Psychopathic Criminals Have "Empathy Switch" 347
dryriver writes "Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research. Placed in a brain scanner, psychopathic criminals watched videos of one person hurting another and were asked to empathise with the individual in pain. Only when asked to imagine how the pain receiver felt did the area of the brain related to pain light up. Scientists, reporting in Brain, say their research explains how psychopaths can be both callous and charming. The team proposes that with the right training, it could be possible to help psychopaths activate their 'empathy switch', which could bring them a step closer to rehabilitation. Criminals with psychopathy characteristically show a reduced ability to empathise with others, including their victims. Evidence suggests they are also more likely to reoffend upon release than criminals without the psychiatric condition."
With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
They'll be cured all right.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
So why don't we do that instead of electing them to public office or making them executives in the banking industry?
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why don't we do that instead of electing them to public office or making them executives in the banking industry?
Because there is evidence that psychopaths actually make better leaders. There was an article about this [economist.com] a couple months ago in the Economist. By ignoring the suffering of individuals, psychopaths are able to focus on bold action for the greater good. This is especially apparent in war time, where compassionate leaders are often dithering and indecisive, leading to a prolonged war and many more deaths and wounds than needed.
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Not this again. Psychopaths do not make better leaders, and they do not "focus on bold action for the greater good", because psychopaths don't have a greater good: by definition, they are antisocial, having "a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others". Any benefit to the greater good as a result of their actions is game theory in action, survival camouflage.
Let's take the example given in that Economist article you cite: "there are five railway workmen in the path of a ru
Peace in our time! (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be said that Neville Chamberlain was a compassionate leader...
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Surrender talks were stalled, not underway. The Japanese hardliners had not yet decided to back off from their position (no change in government, Japan is not occupied, Japan tries its own war criminals, and Japanese troops are evacuated back to Japan by Japanese on a Japanese schedule). The US had already said that, if the Japanese people wanted to keep the Emperor, they'd keep the Emperor.
The Trinity blast was plutonium. The US wasn't going to drop the first implosion bomb on the Japanese, since the
Didn't you forget something? (Score:3)
How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.
They'll be cured all right.
Inspector: Dr. Brodsky, that boy you were treating... I have to inform you that he's just killed another man and committed serious assault and sexual violence against a further twelve people.
Brodsky: What?!
Inspector: Even worse, he told us that he'd really enjoyed the treatment, and that all those films you showed him got him "ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence".
Brodsky: What? This can't be... we forced him to watch acts of bloody sadism and violence for a fortnight.
Inspector: You *assured* us
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't the whole point the fact that they can turn off empathy/have it off as a default state? Without empathy what would be the point of horrific imagery other than discouraging them from turning it on, and maybe give them a thrill if they get off on violence?
It seems to me the whole idea of "rehabilitation" here is shaky at best - as a general rule our society rewards psychopathy quite readily with power, wealth, and sex. So what's in it for the self-interested psychopath you want to rehabilitate? It may be that they can learn to "turn on" the switch for sustained periods to get themselves cleared as rehabilitated, but unless the switch were somehow magically locked in place why wouldn't they just "turn it off" again once they were free?
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Indeed. We seem to have entire professions; like the legal system and upper management, dedicated to sociopathic individuals.
Re: With the right training, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nonetheless, empathy training does work.
When one of my children got caught bullying -- and that is one psychopathic behavior that MANY practice -- I searched for the right response, and came up with a book called "Small criminals among us: how to recognize and change children's antisocial behavior, before they explode." [amazon.com]
The methods -- and there are multiple -- are all about empathy training.
My experience? Between that, and allowing a heavy use of the (Catholic) confessional, and a focus on the Christian aspects, that child is much improved. The book was very helpful.
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A fair point, and a good reason to further study empathy so it can be effectively promoted in our children and ourselves*. But I'm not sure how applicable it is to psychopathic criminals. It sounds like you used a behavior-modification technology backed by social and mythological indoctrination to help deflect a malleable still-forming mind onto a more empathic path. Fine, the tools and goals may change but that's what every culture does - children by and large accept our word on how the world works, so w
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They've been trying to turn off empathy in soldiers since forever. In recent decades they've gotten somewhat better at it, which is why more soldiers end up with PTSD once empathy reasserts itself.
I wouldn't be too down on the church. For all it's faults, perhaps it's why we weren't overrun with psychopaths before and it's waning position in society may be why we have such a problem with corporate psychopathy now.
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Because we also reward them with jail.
Approaching the level of a psychopath is beneficial, getting caught crossing into is not (in general).
FTFY
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We are only talking about the ones getting caught, right?
And they are quite likely to get caught again right?
That's how I read the summary at least.
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But we don't - we only jail those psychopaths who (A) cross the line into violent crime, since white-collar crimes generally fund extremely effective legal defenses, and (B) get caught.
And neither violence or stupidity are directly linked to psychopathy itself, though without empathy violent appetites may find more fertile ground than in most minds.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
You're missing the point. It's important that these scientists do the research because it provides a reason to beg for funding for the research. That is essentially the only possible benefit from this train of thought...
While I am of the same cynical cloth you seem to be cut from there is the possibility they could discern what chemical process happens in the brain to turn it on and synthesize a serum that the psychopath would then be induced to take once released to prevent the switch from turning back off. I'm sure many pharmaceutical firms would fund that research.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:4, Funny)
How about we hold their eyes open and force them to watch horrific, violent videos, preferably multiple at a time.
I doubt that would've caused them to vote differently yesterday...
Or Room 23 (Score:2)
We are the causes of our own suffering
THINK ABOUT
YOUR LIFE
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"We are the causes of our own suffering..."
I don't know about that, really. I am pretty sure I can trace most of my suffering directly back to the action of others.
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The phrase is based on Buddhism if that's really relevant.
Not really.
But this is one of those cases in which I can hardly be embarrassed by a "whoosh" moment. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that I was not a "Lost" fanatic.
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Watch it? They live it!
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Drawing obvious parallels for humor isn't the same as making a cogent point. Chill.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Holy fuck YOU'RE dense. Were you born without the ability to comprehend humor?
He probably switches it on and off at will.
Re:With the right training, huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
listening to Mozart, with eye drops in order that their eyes won't wither ? Sorry Dude, It's been already tried ...
Nobody's tried Mozart; only Ludwig van Beethoven.
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listening to Mozart, with eye drops in order that their eyes won't wither ? Sorry Dude, It's been already tried ...
No it hasn't, Mozart would be much more soothing ;-)
A Clockwork Orange (Score:2)
Would this training work... (Score:3, Interesting)
...for politicians?
Re:Would this training work... (Score:5, Insightful)
They already know how to turn empathy on and off. When campaigning, turn empathy on. When legislating, turn empathy off.
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While I see this as a joke.
The problem with Politicians and Empathy is that often they deal with issues that are more complex then the average Political internet ranter can rant about.
For example: Tax the rich 90%. That sounds good to me, it should solve a lot of problems... However... if these people are taxed too much they will move to more tax friendly areas, move jobs out of the area, and in general make things worse in the long run. Trickle down doesn't work when you give the rich more money. But i
Re:Would this training work... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny...that's exactly what happened after we reduced the tax burden from the rich down from 90%.
I was going to say you sound like you've fallen for some propaganda, but then you said the following and now I don't think you know what you're talking about at all:
Trickle-down economic policies don't work, but they do work when you don't implement them???
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Funny...that's exactly what happened after we reduced the tax burden from the rich down from 90%.
Only because during the time that the tax rate was 90% there was not only far more exemptions, so nobody actually paid 90%, but we were effectively a closed economy - You couldn't just move somewhere else and maintain(most) of your wealth.
With the development of alternate economies, globalization, etc... Moving your wealth is easier than ever, so reducing the tax rates works to slow the bleed, if not completely stop it.
Personally, I'd settle for a flat tax system. With the current tax system the ultra-ric
Re:Would this training work... (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you make sure that gone is gone, that is, they don't get to leave and still do business here, the vacuum left by their departure becomes an economic opportunity for the rest. It's not as if these people are the only ones who possess the ability to run a business and employ people.
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normal people can probably do it too (Score:5, Interesting)
kind and good normal people have been known to turn it off under certain conditions, too fight or defend against that which they believe "evil"
maybe studying that reaction could help with the psychopath problem
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kind and good normal people have been known to turn it off under certain conditions
the euphemism is "political sophistication".
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Good point. It seems like we must all have the ability to empathize, or else we couldn't understand anyone's motives. We must also have the ability to turn it off, or we would be constantly overwhelmed by empathy, and I would suppose we'd be much less violent.
It seems like, in a general way, we sort of divide people into "us" and "them", feeling empathy for "us" and not so much for "them". Maybe psychopaths are just very restrictive in who they include in "us"?
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One can sympathize with the victims of one's actions, and yet still consider the actions to be necessary to prevent a greater harm.
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The difference is that for "normal" people the default position for the switch is on and it requires effort to turn it off.
For psychopaths, the default switch is off and it requires effort to turn it on.
Pyschopathy (Score:2)
I agree. It's more a matter of degree. For that matter, I figure there's far more non-criminal psychopaths out there than criminal ones. I figure that 'most' end up figuring that even though they don't actually care about their fellow humans, it's too much hassle to kill them. It takes somebody broken in yet another way to become a serial killer.
It could be a bit like some cancers that take multiple mutations to become really dangerous. Mutation A isn't deadly by itself, nor is B, but add them together
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Breivik had convinced himself (well really, it seemed that a small group of far right wing whackos of which Breivik was the most extreme member) that socialists and leftists had sold out Europe and that the only way to save the situation was to commit an atrocity against innocents which would, somehow, spark a holy war in which Christian Europe threw out all the Muslims. I would also reference Timothy McVeigh, another individual who managed to desensitize himself and allow himself to be able to commit mass
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Do not stop on your quest. It looks like there are a few more useless bits to ferret out.
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It starts by de-humanising people by calling them something inferior (cockroaches, rats, ...), and scapegoating. Then you don't emphasize with how they are treated and their suffering, because they are not like you, and probably deserve it. ...
Be aware if you want to prevent the next Holocaust
Re:normal people can probably do it too (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is mainly to do with tribalism, which is a very very ancient set of instincts (we share them to a large degree with the other apes, just look at how chimp tribes behave towards each other). People are built to fit themselves into kin groups, which works pretty well when you're talking about relative small societies of a hundred or a few thousand individuals. Essentially it is an "us vs. them", "friend vs. stranger" recognition system.
If someone is seen as a stranger, they are a potential threat, and actions can be taken against them that one would not take against a member of one's own kin group or society (this is why murder of a relative or close friend is still seen in most societies as a much higher crime than murder of a stranger or an acquaintance). Through the ages demagogues have been able to manipulate this basic tribal instinct to group people based upon relationship to further all sorts of atrocities. Whether it's persecution, exile, slavery or genocide, once you've convinced a populace that your desired target group is somehow alien, you can convince that populace to do almost anything.
It's as the old story goes (and time for the Godwin); Hitler convinced an entire nation made of up people who adhered to a religion whose basic tenet was "love thy brother" that persecution and ultimately murder of millions of members of ethnic groups (Jews and Roma in particular) was perfectly fine, and yet even Hitler was a vegetarian who loved his dogs.
Whether this "empathy switch" in psychopaths is related to that I don't know. Obviously even in normal people there is a way to trigger the dehumanizing of groups if they can be convinced that they are alien threats. Mind you even look like genocides like the Jewish Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide, there was long standing prejudice and mistrust against the targeted group, so it's not as if appeared out of nowhere.
Throwing babies into the ovens (Score:2)
That may not be the best example: Some of the horrors of Nazi Germany were so bad that killing someone before they were old enough to form lasting memories might have been the most merciful thing a conscripted prison guard could do.
The question becomes:
Did the guard kill the baby out of mercy for the baby? That's mercy-based action.
Did the guard do it out of fear of his own life, wishing to God he could think of another way out? That's fear-based action.
Did the guard do it "because it was his job." That
How would you know (Score:2)
Re:How would you know (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if they don't want to go back to their seat in congress after the treatment, they're better.
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Exactly. But then the fluffy rehabilitation brigade are pathalogically wedded to their arrogant almost religious belief that everyone is a good person at heart and can be rehabilitated given the right circumstances. They simply won't accept that some people are born evil and need to be locked up for life or executed for the safety of the public. And many people have paid the price for that arrogance.
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They simply won't accept that some people are born evil and need to be locked up for life or executed for the safety of the public.
That's hardly the majority of those incarcerated, however. In fact, the kind of person you're talking about is the dominant lifeform in charge of the very system that we're supposed to be able to rely on to deal with them! How effective...
Re:How would you know (Score:4, Insightful)
They simply won't accept that some people are born evil and need to be locked up for life or executed for the safety of the public. And many people have paid the price for that arrogance.
You dismiss religious absolutism, but you're willing to accept the idea of someone being unavoidably "evil"? Do you realize how subjective that is? How hypocritical? Not everyone who disagrees with you does so because they are incapable of compromise, sometimes it's because you are.
Re:How would you know (Score:5, Insightful)
And, we've discovered that certain kinds intervention before age 18 is really effective at decreasing crime rates among these people. And notably, in spite of the fact that we have all these awesome criteria, less than 10% of those who meet our best criteria ever really do anything wrong. NOVA [pbs.org] had a fascinating documentary about it. (I'm at work and can't verify that's the right video). If we could trivially split people into categories of "future murderer" and "non-murderer" it wouldmake life easier, but we cannot.
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How would you know if they have been rehabilitated?
That's easy: Make them sit on the Group W bench and fill out a form with the following words:
"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"
why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?
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Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?
That is a question that hundreds of very smart people have studied for at least a 150 years. In fact, Charles Darwin [phys.org] struggled with it because it was a big hole in his theories. And it is not limited to humans or even mammals.
The simple answer is that it always seems to benefit the individual, somehow.
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The answer is, populations with the compulsion to sacrifice themselves on behalf of the group are more likely to reproduce themselves and abide, while populations without this compulsion are more likely to see their population decline and cease to exist.
The existence of human beings is a testament to this. We, ourselves, are a culture of cells that work together and sacrifice themselves for the good of the culture. When they stop doing so, the composite being that we are dies, and ALL the cells that make us up also die.
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Not a parent, are you? Probably never had a girlfriend either.
Most parents would gladly suffer for their kids (Score:2)
Why would anyone ever voluntarily suffer on behalf of another?
Why? Love.
A vast majority of parents in Western cultures (and possibly world-wide) would gladly give their life to save the life of their child.
Re:why? (Score:5, Informative)
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Enlightenment.
No, seriously.
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And yet holistic explanations based on simple observation have proven fairly successful over the centuries.
You call them "explanations", but are they really explanations in the same way that a successful "reductionist" model would be?
but you will get a better understanding of the motivations of man from great literature than you will from science and economic textbooks
You get case studies from great literature. What they mean is something else entirely.
That reminds me of (Score:4, Insightful)
...how soldiers can kill people without remorse and then still be good dads
Is being a "psychopath" really just an old term that means "sociopath" and is apparently 1 in 200 men? -often ruthless and in leadership positions?
Trailing thought, are internet trolls like this?
Re:That reminds me of (Score:4, Insightful)
Military killing depends a lot on dehumanizing foes. Battlefield terminology for foes almost always takes the form of a very non-human noun, whether it's "targets", "hostiles", or "alpha", the words that are used are never words that inherently imply personhood. There's a well-researched book [amazon.com] about how this corresponds to good people being capable of terrible things.
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Having a lack of sympathy for people who commit terrible crimes doesn't necessary have a corresponding lack of empathy for them as human beings.
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Is being a "psychopath" really just an old term that means "sociopath"
Yes they are both old terms that mean the same thing that describes people who wind up in prison.
Re: That reminds me of (Score:2)
I take your meaning to be psychopaths like the Jean Valjean?
(btw, in re another post of yours, go see my first post, with a link to amazon. It's an eye opener.)
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Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Robert Hare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare [wikipedia.org] is an expert in psychopaths. He said that was asked to work on therapies for psychopaths to get them to rehabilitate. He said he wanted to develop a program that appeals to their self-interest to not engage in criminal or bad behavior. If they do have an "empathy switch" that would be a good thing. You would have to convince the psychopath that it is in their best interest to leave it on.
Mod parent up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, psychopaths NEED to be identified as mental cases and not criminal cases! We lock people up in an overly simplistic system that fails to work with the real world; we never address the root problem: The criminal system needs to deal with mental illnesses (that includes addiction) as disease and not as debts to be paid to society. It is not business nor should it ever be thought of like a business. Pedophiles for example, should be put into mental hospitals and NEVER released until safe... not automatically released after their "debt" has been paid.
Re: Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Read Small Criminals, mentioned elsewhere in this story. It isn't mental illness, it is a criminal outlook. That said, it is possible to train people to care.
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I agree that paedophilia is a consequence of some sort of mental illness, but that "NEVER" is difficult to quantify - it would seem the only way to achive it is to keep the person in for life. Would it change your opinions any to know that back in the 1960's there were a number of programs to treat paedophiles in prison and then monitor them long term after release, and what sort of numbers they produced. These were studies in the US and Canada, involving in total over 10,000 subjects that were in the priso
This is how they fool lie detectors (Score:2)
It's funny that the slant here is about rehabilitation. It seems to show how they can fool those doing the rehabilitation long enough to get back out in the world to screw it up some more.
Was't this the plot for an episode on ST Voyager? (Score:2)
They "cured" the murderous criminal guy with the defective empathy switch in his brain...
TV Doesn't Know (Score:2)
This is really going to put a damper on all that 'science' going on in Dexter.
Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)
Picard: Data, I'm sure it's a fascinating experience, but perhaps you should deactivate your emotion chip for now.
Data: Good idea, sir.
[beep]
Data: Done.
Picard: Data, there are times that I envy you.
Did they test lawyers? (Score:3)
A lot of occupations require a suspension of empathy. I would be interested to see if "non-psychopaths" have a similar "empathy switch" ability regarding tasks associated with their daily occupation.
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Test for psychos? (Score:2)
Is there a reasonably reliable medical test that can determine whether or not someone is a psychopath? Maybe a fMRI or something like that? While it would be nice if we could somehow cure sociopaths, I think just identifying them would be a good start. Maybe we could even prohibit them from running for public office or holding executive positions in publicly traded corporations...
In defense of psychopaths (Score:2)
I looked over the article and abstract, and note that they compared criminal psychopaths with non-criminal non-psychopaths.
The study seems to equate psychopathy with criminality; ie - they didn't compare non-criminal psychopaths with non-criminal normals, nor did they compare criminal-psychopaths with criminal-normal.
I strongly believe that psychopathy by itself is not a problem; only the immorality, and then only when the immorality leads to actions that hurt others. Psychopaths could learn and practice et
Empathy isn't always good (Score:4, Insightful)
People with Aspergers (ASD) display limited empathy with others. Not the psychopaths' ability to switch it on and off. It is just lacking.
Fake empathy is often used by con artists and sociopaths to manipulate people. And in some cases, people with Aspergers are more able to see through such social engineering than other people. There is an interesting story in The Big Short [wikipedia.org] about an investor/fund manager who saw through the Wall Street bullshit surrounding mortgage backed securities and shorted them, making millions of dollars for himself and his clients.
evolution (Score:2)
this totally makes sense in an evolutionary way...its easy to imagine how important an adaptation like this would be in a species that for 10's of thousands of years lived in a permanent state of war where you had to be bathed in blood and kill everything on week and then chill at court and amuse the kings and females.
how else could people reconcile this?
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really?? you actually believe that mankind hasn't been killing each other for scarce resources and sexual conquest since the dawn of time?
it sure is something i would *like* to believe, like santa claus or the easter bunny, but irregardless of the current trend in anthropology to claim homo sapiens were a gentle, non-warlike species back before civilization i just haven't seen much definitive proof of it. FTA
It shows us that societies that are closer to bare subsistence were unlikely to war over resources
well, right...because why kill and steal from a group that actually has much less then you do?
A Doomed Zeitgeist (Score:2)
When viewed as group organisms, societies, corporations,
slashdot, fix yer damned scripts (Score:5, Informative)
Way OT but I'm really sick of this...
A script on the fsdn domain is causing command-click on links to load both the new tab and the original tab with the destination URL. Both firefox and safari.
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Explination (Score:2)
Psychopaths only ...? (Score:3)
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It turns on the electric chair.
I first read this as "It turns on the electric car ." ... I thought "This must be the most bizarre thread derailing to environmental feel-goodism I've ever seen." Then I remembered this is Slashdot.
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It recycles or it gets the hose!
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I've read before that people who seem without empathy, sometimes are actually naturally very highly empathetic - they have just learned to turn it off as a defence mechanism.
I've wondered that about myself sometimes. Sometimes I let myself get absurdly upset over things that hurt people (or animals) that I don't even know. Sometimes even just from pain that fictional characters are experiencing. But sometimes I ust get burned out and don't care any more.
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How about we make people pass this test to screen for psycopaths? You're flagged positive, you can't hold any job that will give you power over anyone. No politics, no police, no health care, no teaching, etc.
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But why would they want to?
To stay out of prison.
They may never be nice people. They might always be aggressive arrogant jerks. But maybe they can be simply a jerk rather than an actual criminal.
Although I suspect that has much more to do with impulse control than empathy, and so this could indeed turn out to be completely worthless, it does seem at least worth investigating.
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