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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
| Location: | California USA |
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ychopaths
In his book Political ponerology, Andrej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests), psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths. Since psychopaths have no limitations on what they can or will do to get to the top, the ones in charge are generally pathological. It is not power that corrupts, it is that corrupt individuals seek power.
How can we distinguish between psychopaths and healthy people? What is the portrait of a true psychopath?
Two links that go along with that link are:
http://tinyurl.com/mmmgyx
Fromm answers the question on "how to tell between psychopaths and healty people. If I understand it right the tell tale method is to ask them if they are psychopaths. If they can honestly admit to being a psychopath, they are not.
How do you get an honest answer out of a pscyhopath?
I may find the actual words written by Fromm on that question later.
Here is the other link that goes with the first link:
http://www.gametheory.net/mike/applets/PDilemma/Pdilemma.html
That one is not the one I prefer to link. The idea is to see how infectious or destructive crime can be in human life.
The cost is seen in game theory. If people cooperate (collude) then people produce the necessities and benefits of human life, if people prey on each other (cheat) then the necessities and benefits of human life are consumed by those cheaters.
It is false to claim that cheaters score anything of benefit. Cheaters injure innocent victims because they steal from the production process.
Note how that link (the game theory applet)show this fact.
If the two players collude (cooperate) the end result is an increase of "profit" or score by 40 - each player gains 20 points.
If one player cheats while the other player doesn't cheat (the psychopath factor) the cheater steals 30 points and the honest player receives no points.
What does that tell you?
Two people honestly cooperate and produce wealth with their advantage gained in cooperation. Those two people create 40 points and each gain 20 points.
If one cheats and the other does not cheat, please see this, the cheater creates a 10 point cost, production goes down by 10 points, total production is only 30 points, and the cheater takes the whole "profit".
If both cheat, in game theory, each producer receives 10 points for a total of 20 points produced.
Does that sound like a modern corporation to you? If you don't stab your fellow workers in the back you will be stuck on the bottom of the pyramid working for subsistence wages, gaining no profits, while the bosses stab each other in the back to split the meager profits.
I've been there, I've done that, and to be the best worker, to produce the most, the highest quality stuff, in the least amount of time, to bust all the established rates of production, to be the best employee possible, causes, and this is a fact, causes the middle management "managers" to fear for their positions, fear the upcoming "worker", and rain down upon that worker a steady flow of falsehoods, cheats, back-stabbings, lies, and every possible action that can destroy that competition if the slightest hint of accession is perceived by the threatened mid level manager.
The higher tier managers know this, see this, promote this, and reward the mid level managers who are the most efficient at destroying competition, like a game, and if the mid level player is too good, the top level players eliminate them, by the same means: cheating.
Don't take my word for it, consume your own life in "business" and see for yourself. If you happen upon a "company" whereby the idea is to cooperate, honestly, then watch out, watch out for those psychopaths - they will raid your happy cooperative, and they will destroy it.
If the idea is to know the truth about game theory, and how it applies to modern human life, I can suggest a few more links (if someone asks) and I will comment some here:
Cooperators gain the power to increase production through three obvious forms of honest "leverage", or "mechanical advantage", where this economic advantage can be seen with a simple illustration using three terms.
- 1. Division of labor
- 2. Specialization
- 3. Economies of scale
That is a fact. The one person is born into no history, no advantage of cooperation between past human beings, no cooperation of gaining past knowledge. Passing on knowledge, recording knowledge, is a form of human cooperation; which brings me to the first term.
Past experimenters pass on their savings of knowledge power to future generations and that is a division of labor. Past experience is earned by past generations, they did the work, the new generation does not have to do that same work, the work load is divided by that division of labor.
Another example of this powerful honest economic leverage point, this fulcrum, is reproduction. Women bear the children. How can a pregnant woman survive all alone (let alone get pregnant) during the months of child birth? Labor is divided.
Why, the reader may ask, is this division of labor thing capable of increasing production? Perhaps you don't ask. The question is a good one, it begs to be answered.
One person can specialize in one job and not be tasked with every job. One person can make 100 chairs and not have to make 1 chair, stop making chairs, start making hammers, stop making hammers, start making nails, stop making nails, start making glue, stop making glue, etc.
Division of labor and specialization combine, in honest cooperation, to enable 2 people to increase production by a significant factor, significantly more that twice as much production compared to two people producing alone, without exchange of any kind, one person on one remote island and another person on another remote and disconnected island. The two people cooperating have the power to increase production significantly greater once they honestly cooperate and employ division of labor and specialization.
That is two people, and that cooperation is shown in Game Theory as 20 point each earned of the 40 points of production.
If one steals the act of stealing will destroy cooperation. The destruction of cooperation is paid for with past or current production, there won't be any future production, unless the victim is unaware of the cheat or if the victim is forced to continue producing while the cheater continues to steal from the production run.
40 points are earned by cooperation.
30 points are taken from past or current production, stolen by the cheater, and the cheater can "keep the slaves alive" or let them perish. Both will perish or the cheater must work and produce after the slave dies.
10 points each are earned if both player cheat, and that must be less than the production rate earned by two people completely separated form each other because each cheater expends production costs on defense. They have less time to produce because they are working at finding ways to defend against cheating and finding new ways to cheat.
Who is producing when everyone is cheating?
That is not shown in game theory, not without looking deep into game theory.
When everyone is cheating the rate of production falls below sustainable levels; where production is less that consumption - and that will kill off people.
Who does it kill; honest producers?
What game theory should teach us, is for us to avoid any connection with cheaters, and the most obvious connection, in my view, is inaccurate currency.
Who demands inaccurate currency?
Why is the supply of inaccurate currency increasing?
Cheaters love dishonest currency, even if they won't confess that love.