In the future, will we be capable of using biometrics to identify potential sociopaths? Is it possible now? If you answer yes or maybe to either of those questions, should we do so? After they are identified, then what?
Inspired by monstro and QuickSilver’s exchange in the thread “[THREAD=879976]Any atheists here who believe in free will?[/THREAD]”
~Max
Oh, I know! Once we find and register them all, we should make them wear little identifying pieces of flair so that everyone who interacts with them will be warned.
monstro’s comment on false positives does not consider the number of sociopaths in the population. If it is 1%, then a 90% successful screen would involve 0.9% of the population, and the false positives would be 9.99% of the population. Not such a good idea.
Plus the successful identification rate and the false positive rates are not directly connected, and do not add up to 100%.
Book reccomendation time! (Not to make this political, but someone who rhymes with “The Gresident” reminds me so much of that book.)
It seems to me that whatever genetic screening can be done, will be done, at some point in the future. To what effect without well defined bioethics and laws?.. I’m not in a position to speculate from an informed p.o.v.
I have never read the fine print on who gets to see your genetic data that people submit for analysis to places like 23andme, etc. Even if it’s shared anonymously, I frankly have no reason to think it won’t be misused in some fashion we can’t yet predict. So I’m coming from a place of skepticism on this topic.
As for specifically identifying sociopaths in society, I think we are already pretty good at identifying them. Unfortunately, not until it’s too late for the most dangerous among them. It’s often said that many high achievers in society show sociopathic traits. Assuming that’s true, dealing with them by isolating them would possibly be a net negative to society. So we’d need to be able to differentiate between those that are a real danger to society and those that while unpleasant to work with/for, are a net positive.
Final thought for now: If the goal is to prevent some number of people from having to deal with unpleasant (not dangerous) people on the sociopathological spectrum, perhaps even doing that is a disservice. There may be a benefit to having to learn to deal with unpleasant individuals rather than being able to avoid them altogether. Though I’ve not fully thought through the costs/benefits of that position.
Just because your a sociopath doesn’t mean your violent, or will harm people, you might just make a really ruthless and yet effective and competent business leader or CEO. I’m sure there have been some great soldiers too who were valiant on the battlefield or great leaders because they were sociopaths. I don’t think we should get into some Gattaca or Minority Report type territory here unless someone violates the laws than you should leave them alone. Also it may be a moot point in the future anyway if we can manipulate and make designer babies with certain personality traits.
Online sources seem to contradict one another but also I think it’s possible for some you may have the genetics but require the right environmental factors or lack thereof to ultimately become a sociopath, anyway I don’t like the idea of this genetic destiny stuff.
Probably it’ll become sufficiently common to genetic screen fetuses for various problems (and selectively abort) that by the time a similar test for sociopathy exists, it will just be added to the process without much fuss. And eventually, Gattaca-style pre-implantation of optimized embryos free of detectable ailments including sociopathy will exist.
My main concern is that Sociopathy is not a diagnosis. Sociopath was coined in the 1930s, and most mental health stuff from then is ascientific bullshit. There is a whole range of Antisocial Personality Disorder, and having free comprehensive health care is probably better than any other course of action when it comes to mental health.
It’s only worrisome if we’re talking about locking screen positives up for life or killing them.
If the most that will happen is that they get periodic psych evaluations starting at a young age, then I don’t see an ethical problem.
And this:
Moreover, I suspect “sociopathy” is a continuum, same as most other mental states/personalities. I’m having a hard time seeing that the benefits from prior screening for sociopathy would outweigh the harms.
No.
No.
There is no evidence to support the notion that more than a tiny smattering of cognitive, emotional, or behavioral variations from the normative are caused by anything physiological.
In contrast, there’s an already-large and still-growing mass of data to support the theory that most of them are directly caused by traumatic or otherwise-disruptive events in the person’s life.
Good observation! But a 10% margin of error is pretty good for screening purposes. The next step might be a more expensive or invasive diagnostic test.
For example, I work in the medical field and we sometimes order complete blood counts. Actually I believe primary care physicians order that test for something like 100% of their patients. That test can come back abnormal for a variety of reasons, some benign and some less than benign. The followup for an abnormal result is usually a more specific diagnostic test or referral to a specialist.
~Max
Identification of dysfunctional people is good, but there’s much more than just sociopathy out there. There are also narcissists, borderlines, and a wide range of other assholes and abusers.
Not only that but their destructiveness isn’t always the same. Supposedly many sociopaths learn that the best way to meet their own needs is to be pro social and build alliances. This works better than theft and being an asshole. So if you label those what do you achieve?
Also neuroscientists like James fallon claim whether your sociopathy leads you to become actually antisocial rather than just a selfish asshole comes down to parenting. He claims had he had an abusive set of parents he would’ve become a much different breed of sociopath than he ended up as.
We then run into the nurture vs nature barrier.
Fact is that even if we decide what we mean by a sociopath of such concern that they need to be confined, changes in upbringing and learned behaviors must surely require that everyone is tested on a regular basis to determine if they have developed sociopathy since the previous test. Further to that we then have to decide if a particular subject actually presents a risk, and what level of risk is acceptable and just where the grey line is, add to that we will then have to decide what to do long term. This will cost a lot of money and will be a resented imposition on the population.
So we medicate, retrain? Given that a number of individuals will be smart enough to fake the required outcomes then how will we deal with that?
Detaining individuals without warrants and with no appeals process and with no crime having been committed is a fantastic way to identify political opposition, trade unionists and other undesirables and locking them away - maybe we could get them to support the program by putting them to gainful employment in work camps – can you see where this is going?
Counter to the message that the OP has posited, in fact this would be a wholly irresponsible thing to do.
In other words, not a great idea at all
I have severe doubts that sociopathy (such as it is) doesn’t have environmental factors influencing it - or some varieties of it. For example, it’s seems pretty evident that our beloved Gresident’s approach to life was at least partially learned from his family and what happened to him.
But suppose it turns out it is wholly genetic (or something like it is) - it sounds like the sort of thing that society would pay attention to - otherwise why bother with the testing? If this reaction is negative, then false positives would become a huge problem - society would levy its judgement on the innocent in ways that would likely be detrimental to their lives - like, say, ending them.
Of course in actuality we’d probably just end up taking all the diagnostically confirmed sociopaths and making them CEOs and politicians, so a false positive would just mean that resources would be inefficiently allocated to helping the populace or something.
If you’re looking for genetic predisposition towards anti-social personalities you’re better off starting with psychopaths. While neither is a diagnosis, among those who use the term for a living, psychopaths are generally born, while sociopaths are made. Obviously their is a spectrum of predisposition, but with psychopaths the disposition is stronger.
What about currently proposed biomarkers for certain forms of psychosis? For example, an article on the National Institute for Mental Health’s news feed offers MRI-detected neuromelanin as a potential predictor of psychosis, given observed increases of neruomelanin in schizophrenic individuals and building off the well-known dopamine hypothesis (“Neuromelanin-Sensitive MRI,” 2019).
I remember learning that schizophrenia in particular had an estimated heritability upwards of 70%, but was considered to be such a complex disorder with so many contributing genes that our current understanding of genetics was insufficient to screen for it.
That is not to say that the environment has no effect on the development of psychosis. Certainly, the environment has an important place in causing psychosis; however, I think it is like melanoma of the skin: sunlight is a major cause but genetic factors determine much of the risk, too.
Neuromelanin-Sensitive MRI Identified as a Potential Biomarker for Psychosis. (February 20, 2019). National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved August 7, 2019 from Neuromelanin-Sensitive MRI Identified as a Potential Biomarker for Psychosis - National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
~Max
Most psychopaths are pro-social. They are a fascinating lot. Search for Athena Walker’s answers about her psychopathy on Google (most will come via Quora). There are also a lot of good AMA’s on Redditt. Prosocials’s tend to create a sort of code to live by, based solely on reason.
Out of an abundance of caution, it just might be best to go ahead and execute them immediately. You know what they say, “An ounce of prevention …”
The fundamental problem is that absent an observed and provable pattern of damaging sociopathic/psychopathic behavior, we’d be compelled by ethics and morality to treat any sort of screening results as similar to how we’d handle things like a high cholesterol reading, or a family history of diabetes, etc…
Notify the patient, and suggest treatments/lifestyle modifications/preventative medications or therapies, but ultimately unless they’d broken the law, we’d have to leave them alone.