Are You a Psychopath? Take the Test
Posted by Hiraghm 12 years, 3 months ago to Philosophy
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsGDVOCLVQ
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if my understanding of what constitutes a psychopath is correct, then a problem I see with this example is the mitigating circumstance. while the non-psychopath would chuck over the fat person to save the four folks stuck on the rail below, they'd still feel bad about killing the fat guy. The psychopath would not. the mitigating circumstance needs to be taken out to better distinguish between the two. for example, the psychopath would chuck the fat guy over just to get a better view of the skyline. he doesn't care about saving four people. for a normal person, the benefit of killing someone for a better view doesn't justify their death. kind of makes me want to watch Dexter again.
this reminds me... say you meet someone cute at a funeral and want to ask them out, but don't get the chance to get their number before you leave. how do you guarantee you'll see this cute person again?
Except everyone's making an assumption I won't make.
My response was, "insufficient data for meaningful answer".
Am I on the train? Is my life also in danger?
If neither, then most likely I will do nothing more than watch in horror.
Who are the people in danger? Doctors, scientists, serial killers, Moslems, illegal aliens, relatives, people I owe money to... who?
For me, four people dying is no worse than one person dying.
If I'm aboard the train, or near it, I will attempt to stop it or derail it, or warn the people to get the hell off the tracks.
If I'm on the overpass with the fat guy, I will start shouting for people to get the hell out of the way of the train.
No, I will not sacrrifice another individual for the sake of four individuals, unless the individual is myself.
"this reminds me... say you meet someone cute at a funeral and want to ask them out, but don't get the chance to get their number before you leave. how do you guarantee you'll see this cute person again? "
if you're John Galt, you stalk her for 12 years, and destroy her world...
but anyway, the answer to the question (as I heard it, at least) is to kill the cute person's family member and get her number at the next funeral.
2. During that 12 years, while working for TT, and then the JGL, he did not sabotage Dagny's efforts in any way.
He admitted himself he was out to destroy the world.
That's like saying, "I didn't make a car roll down the hill and kill a bunch of people, I just disabled the parking brake."
Dagny hired McNamara to build the John Galt Line... Galt finds out and recruits him. That's sabotage.
He recruits Owen Kellogg and Ken Danagger, he spies on her via Eddie in *order* to sabotage Taggart Transcontinental... and he was working there at the time.
And I haven't even mentioned his conspiring with Ragnar and Francisco to starve the world of copper.
He didn't have to work for TT. He certainly had enough to keep him busy building the gulch and recruiting strikers.
The "world" did not own the copper. You cannot rely on what you do not own.
The only saboteurs in the story were Ragnar and those working in cahoots with or for the government
Galt recruited Danagger when he found out that Danaggar might not be strong enough to face the trial. In that he sabotaged Rearden as well as Taggart.
Ragnar didn't *own* the copper either; D'Anconia Global Commodities did, or whoever paid them for it did.
The purpose was to starve the world of copper, thereby hastening the collapse.
": a person who destroys or damages something deliberately : a person who performs sabotage" - merriam-webster
"
: the act of destroying or damaging something deliberately so that it does not work correctly
Full Definition of SABOTAGE
1
: destruction of an employer's property (as tools or materials) or the hindering of manufacturing by discontented workers
2
: destructive or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation's war effort
3
a : an act or process tending to hamper or hurt
b : deliberate subversion " - merriam-webster
By several of those definitions, Galt *was* committing sabotage. Deliberately. His rhetoric in his speech notwithstanding.
If you've built a ladder, and some of the rungs were made from my wood that I *initially* gave or sold to you, but now while you're at the top of the ladder I reclaim because I didn't give them to be used in a ladder, or because it's Tuesday, and the ladder collapses... yeah, I sabotaged you, whether you deserve it or not.
btw, if space aliens come to Earth and start mining copper... no, they can't have it, yeah it's freaking MINE, and I'll try to kill them if they try to take one gram w/o permission or compensation.
I agree with you that there is no difference between one person or four. Sacrificing one for the many is never acceptable; it is classic collectivism.
I also agree about the space aliens.
Tell the millions who die how moral Galt's actions were.
The default isn't "looter" or "moocher". There are millions of people out there who are neither, but are helpless to control global matters. If Sam Walton decided to destroy Walmart, do I automatically become a looter or a moocher as I starve to death as a result? In spite of my productivity while I *had* that job? Just because Sam was trying to get laid and was too sick in the head to just ask her out?
I'm holding someone who's fallen over a cliff by one hand. My wallet is about to fall out of my pocket. It's in my best interest to let go and grab for my wallet. And you're telling me it's *moral*?
Review the conversations with Eddie. He *specifically* targeted people for assimilation when he found out they were necessary or useful to save Taggart. That's sabotage, specifically to harm Taggart as part of his plan to cripple the country. His *method* was by removing the minds.
And let's get back to that. Galt's powers of pursuasion... he managed to convince thousands of people to go to Atlantis. Why? Altruism? Because, however valid his arguments were, he wanted to *help* them not be mooched and looted? Does that sound very objectivist?
No, he did it out of self-interest. Okay, what was his self interest? Stopping the motor of the world. *Not* liberating persecuted producers. So to suggest he was just having conversations and people decided to take a vacation in beautiful (thin-aired, cold) Colorado is a bit disingenuous.
We know someone else who used power of persuasion to achieve his goals. Someone who convinced millions to support him because he'd bring about a change to the status quote, and hope for a better future. Someone who *convinced* millions of otherwise rational people that Obamacare was a good idea.
Yeah, he lied. The result is a country on the verge of destruction. How is this different from Galt, who told the truth for the same ends?
Now, let's add on to that Rand's psychology. She spent two books trying to justify her despotic lifestyle. Both Dominque Francon and Dagny Taggert were incapable of loving men on their own merit; the men had to conquer them, ultimately. Rand herself cuckolded one man who, apparently, was incapable of dominating her. To her, a guy spending 12 years stalking a woman, thwarting her greatest efforts, and forcing her to give herself to him on his terms would be a wet dream, in my view. And that's Roark *and* Galt I'm talking about.
Your analogy of the guy over the cliff fails. What if moments before, he was trying to push you over the cliff? That may factor into Francisco's reasoning for his actions. However, without knowing more information, it is one's rational self interest to save a life over securing their wallet. But again, one can imagine many scenarios where the man over the cliff may not be worth the risk to save. I was a life guard for many years. When people perceive they're drowning, they panic. When they panic, they make bad decisions. There are maneuvers to do that can help, but until you get them to calm, you risk drowning yourself.
In AS, Dagny is unaware that by continuing to fight, she is helping the bad guys destroy her. I find it interesting that you see the bad guys as Francisco and Galt. Finally, Walmart's obligation to employees is limited. You understand that limitation because you do not own Walmart. If you are a shareholder of Walmart, Walmart has other obligations to you. Those are limited as well. Companies fail all the time. Am I a slave to the employee over other obligations of mine? If I am the face of the company, can I never retire? The self-destruction of businesses in AS is symbolic in demonstrating the reverse of how most people take for granted those businesses and technologies they have come to rely on and choose to vilify and penalize. they were warned and chose to ignore the warnings.
I found Roark to be quite patient in the face of Dominique's bad behavior, frankly.
My ethical burden occurs at the point of accepting/rejecting the burden of saving lives or not. My objectivist self interest is brought to the fore at that point. What self interest is served by loading myself with the ethical/moral consequences of saving lives - feel good/feel bad, good reputation/bad reputation, did I save the good one/did I save the worthless one? Sooner or later you come to the point of saving what you can, but in neither option do you actively or directly sacrifice any life. Murder can only be acceptable in actual defense, not in correcting the actions of someone else.
I suppose that last would seem to be an ethical/moral decision, but I can argue that it is a self interest and objective decision based on self protection from society.
KYFHO.
Notably: nothing is said about the train. How many people are on it? What is it carrying? Is the switch you are standing at in a populated area and/or will one decision or the other send it into a populated area?
After all, part of the scenario involves the possibility of wrecking the train ("stopping" it). In that case the engineer/crew or anyone else on the train may die (is it carrying passengers?). If it's in a populated area (a reasonable assumption since you can see that there are six people on the tracks) and carrying a full load of flammables, derailing the train could kill hundreds.
An implied, but not mentioned premise here is that the train is a "runaway" and therefore likely to derail at some point. What if you are standing in the middle of a densely populated area and interfering with the train will cause it to derail at high speed and presumably burst at least some of a cargo of LP gas? What if leaving it alone will send it out into the countryside where it will derail in the middle of a bunch of empty fields?
The commentator makes an interesting point as far as how the brain works, but his presentation is so simplistic that it left me confused more than anything else.
And by the way: we're not psychopaths here. If anyone's talking about the great strike in AS, let's lay the blame where it really belongs: with a government that violates people's rights, and a philosophical system that informed that government's policies.
didn't Patton say that no one wins a war by dying for their country. They win by making some dumb bastard die for HIS country.
Values are a construct albeit a larger one, but still a construct. No one I know has ever stuck a pin thru a value and claimed it such.
I think you mean immoralist. Amorality is simply not accepting other's definitions of what is/is not moral, but to form your own morals. Immorality is having no morals.
I would argue that values, ethics, and morals is most strongly constructed by the society in which one is raised.
A psychopath is simply one that has no empathy for others, doesn't have much to do with some subjective term such as 'value.'
No, I do not mean an immoralist. I mean an amoralist. Someone without a moral standard. An immoralist has one, but acts against it.
A moral standard is NOT a social construct, but a personal standard of values. A healthy human being derives his standard from his life, as Ayn Rand learnt. Not from ffing society! That's a socialist premise, for crying out loud!
I'm wondering about the people on this site. WTF is your interest in Atlas Shrugged if you haven't got a CLUE about the underlying philosophic tenets?
Although a moral philosophy can be self formed and thus a personal standard of values of what is right and what is wrong, it operates within a society's constructed morality. An Aztec murdering other humans or sacrificing their own children was a highly moral action, within the Aztec society. If your self generated morality feels and believes that to be wrong, then you are immoral, within that society. If, however, you decide that society's constructed morality is not moral to you, then you become amoral, choosing to be outside of the accepted morality construct of the Aztec society.
It is nearly impossible for an individual to form a moral, ethical, or value system in isolation from the society in which he/she finds themselves. Objectivist belief, believing that moral truths exist outside of the moral construct of society can be a way around that limitation, but only through self determination or recognition of value of the self. In a way, it is a search for the reality outside of ourselves that we actually experience.
For myself, I define myself as an unabashed amoral objectivist in that I believe, as it relates to morality, ethics, and personal value, that the definitions, systems, and rights/wrongs imposed by others that demands sacrifice on my part for some supposed good is nonsense and is personally destructive. From that I hope you can see that, at least in my case, that operating outside of the society's standard of morality is not the same as having no moral standard.
But as others have commented, the thread is entertaining.
KYFHO
I also recalled the apathetic/non-thinking switch man in AS; he threw the track switch for the train heading into the Taggart Tunnel, to the certain doom of its passengers and crew by suffocation. He was neither a psychopath or sociopath; he held to the social norm.
would have to give much more thought to the
one I would eventually make....