There's been a lot of talk about sociopaths or psychopaths as not having a conscience. For them to be the kinds of people who go around killing and raping others, there's another important factor that nobody tends to talk about. This factor is that they have a strange disregard for consequences. An experiment with real sociopaths who killed people and stuff and ordinary people involved giving people painful electric shocks after a beep with electrodes on the skin to measure tension. When ordinary people heard the beep, they would tense up and prepare to endure the pain. When the sociopaths heard it, there was no reaction. The threat of going to prison, the threat of being killed, and other consequences have no significant effect on such people.
There's been a lot of talk about sociopaths or psychopaths as not having a conscience
You know, the conscience was/is referred to as the "little voice in your head" telling you right from wrong. I wonder if there's any connection with the recent finding out that some ~40% of people don't have a voice in their head or can't image things in their minds.
The literal unthinking NPC's behaviors could be linked to psychopathy and related behaviors. Good luck getting funding for that study though.
Actually, I think with NPCs the problem is that their morality has been manipulated. Most people are okay with killing or punishing someone bad. This guy raped 20 kids. What should we do with him? Most "good people" would say some bad stuff or at least a minimum of execution. NPCs have had their morality manipulated to the point where they call what is evil "good" and what is good "evil."
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