moridinamael comments on Notes on Psychopathy - Less Wrong

18 Post author: gwern 19 December 2012 04:02AM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 20 December 2012 02:00:56AM 7 points [-]

Deviant but not necessarily diseased or dysfunctional minds can demonstrate resistance to all treatment and attempts to change their mind

Maybe they need better treatments. Has anyone asked psychopaths - "How would you convince a psychopath like you to stop doing X?" Has anyone let psychopaths try? Aren't they the master manipulators? They even have a readily available model of a psychopath to test out the theory on. How convenient! Sufficiently motivating a psychopath with rewards for changing the mind of another psychopath might be an effective treatment for the first psychopath. Did they try that treatment?

I don't mean to be pissy, but "resistance to all treatments and attempts to change their mind" strikes me as a huge claim. Ruling out the "it's something I didn't think of" theory is one of the worst cognitive biases.

Comment author: moridinamael 20 December 2012 04:51:15AM 0 points [-]

This sounds like a wonderful idea for a novel, at least.