[Winstonm]

That almost 1.5 million voted for Walker, Trump’s football hero pick, does not bode well for the future.

What is really needed is for justices Alito and Thomas to die in the next two years.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2022-December-07, 06:59, said:

That almost 1.5 million voted for Walker, Trump's football hero pick, does not bode well for the future.

What is really needed is for justices Alito and Thomas to die in the next two years.

I try for realism but I sometimes I lapse into optimism.

Dan Cox (from the insane wing) lost in the Maryland race for governor but got way more votes than he should have. Wes Moore won but possibly would have lost to a more reasonable R candidate. Perhaps the same is true in Ga. I know I have said this before but just maybe a significant number of Republicans, including some with major influence, will say "Hey, I think we actually could have won those races if we had put up a candidate who was not an embarrassment to everyone".

Last night on the PBS Newshour they interviewed a young Black Republican who had just won a seat in the House of Representatives. I don't recall where he was from and I of course don't know the details of the race but based on what I saw it appears that many voters, the sane ones, will be very happy with their choice. It's way past time to tell the nutjobs to get off the stage.

[pilowsky]

Jack Lang a former Premier of the state in which I live (NSW) once said "In the race of life, always back self-interest; at least you know it's trying."

Sometimes it can be a matter of self-interest to help others.
This idea of helping others because it will benefit yourself is at the heart of what is known as the social contract.
Biologically, the concept of benefiting yourself by helping others expresses itself as altruism, empathy, sympathy, humour and other highly synthesised emotions.
People that lack highly synthesised emotions appear to have no clue at all why helping anyone else is worthwhile.
Sometimes they take it a step further and work to destroy anyone preventing them having what they want at any particular moment.
Sound familiar?
Here's a list of "signs of psychopathy":

• behavior that conflicts with social norms.
• disregarding or violating the rights of others.
• inability to distinguish between right and wrong.
• difficulty with showing remorse or empathy.
• tendency to lie often.
• manipulating and hurting others.
• recurring problems with the law.

American Psychological Association said:

At present, the closest DSM-V diagnosis to psychopathy is a youth diagnosis of conduct disorder with the addition of so-called "callous unemotional" (CU) traits, which manifest as a lack of guilt and remorse, a callous lack of empathy, a lack of concern about one's performance on important activities, and a general lack of emotional expression, said Louisiana State University psychologist Paul Frick, PhD, a member of the DSM-V work group that developed those criteria. In the DSM-V, this diagnosis is known as "conduct disorder with a 'limited prosocial emotion' specifier."

Ref.

[Winstonm]

Mod: I think even with lack of posts this thread should stay open until the special counsel has completed its investigation.

[pilowsky]

It's remarkable that a country that prides itself on its commitment to 'rule of law' and 'democracy' produced such a lacklustre response to a coup attempt.
Only now, two years later, has an actual criminal investigation been started where as one commentator stated "they're working on determining Trump's 'state of mind at the time'" (of the coup attempt).
FFS, his 'state of mind'?
Don't a person's actions mean anything?

Two years! It only took a year to make a novel vaccine.

[johnu]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-13, 16:48, said:

It's remarkable that a country that prides itself on its commitment to 'rule of law' and 'democracy' produced such a lacklustre response to a coup attempt.
Only now, two years later, has an actual criminal investigation been started where as one commentator stated "they're working on determining Trump's 'state of mind at the time'" (of the coup attempt).
FFS, his 'state of mind'?
Don't a person's actions mean anything?

Two years! It only took a year to make a novel vaccine.

The criminal investigation has been going on for almost 2 years. It certainly didn't start yesterday. As far as prosecuting and convicting the leader of a vast criminal organization, you don't start at the top of the pyramid. You start at the bottom and methodically work your way up to the top because the smoking gun is almost never found in the criminal leader's hand. You prosecute the lower level foot soldiers and try to get them to flip on those higher up in the organization. And then you get those intermediary level criminals to flip on their superiors. etc.

As far as equal justice under the law, that sounds great as a soundbite but in real life is sadly lacking because the rich and powerful (and Trump is both) normally breeze through life without consequences because of high level personal connections and the best lawyers money can buy. In Trump's case, that also includes the best judges money can buy in the case of Judge "Loose" Cannon who basically made up her own version of the law to delay and derail Trump's Mar-a-Lago documents case. If Trump were an ordinary citizen, I would have bet a lot of money that he would have been already indicted, and either convicted or still in trial by now.

[thepossum]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-07, 14:30, said:

Jack Lang a former Premier of the state in which I live (NSW) once said "In the race of life, always back self-interest; at least you know it's trying."

Sometimes it can be a matter of self-interest to help others.
This idea of helping others because it will benefit yourself is at the heart of what is known as the social contract.
Biologically, the concept of benefiting yourself by helping others expresses itself as altruism, empathy, sympathy, humour and other highly synthesised emotions.
People that lack highly synthesised emotions appear to have no clue at all why helping anyone else is worthwhile.
Sometimes they take it a step further and work to destroy anyone preventing them having what they want at any particular moment.
Sound familiar?
Here's a list of "signs of psychopathy":

• behavior that conflicts with social norms.
• disregarding or violating the rights of others.
• inability to distinguish between right and wrong.
• difficulty with showing remorse or empathy.
• tendency to lie often.
• manipulating and hurting others.
• recurring problems with the law.

[/color][/font]
Ref.

I find many of these discussions about psychopathy miss what I feel is an important element of such which has been on display at a bureaucratic scale for weeks at the Robodebt RC (Australian Ref) They ignore the manipulation and control by people sitting in an anonymous back office somewhere. If you challenge them they tend to get angry too. Its not all Silence of the Lambs

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2022-December-13, 13:23, said:

Mod: I think even with lack of posts this thread should stay open until the special counsel has completed its investigation.

I have not been posting much lately but I would hate to think that would cause an interesting thread to be shut down. Sometimes I start a post and then think, "Nah, that's too caustic". For example, in post 20623 just above yours, Pilowski gives a reference to an article about psychopathy. The subtitle says "New findings show that people with psychopathy have varying degrees and types of the condition". I started to comment that this is like having a new study showing that ball players play various forms of ballgames and have varying degrees of talent for doing so. Reading further, the study also found that there is both a genetic component and an environmental component to psychopathy and that having a good mother in childhood can sometimes alleviate symptoms. But not always.

Maybe Bruce Springsteen has it right in Nebraska: You want to know why I did what I did, I guess there's just a meanness sir in this world. As to "signs of psychopathy" I note that some on the list, eg "behavior that conflicts with social norms", is often regarded as courageous. And as to lying, when I was an adolescent one of my friends said that he never lied to his parents. I was given a good deal of Independence, more than he was, but I still found that to be an extraordinary claim. We have to do what we have to do. Ok, male adolescents can be a bit psychopathic. We get over it. Most of us. A belated thank you to the cop who said to me "Kind of old for this aren't you, son".


Well, it's the Trump thread. If someone wants to put Trump in a mental institution instead of a prison, I suppose I am ok with that as long as the mental institution is run like a prison and he stays there for twenty years.


I have now done my part to keep the thread alive. You all can thank me later.

[pilowsky]

FWIW 'psychopathy' and its cousin 'sociopathy' aren't mental illnesses.
For something to be considered a mental illness it must - in addition to meeting a variety of agreed criteria (and there's another big argument) - also be 'treatable'.
Basically, you don't get admitted into the medical care system for something the medic can't treat.

Watch some of the Darrell Brooks case for an extreme example of an untreatable constellation of personality traits.

Many people have traits that when taken together might lead to them being labelled a psychopath or sociopath, just as others may be labelled empathetic, or kind.
These are simply the elements that form what is termed a 'personality'.

[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-14, 18:57, said:

FWIW 'psychopathy' and its cousin 'sociopathy' aren't mental illnesses.
For something to be considered a mental illness it must - in addition to meeting a variety of agreed criteria (and there's another big argument) - also be 'treatable'.
Basically, you don't get admitted into the medical care system for something the medic can't treat.

Watch some of the Darrell Brooks case for an extreme example of an untreatable constellation of personality traits.

Many people have traits that when taken together might lead to them being labelled a psychopath or sociopath, just as others may be labelled empathetic, or kind.
These are simply the elements that form what is termed a 'personality'.

For me saying that "For something to be considered a mental illness it must - in addition to meeting a variety of agreed criteria (and there's another big argument) - also be 'treatable'." is a weird use of language.


If someone has a physical disease for which there is no known treatment then we would not admit him into the medical care system, what would be the point, but I have never heard anyone say that since his disease has no effective treatment he is therefore not physically ill. So psychiatrists agree that a mental dysfunction that cannot be successfully treated should not be called a mental illness? Psychiatrists are weird.

[pilowsky]

Not that weird.
(disclaimer - not a psychiatrist).

If a person is in distress (which is shorthand for "has a physical disease for which there is no known treatment"), the doctor aims to determine whether or not there is anything that the medical model can do to alleviate their suffering, sometimes there isn't. That's why we still have medical research.


BTW, 'treat' includes any form of medical intervention that relieves suffering. But first, there has to be suffering.
There are definitely many illness that manifest themselves with psychiatric symptoms that can be hard to diagnose but a person can only be detained for treatment if in addition to the presence of the signs and symptoms of a mental disorder it makes them a danger to themselves or others. The last bit is the key.


In the case of some with psychopathic traits - eg they're narcissistic - they might be functioning perfectly well and be pretty satisfied with themselves.
The way that they behave towards others might cause others to be unhappy with them - and there's the problem.
If the unhappiness that they create doesn't break any laws what would you want the medical profession to do?
Sit on them and tell them they aren't as wonderful as they think they are?
There are no drugs or any amount of 're-education' that will de-narcify anyone.
Narcissists never wake up one morning and think "hmmm, maybe they were right, maybe I am less amazing than I thought I was."


Returning to this thread, Mr T doesn't appear to have a "treatable mental illness" in the sense that although he believes a bunch of stuff that some other people don't, there is no drug or treatment that will shift his beliefs.
His ideas are mostly of the form. "I think Trump will be elected President and if he isn't the election was rigged". Lots of people believe this, it (arguably) isn't impairing his ability to eat, sleep, play golf and rotate under UV lamps, so it isn't impairing his choice of a normal life.
Trumpy beliefs are a legal and political problem, not a medical problem.


Suppose 75%+ of Americans suddenly decided that the world was created in 6 days by an omniscient being that no-one has ever seen but you have to believe it exists because...
It's only a problem if they start shooting people that disagree with them.
A psychiatrist would say that the shooter isn't suffering from a 'treatable mental illness' because of their apparently unusual and unfalsifiable belief system, so the unacceptable behaviour has to be managed by the legal system.

[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-14, 22:11, said:

Not that weird.
(disclaimer - not a psychiatrist).

If a person is in distress (which is shorthand for "has a physical disease for which there is no known treatment"), the doctor aims to determine whether or not there is anything that the medical model can do to alleviate their suffering, sometimes there isn't. That's why we still have medical research.

BTW, 'treat' includes any form of medical intervention that relieves suffering. But first, there has to be suffering.
There are definitely many illness that manifest themselves with psychiatric symptoms that can be hard to diagnose but a person can only be detained for treatment if in addition to the presence of the signs and symptoms of a mental disorder it makes them a danger to themselves or others. The last bit is the key.

In the case of some with psychopathic traits - eg they're narcissistic - they might be functioning perfectly well and be pretty satisfied with themselves.
The way that they behave towards others might cause others to be unhappy with them - and there's the problem.
If the unhappiness that they create doesn't break any laws what would you want the medical profession to do?
Sit on them and tell them they aren't as wonderful as they think they are?
There are no drugs or any amount of 're-education' that will de-narcify anyone.
Narcissists never wake up one morning and think "hmmm, maybe they were right, maybe I am less amazing than I thought I was."

Returning to this thread, Mr T doesn't appear to have a "treatable mental illness" in the sense that although he believes a bunch of stuff that some other people don't, there is no drug or treatment that will shift his beliefs.
His ideas are mostly of the form. "I think Trump will be elected President and if he isn't the election was rigged". Lots of people believe this, it (arguably) isn't impairing his ability to eat, sleep, play golf and rotate under UV lamps, so it isn't impairing his choice of a normal life.
Trumpy beliefs are a legal and political problem, not a medical problem.

Suppose 75%+ of Americans suddenly decided that the world was created in 6 days by an omniscient being that no-one has ever seen but you have to believe it exists because...
It's only a problem if they start shooting people that disagree with them.
A psychiatrist would say that the shooter isn't suffering from a 'treatable mental illness' because of their apparently unusual and unfalsifiable belief system, so the unacceptable behaviour has to be managed by the legal system.

Perhaps we don't disagree all that much. You describe the key as "but a person can only be detained for treatment if in addition to the presence of the signs and symptoms of a mental disorder it makes them a danger to themselves or others." Of course. But here the word "detained" could be a key part of the key phrase. It is one thing to say that a person is or is not mentally ill, another thing to say that we will, whether they are willing or not, detain them. A person can have a physical illness and reject treatment. I have known various cases of that. But they are still called physically ill. What I got out of your original phrasing was that if a person had a mental condition for which no treatment exists then psychiatrists would refuse to say that they had a mental illness. That would be weird, at least to me. If they say he doesn't have a treatable mental illness, sure, that I understand, just as a person might have a physical illness that is not treatable.


As to letting the criminal justice system handle it, I probably agree sort of. Our book club recently read The Great Alone. (actually I didn't, perhaps I couldn't, finish it but Becky did and summarized the parts I didn't get to). A very depressing story involving, among other things, a guy who was shot down and captured during the Viet Nam war and came back a very different person than he had been. He had a wife and a daughter and was difficult in general and abusive in particular. The wife eventually shot him (killed him) as he was beating up their daughter. I saw a milder but not mild case of this while I was young. We took in a mother and her two kids after she left her abusive husband. This was not long after WW II and I think that was how the guy got that way. Very much people have to protect themselves and others, but I do make a distinction between guys who went haywire by being abused and guys who are rotten because they decide to be. But both have to be dealt with and sometimes this means cops and judges, not psychiatrists or social workers. It gets complicated.

[pilowsky]

kenberg, on 2022-December-15, 08:05, said:

It gets complicated.

It sure does.

[Winstonm]

I have seen supposedly factual news shows that indicate that a psychopath shows an abnormally low amount of activity in a portion of the frontal cortex, and this same show interviewed a man with that condition who said he did not feel things like sympathy but relied on observation of others to tell him how to act. What separates this copier-type of functional psychopath from Ted Bundy types is unknown other than an almost universal history of animal torture.

[pilowsky]

Winstonm, on 2022-December-15, 16:05, said:

I have seen supposedly factual news shows that indicate that a psychopath shows an abnormally low amount of activity in a portion of the frontal cortex, and this same show interviewed a man with that condition who said he did not feel things like sympathy but relied on observation of others to tell him how to act. What separates this copier-type of functional psychopath from Ted Bundy types is unknown other than an almost universal history of animal torture.

One of the many problems with this type of research is the control group.
Suppose you take 20 mathematicians from Minnesota and do some kind of imaging (positron emission tomography, functional MRI, feeling their skulls for lumps etc) and then compare the results with some random group in the population (matched of course for age, sex and weight).
You find a difference in the right frontal cortex.
Does this means you've discovered the Minnesota mathematics nucleus?

When EInstein died he left his brain to science (very kind) and when Marian Diamond examined it she discovered that Einstein had a higher proportion of glial cells compared to neurons when compared to a 'control' group in one area of his brain. Here's the paper from 1985.

Marian Diamond said:

The results of the analysis suggest that in left area 39, the neuronal: glial ratio for the Einstein brain is significantly smaller than the mean for the control population (t = 2.62, df 9, p less than 0.05, two-tailed). Einstein's brain did not differ significantly in the neuronal:glial ratio from the controls in any of the other three areas studied.

Fascinating but what does it prove?

[Winstonm]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-15, 17:32, said:

One of the many problems with this type of research is the control group.
Suppose you take 20 mathematicians from Minnesota and do some kind of imaging (positron emission tomography, functional MRI, feeling their skulls for lumps etc) and then compare the results with some random group in the population (matched of course for age, sex and weight).
You find a difference in the right frontal cortex.
Does this means you've discovered the Minnesota mathematics nucleus?

When EInstein died he left his brain to science (very kind) and when Marian Diamond examined it she discovered that Einstein had a higher proportion of glial cells compared to neurons when compared to a 'control' group in one area of his brain. Here's the paper from 1985.
[/color]

Fascinating but what does it prove?

Coincidence or cause that is the question; whether tis nobler to map the mind in order to see trouble…

[barmar]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-15, 17:32, said:

One of the many problems with this type of research is the control group.
Suppose you take 20 mathematicians from Minnesota and do some kind of imaging (positron emission tomography, functional MRI, feeling their skulls for lumps etc) and then compare the results with some random group in the population (matched of course for age, sex and weight).
You find a difference in the right frontal cortex.
Does this means you've discovered the Minnesota mathematics nucleus?

When EInstein died he left his brain to science (very kind) and when Marian Diamond examined it she discovered that Einstein had a higher proportion of glial cells compared to neurons when compared to a 'control' group in one area of his brain. Here's the paper from 1985.
[/color]

Fascinating but what does it prove?

Unfortunately, not very much.

To draw any significant conclusions from something like this, you need more than one sample to detect a meaningful pattern. Maybe if all Nobel Prize winners, or lots of successful physicists, left their brains to science we could look for something many of them have in common that distinguishes them from the general population. Genetic comparisons might also be useful, although there are so many genes that affect intelligence that I suspect it would be hard to find common factors there.

When thinking about psychopaths and sociopaths, I'm inclined to remember the movie "A Clockwork Orange" (spoilers ahead for this 50-year-old classic). A scientist "cured" Alex, but the process went overboard and turned him into a total wimp who couldn't even defend himself when attacked by his former cohorts. After he wakes from this, he finds that he has reverted to his original self. There doesn't seem to be an in-between, he can't just be "normal". So the question about whether something is an illness is not whether there is a treatment, but whether we can contemplate one; e.g. we don't have a cure for the common cold, but it's not something out of the realm of possibility, and we do have drugs that mitigate the symptoms.

[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2022-December-15, 17:32, said:

One of the many problems with this type of research is the control group.
Suppose you take 20 mathematicians from Minnesota and do some kind of imaging (positron emission tomography, functional MRI, feeling their skulls for lumps etc) and then compare the results with some random group in the population (matched of course for age, sex and weight).
You find a difference in the right frontal cortex.
Does this means you've discovered the Minnesota mathematics nucleus?

When EInstein died he left his brain to science (very kind) and when Marian Diamond examined it she discovered that Einstein had a higher proportion of glial cells compared to neurons when compared to a 'control' group in one area of his brain. Here's the paper from 1985.

Company coming, 20+, some today, some tomorrow. But I do have time to note that growing up in Minnesota is a good start. I'm actually at least a little bit serious about this.

[thepossum]

I always follow discussions of psychopathy with some interest and skepticism
I think there is a lot of misinformation about it but I reckon many of us would know one if we met one
I used to be concerned that I could be one but since I totally lack superficial (any) charm I am relieved to say I am not. Ooops and I'm not cold and callous either. But you can get me on much of the other stuff and some online personality tests have advised me to talk to a professional if at all concerned by the results

But more seriously I have some (not much) semi-professional knowledge on the subject and always get irritated at most discussion on the matter. Apparently approximately 1% of the world (or small subset thereof) are Hare psychopaths. That seems a lot to me

To me its like on any set of dimensions pick the 1% worst on everything kind of method - not people you want to mix with much anyway - just some set of dimensions and draw a line around 1% of them

Just reacquainting myself with some of the criteria. You have to have been caught and get into trouble for something. A bit biased

I think there are many reasons it is not listed as a disorder. So I feel somewhat safe discussing the matter as above. Remember to separate the psychopathy from the person

[Winstonm]

I agree with Possum on this point that psychopathy is a condition not a conclusion.