My reaction made you re-examine your own actions and conclude they were wrong from my perspective. That is how a child learns empathy.
No, I already knew empathy and already agreed with the principle involved. I apologized because I simply acted precipitously without really thinking it through - the equivalent of grabbing something because you're in a hurry, then realizing that you snatched it out from in front of another person, and apologizing. It's not that you didn't know before you did it that grabbing things isn't nice, just that sometimes people act hastily when not fully engaged.
I consider a sociopath to commonly mean a person with consistent intentions that pursue complete self-interest with an amoral lack of concern for any others.
That's reasonably close - the key to the psychological definition is that sociopaths literally possess no capacity for empathy. They couldn't act out of anything other than self-interest even if they wanted to (which, since they possess no capacity for empathy, they wouldn't want to since they perceive those who do have empathy rather the way you do, as chumps who willingly suborn their own self-interest for the greater good).
You're assuming a sociopath is incapable of understanding empathy. Being judged amoral doesn't mean you don't understand what the moral thing to do is or that you don't feel empathy. Merely that you push it aside, much like you would push aside anger when you feel it's not appropriate or is irrational.
This is, I think, the key thing that you're missing. Someone who feels empathy, even if they push it aside when they feel like it, is by definition not a sociopath.
A sociopath might understand what empathy is, intellectually, but in the same way that a person blind from birth might understand what colors are. You can explain it to them, they can figure out how the concept fits into the world, but they will never really experience it. And in the sociopath's case, that means they are pretty much incapable of seeing how empathy is anything other than a voluntary handicap that stupid people put on themselves.
I really don't think anyone's qualified to make that judgement. First of all, the most successful sociopaths we probably don't even know about. Only the sociopaths who are stupid, made mistakes, or deliberately exposed themselves for fame are the ones we know about.
Not entirely true. You're right that we don't have comprehensive census data on all sociopaths, because most sociopaths do not become serial killers, and since obviously it's not actually illegal to be a sociopath, and a sociopath is very unlikely to consider himself in need of "help," we can only infer a lot of sociopathic cases. Nonetheless, psychologists have done a lot of studies and dealt with quite a few sociopaths, even if second or third hand (such as by dealing with their victims), enough to know that there are plenty of sociopaths out there who are not powerful, wealthy, or successful.
You seem to assume that sociopaths tend to be more successful and more pleased with themselves than the average person, because they are unfettered by moral restraints that hold other people back. The problem is, as I said, non-sociopaths are not stupid and can usually perceive when someone is seriously wrong in the head (even if they can't diagnose him as a sociopath), and this tends to lead to problems in interactions with people and society.
Sociopaths also don't necessarily possess any more drive or ambition or talent than anyone else. A sociopath might want to be rich and powerful, but is no more likely to succeed at it than anyone else. So it's not just "clever" sociopaths who remain undetected because they're so smart. It's also the ones who just never really get anywhere, and their sociopathy remains unknown to anyone except those who've had the misfortune of dealing with them and may only know that that person is very unpleasant and bad to be associated with.
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Re: Sociopaths
Date: 2012-09-11 12:08 pm (UTC)No, I already knew empathy and already agreed with the principle involved. I apologized because I simply acted precipitously without really thinking it through - the equivalent of grabbing something because you're in a hurry, then realizing that you snatched it out from in front of another person, and apologizing. It's not that you didn't know before you did it that grabbing things isn't nice, just that sometimes people act hastily when not fully engaged.
That's reasonably close - the key to the psychological definition is that sociopaths literally possess no capacity for empathy. They couldn't act out of anything other than self-interest even if they wanted to (which, since they possess no capacity for empathy, they wouldn't want to since they perceive those who do have empathy rather the way you do, as chumps who willingly suborn their own self-interest for the greater good).
This is, I think, the key thing that you're missing. Someone who feels empathy, even if they push it aside when they feel like it, is by definition not a sociopath.
A sociopath might understand what empathy is, intellectually, but in the same way that a person blind from birth might understand what colors are. You can explain it to them, they can figure out how the concept fits into the world, but they will never really experience it. And in the sociopath's case, that means they are pretty much incapable of seeing how empathy is anything other than a voluntary handicap that stupid people put on themselves.
Not entirely true. You're right that we don't have comprehensive census data on all sociopaths, because most sociopaths do not become serial killers, and since obviously it's not actually illegal to be a sociopath, and a sociopath is very unlikely to consider himself in need of "help," we can only infer a lot of sociopathic cases. Nonetheless, psychologists have done a lot of studies and dealt with quite a few sociopaths, even if second or third hand (such as by dealing with their victims), enough to know that there are plenty of sociopaths out there who are not powerful, wealthy, or successful.
You seem to assume that sociopaths tend to be more successful and more pleased with themselves than the average person, because they are unfettered by moral restraints that hold other people back. The problem is, as I said, non-sociopaths are not stupid and can usually perceive when someone is seriously wrong in the head (even if they can't diagnose him as a sociopath), and this tends to lead to problems in interactions with people and society.
Sociopaths also don't necessarily possess any more drive or ambition or talent than anyone else. A sociopath might want to be rich and powerful, but is no more likely to succeed at it than anyone else. So it's not just "clever" sociopaths who remain undetected because they're so smart. It's also the ones who just never really get anywhere, and their sociopathy remains unknown to anyone except those who've had the misfortune of dealing with them and may only know that that person is very unpleasant and bad to be associated with.