I don't know about "subjective". I see these people everywhere. I think Psychologist Martha Stout puts it best in describing a sociopath for simplicity, as someone not bound by conscience based emotions (regret, embarrassment, remorse, empathy, sympathy etc). The diagnostic criteria is tricky and between sociopathy, psycopathy and anti social personality disorders, very much overlapping and confusing and sometimes conflicting.

Really it comes down to an individual assessment of course, but the current numbers are pretty staggering.. even the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders puts it well into the millions.

These are often the people who excel. Think about "conscience based emotions" and what it means to have zero regret, remorse, empathy, sympathy, embarrassment etc. These people are very often the charismatic public figures all around us. They are in the military. I am sure some are scout snipers. These people are the stock brokers bilking old people for millions. They are the attorneys, sitting in a room, lying about anything claiming to fight for justice, but really just playing a game to win. They are the people who can manipulate others to invest in scams. They are the lazy cousin who is 36 and still living with his parents, still fucking up, still borrowing money from them, still saying he's got a job interview next week.

Why we don't readily see them for what they are, is because they have learned intuitively to fake emotional responses they observed to be socially acceptable. We see an appropriate response and thats often good enough... until we actually see a much broader pattern forming.

Think about this industry. How many millionaires are there from this industry alone who did very hard to understand things like all the fraud, theft etc etc etc and got wealthy from it.

Why didn't everyone else do the same?

Because we had those emotional responses they didn't. You and i stopped to think "thats wrong", "what if i get caught", "aren't these people getting fucked?". They didn't. In fact, they think you are silly and handicapping yourself for having those inhibiting emotions.

Sociopathy doesn't have to have anything to do with violence. I don't know what Hitlers problem was. I don't think there is a sound argument that mental disorders did not play a role in his behavior. Again, genetics, environment/experience all come into play in a very complex interaction of countless factors of varying weights, so to your point, its not entirely accurate to over simplify it with a single label. That tendency is actually a function of the brain and lies within the region that helps identify/interpret and attribute causality. It is behind the tendency that drives us to see answers as being simple black and white, right or wrong answers as those are really all that matters to issues pertaining to survival. touch the fire... get burned... therefore, touch fire = get burned.

As for the argument of Free Will... that's quite fascinating as well. I don't think it will go to a place anyone will like. It's already very certain that our understanding of what we believe to be "free will" and an act of conscious volition is deeply flawed and largely an illusion. After all, the simple fact is that conscious awareness is "after the fact"... meaning it comes only after unconscious mental processes have had their way, after the input has been filtered and distorted. Anything that arises to conscious awareness has already passed through endless unconscious mental processes. We do things and tell ourselves "see, i'm in charge"... but we have no real idea of what led up to us doing those things in terms of unconscious processing as the conscious mind has no access to those other processes. Gazaniggas discovery was probably the most fascinating of all... that we constantly lie about nearly everything we experience to escape burning calories thinking about it.

Here's what I don't understand, you respond to a lot of posts by people who are failing at this business and some at life in general, you analyze them and explain how successful people become successful, implying that these people are largely responsible for their failures. Yet on the other hand you suggest that our brains are working away subconsciously making many of our decisions for us without us really in command. So perhaps many people who fail in life to a significant degree are just being betrayed by their own brains over which they don't have much control.

I'd say that's fairly accurate to a degree.

Though i am not saying we don't have any control over our actions, i am saying that we have often live in an illusion that we are exercising volitional control when we aren't. We just sort of roll with it. We say "i just figured it out!" when in fact, we might have been thinking about it unconsciously for months. We might have read the answer yesterday and it just didn't really register consciously and was instantly deleted from short term memory but made it to our explicit memory for later recollection. Meaning that "i just did it" moment isn't real. It's a lie and really just an illusion.

To use social psychologist Jonathan Haidts analogy of the division between the conscious mind and unconscious brain, it is like an elephant and a rider. The rider, is very quick to tell you all about the elephant, what he's doing, why he's acting that way and can easily explain away all of his behavior. Of course the elephant is an elephant. The rider has no idea whats going on in the elephants brain, as he has very little access to it, relying only on what is an imperfect understanding of what is observed. In reality, the elephant does what it wants to do and the rider is really just a White House Press Secretary trying to spin answers to questions he really doesn't know the answer to.

Though we all live in a sort of illusion of volition, we do also have a say in the relationship between the elephant and the rider. It can be improved. It can be strengthened and they can always learn to better work together. New things can be learned and applied and new habits can be formed.

You can choose to do things. You can choose to work hard. You can choose to learn. You can choose to apply what you've learned. You can choose to be more diligent and organized. You can choose to tame the elephant and improve the relationship between elephant and rider.

Everybody who "believes" in "Jesus" should watch that short video.

And then watch Bill Maher's "Religilous" movie.

And then you will ask yourself (like I did): "How did I ever fall for this shit?"

The bible lol. Any adult that believes in that needs to have their head checked.

I never knew about that. I used to keep up with this stuff, until life got in the way.

Seems like a beacon of hope.

Come on! What is this "Bacteria" you speak of???

Everybody knows that those people are possessed by Demons! Just get an exorcist to come in and say some words in Latin and it will be cast out!

You just gotta have "faith". :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Haha I know right? People are always like.. "Why are you so passionate about dispelling people's beliefs?" and I'm like.. Cause once I found out I wished someone had made me fucking take a few hours and actually research this shit. Because once you realize you were in an indoctrinated fog along with most of the world... you get pissed off. lol

But ya people that think there is any actual record of Jesus need to research more. I ordered a LOGIC shirt of Dusty bit ago hoping it shows up soon.

Hope you and Claudia are doing well. Been awhile since we have hung out. Moving to CO in about a month so I'll be more likely to be in Vegas a bit more have to get together when I'm in town.

http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/word...Holy-Bible.jpg


You can even print your own labels in case you want to help spread the message via the contents of bedside table drawers across the land.