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You two have a serious misunderstanding of what a sociopath is at their core. The number of sociopaths walking around is debatable, but what is a fact is that they ARE wired differently than what most would call "normal" people. They in fact are incapable of empathy, even on a theoretical level they just don't get it.
How do you know this 'fact'? I've been doing a bit of personal research lately regarding things like "the hard problem of consciousness", and it seems it's impossible to definitively prove that
anyone (other than yourself) has empathy or other feelings. Consciousness has not been scientifically proven to exist at all, even though we intuitively know it exists, and the same can be argued for
'qualia' such as various feelings.
OK, it seems plausible that the same way some people are red/green colour-blind, other people might have other things such as empathy missing. But even such a comparison seems weak. Although eyes can be physically tested and brains can be imaged, such tests say nothing about what blue
is for you, and they say nothing about the
mind's ability to
see colour with the available hardware. And unlike colour tests which simply test the hardware, it seems that in the field of psychology they're boldly attempting to measure the mind itself. Besides, isn't the brain supposed to be an expert at learning and constantly re-wiring itself?
This is a mistake I see so often, and it is quite frustrating because sociopaths know this is a common misconception and they utilize it to be better at being sociopaths. Depending on circumstance they may be more or less destructive to those around them, but from birth they simply learn to be proficient mimics of emotional states so as to appear normal to everyone else. Some times they are SO good at it you could be around one for years and not even know it.
What if the world is filled with philosophical zombies, and you're the only one who is really 'alive'? How would you ever know for sure?
...by definition they try to blend in to their surroundings. Any psychologist will tell you a sociopaths worst fear is being exposed for what they are.
What? People react badly when they're told they're somehow deeply flawed in a way that's invisible to them, it's permanent, and there's nothing they can do about it?
You know how they know what "blue is for you"? They show you blue and measure your response showing a repeatable pattern of brain activity. The same can be done for neuromapping. They can invoke empathy in various ways and gauge response or lack there of and compare to the general population. I think most people would be surprised how accurate this kind of technology is getting now.
BTW memvola I don't appreciate being associated with eugenicists simply because I am discussing the possibility of such technology existing. I at no point made any suggestions that such technology should be applied to society, only argued that it is possible and the technology exists. Learning about something is not the same as supporting it. Please grow up.
