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Psychopaths, ancient breed.
v5 2/9/2012Don't read on if you are easily unnerved."Together, these pieces of the puzzle form an image of a self centered, callous, and remorseless person profoundly lacking inempathy and the ability to form warm emotional relationships with others, a person who functions without the restraints ofconscience. If you think about it, you will realize that what is missing in this picture are the very qualities that allow human beingsto live in social harmony." -- Dr. Robert Hare
Background:
Would you be surprised to find out psychopaths are about 5% of the population and evenly distributed between the sexes? Whatare they? They are mostly normal looking human beings, who's brains are physically wired in a way that they feel little emotionand no empathy. They vary widely in observable behavior. Some revealing little and succeeding as ruthless businessmen orpoliticians. Others acting out wildly as open thieves, liars, or the occasional mass murderer. Please research this on your ownlater, but simplicities sake you can think of them as self serving, self programming, emotionless robots.
Proposed theory:
Now think very carefully about this in economic terms. The most powerful social force known to man is economy of scale. wheredoes economy of scale come from? Interhuman trust in the form of specialization and capital investment. What, in nature, gave riseto this trust? Trusting other creatures, including humans, to handle something as abstract as currency or a contract, seems to be anirrational non-beneficial behavior. Particularly in the first case (the dawn of civilization) where there was no successful precedent. Ipropose that it was a mutation first appearing not long before the first seedlings of civilization. The empathic gene.It has been proposed that empathic humans are the older model and psychopaths the new breed. This is contradictory to thatwhich is observed in nature. Most animals do not cooperate with others in their species. If they do, the cooperation involves littleinvestment of time and energy and it temporary and transient in it's type. Some higher species like primates can form smallsocieties, but only to the extent that it benefits their needs. Mates are easily left, loyalties changed, leaders killed and replaced.Occasionally mates do pair for life, but this investment does not extend beyond the base case of one other animal.Brain mutations would not be out of place. So far at least 30 separate brain related genes have mutated in humans from ourclosest ape relatives. Compare this with a simple 3 or 4 brain mutations separating an ape from a chicken. Human brains havegrown to three times the size compared to early man before our jaw muscles shrunk, relieving pressure on the skull, and openingthis waterfall of change. So is it so far fetched that single or even a small group of mutations gave us our empathic civic mind?Understanding this yet to be cataloged gene from an economic perspective makes the theory strong. I propose that all earlyhumans were psychopaths. They worked alone or in small groups. They each built their own tools, clothes and fires. In the case ofa family or small tribe a constant struggle for control of food and sexual rights was waged, usually between larger males. Groupswere small since humans with a lesser status would have been spared no resources and given no assistance.Then one day human with a mutant gene was born. Over several generations, that gene spread and humans in that tribe didsomething new. They began, to take risks for each other for the hope of a future reward. For example one empathic human withanimal skin tanning skills made clothing for another empathic human in the tribe. They in turn shared the meat from their hunt. Asempathic humans spread, barter, and economy of scale was born.Naturally the psychopathic humans took the extra meat or unworn clothing at first, without any reward. But then something newhappened. the empathic humans felt bad for each other and formed a bond not strictly in the interest of self preservation. Oneempath, who may have specialized in something that did not specifically enhance their fighting skill, physically blocked apsychopath from stealing his materials. The thief was most likely entirely self sufficient and utterly ruthless, and probably hadsuperior fighting skill since he would have hunted for himself. Then a second empath, and a third, and then all the empaths in thetribe stood together to protect each other from the thief. The psychopaths were selfish and shortsighted and could not worktogether. One by one were ejected from the tribe.Now the tribe was free to grow as large as land and technology could support it. A tool maker or a hunter could specialize furtherstockpiling massive wealth (stored labor) in ax heads or hides, and did so. We know economy of scale is non-linear to the workexerted, so the tribe was wildly successful. Others followed and became cities and even nations, creating vast stored wealth.Eventually, empathic society would have threatened to crowd the psychopaths out of a region. So the more intelligent psychopathsbegan to imitate the empaths to rejoin the society. Since they didn't have the burden of the irrational care for their fellow man(empathy), they could lie, cheat and steal at will, assuming they did not get caught. The intelligent successful psychopath,pretending to be empathic, would create a huge drain on the society to his own benefit.Integrated psychopaths can also breed with impunity and do so. Their problem is this is unsustainable. Eventually they become soprevalent they they disrupt or completely overtake the benefits of the economy of scale. As the rewards for specialization arediminished by taxes, regulations, and theft, empaths invest less and less time specializing and less and less wealth investing inthe future as the risks outweigh the benefits. Then one day the psychopathic influence and population outstrip the ability of theempathic society to support them and it collapses. Psychopaths are like a fatal virus for their host society and economy. They are
 
self limiting.
The mechanism that psychopathic populations eventually collapse human societies with is easy to detect. Left to theirown devices, empathic humans both compete and cooperate. Psychopathic humans will only compete. This eventuallyerodes the social contract, outlined by law but primarily comprised of trust. As trust degrades, that irrational compulsionto help other humans will eventually be overwhelmed by a sense of self preservation, and the empaths will differ allfurther investment in a society.
This is a scientific theory. And fortunately one that can be tested. Psychopaths constantly display easily identifiable differences inSPECT brain imaging tests when asked to identify words. This can be used to positively identify both empaths and psychopathsand genetic samples can be collected. Then the differences in DNA can be cataloged and any related gene or genes identified.Good scientific theory can also make successful predictions.
If I am correct, than the percentage of people in a population thatare psychopaths will increase over the course of civilization. This can be tested by exhuming and testing wide samples ofsubjects from known dated graves. I also predict that psychopaths will peak at the end of a civilization and dropdramatically thereafter. As the economy of scale shrinks there will be less and less yield from the economy of scale tosupport them. Many of them will be unable to adjust to the rapidly shrinking barter systems and societies and will beidentified and cast out.Studies:
Game theory, best known for it's successful cold war strategy of mutually assured destruction, is the social blueprint for modernsociety. In game theory's cynical view of humanity, humans always act in the most selfish way possible. All decisions arecompetitive, and cooperation must be an illusion because it is irrational. Game theory was a success against the Soviet Unionbecause it's leader at the time, Stalin, was a psychopath. Game theory did not consider that humanity was comprised of bothdependably rational and irrational(selfless) humans. In a word it's success against megadeath, was a fluke.Behavioral economists have since disproved game theory as only reliably valid when used to test humans who fit two categories,people who have studied economics, and psychopaths. Unfortunately game theory is highly political and benefits those who arecurrently in power, primarily appearing as free market style incentive systems as solutions to civic problems. As a result, I wouldstrongly advice against the use of small sample pilot studies or empirical studies based on literature. They are too easily tainted,distorted, and manipulated. In addition, psychopaths are prevalent in the top tiers of our society and will not want conclusivescience to be established on this. It is strange, even suspect that such a simple, testable, and vital theory has not been proposedand tested before. Instead widespread independent studies should be conducted across time periods, continents, and jurisdictionsand results should immediately be published to multiple sources on the Internet. Once that is done the results can be fed up thechain and submitted to selective scientific journals. Any conformation in the data at any site/period should be considered asuccess, at it is statistically unlikely that a pattern would be displayed over even a few generations, even with only dozens ofsamples. Please understand that this is not a path to short term profit. This will be a difficult endeavor, and attempts to 'own' it willonly get your efforts buried and obscured.
Impact and effects:
If this theory is established as fact what should we do next? If left to their devices, the psychopaths will eventually return us tocaves where they would rule with their elevated testosterone. They are destructive as independent members of a society, but canbe useful to humanity as a whole. It has been proposed that they are a primary drivers of improvements in human intelligencewhich is likely controlled by separate genes than empathy. I find this plausible. The strong (intelligent) survive and persevere asthe burdens of integration increase with the complexity of society. Likewise each economic collapse, eliminates the less intelligentpsychopaths as they can not adapt quickly enough. They breed with empathic humans and result in more intelligent empathicchildren than the empathic parent.I do not think the theory that they improve productivity of a society in any way is valid. Recently humanity has been riding atechnologically driven wave, which disguises their drain on society. They are inherently selfish, and will exploit every profit, evento the point of their and our destruction. They can not resist an economic 'golden opportunity,' no matter what the consequencesare for anyone other than themselves. I expect the impact of this opportunism to be highly measurable. Previous economic modelssegment humanity by income, sex, region, race, etc. The difficulty is many psychopaths are both highly invested in evadingdetection, and are effective at it, but it may be possible to work backward to calculate predictable losses based on populationdensity and income stratification. Empirically, the costs undetected psychopaths incur on society can be several times theircontribution, so the impact of such a model on prosperity would be enormous.
Remedies:
We need to educate the entire empathic population of earth on their nature. What they are, how to spot them and what theirweaknesses are.Also effective but more ethically controversial genetically identifying psychopaths and limiting their employment prospects may benecessary. Available jobs in tightly supervised roles of a purely technological nature with no interaction with other human beingsshould be effective. A true psychopath has never met a human they did not consider taking advantage of. Not someone an empathwants for coworker or a boss.
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