Psychopaths

[Svartalf]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-p ... ction.html

Can these studies be applied to management Socialists and executivesMarxists? If we find that a significant number of Americans Marxists are psychopaths, can they we democratically vote to approve of psychopathy confine them to insane asylums for life?

OK, the day I organize trips East, you'll be on the first train.

[Atheist-Lite]

I'm a realist Schneider. The coming economic collapse will mean replacement parts for these highly complex scanners will become impossible to find. Like those ancient fossil Greek clocks it may be a while before clock making takes off again. So you'll have the check list and the theocrats will be looking for a reason to round up people just like you? Do some more denial, I find it inspiring?

[Schneibster]

I'm a realist Schneider. The coming economic collapse will mean replacement parts for these highly complex scanners will become impossible to find.

You really don't understand the meaning of having this available as a training tool, do you? Merely from this, we now know something about the mechanism behind psychopathy. We right here can draw some tentative conclusions about the motions of this disease in peoples' brains, man.

And we aren't hunting in the dark any more. We can see fine enough detail to turn a thought into a unique, detectable trace on an fMRI, a consistent trace, a repeatable trace that is the direct indicator of that particular thought.

Unique of course per-brain, we don't have that much computing power available yet that we can divine peoples' thoughts from reading their brains. But give it time. Maybe in a hundred years; surely in two hundred. Maybe in five.

Or an abnormal trace. That's the most useful. You can use it to make a physical diagnosis.

As far as "the coming crash," be sure to clear the brush off your lawn for the black helicopter and don't worry about the autism vaccines.

[Atheist-Lite]

I'm a realist Schneider. The coming economic collapse will mean replacement parts for these highly complex scanners will become impossible to find.

You really don't understand the meaning of having this available as a training tool, do you? Merely from this, we now know something about the mechanism behind psychopathy. We right here can draw some tentative conclusions about the motions of this disease in peoples' brains, man.

And we aren't hunting in the dark any more. We can see fine enough detail to turn a thought into a unique, detectable trace on an fMRI, a consistent trace, a repeatable trace that is the direct indicator of that particular thought.

Unique of course per-brain, we don't have that much computing power available yet that we can divine peoples' thoughts from reading their brains. But give it time. Maybe in a hundred years; surely in two hundred. Maybe in five.

Or an abnormal trace. That's the most useful. You can use it to make a physical diagnosis.

As far as "the coming crash," be sure to clear the brush off your lawn for the black helicopter and don't worry about the autism vaccines.

I'm convinced all of this and more would be possible given time. I'm just not convinced there will be time, at least in the next few decades, with the current state of mass pyschosis in the human animal.

[Schneibster]

I'm convinced all of this and more would be possible given time.

You really don't understand what happened right there, do you?

For the very first time we have a diagnosis using brain scanning technology that can track moving impulses in 3 dimensions through the brain. That means we know what region of the brain they came from, and what region they went to.

We know that right now. Not later. Now. Today. The first time the guys looked at their charts and high-fived was six months or a year ago, and this is them announcing it to the world.

You see, we know what all the regions of the brain do, more or less. What we don't know is how they do it. But when we see a particular region of the brain that we know what its function is transmitting something to another region of the brain we know what its function is, simultaneous with presentation of a stimulus that the diagnostic criteria say should produce less response across that pathway, and we actually see less response, we know what's going on. We have nailed that dysfunction. If there is nuclear war today right now, its likely that knowledge will survive. It is very, very valuable knowledge about the exact way our brains work, knowledge that we now have for all time.

Soon that knowledge will be in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. We may be able to halve crime everywhere we go. There is a superpowers game going on right now over on the games forum. How about that one? Being able to tell if people are sociopathic- more, being able to tell the degree to which they are. That's what this is.

Now this minute we can see a big piece of the architecture of the brain. The frontal lobes have the main control machinery; the context providers; the touch/damage/heat/cold sensors; the speech centers; the memory centers. The context providers process language, social signals with somatic components, thoughts, associated memories brought up by incoming sensory data, and images of things and people, and send it down to the amygdala. The amygdala's function is to associate not only all of that data but also and in parallel all the incoming direct sensory data, with the current chemical and physical state of being of your body, as well as the different data with each other. That chemical and physical knowledge makes its way up from deeper centers, such as the cerebellum, where learned behavior patterns are stored for later execution as discrete tasks, and the brainstem that contains the firmware that makes you breathe and your heart beat and your colon peristalse and so forth. This provides an emotional context and transmits the tenor of your thoughts to your body so that it can be ready to respond to your demands based on what's going on around you. But in addition, there are cues making their way back up to the frontal lobes, that provide information for memory recording, and potentials that eventually may result in action using the control board for your muscles. All of these are functions of the frontal lobes. Things like, information from your hearing, or your seeing, gets sent for processing to the language centers, and also in parallel to the centers responsible for social interactions, so that social cues from others can be extracted as well.

And we know all that simply because we can see how these things work. We really know a lot about our brains right now and nobody seems to know. I am regularly amazed as new breakthroughs like this one come along and everyone just stands around not looking. We know so much already that any new discovery opens further portals by leaps and bounds.

I'm just not convinced there will be time, at least in the next few decades, with the current state of mass pyschosis in the human animal.

Decades?

Not. You are about to be future shocked.

[Atheist-Lite]

Yeah. Perhaps? I buy into a modular brain. I'm not sure I share your optimism about any good that'll come from this knowledge. People being risk averse and conformist. They'll pyschotropically medicate everyone who might think differently in the hope of getting the occasional bad apple.

[Schneibster]

People always assumed, well, when we get psychology all figured out it will be mind control.

Turns out you can't do that. It just doesn't work that way. Sure, you can brainwash somebody, but not like Frank Sinatra played in The Manchurian Candidate; they're zombies the whole time, obviously dysfunctional and so fucked up they'd never have a chance back in their home society. Look at Moonies or Hare Krishnas; that's brainwashing. If you want to see a somewhat more subtle form check out any really weird religious sect. Especially ones that have traditions of evangelism. Those folks have to be thoroughly indoctrinated; talk to them for five minutes and you can smell it. There's a thing in their brain, and it's not gonna let go. Go argue with Seth; I can practically see the memeplex in him staring back at me hungrily trying to find a crack it can invade me through.

Turns out that the most dangerous mental disease we know of, just might be curable if you get it early enough by just talking.

Just talking.

You do know that the KUBARK manual disdains torture and claims that it is the only sure way to guarantee you'll get false information, right? You know it recommends co-opting the prisoner and gaining his loyalty, using Stockholm Syndrome to break him down, right? That's how the pros do it. They just talk.

[Atheist-Lite]

That isn't exactly new knowledge.

[Schneibster]

KUBARK was written during the Kennedy administration. It was de-classified a while back. There is quite a bit of controversy over it; for example, there is an entry in Wikipedia about it that is wrong. It concludes that torture is enormously less effective than psychological techniques, most strongly recommending standard interrogation without the use of force other than confinement.

One thing to keep in mind about people is that their memories are delicate. Start fucking with people and they start not only forgetting but altering, without even realizing it. Bring up a memory under conditions of torture and that memory will be associated with the torture forever more in that person's mind; and many of the details will be lost from the engram to make space for this new emotional context. Stupid idea.

Amateurs and writers use torture. It doesn't work.

The thing about KUBARK is that rumor has it that since Kennedy was a Catholic he took the opportunity to secretly run the manual past the Congregation For the Preservation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Do you know who that is?

[Svartalf]

LOL. Given the kind of Catholics the Kennedys were, they'd have about the same degree of relation with the good ol' Inquisition as I myself would and have.
Heck, even deep seated, ultraconservative Caths avoid those like the plague unless they have to... takes the like of Pope Benny or the Opus Dei to actually deal with such folks willingly.

[kiki5711]

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-p ... ction.html

Can these studies be applied to management and executives? If we find that a significant number of Americans are psychopaths, can they democratically vote to approve of psychopathy?

The United States is not a democracy, it's a representative republic. And we send all the crazy people to Washington now. Right Ian?

It's a prerequisite to becoming a representative in the government. Some countries is a "must" to be a psychopath to lead.

[Schneibster]

LOL. Given the kind of Catholics the Kennedys were, they'd have about the same degree of relation with the good ol' Inquisition as I myself would and have.
Heck, even deep seated, ultraconservative Caths avoid those like the plague unless they have to... takes the like of Pope Benny or the Opus Dei to actually deal with such folks willingly.

He was the President of the United States. All he had to do was have lunch with the Archbishop of the Washington Diocese and pass him the manual, and later get it back with commentary from the organization that's liable to know the most (without tainting himself with the Nazis). Simple, easy, obvious. Bingo, the CIA owes the Inquisition one. Wonder what the payback was? Paybacks are a bitch.

[Svartalf]

You know that the CDF stopped having recourse to inquisitorial methods like 250 years ago (even if the Church of Spain kept them, at least on the books, though mostly unused, until 1820), and it was still the Holy Office back then, so a mid 20th century CDF would be as much of an expert on such things as a modern physician would be on humour based medicine in the tradition of Galen.

[Schneibster]

Who else has the records they do?

You don't suppose they threw them away? No way.

[Svartalf]

SRSLY?

Sure, they've got extensive archives, procedurals, manuals and whatnot, but those are historical documents, not stuff that goes into the actual training of prelates involved in the Congregation... Nowadays, the CDF deals mostly in Jesuit tradittion of skewed debate, propaganda, and sophistic argumentation than in the legacy of the domini canes (who are no longer associated with it, as you might notice)...

I have little doubt that if the Church were to get back the kind of temporal power it had 5 centuries ago, it might exhume the old documentation and resume forceful extirpation of heresy, but even if such an event happens, I'm pretty certain I won't be there to witness it.