STer

Brilliant point.

Salty, We've been discussing some of your concerns about land distribution and the passing down of wealth in this thread. Who's Money Is It? Read through the thread and you'll see. I think this question is one of the most important as it goes right to the heart of defining what is and is not aggression when it comes to the Non-Aggression Principle.

There is a stark division within humanity between those with the capacity for empathy and those without (or with very reduced capacity). I believe this idea of us all being one is often used as a way for victims of abuse to excuse abusers. They are basically saying that there is no difference between the abuser and the victim. But this is increasingly known to be simply incorrect. Many abusers have significant differences in brain and genetics from other people. This view is also tied into the flawed notion that an abusive person will stop doing harm if we only love them enough. In fact, many abusers are exploiters and will simply manipulate those that attempt to love them (if by love we mean appeasement and excessive kindness.) One other potential reason for this view is to try to convince the abusers themselves that, since they are one with their victims, they should stop hurting them. However, many abusers are quite aware that they are deeply different from their victims and view kind, loving people as fools. I think it would serve humanity much more to educate about the significant differences in conscience that exist among humans rather than teach that we are all one as if to say these important and consequential differences do not exist. I find the New Age philosophies very misleading and actually quite helpful in allowing abusers and exploiters to continue unchecked.

I'm saying around 1/20 of all people in our society have a condition where the capacity for empathy and conscience is reduced in a significant way that requires deep intervention to possibly address. I don't know exactly how many of those involve a biological basis. But we know with very strong confidence that there is a biological basis in a percentage of those. Superficial tools like NVC are not sufficient to bring about empathy and conscience in these cases and to think it is is naive. Yes if someone is able to switch to non-violence simply through something like NVC, they were not one of these people with a deeper issue affecting their capacity. Do you understand the difference between displaying less empathy/conscience than others at some point in time vs. having a reduced capacity? That is the crucial distinction. If the capacity is reduced, then by definition empathy and conscience cannot be elicted strongly without deeper treatment. I am completely confused as to how you are having any trouble finding studies on the psychopathic brain. There are many of them. In fact, there are entire books on it. The fact you were able to find so little shows how small the amount of effort you are putting in to find them is. Again this shows great bias. If you really wanted to find the information you'd have searched far and wide and found lots and lots of studies. You seem quite eager not to find them. Here are some resources to look at and this is just off the top of my head without even putting in much effort. This only scratches the surface. I list some of the studies here: The Biological Basis of Psychopathy (scroll down in this section) Some more links which discuss or link to relevant studies (one being an entire journal issue focused on just these studies): http://www.ponerologynews.com/social-neuroscience-special-issue-brain-studies-aggression-violence-psychopathy/ http://www.ponerologynews.com/caudate-putamen-nucleus-accumbens-different-in-psychopaths/ http://www.ponerologynews.com/cnn-dr-sanjay-gupta-boston-marathon-bombings-anatomy-of-violence-adrian-raine/ http://www.ponerologynews.com/wall-street-journal-neurocriminologist-adrian-raine-the-anatomy-of-violence/ http://www.ponerologynews.com/neuroscientist-james-fallon-how-psychopathic-killers-made-prevented/ I recommend these books, both full of well-documented research. Evil Genes by Barbara Oakley The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime by Adrian Raine And just for good measure here are a few links I found with just 2 minutes of searching: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/psychopath-brain-hardwiring-concern-for-others_n_3149856.html http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/us-brains-psychopaths-idUSBRE8460ZQ20120507 http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/07/psychopaths-callous-children-show-dysfunctional-brain-responses-to-people-in-pain/ You must be almost trying not to find these to have any trouble. All I had to do was search for terms like "psychopath brain studies" and tons of results come back. And this is only focusing on psychopathy without even getting into studies on some of the other conditions. There is so much more relevant data it could fill an entire section of this forum. The importance of this is that the people in this second group, with reduced capacity for conscience and empathy, have disproportionate influence. Even though they are small in number, they are particularly skilled in deception and in rising in power structures. So they have a significant impact on our world. This is an issue of great importance if you want to promote a healthier world. And if you don't recognize the reality of the conditions such people have and think that promoting NVC alone is going to address the problem, you are in effect assuring that they can continue doing what they do without any real resistance at all. This is so much the case that I believe such people would be thrilled about the promotion of NVC since it poses no threat to them and, if people focus solely on it, keeps them from ever facing any serious challenges to their Machiavellian activities. It's important to understand that even if you don't come face to face with someone like this, you are living in systems they influence and among people influenced by them. So simply trying to avoid them or trying to deal with them face to face in a more effective way, if you can even manage to do that, isn't enough if you actually care about improving systems.

Marc, I took the time to very specifically explain what my claim was twice now. And yet you do not seem willing to even come close to quoting me correctly. I wonder if you're even seriously reading what I say. I did not say "people who hurt others are deficient in empathy and not amenable to effective communication with NVC alone, because of their different biology." That would imply that my statement applies to all people who hurt others. What I said is that probably somewhere around 1 in 20 have a significant condition that affects conscience and empathy and cannot be dealt with without deeper treatment. In many of those cases the issue likely has a biological basis. There are certainly many people who hurt others that do not have a serious deficiency in their overall capacity for conscience and empathy and who can be reached very well with something like NVC. My point here is that it's important to distinguish which case you're dealing with and not to assume NVC is enough in all cases. I absolutely agree with you that there are people like the one you mention with whom NVC can be very effective. The problem is you do not seem willing to concede that there are also cases unlike that person in which someone cannot be reached effectively using NVC. So you are really demonstrating my overall point. Many people, when you raise the evidence of conditions that significantly reduce the capacity for conscience and empathy - especially ones involving a deep biological basis - attempt to keep changing the subject and not talk about the reality of those cases. That is what you keep doing here. Did you look at any of the evidence about the psychopathic brain, for instance? There are many, many studies on the subject. Did you go seek to learn about it? Or do you just keep ignoring it? Here is the bottom line. Most people have the capacity for conscience and empathy, even if they are not currently maximizing that capacity. But a significantly-sized minority have conditions that reduce that capacity in a serious way. For the people in the first category, NVC is very useful. For the people in the second category, NVC is rarely going to be effective. Do you acknowledge that both groups exist? Offering examples of people who fall in the first group does not in any way disprove the existence of the second group. They both exist and it's important to distinguish between them as best we can.

Well I'm no expert on spiral dynamics. I'm just familiar with it. In fact, I only learned of the "mean green" meme controversy earlier today after I saw your post and skimmed the Wikipedia page on spiral dynamics. So I don't think I can give advice from that perspective very reliably. However, if you just ask directly without the spiral dynamics terminology and explain the situation I'll give my opinion.

Not Stefan here. But, I've come across this concept both through Beck and Ken Wilber. I think it's a very interesting concept. I'm a big proponent of the importance of understanding relevant categories properly when assessing situations. For example, knowing a person's personality type can help make a lot more sense of why they interact the way they do. Knowing if someone has a particular personality disorder can help you make a lot more sense of why they interact the way they do. Similarly, I find this color concept helpful in thinking about the different categories of values in groups within society. None of this is pinpoint accurate. But I do think it can help think about strategy in a broad way and it is important to recognize the presence of these very different value systems.

You might be confusing the fine-tuned universe with the Rare Earth hypothesis. The Rare Earth hypothesis addresses the good fortune of planet Earth—distance from a star, a large moon, stable orbit, and so forth. If only one of these factors were slightly different, complex life could never develop. That good fortune could be explained by the observable fact that billions of planets exist. The fine-tuned universe addresses the good fortune of the universe as a whole (the cosmological constant, strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei, and so forth). If only one of these values were slightly different, complex life could never develop anywhere in the universe. That good fortune could be “explained” by the hypothetical existence of an infinite number of universes that can't be measured or observed. It's a new theory because only recently have physicists learned how ridiculously fine-tuned for human life the universe seems to be. The latest science seems offers two equally extraordinary choices—an intelligent creator for this universe, or Bigfoot butlers in other universes. Yes I was thinking you meant the Rare Earth hypothesis. It sounds like the fine-tuned universe idea is the same thing on the larger scale. But I had never heard that version of it. I'd need some verification that it applies the same way on that scale as on the smaller scale. If so then this is an interesting discussion.

We might have to agree to disagree on this point. If I went to Vegas and hit the jackpot at every slot machine in every casino, I would certainly wonder whether some higher power was helping me win. Whether scientists admit it or not, multiple-universe theory is driven by the human desire to explain our cosmic good fortune without bringing the “g” word into the picture. (That’s a bit of speculation, but I think some scientists have admitted as much.) I am not really making an argument. I am asking a question to start a discussion: IF an atheist feels the need to explain the fine-tuned universe AND accepts multiple-universe theory as the explanation, does he have to believe in Bigfoot butlers? If so, what does he think about that? I ask because I’ve noticed that many atheists and agnostics show a skeptical if not derisive attitude toward subjects like Bigfoot encounters and UFO abductions. That attitude makes no sense if they believe multiple-universe theory is true. If Bigfoot butlers and alien sex offenders exist in an infinite number of universes almost exactly like ours, how can we be certain they don’t exist here? Atheists should maintain a receptive or agnostic mindset toward all kinds of extraordinary claims. I’m not accusing anyone here of ridiculing Bigfoot and UFO researchers, but it’s a trend I’ve noticed among people who identify as atheists, skeptics, or whatever. If the universe is governed by random, impersonal forces, it’s quite possible that a Bigfoot butler could be serving me a beer sometime in the near future. It’s weird and interesting to think about. Of course, if STer or anyone else wants to offer an alternative to the multiple-universe theory, I’d love to hear it. I've heard very few atheists bring up the multiverse theory. It's a pretty new theory whereas atheism is thousands of years old. I think you might be mixing up the multiverse theory with simply the idea that the universe we do have is huge. We don't need to posit any more universes to have the large numbers involved to make sense of our "good fortune." Even in just one universe as big as the one we are in, there are so many places and events that you would statistically expect to find a place like our planet.

I think the key word there is "Some." Only some posit a multiverse. Many do not posit a multiverse.

Would make sense to say that those that have unhealthy genetic tendencies would benifit the more from peaceful parenting that those who do not have such genetic tendencies? I feel as though that less peaceful parenting would have little effect on a human with a healthy genetic disposition, but that it would have a rather drastic effect on one with an unhealthy genetic disposition. I guess that depends on the goal. A person with healthy genetics who also has great parenting might also benefit greatly and become extraordinary. And such a person might then go on to influence many others. So I think the benefit could be important in any case. Also, the parenting influence could be even greater if, beyond just generic peaceful parenting, we were able to identify particular biological issues so that parents could give specific care to compensate for any challenges to which a particular kid is predisposed. I often use the analogy of diabetes. It's not enough to just do peaceful parenting with a diabetic child. You need to understand their special dietary needs. A kid with a biological predisposition for reduced empathy or poor impulse control, for instance, might need a special type of nurturing above and beyond what some other children might need.

Different cases have different levels of influence of genes vs. environment. So I don't think it's safe to say that an improved environment will override all genetic tendencies toward dysfunction. Some genetic tendencies may be stronger than others, even with a healthy environment. But a healthy environment could help reduce many cases it would seem and perhaps make the ones that still persist more manageable.

Sorry I didn't get back to this thread until now. Marmeladov, I like what you're doing here in trying to zoom in on what may be a leverage point issue underlying the broader debates that go on among these communities. This is the same approach I try to take. For instance, I tried to do just this in this blog post and this one. Here you identify the leverage point issue as the question of whether a noncoercive third party can still hurt others. I identify a different leverage point that maybe is even more fundamental. Regardless, I believe these communities would be well served by focusing in on the fundamental issues in a more concentrated way. So I hope that is where this discussion leads.

Perhaps the issue is in the “transfer-upon-death.” As far as most common laws go, the estate of the deceased continues ownership and claims could be made against it. The debts and claims have to be paid first before the transfer of the remainder takes place to the descendants. So, no, if somebody stole something from you and died, you can claim restitution against his estate. That would be a solution if the laws were fair. But many of the situations we're talking about took place in environments so corrupt that it was the laws themselves that helped the theft take place. Native Americans couldn't usually successfully sue those who took their land for restitution. It was often the government itself that broke treaties. Many of these people have been fighting to get that land back for generations. So yes if you have fair and honest restitution laws then you are right that this problem might not arise. The question is what is justifiable when restitution also fails to right the situation? And this is not even to mention the fact that many of the supporters of the NAP see lack of a government as one of the consequences of it. So in that case there would be no court in which to sue them for restitution the way you seem to be thinking of it. I guess you'd have to have some dispute resolution entities for cases like this. If those entities were fair and proper then it could be a potential solution.

Marc, First I didn't say 1/20 get pleasure from hurting others. That 1/20 was an estimate of a group of people with a variety of conditions including psychopathy, sociopathy, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder. These groups overlap some and have in common significant difficulties with empathy. Some people in this group are more extreme than others, with the extreme being severely sadistic. But many people in these categories are not sadists, but simply have difficulties empathizing with others that are likely at some level biological and even in cases where it isn't primarily biological is deeply rooted and not fixable without significant and intense work over time. Our discussion is not only about sadism where people get pleasure hurting others. It's about the much larger group who are deficient in empathy and therefore will hurt others whether they enjoy doing it or not. Regardless whether they enjoy hurting others or simply do it out of a deficiency of empathy, they are not really amenable to effective communication with NVC alone. There is a deep fundamental basis for the lack of empathy and many times this is biologically based at least in great part. You did not give me "evidence" to counter the enormous mass of evidence supporting what I said. All you did was mention that a couple people have said they disagree (some of whom aren't even alive and died before a lot of the new research even was done). None of these people you mentioned were even researchers. That isn't evidence, that is opinion and rather irrelevant opinion at that when they weren't even alive to see the studies being discussed here. If you want to counter the evidence I'm pointing you to that would look like you showing me studies that show psychopaths do not have different brain structure and function than others. I would be very interested to see such studies as would everyone in this field. It would be a shocking revelation given the countless studies showing significant differences. I will await some studies that actually show psychopaths to have normal brains, going against the many many studies identifying specific differences in their brains in areas dealing with emotion-processing, impulse control and conscience. If you show me these studies, I will actually show them to some of the experts in this field and see what their response is and I will give these studies a very serious look as my goal is to understand the truth whatever it is. You also completely ignored everything I said about the fact that I know these people whose opinions you (incorrectly) cited and their stances, even spoke to some of them personally and their views do not apply to these conditions (especially not psychopathy) in the same way that they do to other more vague conditions. I even pointed out that Robert Hare, the world expert on psychopathy, agrees with the problems you raised with other disorders, showing once again that it is faulty to judge psychopathy along with these other disorders as if they are analogous. I also showed you that Gary Greenberg, one of the most vociferous critics you'll find of mainstream mental health, who speaks out constantly about how poor our psych systems are, is nonetheless so supportive of the role of psychopathy that he was in a movie dedicated to the topic. Even people who agree with you about the problems with things like depression, which include me, still understand the reality of these other more neurologically-based disorders where we have much clearer brain differences identified. Some people even think these conditions like psychopathy may play a role in why these other conditions are misused, but that's a whole other discussion. Nor (as expected) did you go spend time assessing the full weight of that evidence I pointed you to. Saying "I've seen a few studies like that before and dismissed them" is not a credible way to approach truth. If you are interested in the truth in an unbiased way you would look at and take into account the entire body of such research, not cherry pick a few studies you think you can dismiss. Replication and weight and amount of evidence matter greatly in science. And this is not a field with just a couple studies. This is a field with hundreds and hundreds. You seem eager to not look at the full array of research, but just find a couple you can look at and dismiss. The strokes/tumors issue was simply to establish a base of understanding that there are definitely biological causes for intractable harmful behavior, not at all to say those are the only examples. We now agree that there are biological conditions that affect conscience. Now we can move beyond that to discussing how many such conditions there are and how many people have them. What seems to be holding us up is that you don't understand that psychopathy itself is a condition with brain differences, sometimes even more striking than in someone with a brain tumor. Go look at some of the various imaging studies of psychopaths' brains. The differences are quite significant. There are areas that are almost totally inactive in the psychopath's brain that are very active in normals. There are very large size differences in certain areas. I don't understand how you just dismiss these things. Do you think somene with an amygdala half the size of a normal person is going to react to NVC the way a normal person would? My feeling here, Marc, is that you emotionally have difficulty accepting that people like this exist and in numbers significant enough to have meaningful influence on us and our world. I do not see a serious desire to find the truth, but a bias toward finding any way to dismiss the evidence, even if that involves never looking at most of it, misquoting a few skeptics who are referring to other conditions as if they are talking about these conditions and pretending that this constitutes counter-evidence to hundreds of highly credible and replicated studies. If you want to believe that these conditions either don't exist or are so rare as to not be problematic, you will no doubt cling to that belief. If you want to know the truth, you will first look in an unbiased way at a much larger sample of the research and you will question it on the merits. Do you find something wrong with the methodology? That's valid. Let me know if you find that. Many of these researchers are accessible and we could ask them questions and see how they defend the work. If you want to challenge the actual science of these studies, that's fair game and perfectly reasonable. But if you want to just dismiss them without even bothering to look at the research itself, I can only conclude that your view of human nature as inherently good in all people (or all but some incredibly small number with certain brain tumors) is almost a religious one that you are not willing to question and that you are not concerned with actual scientific evidence. If that is the case, then there is nothing much to say. Evidence and reason don't influence someone who holds an opinion that was not based on evidence and reason to begin with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love

I guess it all depends on the definitions of "love" and "like" being used. I think when people say you can love family without liking them, by love they mean something like "strongly wish the best for them" but by like they mean "enjoy being around them on a day to day basis." Perhaps you can argue with these definitions, but I get the sense that people are defining these words when they use them in a way where this seeming contradiction can actually be reconciled. It's easy to understand this if you imagine a family member who is a drug addict. You may deeply care for their welfare and want badly for them to get better. But at the same time you may find it extremely unpleasant being around them.

Marc, I just experienced one of those coincidecnes so perfectly timed that you wouldn't believe it if put in a script. Just after writing what I did earlier and finishing with the quote from Robert Hare, I came across a tweet from the filmmakers of a movie focused heavily on the influence of psychopathy that features Hare. They linked to an article about how unscientific and misguided the DSM (the main diagnostic manual of psychiatry) is along with the comment that they had heard similar things about psychiatry from who else but Hare himself. So even the most recognized expert on psychopathy, who has spoken emphatically about how crucial it is that we don't deny its existence, agrees with many of the people you mentioned earlier about psychiatry as a whole. Hare himself apparently agrees with how off base we are with so many of our psychiatric diagnoses. But not with psychopathy, to which he has devoted most of his career. Psychopathy is different. It is not just another of the vague, amorphous conditions psychiatry often deals with. It is a much more objective condition based on far more precise and clear brain markers. It really belongs more to neurology than psychiatry, I think. The objections you raised, perfectly valid with regard to many other aspects of psychiatry, are not relevant to psychopathy. Hare's stance on both of those issues where appropriate is a nice representation of that. And if that's not enough to drive the point home, maybe this is: The guy that the entire article they linked to is about - the one vociferously challenging the basis of psychiatry - is ALSO in that movie that promotes the importance of recognizing psychopathy.

I found the end of the discussion absurd. Stefan kept pointing out that it's not enough to simply say that nobody came along to break this supposed oligopoly and produce the 100 year light bulb, but that we have to know why. His point was that there might be an alternative reason other than simple collusion that explained it. SCG avoided the entire question, acting as if the very fact that the bulb wasn't produced was evidence of a cartel and no more investigation was needed. If the reason is nothing more than that the bulb costs more to use in electricity than it saves in requiring less bulb purchaes, that would be a pretty hilariously simple refutation of SCG's entire point on this issue.

I don't see how it's a circle. I am pointing both of you to the truly massive amount of research supporting the neurological basis of these conditions. That's a line pointing in a very fruitful direction, not back in a circle. And it isn't really my position. It's the position that is pretty unavoidable if you actually look at the research. I take it neither of you has done that. I wonder if you are even willing to. Ultimately, this seems to be more of an epistemological issue. When I am made aware of a huge amount of research supporting something, I look at it and, if it is valid, I actually base my belief on it. If you don't approach forming your beliefs on that basis, then there isn't anywhere to go with the discussion. But it has nothing to do with going in a circle. It just has to do with an unwillingness to go where the conversation has, in quite a linear fashion, pointed.

As I pointed out in my previous long response to Marc, one of the "nice" things here (not nice in that it exists, but in that it makes it a lot easier to solve this debate) is that what you say is not actually true. There are people who are quite open and honest about their desire to hurt others and the enjoyment they take in it. They are simply honest sadists. Certainly, some sadists do not wish to expose their predilections and will make up excuses like you say. But there are plenty who have been open about it. Some are even quite proud. Some even mock and look down on others who don't share their enjoyment of seeing others harmed. And when allowed to speak with anonymity, even more such people will admit to this openly. There are plenty of people who do harm believing they are helping, as you point out. There are plenty working in the gray areas between altruism and malice. But I don't think there is much debate that there are people who are simply sadistic in the world. And I think we are perfectly justified in referring to such people as malicious and recognizing that they are highly unlikely to respond effectively to the use of NVC. Again, I'm not saying that strategically it is wise to necessarily tell them your assessment of them out loud to their face. But to simply accurately label them in your own mind or when speaking about this topic is hardly a moralistic judgment that should be avoided. It is just accurate natural science. And it is the first step to devising a strategy that does work optimally.

Marc, Not only have I had dealings with such individuals, but so has every one of us. It's literally not possible to live in our current society and not have such dealings given their prevalence and the level of influence they have. My concern also stems from a rich and growing body of very solid research on the subject. If your argument is based on attempting to claim that such people don't exist, that is going to be as close to impossible to support as you can get. Even if you'd like to challenge the existence of psychopathy - itself a nearly impossible position to support given the enormous amount of evidence of differences in brain structure and function - can you challenge the existence of those who have brain tumors which lead them to become violent? We know with enormous confidence that tumors in certain areas can cause such behavioral change and have for quite a long time. This is not something I think you can find any remotely credible neurologist or brain surgeon who would dispute. So if you can accept that brain tumors can biologically predispose someone to violence - even someone who was previously very peaceful - then you must accept the principle that biological conditions can render a person violent or non-cooperative. Our only debate would be about how many and which such conditions. By the way, quite a few psychopaths are very open about the fact that they are, in fact, quite different from the rest of us. Many of them are even proud of it. So it isn't as if all of these people are out there fighting to avoid being labeled and feeling stigmatized and wishing to be viewed as misunderstood. Their testimony is pretty important to take into account here, as well. Rosenberg giving evidence of a misdiagnosed person does nothing whatsoever to call into question the existence of these conditions. I can find people misdiagnosed with heart disease, as well. Does that show that heart disease does not exist? Such an argument would be almost a textbook example of a fallacy. Also remember that Rosenberg himself, in the book Nonviolent Communication, has an entire section on the "protective use of force." Why do you think he has that section? Because even he recognizes that there are cases where people simply will not respect the boundaries of others no matter how effective our attempts at dialogue. I am very familiar with the work of the people you mention who spoke eloquently against some of the views of the mainstream mental health establishment. I have studied their work and even spoken personally with some of them in my life. And I agree with their views when it comes to many aspects of mental health. But it is misguided to conflate their view on some types of mental disorders with those on other very different mental disorders. I agree with you (and them) that many vaguely-defined disorders, such as depression, are often dealt with absurdly and misdiagnosed and misunderstood. However, psychopathy, for example, is increasingly recognized not just as a psychiatric, but really as a quiet striking neurological condition. There are more studies coming out almost weekly or monthly pinpointing the brain differences, which are quite distinct and very significant (which is something we cannot say for many of these other, far more questionable types of disorders). I urge you to take a look, in an unbiased manner, at the array of research on the topic. I think if you do that in an honest and sincere fashion, simply seeking the truth, you'll come away pretty impressed with the sheer amount of solid research we have on this. Search on terms such as neuroscience and psychopathy, neurology of psychopaths, neurocriminology and so on. Or I can share with you a number of links to this type of data if you wish. The irony of you appealing to an anti-establishment sentiment as a reason to disbelieve in these conditions is that, in fact, it is the establishment itself that has conspicuously failed to pay much attention to these conditions. That's why, despite so much solid research in this area, you rarely hear about it and will be surprised when you see how much there is. It is the establishment that has attempted to make huge profits off of treating people with depressed symptoms with pills while barely paying attention to the conditions of the abusers who may well have caused their symptoms. It is also the case that many of these people work in the establishment and thus have no desire to bring attention to their conditions. It is hardly an establishment view to pay serious attention to these conscience-reducing conditions. In fact, the lack of such a focus is one of the reasons why I myself became disenchanted with the mainstream mental health field. It is only in very recent times that I am starting to finally see more mainstream discussion of these conditions and much of it is being driven by people not at all originally in the heart or mainstream of their fields. It requires no moralistic judgment to make the very scientifically-supported statement that there are people with neurological conditions affecting the areas of the brain responsible for such capacities as empathy and impulse control which render them more likely to be violent and uncooperative. Nor is there any moralistic judgment in recognizing that there are also recognized genes that play a role, as well. This is a very important and archetypal back and forth here because I believe the desire to deny the reality of these conditions is at the very heart of some people's philosophy on life. I empathize with them because I wish these conditions did not exist too. I also would like to believe in a world where we didn't have to take account for them. And I believe that for many people, accepting the reality of these conditions is itself very painful as it shatters some of their protective defenses in a variety of ways which could take an entire separate post to cover. But I think we, as well as others, pay a steep price for our remaining in that denial. Ultimately, you will have to decide, as will others, on what basis you will decide what to believe on this subject. Will you look at the neurological and genetic research and base your decision on that? Or will you base your decision on what is most comfortable to believe or fits your current worldview? Will you cherry pick the views of those that validate what you'd like to believe (none of whom have done any actual neurological or genetic research on this topic) and ignore the overwhelmingly greater preponderance of evidence on the other side? The research is there and quite strong and voluminous. I post pieces about new studies and stories on the subject weekly. You could spend weeks just reading that research. None of this is to completely devalue the importance of the philosophy you are promoting. To me it is like Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Newton's work is of great value as long as we are working within certain everyday limits. But once we go outside of those limits, his work doesn't apply. Similarly, approaches like NVC can work very well in many cases. But now and then we run into someone with whom or a system in which those rules simply don't work. And we have to recognize when we are dealing with people or situations that require us to take a different approach. A philosophy, like a tool, only works effectively if you know where it applies and where it doesn't. Trying to apply it inappropriately can backfire quite badly. I'll end this with a quote from perhaps the world's leading expert on psychopathy, Robert Hare, that I think is highly relevant here, not only because it hits on the denial of psychopathy in general, but it should reinforce what I said both in terms of there being overwhelming amounts of research evidence on the subject and that, despite this, far from pushing the issue and meriting some anti-establishment backlash, the establishment actually has not given sufficient attention to it: "There's still a lot of opposition -- some criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists don't like psychopathy at all," Hare says. "I can spend the entire day going through the literature -- it's overwhelming, and unless you're semi-brain-dead you're stunned by it -- but a lot of people come out of there and say, 'So what? Psychopathy is a mythological construct.' They have political and social agendas: 'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay." - Robert Hare

Research on how child abuse can lead to changes in genes, which then leads to underlying differences in PTSD when compared with those without previous child abuse. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130501154442.htm

This is not true for quite a few people with conditions like psychopathy and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as some others, that are deeply rooted and reduce empathy and cooperation. Thinking that "getting past our negative images of them" will lead to better behavior on their part is sorely misguided and can lead to a lot of pain. For many many people, it is true that taking a forgiving view of them will help them grow and heal and cooperate more. But it is really important to recognize there is a whole category of people for whom, by the very definition of their conditions, this is not the case. And this category likely includes at least 5% of the population, which is quite a lot when you really think about what 1 in 20 people means.

Very interesting if that's true about Rothbard's view on this. I wonder if Libertarians and Anarchists take that view seriously or kind of just ignore it. As you say, this issue would have huge implications with the US and Native Americans for example, with many well-documented examples of broken treaties and so on that could probably be shown. I think, at least for philosophical consistency, this issue can't be totally ignored. I believe Walter block has written about it, I don't think other libertarians have taken it seriously, but they probably just haven't heard the argument, Rothbard has written so much that its hard to read everything he has written. I myself am prepaird to pay restitution to a Native American if they demonstrate proof that my house was stolen from their ancestors. its possible though that a lot of Native Americans could be persuaded to not press charges Or just don't take it seriously becaue it's an invalid argument that makes a number of incorrect assumptions. The most pressing is the assumption that being someone's descendant gives you any right over their property. That's a workable solution to a single generation inheritance where no record of the actual wishes of the deceased is left. Even that isn't Universal though, with legal disputes between children and the spouse of parents being common. I don't see any reason why people I haven't met who happen to be the offspring of my great grand children, suddenly have a right to my property. There's also the problem of justification of the original property. Does a descendant of a Monarch of England have a claim to the whole of England? No? What about the descendant of a Lord that was given land by the Monarch, made lots of money off the land, gave up the land and title, passed his money down three generations, to someone who bought a large home with it, and then a few generations later they had that home taken by the State? Is that land the descendants? Then there's the problem with "proof". If the actual current owner of some amount of property is the descendant of some "rightful" owner but can't prove it, does a descendant with a better genealogy have a stronger claim to the land? Also, to add to the absurdity, nearly every single person on this board, and that this board knows, or has ever met, is descended from Charlemagne and his contemparies. That gives us only about 1200 years of arbitary justification of our property claims, from a time when nearly all claims are completely unjustificalbe because of Feudalism and the fact we're all one big happy family. You make a lot of points demonstrating how difficult it is to pinpoint which descendants have any claims to property passed down or to sensibly deal with that issue. And they are all worth considering. But there is another potential absurdity that must be balanced with these. And that is that it seems absurd to say that if you steal from someone, but just manage to hold on to it until you die, then your family can have it from now into eternity scot-free. I'm not claiming to have any easy answers to these challenges. My point is simply that you can't really clearly define or implement a non-aggression principle without taking a clear stance on some of these issues - both the ones you raise and the one I'm raising.