Dear Armin Nikkhah Shirazi,

"The public perception of the term "psychopath" is heavily distorted because both in movies and in the news the term appears frequently as a description of serial killers. However, it is not a desire to kill people that characterizes most psychopaths but the absence of a conscience, together with diminished ability to experience certain emotions, like love and fear and especially empathy, as well as impulsive behavior."

These are the traits you are going to demonstrate.

"The above model can only be considered an initial attempt at a rough description that may be refined, extended into a quantitative model, or falsified with more information and data. The central problem in testing it is that psychopathological disorders must be diagnosed by competent professionals, and people in positions of power are highly unlikely to submit themselves to psychological testing for this purpose. We may therefore never be certain that it describes reality at least in some approximation, but we can also never completely rule it out. Thus, there is always a danger that whatever "steering" is initiated will actually be a ploy to benefit the few at the expense of the many, especially since "steering" implies to some extent abdication of responsibility for change at an individual level. The danger is increased in light of evidence that a society is, or is in the process of becoming, a pathocracy."

You are suggesting that one group of leaders who presumably will not be required to undergo testing should be entrusted with labeling others. We are to trust that?

"Apart from the fact that conditions imposed on persons seeking financial and political power in the US seem to select for people with psychopathological traits (e.g. they favor those with the ability to express with utter conviction what is expedient at the moment), there is indirect evidence that such a process is in fact happening now: ..."

Here I read your words as expressing your opinion with utter conviction. It is in writing so it is not possible to know if you wrote it expediently. However, we can look at your examples to see your evidence for psychopathic behaviors. I understand that you hedged your evidence with the words "...there is indirect evidence...". All the more reason to make a careful, well supported presentation.

"George W. Bush's administration led an unprovoked attack against Iraq under the pretense that Saddam harbored weapons of mass destruction. The ensuing conflict has up to now cost thousands of American lives and led to the deaths of over a hundred thousand Iraqis. The reason given by that administration to justify this war turned out to be false, but none of its members, with the exception of Colin Powell (Weisman, 2005), has ever publicly expressed regret over this."

The attack was led... "...under the pretense..." Show that the claim that "...Saddam harbored weapons of mass destruction." was known by the administration and those who voted to support it knew before and at the time of the attack that the claim was false. Support your claim that they acted under pretense. Also, you did not mention who started the pretense. In other words, who made the case for claiming that Saddam harbored weapons of mass destruction. Who was that and were they in your opinion psychopathic?

"Barack Obama rose to the top because he convinced many voters that he was an agent of change. As his second term nears completion, it is evident that many of the policies that he had vowed to change are still in place and sometimes even expanded (Kuhnhenn, 2013). More disturbingly, during his administration the nationwide spying on Americans by the National Security Agency reached unprecedented levels, as was unveiled in a leak by Edwards Snowden shortly after NSA director James Clapper assured Congress under oath that it was "not wittingly" spying on Millions or hundreds of millions of Americans Greenberg, 2013). Obama quickly expressed "full confidence" in Clapper, while Snowden is sought for espionage (Dozier, 2013)."

A Senator ran for an office he never held. That office is nothing like being a Senator. He became the President of the United States. One's ideology doesn't count as much for a President as it does for a Senator. The Senator gets to verbally attack those who's votes obstruct his personal belief system. The buck stops with the president even though each President learns on the job that they cannot do all they wish and often learn that they should not do all that they naively promised to do. Anyway, it is up to you to show that Barack Obama freely chose to not follow through on some of his promises for psychopathic reasons.

You picked out your choice of targets for the Supreme Court rulings. They weren't the one's who's votes counted most. What about the swing voters? Are they psychopathic?

I will wait to see if you are interested in this dialog continuing? I say this because, my impression of your conclusions was that they represented your political persuasion and your attitude more than those of the person's mentioned. If I were to ask you one question to learn about your political agenda, I would ask if you want the United States to be a socialist state? I am not saying you would, but, your response either yes or no or in-between might help to clarify some parts of your essay. Do you want the united States to become a socialist state? Perhaps a more pertinent question is: Would you undergo testing? In other words, should those who would seek to judge and qualify leaders be the first to scientifically establish their own state of mind? If I have misunderstood you, please correct me. I invite clarity.

James Putnam

Armin, you have obviously thought so much longer and deeper on this subject than I.

I defer to your analysis -- thank you. And I do appreciate what we share at a fundamental level:

"I think that you find the notion that a minority of the population is singled out as, at least in some sense, 'evil' highly disturbing and uncomfortable, and you would rather believe that this was not true."

Here's to setting belief aside, and helping truth along.

All best,

Tom

Thanks Armin, You make a strong impression. It's more this I have to share, and a number of questions, than any critique. First your essay strikes me (please don't take offence) as a hortatory sermon, almost as though you were a prophet speaking of Heaven (section III), Hell (IV) and the circles of Hell (V). Did you intend this? Or does my impression surprise you? - Mike

Dear Armin, good to see meet you agin in this FORUM. I agree fully with your universal values:

."Treat others as you would like to be treated.

• Doubt everything at least a little.

• Own your share of responsibility for everything that happens to you.

• Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

• If an authority strikes you as genuinely unjust, consider disobedience"

I believe we are in Leibniz's world, the best of all possible worlds. I do believe that we must have not only somewhat ground rules or universal values but also diversified values and thought. Chinese Doctrine of the Mean promotes "harmonious unity in diversity" that is similar to Indonesian national philosophy "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika" or "Unity in Diversity,". Yes we already acquired the wisdom of harmonious unity all over the world for common prosperity.

Thanks for caring, humanity united in diversity we shall have no fear of the future. I rated this caring essay a ten (10).

Good Luck,

Leo KoGuan

Armin,

Well written essay with very strong political undertones.

I think we are in sync on many levels, including not "steering of humanity by an elite few" and the idealization of the "Prosperous Society."

While your detailing the impacts of "psychopaths" is very interesting and informative I wonder if you are saying that no steering should be enabled because the psychopaths amongst us will steer us to a more unwanted future. Isn't this like saying that because a means can be put to a bad end, no one should have that means?

In my essay (here), by contrast I believe that everyone should get the continuous opportunity to reshape their future to their liking. This is much like saying that everyone should be considered innocent until found to be guilty.

- Ajay

Armin,

that was a very engaging and interesting essay that needed writing. I think you did so very well.As a racing yachtsman I'm not entirely sure we make safe progress with nobody at the helm, but them I've seen enough fools in charge and dangerous stupidities to wonder!

Which brings me to QM.

We've previously found agreement, I recall your comment; "background independent quantum theory has to be considered a contradiction," and on superposition; "The absence of an explicit specification entails all possible default specifications."

This year I extend my work in QM to include "collapse to pure singlet states" in that description. I present what looks to me like a quantum leap in understanding which I'd greatly appreciate your study and views on (and help!). Spin 1/2 seems to be derivable classically in various ways with hierarchical sets or gauges. In that case the speculative and unnatural 'pure spin state' is not needed. Substituting normal (gauged) OAM and invoking electron spin flip as 'joined up physics' a classical dynamic mechanism emerges able to fully reproduce the predictions of QM, circumventing Bells theorem. The solution is geometrical and self apparent.

Some fresh eyes not bound to old assumptions are needed (quantum physicists run away screaming and won't look!). I hope you'll also like the story. Bob and Alice have to escape Earth-centric thinking to work out true rotational relationships. I've tried to make it comprehensible (Ave Sci-Am reader) but you'll well know how tricky that is with QM. The implications are fundamental.

Finally; Having also read Ross Cevenst's essay on artificially intelligent clones with limited capabilities and rights ('AI's'), I'm now a bit concerned I may be both a psychopath and an AI at the same time! Is that possible?

Best wishes

Peter

I am not an expert in this subject by any means, but it is of some interest. In particular I have had some dealing with sociopathic personalities.

I don't have references at hand, but they could be looked up. There are two sets of studies being done on this. The first is with fMRI which illustrates that people considered psychopaths, usually prisoners and the like, have different brain functions. In particular the frontal lobe involved with executive decisions interacts with the amygdale that is involved with emotional responses. There appears to be limited interaction which confers an emotional basis to an executive decision. The neural pathway between the frontal lobes and the amygdala is regulated by the neuropeptide called monoamine oxidase (MAO). It is now known that certain violent tendencies that fall into the spectrum of the psychopathic disorder are associated with a certain mutation of the gene that expresses the MAO. This is being called the warrior gene.

It may well be that a range of genetic differences have different MAO induced interactions between the frontal lobes and the amygdala. This may account for the spectrum of sociopathic personality disorders. Some sociopaths are functional people who are productive and yet have a flat emotional affect with other people. Others are raging psychopaths who end up as serial killers or who lead cults on some sort of doomsday quest.

LC

P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate essays:

10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

6 - slightly favorable indifference

5 - unfavorable indifference

4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

The following is a general observation:

Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

5 days later

Armin -

Thanks! I enjoyed your essay and invite you to review mine: The Tip of the Spear, which tackles similar questions from an evolutionary perspective.

Your assessment of the two sociological paths - creating a shared moral culture necessary for a prosperous spocoiety; and of patho-selection - provide two very stark alternatives. There is also the third path (the one you seem to argue for) - don't try to steer.

Of these three, I would vote (with all my strength, my heart and my free will) for the prosperous path, and I think the vast majority of humans would as well (having been bred for altruism - as noted in my essay). Of course, part of the shared moral culture will be vigilance in opposing the forces of patho-selection (isn't this the fundamental narrative of good versus evil in human mythology?).

I certainly hope our future is closer to the prosperous path than the pathological one!

Cheers - George

6 days later

PS - This is just a note to say I'll be rating your essay, Armin (along with the others on my review list) some time between now and May 30. I still hope you'll be able to review mine. All the best, and bye for now, - Mike

7 days later

Hi Armin,

An excellent essay exploring a number of interesting topics. I feel that your first section is a very eloquent description of a set of values that almost feels like the classical set of Western liberal values of a free, prosperous and partially decentralised society. These seem to be fading a little in favour of a harsher conservativism of the right and a highly emotive social liberalism on the left. It's sad to think, that if you are right, we are forgetting the values that right now we might desperately need to help us to choose worthy leaders and noble goals.

Your discussion of Lobaczewski's theories is very interesting. I make a very brief reference to something similar in my own entry, but I find here you explore it in much more depth. I don't thnk that all the troubles and ills of our society stem from our being in this unfortunate stage of Lobaczewski's cycle, but such considerations certainly get little consideration in our current political rhetoric, despite all the corruption scandals on the nightly news. So thanks for bringing it to the forefront in your essay!

I'd love for you to take a look at my own entry. It's a very different format (I've drawn quite a bit on science fiction), but I think in some ways it shares some of the values referenced in your essay (as does my website). I think ratings close in a day or so, so if you have a chance to rate my entry I'd be ecstatic!

Good luck with your essay!

4 days later

Armin,

When you ask, "Is Steering Humanity a Good Idea?", I believe you are saying not by an elite few, as your empirical evidence proves. It sounds as though you have read "The Wisdom of Psychopaths," since it describes CEOs, politicians, spies, and business leaders in general as functional psychopaths as opposed to dysfunctional serial killers like Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.

I believe most of us recognize that the elite few should not steer our future. They have -- with our help -- made a mess of that. I speak of the "common good" as opposed to the cult of individualism and the self-interest that drives it. My looking beyond has visions beyond orthodox science and my looking within the neural universe of the brain.

I'm interested in your thoughts on my essay: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2008

High marks for yours.

Jim

Dear Armin Shirazi

It is a clearly written essay about people who decide about us. It is interesting that extreme psychopathic leaders do not lead long time. Hitler's leadership lasted 12 years. An exception was Stalin with leadership of 30 years. But people need clear instruments to find such people and to remove them. It is hoped that MRI and other brain technics will help at this in the future. Some psychologists on police are very successful at predictions of profiles of mass murderers and so on. They also finely describe reasons, why they became what they are, for instance childhood with a lot of violence. I hope that this science will additionally make progress, thus that also psychopaths on important positions will be find and deposed. But, I miss still more solid science of human behaviour and character, because everything begins in brains. Thus, it should be explained why brains of psychopaths are different, and why brains of schizophrenics are different and this as much as possible. Because, a lot of injustices on this field are happening. People, who are normal, are in psychiatry, or that their state is not so bad, as they are treated.

But, although it is very bad to have a psychopath as a leader, it is still better as anarchy. One leading man can be controlled, but a lot of hidden ones cannot be.

My essay

Best regards

Janko Kokosar