No, it means that you get killed if don't conform. Quite similar to being excluded as "bigot" or "racist", if you don't comply with the multicultural policy.
No, psychopaths clinically are impulsive, lack empathy, and are no more rational than anyone else. The distinguishing feature of a psychopath is the lack of empathy but when psychopaths act impulsively on anger then it's not rational.
It's rational to take others into consideration because cooperation is more effective (long term) than competition. If you compete with everyone, then it's everyone vs everyone, and it's a state of constant war with no peace. In an environment like that then everything becomes more expensive because no one wants to cooperate with you because you could be competing with them. In the prisoners dilemma cooperation if it can be coordinated is more efficient than competition but if you cannot coordinate well enough to cooperate then it becomes more efficient to betray by default.
Why would you betray by default if you can cooperate by default and be guaranteed to never lose across many games? If you betray by default you might win this game, but eventually you'll be on the losing end.
If I offer some help to a stranger that's quite irrational because chances are I'll never get anything back for my trouble. While a psychopath doesn't have this problem, all his/her acts are 100% rational.
Reciprocity is rational. If you believe you'll never in life be in the position of the stranger in need of help then perhaps it's not rational to help a stranger. If you could imagine a future instance of yourself in a position where you might need help, then helping the stranger promotes an environment beneficial to you being helped at some point in the future. This is rational as I mentioned, it's superrationality and is reciprocity.
Your assumption that psychopaths are 100% rational is extremely flawed. No human is 100% rational and psychopaths are no more or less rational than anyone else. Humans aren't 100% rational and psychopaths simply act on different emotions rather than empathy.
If a human acts on rationality then it's still possible to arrive at the conclusion to help others based on "enlightened self interest" which is to say that you want to create a trend, or a culture where people help each other and cooperate. A cooperative culture could be something you want to create for your own selfish reasons because it's more beneficial to you. Maybe it lowers your blood pressure to not have to be stressed, and so you think you'll live a longer life if you have less competition, and promoting cooperation is a way to reduce the competitiveness of life.
In my opinion competition shouldn't be the first resort. If an individual can get what they want from life through cooperation (and if you're smart about it then often you can), then there is no reason to force a competition. If you can give a stranger something they want, you never really know what the next person can do for you in the future or how that stranger is connected to you. The unknown interconnections between strangers encourages people (for rational reasons) to help complete strangers, but of course it depends on the kind of help. It's probably not rational to help any stranger at your own expense, so I'm not saying it's rational to run into a burning building to save the life of a stranger unless it's your job to do that.
Absolutely wrong. A psychopath knows exactly what the other person feels and is able to play those emotions to his own advantage.
A proper psychopath never acts impulsively or is driven by his own anger. That's why he can be so manipulative and powerful.
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Psychopaths aren't capable of empathy. Having knowledge of something doesn't mean having an understanding. I know how you feel if you tell me how you feel. I don't understand how you feel unless I relate it to how I felt when in your position.
Of course the above experiment is a bit flawed but it does indicate that psychopaths do not experience empathy in the way neurotypicals do. It is equivalent to saying that psychopaths have a diminished capacity for understanding certain cues and signals.
Psychopaths by definition are impulsive or they wouldn't be clinically diagnosed as psychopaths. Also, the human you describe doesn't exist. Any psychopath is also a human. Any human also has emotions, and which emotions the human will respond to differs from person to person. A psychopath without a short temper might easily get jealous, or may be tempted in many other ways away from rationality. The fact is, the idea of "proper psychopath" like you see in series like Dexter is not based off reality. If you look at actual clinically diagnosed psychopaths, you will never find a "proper psychopath" immune to being manipulated.
Finally I will note, anyone can be manipulative and powerful. Psychopaths do not have a monopoly on being manipulative and powerful. Manipulative is a learned skill, and power is acquired. Terrorists and gangsters can be manipulative and powerful, but not necessarily psychopaths or rational.
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The only important thing here is that psychopath knows what you feel and makes use of this knowledge to his own advantage. And my point is that in statistical terms this is the most rational behavior one could imagine.
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My point is everyone does that, not just psychopaths. Psychopaths simply manipulate in a particularly callous way is the main difference. But just as every person has told a lie, every person has manipulated someone else. And who doesn't use knowledge to their own advantage?
So unless there are people who never lied and who never use knowledge to their own advantage, I guess I don't see the point to bringing psychopaths into it. Sure psychopaths manipulate but so do law enforcement investigators/interrogators.
My point is you can be rational or irrational without being a psychopath so really that doesn't have anything to do with being rational. You can also be ethical or unethical being a psychopath or not so that doesn't have much to do with ethics.
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You still don't get the point why we started talking about psychopaths. The point is this: their behaviour is morally bad yet can be perfectly justified on the rational ground.
All this is to prove the point that morality cannot be derived from rationality. Even worse, moral acts which receive the most admiration are completely irrational.
To give a simple example: if I find a wallet in the street the moral thing to do is to try to find the owner and return it to him. Yet the rational thing to do is to keep the wallet and spend the money.
Unless you can to prove that being egoistic in this case is irrational. Good luck with that! It's morally bad but not irrational.
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Their behavior can be wise and rational or unwise and rational. To be wise is to take a long term view of your own future when deciding on a behavior. If you take a short term view, similar as with investments, you're pretty much gambling. When you gamble you might gamble based on some rational theory but you typically lose long term and this is what happens a lot of the time with psychopaths who as I said have great difficulty taking a long term view.
A narcissist who follows a wise strategy can be perceived at one of the most moral people in society whilst also being completely rational and selfish. Narcissists can manage this because narcissists care a lot about how other people perceive them and this is a key difference which in my opinion is the real thinking behind moral behavior. The moral behavior is something an individual adopts in order to be perceived a certain way by others in society whom they respect or seek the respect of. So it's actually rational behavior to adopt moral behavior but only if you take a long term view and think long term.
I don't have to do that. I can show you that you can be rational but have a short time horizon or you can be rational and have a long time horizon. If you don't believe you are going to live more than 5-10 more years you might not have any reason to care about social conventions of society or adopt the moral norms of your community. But if you do intend to live beyond 10 more years and you intend to stay in that community, then it becomes rational to adopt the moral norms of that community. There is no reason other than rationality to adopt moral behavior in my opinion and if it is irrational to be moral then I would think a lot of people wouldn't be. Going against the moral norms is essentially taking a bet, and there is risk and reward with any bet.
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This is not necessarily the case. My argument is there is no fixed set of "moral thing to do" that everyone is born just knowing. People discover the "moral thing to do" by trial and error or by observation. The reason people do the "moral thing" is so they can be perceived as a "moral person" by the "moral community". There is no inherently moral thing to do, but there is a normal reaction. Most people will want to take the normal reaction regardless of whether or not they agree with how it feels. Conformity is what is behind morality.
If someone found a wallet and there is no possibility of it ever being detected in the future by anyone that they took the money then a lot of people will take the money. Why? Because the risk vs reward ratio would skew far in favor of taking the money. But if a person seeks respect from the moral community (people who apparently think like you do) and the odds of it being detected that they took the money in the future are high that it could get back to you someday, then they will not take the money so as not to ruin how you perceive of them and so as to not harm their reputation.
The individual we speak of does not need to have a feeling one way or the other about the owner of the wallet and merely has to think about their own consequences to take either action A or action B. The risk vs reward ratio in my opinion determines what action a rational consequence based person might take but even that might not always be the case as a rational consequence based person isn't rational 100% of the time. Say for instance if they know the person who owns the wallet and it's their friend, well now they might not be as rational.
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