are psychopaths. If men see women are sex objects, feminazis, which usually are ugly, fat, and hate males, will simply go extinct. They’re jealous with porn stars that easily get all the attention. So they behave as any psychopaths would do. They control us.
The same goes with socialists, social democrats, politicians, and anything non libertarians. Libertarians are not psychopaths. They’re just delusional to think that morality might works. That’s how people are. Either psychopaths or delusional.
Voters are effectively psychopaths.
It’s not morality. It’s self interests that make people votes.
If you want to be succesful in politic, you need to be more like Milton Friedman rather than Ayn Rand. Be like those store owners. Make sure that your deals are better for at least 51% of the population. There are many ways we can get far less government and till make 51% people happy but that’s a different topic.
Libertarians do not act like bizs in politic. Voters pick differently and they think voters are wrong. If you have a store, do you simply shrug and says customers are wrong? Presume humans are selfish and psychopathic and we can extend what we understand in business, to politic. It’s the same thing.
Again, moral deficiency (insufficient empathy) is not the same thing as psychopathy.
Well, I don’t think the problem can be “fixed” - I just think that the only route to correct the obvious immorality and injustice of the current world order lies through a revival of very ancient moral ideas (pre-Agricultural Revolution).
So now you’re moving the goalposts? Before, the masses were psychopaths, now they’re like psychopaths?
WTF?
You’re hyperbolizing human nature and its relation to the case for capitalism. I don’t have time to dig up the cite right now but Hoppe addresses this in one of his articles on the myth of collective defense.
There is no question that human nature is maladaptive with respect to a non-zero-sum environment.
Yes, legalizing prositution and polygamy would be the shortest route to elimination of massive wealth inequalities across national boundaries and would lead to generally fairer arrangements in romantic relationships. The fact that these inequalities correspond to national boundaries should be a hint that they originate not in human nature but in the particular facts of the political divisions in the world.
*shrug - sounds like you need to take this up with your shrink, I don’t think I can help you with it.
Not delusional at all. Moral instruction - just like manners, etiquette and other social customs - plays a key role in regulating society. The problem is that moral instruction has been corrupted and perverted to the ends of the political Establishment. Its role in regulating a decent social order has been hijacked and it has been re-purposed to maintaining society in a malleable and pliant condition suitable for supporting the parasitic subsistence of the political elites.
No, voting is delusional, not psychopathic.
I don’t want to be successful in politics. I want to have nothing to do with politics. I want to live my life in peace like a decent human being and preserve my moral integrity.
You’re incorrect in your assumption that most people on this forum are interested in political success. We’re not, except to the extent that political success (such as Ron Paul’s) can be a vehicle for what really matters: teaching truth.
Clayton -
Actually you said something that perfectly match what I want to say. You said that better:
So what’s the difference then? What’s the difference betwen typical psychopaths and typical normal people?
That’s a question for psychology, not economics or even politics.
That’s my whole point. Normal people are economically and politically equivalent to psychopaths. If you’re a psychologists, then yes you should differentiate them. For all other purposed they are the same.
Do we have an agreeement here? I read that it’s very difficult to differentiate psychopaths from normal people. So don’t bother. Presume they’re the same then. What can go wrong?
The goalposts have always been the same. The mass are like psychopaths they behave like they really are.
As you said yourself, psychopaths are 4 % of population. However, that’s because definition of psychopaths are unnatural. Psychopaths have no empathy. Normal humans have a little empathy that they don’t listen. Both are not that different right?
My understanding is the following:
When psychopath can eat you, they will eat you, and then they will justify and lie about it.
When normal humans can eat you, they will eat you, and then they will honestly believe that they’re right and justify about it. When they know they’re wrong, they’ll still lie to save face. That’s what all humans do.
So the difference, the only difference, between psychopaths and normal humans, are that psychopaths is more enligthened faster. A normal nazi honestly believe that jews are guilty. A psychopathic nazi konws it’s not the case but kill anyway. If you are that jew, run or fight. Presume all nazis are psychopath and you’ll have better chance.
You are like sheeps arguing why wolves shouldn’t eat them. The sheeps should have run. Sheeps should have fight. You don’t argue. Argument solve nothing.
If you presume that people are psychophats, you judge them based on what they do to and for you. If you presume people are normal, you have to put up with thousands and thousands of nonsense justficiation. Which most libertarians seem to try to do. Argue.
Ah homo homini lupus. That’s the term. Psychopath is not far, but a good approximation that fits data anyway.
Look, you pull out another standard libertarian rethoric again. Yes I agree. So what? That’s not the point.
My point is whether presuming humans are psychopaths would correctly approximate typical voters’ behavior. I know it approximiate business partners and most strangers I know.
I think a better way to see it is that voters are like psychopaths, and the fact that they aren’t actually make them even worst. Zhuang Tzu, for example, pointed how a moral robbers’ leader that take care all of his underling is far more dangerous, then an immoral ones.
Another correction is that humans are psychopathic toward strangers and in pursuance of the interest of himself as well as his friends and those simmilar to them.
In any case, I think thinking that humans are like psychopaths are good approximation. So the next time someone complain about women trafficking, ask your self, why does feminazis care? Even the trafficked women often don’t mind, so why does the feminazis care? If they were psychopaths would they care? Obviously no. So anti women trafficking laws can’t possibly be the result of actual care about others. I think feminazis are just affraid of competing with cheaper women immigrants.
“Hobbes’s thesis obviously cannot mean that man is driven only and exclusively by aggressive instincts. If this were the case, mankind would have died out long ago. The fact that he did not demonstrates that man also possesses reason and is capable of constraining his natural impulses.”
It is no approximation at all - on its face, it’s oxymoronic and even what I believe is your intended meaning is simply false, as Hoppe makes clear in the above quote.
Clayton -
why humans kill each other? Because they are psychopaths
why humans are capitalistic and spend little time killing each other? Because even psychopaths understand that it is to their best interest not to kill each other.
That’s what I really mean.
As hobbes say, it’s reason, not compassion that keep the peace. I hate tax, but hell, voters are stronger, so I pay anyway and now have some temporary peace. Ah, but you should lower your tax, otherwise, I move jobs to china. At the end that’s how politics work.
We all understand what we can do and max out our interests based on that. I pay my tax, you don’t kill me. You lower your tax, so I don’t move out to China. If we can understand this, a lot can be done realistically rather than just ideally.
Too much politic, however, is based on lies. People want something as if they actually care about others. 'They don’t. That’s what I want to say.
Politicians do not prohibit ganja because it’s dangerous. Politicians prohibit ganja to make government bigger and voters condone it because they too are psychophats that don’t care.
Most psychopaths aren’t killers and a lot of killing has nothing to do with being a psychopath.
@gene: I just don’t see the use of discussing human nature in oxymoronic language. “Normal” is whatever is the population average. A “-pathy” is, by defintion, something which is not normal, not average. So, whatever your personal feelings are about what is normal, average human behavior and whether you think it reflects a true caring for one another or not, it is what it is and it is by definition not any kind of -pathy, psychopathy or otherwise. These are the rules of language and they are definite rules which you must conform to if you expect to be understood. Maybe you’re just venting and it’s not meant to be understood. Who knows.
Suppose we were talking, reasoning parasitic wasps, instead of human beings. Now, I dare you to watch that video and not say to yourself “that’s fucked up!” (in any words of your choice). But the fact is, it is what it is. I think this is what you’re trying to say about human beings… no matter how much we may not like the way people are, it is what it is. So we have to pay taxes just like the caterpillar has to be stung by the wasp and eaten alive from within by its larvae.
But there is a crucial difference between human beings and parasitic wasps and it’s called a frontal cortex. This is the really modern part of the human brain that evolved most recently and is responsible for most of our ability to speak and engage in complex, abstract thought. Unlike wasps, human beings are capable of developing laws. For example, rape was pervasive in the ancestral environment where humans spent the vast majority of their evolutionary history (90+%). The physiology of the reproductive organs as well as the behavioral traits of modern human beings leads directly to this conclusion.
Yet, today, rape is extremely uncommon by comparison to the ancestral environment. How did this happen? Well, the development of family protection, the monogamous union (male “ownership” of his wife), retributive justice and legal precedents have combined to all but eradicate the behavior of rape from our species, however intrinsically inclined males may be to commit rape. Genetic determinism holds for homo sapiens to a much smaller degree than it does for other species. It’s there, but it’s much smaller and social developments are sufficiently powerful to completely alter the biological balance.
So, I disagree with the political nihilistic that there’s no point in trying to change things. There is a point, the point is to eradicate what is evil and to attain what is good both within our own lives and in the lives of our descendants. As far as having a more “business-like” attitude about it, that’s a matter of taste. Some people take a more action-oriented approach, others take a more cerebral or academic approach. Both have their place and to the extent that you derive satisfaction from thinking about these problems and trying to find solutions or at least understand their true nature, it is effort well spent.
Clayton -
Okay understood. Humans are not psychopaths. BUt we’re not that much difference.
Tell me then, what’s our difference, beyond psychological differences?
For political or business purpose, what’s the difference between humans and psychopaths?
Not much. If any thing, we’ll be better off if politicians are psychopaths. The fact that they aren’t is the reason why they cooperate so well to tax capitalists?
Do we have to pay tax? Ugh… Ask Google. That big company only pay 2% tax.
Now that’s rich. Hell I know many people that actually eat tax money. I used to think it’s wrong. But when I see that most humans are so delusional they do not see the obvious, I sort of let go.