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Do we need to, in discussing sociopaths and their “rights,” separate out the group that can successfully navigate normal social environments, from those who end up in jail because they cannot conform to social norms even when it would benefit them? That seems like two groups with two sets of problems?

Same with autistic spectrum people – there are Asperger syndrome sufferers who aren’t good at normal social interactions, but can live “normal” lives, and then the people with actual full-blown autism who can’t function without special services. They aren’t just not neurotypical, they are genuinely disabled. Which kind of makes them two different populations?

Damn, great topic. I have no academic credentials, but I have often wondered myself if there was some sort of biological basis for our species to develop offshoots of itself to fill specific niches. It seems to make sense, though the reason, if any, is unclear.

My best guess would be that it has something to do with coping with constantly evolving technology, and in doing so we develop into several types of specific ‘softwares’ to function/process a certain kind of input; numbers, visual stimuli, and types of pattern recognition.

I have no idea what this would be for, because evolution never really has any goal in mind. It’d be interesting to see how it turned out though.

It sounds completely far fetched when I look at what I’ve said, and I could always be wrong.

I wouildn’t say you shouldn’t post for fear of offence – far from it.

You may not intend describing autistic people as a different species as an insult – and I don’t take it that way, as it happens (I don’t offend easily). But what it *does* do is contribute to a rhetoric of us as being ‘other’, and in a way that cuts to the core of what most people describe as human. I expected more from you in this regard not because I didn’t want to be insulted (your blog, your rules, and I’ve been reading your blog for about three years now, off and on,so I do know the form), but because I would have thought you could see how dangerous rhetoric like that can be.

Incidentally, I have read quite a bit of your fiction, and voted for The Things in last year’s Hugos. I understand that you don’t see the baseline of humanity as aspirational, and that you didn’t intend the post to be offensive. I didn’t take offence, and I apologise if it appeared that I did. But however you intended the words, saying a group of people are literally distinct from the rest of humanity, and repeatedly comparing them to a hated group like sociopaths, is something that can be very, very dangerous to members of that group.

As far as the factual accuracy of autistic people lacking empathy, read through some of the pieces in Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg’s blog that I linked earlier, where she looks at the papers that supposedly demonstrate this lack of empathy. It’s pseudoscience on the level of phrenology. I’m absolutely agreed that we’re both ‘experiments of nature’, and that there is no moral value to differences in the brain. I don’t have a problem with people stating facts about autism. If you’d said “autistic people have a tendency to go on at tedious, long-winded length when the person they’re talking to wished they’d shut up half an hour ago because they don’t know when they’re boring people” for example, I’d be fine with that, because it seems to be true.

But what you’re doing is the equivalent of saying “Jewish people are just naturally more avaricious than everyone else, it’s been proven. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, live and let live, but they are.” It’s not only factually untrue, but it also perpetrates a harmful stereotype – one which is no less harmful even if you personally don’t think it a bad thing.

As for the equivalence I’ve drawn, that’s something we’ll have to agree to disagree on, because I don’t know of any comparative studies of these things that would be persuasive. What I can say though is that I have an easier time understanding the motives and emotions of neurotypical members of the political party I support than I do understanding those of Asperger’s people with different political views.

Had I just been offended, I’d have just turned away in disgust and gone off to one of the many other websites out there. It’s precisely because you’ve struck me in the past, from your writing, as someone who is intellectually honest that I wanted to point out that your statements are simply factually incorrect.

Check out a few of the posts on Cohen-Rottenberg’s blog. This one – http://www.journeyswithautism.com/2011/09/19/my-reply-to-simon-baron-cohen/ – is a good place to start, and the posts it links to. I think if you’ll read her critiques of the research methods, you’ll come to the conclusion that you are, in fact, simply factually wrong on the question of whether autistic people have impaired empathy.

(Apologies for what is probably an overlong comment, I am too tired to write a shorter one. I won’t clog up these comments further unless you address something directly to me).

I’m teaching at a junior high school in Japan, and one of the most interesting differences in curriculum that I’ve noticed, is the inclusion of a ‘moral education class’. It seems to be more than just morals though. For example, in the class, the students might read a story about someone being cruel to another person, and the students are then told who to sympathize with in the story (“Doesn’t it make you angry that they did that?”).

I asked one of the teachers about it, and they told me that although some students probably naturally feel these sorts of emotions (empathy), others don’t, and need to be taught how to react.

This is purely anecdotal of course, but it looked to me to indicate a cultural difference in how empathy is perceived.

I enjoyed how you snuck the “most of them operate entirely within the limits of established legal, religious, and political systems. Hell, it’s hard to look at the Citizens Uniteds and Rupert Murdochs of the world and conclude that sociopaths didn’t play a major role in building those systems in the first place.” part in as though that were a reason why we SHOULDN’T fear sociopaths.

That’s exactly the problem, at least in theory… even if they do operate within established limits, a) that may only be because that’s the better overall strategy for themselvs, but if a time comes when a ruthless murder, or for that matter genocide, is their best move, they’ll go at it with nary a doubt, and b) they’re classically far more adept at getting themselves in positions where they can change the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of others, and there’s not a rule against that.

A utopian world where sheep and wolves live together in harmony works fine for the wolves, and fine for the sheep… so long as the wolves never get hungry. And if you get elected to the animal congress on the basis of a ‘sharpest teeth’ contest, then pretty soon the wolves could all be law-abiding citizens and the sheep could be even worse off than if there were no rules at all.

That said, I’m not entirely sure where I fall on the issue, because we’re not actually dealing with wolves and sheep, but people, and where there aren’t always good solutions to thorny problems.

I, too, have wound up perusing sociopathworld.com on occasion. In my humble opinion, I am one of those sort of folks that adopts the label “freak magnet”, except that for me, it’s less of the people I would consider mere “freaks” (those I usually like or at least cheerfully tolerate), and more of the people I’d consider “sociopaths”. Hence the googling, and hence the visits to sociopathworld.com.

It’s important to distinguish between the mere sociopath and the more dangerous psychopath. If one thinks of a sociopath as a “socialized psychopath”, one might be on the right track. A sociopath can’t much care what other people — in one-to-one interactions — think, but they can and do care what large numbers of people think, even if mostly because otherwise those large numbers of people will gang up on them if they sufficiently offend. A psychopath doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks.

As to autism and sociopaths, I was watching Discovery channel or some such, covering the subject of autism, sub-subject, “Theory of Mind”. One professor type got a 30-second sound bite in which he stated “it’s not that autistics are so alien, it’s just that they have no way to model what normal people are thinking. Contrast that with a sociopath, who understands perfectly, but just doesn’t give a damn”.

This is possibly the important bit: many people operate throughout their adult lives with an internalized moral system which does largely have basis in empathy, “the Golden Rule”, or some such equation. Such persons are effectively restrained from most violence and most evil, and the restraint is internal to themselves. We see a maxim in Law to the effect that “ethics are meant to impose externally those tendencies which in a good man would express from within”.

In perhaps most people, such internal restraints are of such force that even in the face of invasion by a most cruel and heartless enemy, it takes 8 to 12 weeks of military Boot Camp to break down the internal restraints and replace them with a new socialization that allows them to kill other human beings. Yet for most people, the main thrust of this may be a sort of re-socialization where the recruit learns to see his unit and buddies as people and to see other people as not-people; the essential mechanism is learning to de-humanize, to demonize, the enemy. What is not a person may be killed without remorse, that’s the psychological trick that must be installed for most people to become effective soldiers.

Yet for some recruits, the real problem will turn out to be that they are perfectly willing to apply weapons to human targets, but will do so equally against people sharing the same uniform, if not upon their actual comrades. But, believe it or not, I actually digress.

Peter Watts and many other folks might feel free to rail against the idiocy of believing in Sky Fairies or the Giant Purple Space Squid or whatever. But I think that there is value in the fact that some people will internalize an external system of morality, even when couched in terms of unprovable mythos and improbable deities. Why?

In the same way that autistics need a rule book to help them navigate a concept of other minds, sociopaths need a rule book to help them navigate the society of people who have that rule-book built in. I think that society has long realized this, even if it never articulated it in so many words. Leaving out notions of “the God spot” is something we might want to do, yet we might wonder why it seems to be so widely distributed. Perhaps that’s because it’s an alternative to internal concepts of Moral developing on their own as they do in most people; if someone doesn’t develop those Morals as they emerge from adolescence, they’ve already been taught a set of rules that tweaks their “God spot” when they are doing what their society has declared to be right. Ethics proceeding from theology, thus, must substitute for Morals in people who haven’t any.

Yet as we’ve seen time and again, throughout history, and as Peter D comes close to suggesting, the people who are writing the rules or administering the rules have frequently acted as if they are above those rules, or change the rules. Yet some of the systems which lasted the longest seem to have checks-and-balances either written into them or which remains because of long-standing tradition. One wonders it, perhaps, the college of Cardinals chooses from among them the person who is the most fervent believer, the one with the best grasp of the mythos, or the one who is most inherently a Good Man not in need of any external rule-set, and thus in that case the person most inherently unlikely to re-interpret the rules to favor the wolves to the detriment of the sheep.

Having spent a lot of time in those dark corners of the internet where people seem to be excessively interested in the vampiric lifestyle, I’m struck by Peter Watts’s question to the effect of “so who speaks for the sociopaths”; it’s similar to my own question of “why would anyone claim or even admit to be engaging in vampiric practices”. There’s an astonishing lot of stuff out there which seems to be people trying to reconcile their notion of needing a strange diet with notions generally in direct opposition to actual sociopathy. I mean, would a sociopath go to such lengths to try to explain themselves, to shed light into darkness? Well, other than to lure in more victims. 😉

When I first ran into sociopathworld.com I thought that’s what it was, evil trying to represent itself as less than totally harmful or at least as something not to be so rightly feared. I’m less sure, now, and we should probably all spend some time reading there.

Peter Watts suggests that the next time I run across what I term “quaint little vales of total otherness”, I should send him a link.

Well, I ran into that by googling for “sociopath” in the context of “family” — please don’t ask me to elaborate 😉 — and possibly there are comparable things out there.

For quite some time, I was into the phenomenon of the so-called “living vampires”, or as some of them call themselves, the “sanguinarians”. If you want to get an eyeful of books to read which are semi-scholarly, try googling for “ramsland” in the context of “vampires”. Her “Piercing the Darkness” was pretty good, though most of the people interviewed were pretty much poseurs and goths and the occasional blood fetishist. Yet there’s one interview in the heart of the book which brings out a fairly clear picture of someone who is very cautious, very predatory, and expresses that they have not too much concern for the fate of their occasional pychosexual conquests. Reading that section, I was thinking to myself “definitely a sociopath”.

In the online community of “sanguinarians”, there has been this recurrent debate — trolled nine ways from Sunday so to speak, as you might expect — over what level of concern for the victim was necessary. Mostly it tends to resolve as a sort of ethical debate, which one doesn’t expect to be a primary concern of even mere sociopaths, and far from a concern of actual psychopaths. Then again, some of the trolling is seriously scary.

Here’s an old FAQ which may have a lot of dead links in it, but from the site names and the personalities listed, the URL may have changed by the sites themselves are probably under the same name in a new location.

First, though, quote possibly the strangest thing Evar in USian politics, and that is saying a great deal, and oddly on topic for this thread:
http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/nakedcity/ICE-CUBE-Ron-Paul-Hires-Local-Anti-Establishment-Concert-Promoting-Vampire-Hero-As-Delegate.html

Moving right along: from back in the days of UseNet:
http://earthops.org/a-c-v/faq.html

Most interesting in the context of sociopathy might be:
http://www.necronomi.com/users/akrieytaz/index.html

Fairly close to the “mainstream” of the vampiric, with forums FAQ “safety and privacy section” etc., would be:
http://www.sanguinarius.org/vampire.shtml

Sanguinarius does have their own little warning about sociopaths, though it’s pretty cut-and-paste:
http://irc.sanguinarius.org/nav-info/sociopath.html

More back to the “mainstream”, though. This may have been mentioned but if so, it slipped my brain:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24854134/Psychosis-and-autism-as-diametrical-disorders-of-the-social-brain

Cheers,

Will Sargent wrote:
Re: intelligence in ethnic groups

Peter, can you jump on this RIGHT NOW?

Not because it’s a topic that shouldn’t be discussed, but just for the thread-jacking effect.

@seruko:

Here’s a good culturally non-sensitive test!

We take a half-dozen adults randomly selected from each ethnic/religious/cultural group, dress them warmly and tie them to a cargo load full of things like 200 pounds of cut lumber suitable for firewood, some baling wire, fish-hooks, plastic sheeting, glow-sticks, radio beacon homing tool, etc.

Then we toss all of them out of a plane so that they’ll land at the same spot in Antarctica.

Whatever group of individuals — whatever their backgrounds or however they group up — which combines resources to make a shelter on a sled that can reach a rescue team waiting at a suitable point, is the superior group and gets airlifted to an all-expenses paid vacation someplace that they like. Cheat terribly in setting up the expedition so that no individual can possibly make it on their own. 😉

/me channeling my inner sociopath… or not.

two replies, and some additional thoughts I didn’t initially put together. Sorry this is disorganized, I am tired. Again. ( : Late at night is when I am tending to get to this. I look forward to seeing your reply and appreciate your thoughtful reply above.

@Peter

1 – “I cannot bring myself to accommodate the cultural norms that perpetuate those ‘dehumanizing’ beliefs. If enough people use the words for their meaning and not their baggage, my hope is that eventually that baggage will end up in the lost-and-found at Minsk International Airport, and stay there.”

Good points about reclaiming language, but I think it is easier for “outgroups” themselves to reclaim or reframe arguments and speech used to denigrate them than for people who are not members of those groups to lead the charge to do so. I know activists on the spectrum have emphasized the difference of their experiences, but I do not know if anyone has claimed that we belong to a different species, whatever one takes species to mean in that context (which I’ll get into further later). However, I think the best way for people to hear what you say rather than the historical echoes which could drown you out is for you to explicitly acknowledge those echoes and actively reframe your discourse rather than leave it to the reader (think about an exchange we had last week vis a vis lowest common denominators and most tv nature shows, aka canned sh*t).

2 – “Mundane”, “Neurotypical”, or “Empath”

a) It serves a certain purpose for “outgroups” to reframe themselves as central to their own experience by developing marginalizing language for dominant oppressive groups. But in this case, vis a vis my own experience (**I cannot speak for anyone else, or any other group**) as some kind of non-neurotypical person I’ve found that mindset hasn’t done much to help me. Even as it encourages a kinship with other “others” like me, it encourages me to feel more isolated or alienated than I naturally may tend to be, and groups together as my potential enemies a diverse group of individuals, some of whom might be allies, or even invisibly to me, just as “different” as I am. Now, for use in discussion or argument or comparison, it makes sense. But I’m not sure it is useful overall. Also, I feel use of the word “Empath” in this fashion is misleading, as an empath would be someone who senses others’ emotions to an uncommon degree, when it seems intended in this context to refer to people who do not have that kind of uncommon experience.

b) Also, would you say “cripples”? Would you say “queers”? Those words are reductionist in terms of their ability to communicate nuance, as well as in the way they reduce people to one simplfied (when they are in reality heterogenously expressed) set of characteristics. It is one thing when members of a group use a term about themselves, often in defiant anger, to claim solidarity, and not all members of that group might agree with that reclaiming or reframing of language. Again, frame matters as much as terminology here. That isn’t to say it’s bad to tear off a quick blog entry with some interesting ideas, but to be honest it feels to me like barking up the wrong tree when you make generalizations that don’t serve to reinforce your argument.

Autism as a concept is in itself imprecise, worse than a shorthand. After all, the autism spectrum is one along which people who share some common characteristics are spread. I’m not just talking about being “pc” here — “pc” is bs made up by covert conservatives to keep folks from talking about the realities of discrimination — I’m talking about being sensitive to the diversity of experiences among people on the spectrum, not just for their sake, but for the sake of accurately describing and exploring reality like the scientist you are. I’m not talking about polluting science with politics, but on taking into account the lived experience and valid input of the people you’re describing, without which you are likely to miss important insights.

additional comments:

i – I find the Martin Luther King comparison troubling. I get what you’re trying to do, but conflating the experience of different kinds of oppressed groups seems counterproductive in terms of adding sense to your argument because that sort of conflation is so imprecise and not terribly illuminating, and it is that dissimilarity that makes it offensive, because of the lack of understanding which it implies (especially because I doubt you lack that understanding and likely picked it because it seemed a catchy tagline).

ii – Your whole argument comparing sociopaths and people on the autism spectrum seems to hinge, even if you do emphasize that you honour the diversity of human neurological makeup, one putative shared lacuna in these putative and rather sketchily defined populations’ theory of mind in comparison with so-called “baseline” humans, rather than a palette of shared divergences from the “norm”. I find myself thinking about a similar logical fallacy in relation to how many people think about criminals which was mentioned in a brief talk I recently attended about Samenow’s research on the criminal mind. The talks discussed how Samenow developed a theory that fallacies in reasoning, rationalizations and such, allow people who engage in criminal acts to “normalize” their actions to themselves. If you haven’t read up on this, I recommend it, I wish I had the slides the psychologist who gave the talk was using, she did it in five minutes, utterly brilliantly, as part of a mini-TEDlike lightning talks thing at a local sf convention.

iii – Why necessarily a different species? What are your criteria for cognitive speciation in general, as a concept per se, rather than just in this particular case?

@Val:

It’s late and I’m finding the arguments you apologize for as being the result of someone a bit tired late at night to be both subtle and overwhelming in the precision; I believe I might easily fear what you might say after a night’s sleep and a good breakfast. Besides, it’s not addressed to me. 😉 But there’s something I feel I can take a stab at, however briefly.

You wrote:
iii – Why necessarily a different species? What are your criteria for cognitive speciation in general, as a concept per se, rather than just in this particular case?

This is an excellent question, in my humble opinion, especially because it seems that nobody can quite latch onto any single genetic component that produces autism. It’s not a broken “X” or a trisomy or anything of that sort; it seems rather to be a sort of “greater than the sum of the parts” sort of thing. I can’t point to any supporting research, but perhaps it’s the little traits that all add up. Why does autism seem to appear more frequently in the offspring of successful college-educated professionals than it does in “the working classes”? Could it be that the collection of traits that make someone a studious and diligent accountant combine with the traits that make someone a rigorous follower of the rules of Real Science and Fine Harpsichord Playing combine to produce a child who experiences tone as color signifying number that they can’t articulate in any existing mode of expression or transcription? A lame example, probably, and if so I apologize.

Additionally, can there really be cognitive speciation without actual speciation? Or are like minds so drawn together that they exclude the unlike from their midst? One could say that this is the basis of our whole culture for most of its history. Beware the heretic, etc., but what of those who are excluded. I suppose I could just cite the allegories from Gene Wolfe’s “the Hero as Werewolf” (wherein the folks who don’t develop the new senses and thinking needed to meld with machines are reduced to foraging in the hinterlands around the rubbish heaps) but who is it who might be destined to fall by the wayside? Or does it even go that far?

I’m sure that at one point in time, there were lots of folks in the ancient days who said “what is up with that gal and her making marks on the walls of the cave”, but nowadays we just sort of nod and perhaps don’t even need to mutter “the Artist at her work”. We who mutter might not be Artists, and may indeed neither know nor appreciate Art, but we understand that other people do, and we understand that the general consensus seems to be that whether we understand it or not, it is a Good Thing. Are the Artists a different species? Are Musicians? Farmers, perhaps?

We might all be revisiting the moment when some fellows were sitting around and discussing to the effect of “you know, I’ve getting a bit tired of that gal with her charcoal, always marking up the cave walls, as if we didn’t have enough smudging from the fire dontcha know, I’ve half a mind to pitch her out with the smilodons and see how well her charcoal serves her then, I tell you! -But wait! You know, that looks more than a bit like an Aurochs, and there’s a Man! With a spear! Looks like you, Barney! Really, it quite does.” And thus this cognitive speciation, so to speak, can be argued about as to whether the evolution is occurring in the art of the artists or in beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

In the end, less of speciation, and more of including a new understanding, in my humble opinion. The species doesn’t divide; rather, it increases the range of what it comprises.

Has anyone mentioned Willem H. Martens here?

http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2003/psychopaths.htm
http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/martens2001.pdf

His idea is that there are neurophysiological differences between psychopaths and everyone else, yet the ‘psychopathic’ traits are the result of environment, which means a non-criminal with a psychopathic-type brain would, for example, lack normal empathy but would also lack those psychopathic traits which are caused by a bad personal history. Which makes sense, for why would the lack of empathy in itself make someone hostile to those with empathy? (What was Jukka’s backstory?)

Here’s a good culturally non-sensitive test!
We take a half-dozen adults randomly selected from each ethnic/religious/cultural group, dress them warmly and tie them to a cargo load full of things like 200 pounds of cut lumber suitable for firewood, some baling wire, fish-hooks, plastic sheeting, glow-sticks, radio beacon homing tool, etc.
Then we toss all of them out of a plane so that they’ll land at the same spot in Antarctica.

Thus proving incontrovertibly that Inuit are by far the most intelligent group of the human species. Or possibly Lapps or Norwegians.

“If they’re so smart, how come they haven’t all moved to live somewhere warmer?” (Not serious)

Thanks for the response to my response, Peter. And I’m actually in agreement with everything you say now, pretty much (I worry about labels like ‘cognitive subspecies’ being misappropriated, but not to the extent that I’d want to restrict your right to use them). I have a huge problem with any group of people being *mis*characterised, but none at all with correct, accurate descriptions. If Jewish people really *were* more avaricious, or black people really *did* have a better sense of rhythm (or straight white men really *were* arseholes who want to oppress The Other) then stating that should be considered a reasonable thing to do.

And yes, I’d figured out from your various writings that you would generally see cognitive diversity as A Good Thing, which was why I was surprised to see you making what looked like pretty negative statements about autism. I’m very glad to see that you’ve actually followed those links and revised your opinions in the light of new evidence – which *is* what I’d expect from your other writings. Thanks for that.

And while I dislike the term ‘cognitive empathy’ for the political reasons Cohen-Rottenberg has – plus thinking it simply factually a bad label, as what I have is closer to a sensory disability like blindness rather than an empathetic one – the distinction itself is a totally valid one. I can’t tell when I’m boring or upsetting someone, say, unless they give out *very* clear clues or unless I devote almost all my thoughts to consciously analysing their expression and body language, but I *care* enormously about the effect I’m having. So while I can quibble with the term, the distinction is one I think most people with autism would accept.

(For those who are interested, the single most accurate summary of Asperger’s, what its actual effects are and how it feels on the inside, that I’ve ever seen is the one at, of all places, TVTropes – http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome )

Random (and totally unsupported by shit) thought: If asperger’s folks (and my own experience supports the Lamarckian bit, by the way) and sociopaths are actually cognitively opposite in regards to empathy, is it not possible – if not probable – that there is an inherent *opposition* between the two groups?

Even if I’m horribly off-base, it’d be a cool story – and this post (and all the comments) have got my brain a-buzzing.

re me apologizing for tiredness — this was mainly because when I’m tired
and trying to make sense I tend to sound like a pompous ass.

re AcD

“irritable idiots”
I’m not an idiot, I’m particular about clarity.

“neither selective breeding nor purposeful grooming (acculturation) seem to play a decisive part in producing sociopaths or high-functioning autist”
yes. BINGO.

“cognitive polymorphism . . . [etc]”
nicely put paragraph

Brain layout and genes don’t always result in a predictable
result. There was a researcher whose name I cannot find
who found out that he had brain responses or biology
associated with psychopathy, but he wasn’t a psychopath.
Please, someome find this before I go mad trying to.
Heard about it on NPR, I think.

re Peter

“I think you may be overestimating the breadth of my readership;”

I suppose . . . I guess I see a thing that I think could be twisted and
get all sensitive about it.

vis a vis loaded nouns:
The plural has different weight than the singular (e.g. queer community)
seems to me . . . but maybe I’m just still sensitive. It isn’t like I
wouldn’t use the word about myself, but I feel hesitant using it about
someone else. But mostly I can’t think of anything, calling people
“autists” just rankles me.

General:
For me scientific truth, e.g. global warming, is too important to stifle for politics,
but I also believe in responsible actions with that truth,
because I don’t think you trust the average jerk to
run with the concept that “X population is X value-laden
characteristic different than than Y population” without
ending up violating the rights of X population.
I get angry because people are assholes, same as you.
Life is complicated.

Hope your recovery goes, ah, smoothly.

(And for a totally unimportant aside, as for the Queen & Beaver,
(what a lovely name for a pub), I have fond memories of my visit
there with my friend Petteri back in ’10, minus the
slightly elevated prices and noisy milieu. Hmm, that’s a destination for
early November during WFC . . . might drag the husband along this time as well)

Also . . . some interesting bingo cards . . .

autism bingo
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66800893@N03/6087211355/in/photostream

offensive adjectival nouns bingo
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6171/6131761237_52599853e1_b.jpg

and for the win, evopsych bingo
http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d98/sabotabby/evopsychbingo.jpg

Re Val: about being an idiot (not), ‘loaded nouns’ and ‘General’:

I wasn’t suggesting you’re an idiot, obviously.
You raise an issue that would be entirely valid in the context of an educational program, but this here is pretty much the guest table at Ye Olde Watts Tavern, and even by my own lax standards, it would warrant at least a PG-13 rating. As such, it’s just as well if the local color happens to repulse those made uncomfortable by ‘strong’ words and themes — call it advance warning if you want. 😉

Framing such discussions so as to make them palatable and engaging to an unprepared audience is a work in its own name, and certainly a worthy endeavour, but that’s a demanding exercise in pedagogy and translation, one that more than likely would choke the free-flowing mix of solid arguments and hot air that composes this local atmosphere.

Working under the assumption that people here generally strive for intellectual honesty also gives us license to dispense with the usual pleasantries of PCness (which I suspect have more bearing on your cautious approach than you seem to realize).

Beyond the principled stance of reclaiming unfairly loaded forms in the name of reason/science, paying heed to the outcry of the easily offended may not be as virtuous as you might think, considering how, more often than not, their outrage is disingenuous, and simply constitutes a misdirection/evasion when faced with challenging/uneasy topics.

When in doubt, the intellectually honest will ask for clarification (as exemplified many a time in this very thread), as opposed to readily assume the worst.
Playing nice with the unwarranted outrage just gimps the pace of the conversation for those willing to engage in earnest debate, yet will not force the bigots or squeamish to play up to the level.

As for those who’d rather tout their traditional family values and blush at bad words, well, no big loss… Peter’s frequent use of ‘larvae’ as a moniker for human offspring should have been enough of a hint for them to take a hike sooner.

This [http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6171/6131761237_52599853e1_b.jpg] is precious.
Check me in for A2, B3, E2.

Re: Anony Mouse: “OH GOD COLONOSCOPIES SUCK OH GOD MAKE IT STOP”, atheists in fox holes, etc…

In fairness, Peter eventually invoked science, in the shape of an IV drip, and it worked much, much better than the fairy sky man.

@Lanius:

Linda Mealey’s probably pioneering article that came out in ’95. Suggests that speciation is taking place, and that psychopathy and related traits are adaptations for another survival strategy that works.. (the one most of us like is cooperation)

Uh aside from this, “troll much?” But I’d tend to agree with the facial tattoos, except it’s a bit too close to the old strategy of Mayhem (in the older sense) as seen in some cultures in the past. Keep in mind that you could mark the wrong person, or it could degenerate into markings for political reasons, and then there’s that bit from The Thousand Nights where the Grand Vizier marks the door of Ali Baba so that the soldiers can find him, but Ali Baba’s faithful servant takes a piece of chalk and goes out to mark the doors of everyone who supports the Grand Vizier…

Mealey is covering some ground that seems to have been under a lot of discussion right about that time. I know that on various BBS in previous years we had a set of discussions regarding speciation and sociopaths.

Look: as best I can tell by running the numbers, the majority of humans ever living are alive NOW. That might suggest that we have the greatest genetic diversity ever, if only through their being more people survivably expressing minor mutations. Some might be cognitive, or not; in any case as sociopaths seem to be a standard but small percentage of the population (Ressler, “Whoever Fights Monsters”), as the population grows the percentage remains the same but you have a larger number of sociopaths. Depending on their “virulence” and the technology at hand, interesting scenarios come inevitably to mind.

@AcD:
I guess I need Peter to write a vampire-centric novella starting in alternative prehistory to sort out how a species of sociopaths may have fared without the interference of pesky euclidian architecture…

If I understand Peter rightly, his vampires aren’t another species… not quite yet. Technically human, they are capable of progenating to the point of fertile grandkids, after all, in his fiction they are “revived” by activation of DNA carried in modern people.

All of this talk of “speciation” has mostly avoided the fact that it usually occurs during periods of population crash, when suddenly some collection of minor mutations — which in the usual situation didn’t matter much either way — suddenly become the stuff of life or death. Range drift often has something to do with it as well… but we’re talking about humans here. Our range is the planet.

Think for a moment about conditions during the apparently inevitable Zombie Apocalypse um ahem I mean Peak Oil/Peak Water/Glacial Melt/Global Warming/Confluence-of-Everything-Bad. A global system of just-in-time delivery succumbs to a cascade failure in the increasingly micromanaged systems-of-systems. There’s little to drink, not much to burn other than housing and books, less to eat that isn’t human. Mobs of millions will descend on the fortresses of the well-prepared mega-rich, enough to assure that they too wind up with nothing. In all of this harshness, who will survive? One side of this hoary argument posits that the best-equipped to survive are those who have little humanity other than being bipeds that make and use tools and language in purposeful, goal-oriented behavior. When the best chance to survive means being the best at ingratiation and betrayal combined with a deep and dispassionately endless analysis of your prey, it’s the sociopaths who have the advantage… for a while. Once most of the dying is done, if any survive who aren’t sociopaths, they’ll remember the doings of the sociopaths… and there will be a whole new Van Helsing Society endlessly searching while trying to not become what they must hunt. Some of the best writers have taken a whack at that scenario, Poul Andersen having pulled off one of the better tries. Yet the subtext remains, whoever hunts monsters must be careful to not become one… for as you study the darkness, the darkness is studying you. And frankly the sociopaths are better at that sort of thing.

And given world enough, and time? Guess what they become.

let me chime in and say that i find this alternative take on asperger/autism interesting:
http://www.journeyswithautism.com/2009/06/02/intense-world-syndrome/

cognitive subspecies — middle children of alcoholics in WEIRD cultures?

Thank you very much Hljóðlegur. You saved me bothering to comment at length again. It has been a long week, and I am very tired and have more to do.

And I think where he went in his discourse is proof that frame and context do matter here, where the audience isn’t as homogenous as some have argued.

@Thomas:
My question was more about the prehistoric vampires, which I understand to be reproductively compatible mutants, or at least close cousins of homo sapiens (a la Neanderthal), and whether there could have been a turning point where a vampire explosion could have taken place (if not for the architecture-induced population crash).
Considering the long gestation and slow development of young hominids in general and cortex-heavy ones in particular, it’s hard to imagine how a systematic brood-parasitic strategy would play out in the long run, factoring in the inevitable nature/nurture influences.

I can’t put my finger on the exact quote from Peter, but I seem to remember prehistoric vampires being described as loners, not living in herds/tribes, nor even couples and nuclear families. That would seem to rule out the establishment of anything like a ‘vampire socitey’, which was my initial question/thought experiment: how would a vampire society come about, using humans as chattel, without first either depleting the food supply, or diluting the vampire population so much in the H.S population that individual vampire offspring would presumably fail to self-identify as belonging to the vampire nation ?

@Lanius: Thanks for pointing the bloody obvious… now who is this us that makes your average ?

@Val:
I’m sure you will entertain the possibility that there is some range between the tiptoeing around ‘loaded nouns’ (which you seem to advocate), and being trollishly potty-mouthed (Lanius’ thing, clearly).

With that said, I’m in full agreement with you that frame and context matter: we mainly seem to disagree about whether we ought to self-censor as a default stance in order to accommodate the lowest common denominator of politically acceptable discourse (possibly unnecessarily stifling the free flow of conversation), or adapt our discourse frame to our present company (which carries the risk of being overly optimistic about the quality thereof).

Cuss words efficiently scare away the soccer-mom hordes (which I see as a GoodThing™), but they’re indeed no deterrent against some strains of wingnut trollery — short of entirely sterilizing the field, I know of no perfect prophylactics for the latter, alas.

AcD wrote:

I can’t put my finger on the exact quote from Peter, but I seem to remember prehistoric vampires being described as loners, not living in herds/tribes, nor even couples and nuclear families. That would seem to rule out the establishment of anything like a ‘vampire socitey’, which was my initial question/thought experiment: how would a vampire society come about, using humans as chattel, without first either depleting the food supply, or diluting the vampire population so much in the H.S population that individual vampire offspring would presumably fail to self-identify as belonging to the vampire nation ?

Using the new definition of species provided by Peter (which I should read up on before making use of, but what the heck…) we have groups in the human population which are on a distinct cultural trajectory. There are and have been monasteries for a very long time in European and Islamic societies and Japan. (Don’t know if there are equivalents in Africa or the Americas – would not surprise me.) Modern Europe and North America are almost certainly rich enough (resources, technology, chattels) to support some decent sized vampire communities.

Christian-style monks don’t reproduce, but there are other groups that do maintain a different lifestyle and reproduce, such as the Amish. And modern reproductive technology would let them reproduce without losing essential genes.

Christian-style monks don’t reproduce, […]

Not biologically, but cognitively.

I’m positively gleeful when I have the chance to stick it to PC people

Ah. I suspected it was really about that. Hey, whatever? Knock yourself out, Cleatus.

P.P.S.:
How is the whitelist thingie doing ? ~__^

you know, a funny something just crossed my mind that I considered (perhaps wrongly 😉 ) worth sharing…

By the time we have the tools to actually rewire some of the people on autistic spectrum and some sociopaths into approximation of XXI century baseline (which may be very much an imaginary construct since we hardly have any idea how many weird modes of thought remain uninvestigated by science due to not being associated with any form of socially unusual behavior), the baseline itself would have likely already dissolved into an alien world of people who traded their ability to dress themselves without assistance for a really cool feat 😉

Or dialed down their “affective empathy” to a mere whisper because damn thing gets in the way every now and then. Or any number of weirder things, things for which no words exist yet.

To me, it seems likely that by the time we might seriously need a neurodiversity rights movement, “XXI baseline” is the group that would be a vulnerable “neurominority”

Well, I don’t fit the cookie cutter stereotype thing at all. I read my first book at fourteen months old, in Indonesian. It was a very easy picture book and I reckon most kids could learn to read very early in the right environment. I didn’t grow up Autistic or Psychopathic and I’m not Jewish.

As a kid I was extremely sensitive. I would burst into tears quite quickly, when the mother Panda died in the endangered species documentary, when people got hurt on the news ect ect. So, over things that other people would consider quite minor. After my Grandpa died I cried myself to sleep for five years straight. In grade 3 I got a high score on an IQ test and was put into a Gifted and Talented Class. The person assessing me didn’t find I had a problem with word meanings but I had a problem expressing myself verbally to other kids because I used really strange words I’d learnt out of books and it was basically like any person trying to understand Shakespeare. I was put into Acting Classes as recommended by the Psychologist and that problem went away. My parents weren’t interested in me growing up to be someone smart – their passion was creativity and I was very enthusiastic about creative writing, art, theatre and I didn’t really like maths.

I got bullied a lot as a kid but there was never a point where I didn’t have friends and I still know some of them now, decades later. Generally, I was a pretty happy kid. I was abused from an early age and molested before six years old and it affected me and it hurt a lot and I repressed a lot of those memories but I had friends and family and love and I didn’t experience disassosiation until 21 years old with Major Depression. Even though I didn’t talk about what happened when I was little I did have a lot of love and support, particularly from my Grandpa. I was very lucky.

I have been sitting between introvert and extrovert on a personality test for three years now. Since developing PTSD from trauma and no social support in my late teens I have experienced memory and spelling problems and my IQ seems to be average atm. I am convinced that PTSD is caused by a lack of social support. I think that Psychopathy is often more of an environmental thing than a Biological thing. Kids who grew up badly abused or with little stimulation and without social support. There was a little adopted girl who was displaying signs of ASPD after being badly abused by her Dad. Years later, after living with a loving family, she grew up quite normal. The documentary is on YouTube. Then, there’s the ‘Feral Children’ who were badly abused and neglected from an early age and in some cases the brain wasn’t able to develop properly.

Would you mind posting my 2nd post?
Without it my 3rd post is taken out of context…

Hello Peter.

I’ve been watching your blog for, oh, close to a year and a half I suppose. It’s been an entertaining read, I came in (I think) right when you damn near died, so it certainly caught my attention. I’m glad you made it through that incident, and hope you live for a long, long time yet. Immortality is just around the corner anyways, it would be a shame for you to kick the bucket before seeing the religious types rant and rave about how biological immortality “goes against God’s design”.

In honesty though, I have been falling behind in keeping up with your latest posts. I was actually brought here from Sociopathworld when ME made a post about you.

Honestly though, I am somewhat surprised that you did not read his blog before writing Blindsight. You seemed, in that book, to have an insight into us that many people can’t grasp. Your outlook on us is also refreshing. In a world where people want to force us to wear some kind of symbol denoting our “disorder” like we are some kind of Jew during 1940s Germany, it’s good to see people with your kind of stance on the issue.

Amusing how I suggest Blindsight to ME, he finally decides to read it, and then you find his website and both of you talk about eachother. Ironic still how besides Eeben Barlow, yours’ and ME’s blogs are the only ones I read with any consistency. Now all I’ve got to do is get one of you to go on about something like “evolution of sociopathic tendencies in wartime Africa” to get the ball rolling between you three. That would be something to see.

Anyways, I’m rambling at this point and seemed to have lost any cohesion I had in mind when I started writing this post. Seems like it’s a good time to end before I make a bigger fool of myself.

Guten Nacht.

Seruko said, Or maybe you could google “jstor cultural factors iq test” and read 60 years or so of analysis.

Hahah. All of what Seruko said in that comment! Plus this:

Cleatus already copped to being a TROLL. He’s not here to debate the merits of any scientific anything, he’s here because “I’m positively gleeful when I have the chance to stick it to PC people.”

Remind me again why we’re feeding the troll?

@L

I see what’s going on here.
Let me be more plain.
Race is a word that means nothing testable. Especially when you start drilling down to sub categories like: ashkenazi jew or african jew. It’s just noise.

Different Organisms are different.

I do have a beef with IQ and enormous side of beef, perhaps a herd of prime grade A steer. IQ does not equal intelligence. IQ is a number based on a test. Intelligence is an enormous multifaceted subject best defined as a nebulous ability to adapt to changing specific environments. It’s not one magical tool. The whole notion that it is a itself a racist crazy conceit held over from the 18th century.

Additionally not once have you addressed how you would account for cultural factors. Factors themselves which in every study, in every case, are shown to have a stronger effect on learning outcomes (and that’s what the IQ test really is, a metric of how well you’re education has prepared you for the test).

To wit: To defend the claim “ashkenazi jews have a genetically hire intelligence the others” you need some falsifiable evidence. You don’t appear to have any that goes beyond your gut bacteria and some correlation analysis that would shame your average social scientist.

If you don’t have those things, you’ve only got the contents of your gut to go for your argument.

The problem is not that populations differ along various axes. The problem is that too many people still use those differences to justify simplistic stereotypes — and as a result, other people develop a hair-trigger aversion to the mere mention of possible differences between groups.

Not only an aversion the mention of it, a gag-reflex at simplistic stereotypes, even complimentary stereotypes. It’s nearly classical conditioning – you experience enough iterations of violently nauseous stuff in tight chronological proximity to other events, and eventually any component of the cascade causes you to wanna vomit.

The creepy part here is how quickly the cascade proceeded to ethnic epithets. Amazing.

OMG Peter, you have managed to tame your spam filter ?

Everyone, rejoice !

To make falsifiable claims about genetics, you need to get down to the genes (and the claims will be like “carriers of genes ALPHABETSOUP and NUMBERSALAD have significantly better test performance, not “teh joos are teh smarter” 🙂 )

So far, evopsych folks have been very successful at avoiding getting down to genes 😀

Sorry guys.. forgot a hanging italic tag in my post..

@01
Cochran et all propose that the high incidence of neurological congenital defects is because of high selective pressure on ashkenazi smarts during the middle ages..

Also, Cochran is not evopsych, he’s a physicist and an antropologist..

Anyway, no one is willing to fund such a project. Even Israelis balked, on account of half of Jews in Jewland [editorial insert: seriously, Lanius? “Jewland”? That’s almost too over the top to even be insulting. You make interesting points on occasion, and you offer up cool links, but this kind of terminology serves absolutely no function *except* to give insult. We talked about this. You said you’d cut it out. Strike two.] being Sephardic.. and there already being a bit of strain in relations …

Looks like I broke Peter’s blog 🙁

@ Seruko

Well, I can boil down the entire scripture to one word 🙂

@ Peter

Thanks man.

I am remarkably untidy, in my posts and in my code. Can’t help it.

if one is going to make claims about genes and then not examine genes one fails at understanding the scientific method.

This may work for the underpants gnomes
1. sociological claim
2. genes!
3. ????
4. profit

but it fails for science. 🙁

Science isn’t about why, it’s about why not. You ask: why is so much of our science dangerous? I say: why not marry safe science if you love it so much. In fact, why not invent a special safety door that won’t hit you in the butt on the way out, because you are fired.

re Seruko and Hljóðlegur su trolltaming
You are both incredibly awesome. If I meet you someday, I hope I know it’s you.

re Peter su evopsych
I think the mechanism at work re responses to evopsych is something like almost classical conditioning Hljóðlegur described — one gets used to dismissing it because “the gag-reflex kicks in”, so I appreciate actually useful examples like the one you gave above. It strikes me that misuse of science does it as much damage to public non-specialist scientific discourse as distrust of science. Going out on a limb, that may be why the people who went on an anti-vaccine field day were able to do so, which is a rather terrifying example of why science needs to be rehabilitated as what it is, a tool of insight, not a crop for the overlords to use to smack the vassals and tell them they belong in the mud.
Also, I’m totally stealing the term “just-so stories”, because using words like etiological tends to scare people.

Magenta
re “I think that Psychopathy is often more of an environmental thing than a Biological thing.”
Anybody who argues that something behavioral is all nature and no nurture will have to argue very well for me to buy what they’re saying.

I think that it is perhaps worth clarifying that by evopsych, I mean specifically evolutionary psychology pertaining to human research, so research dealing with animals and not attempting to draw an explicit line to humans was not intended to be covered by my claim (though I suspect that field has a fair share of crap, too)

shouldaf made that more clear when sticklebacks came up.

@Demo

Environment is extremely important. The “Feral Children” were exposed to abuse and neglect so severe that they had a loss to their language abilities. Sensitivity to hot and cold and pain was also affected. Fortunately, they were all able to improve and either regain lost language or learn a lot of words with plenty of long term support.

I wonder if an adult who has lost the ability to empathise and experience remorse from childhood could possibly relearn these abilities like with language?!?
It used to be believed that bpd was incurable. Studies have since proven otherwise 🙂

Completely agree that a virtual world, like Achilles from Starfish had, where you practice your desire to murder or rape in a virtual space, is a practice session for murder or rape. Especially because sexuality has a learned component, and one can desensitize to violence through repeated exposure

1)You’re saying that guys who spend their free time, instead of watching boob tube or wanking to porn playing Red Orchestra 2 where you kill either Nazis or Bolsheviks in what amounts to a decently realistic first person shooter are going to eventually crack, take their bolt-action rifle or their vintage submachinegun and go shoot/bayonet Nazis or commies?

2) Or that pedophiles who control themselves, never even touch kids and wank to pedophile stories or drawn porn obtained from the internet are more likely to offend and actually molest kids?

If you argue 2), be aware that Japan, the country with the worst and most atrocious porn imaginable (I urge you not to see it, once you’ve seen a dick-nipple, you cannot unsee it) has very low rates of actual sexual assault.. and sexual violence..

You guys are gonna like this:

http://sociodomain.blogspot.com/

Very erudite sadistic psychopath, or perhaps a psychologist with a wicked sense of humor..

‘Life is what you make of it’. A true statement in more ways than one. Some circumstances or events may be inevitable, but they are not the driving force of your fate–you are. At least, that is what I’ve come to know.

Sociopaths are purported to have a grandiose sense of self; an innate belief in their superiority and capability to achieve success. This is seen as a ‘delusional’ symptom of a disorder, but close your textbook and look at the facts. It won’t take more than a glance at the obviously high-functioning Sociopaths running amuck in your backyard to see, our little ‘delusions’ are often more than justified.

What you call delusions of grandeur, I call an innate understanding of the world. Superiority is not a stroke of luck, a silly nametag that falls into your lap– it is a mindset. An implacable and justified confidence in your own abilities. In your own power to control your reality.

…than pedophiles WHO stop themselves …

(typo)

@Sheila says:

Btw, based on reading about the effects of violent games or porn, etc; I would say the verdict is still out as to whether they improve or degrade behavior.

I don’t know about pr0n, but as far as video games are concerned, I have yet to see a half-decent study on that topic, and not for lack of looking.

Everything released to date (to the best of my knowledge) has been flawed in methodology and/or contextual analysis.
The most typical error being to fail to earnestly look into videogaming patterns of use relative to other activities, and on the relative time/attention invested in various game genres/playstyles by study subjects,.
…all of which seems critical, as from empirical and anecdotal experience, individual context and disposition play major parts in informing one’s experience of violent videogames.

Does a stilted social life (meatspace or online) and little other interests besides, when combined with compulsive gaming, all increase the odds of antisocial behavior, and possibly psychotic excursions ? Yes, sensory and affective deprivation works wonders in boosting operant conditioning, indeed.

On the other hand, I know of many people for which intense gaming has been a haven and a place of experimentation, both in solo (or non-socially binding) play and in team/multiplayer settings.

What matters most is how gaming blends or contrasts with one’s non-gamey experience and practice, and understanding such complex dynamics can’t happen by focusing exclusively on the count of hours logged in “SadistophanMegaMayhem IX”.

A game should not be excused from accountability for the messages it conveys, and neither should players be imagined as passive subjects gorging indiscriminately on virally-loaded thought pellets.
Gaming surely can strongly affect one’s imagination, thought process, and possibly ‘deeper wiring’, yet what’s played, why, when, how and with whom makes all the difference between cathartic/innocent good fun and desensitizing mass-murder rehearsal.

@01
It has Batman in it. I am allergic to Batman(and all superheroes), I cannot bring myself to read the thing.

@01

I think I will eventually find a nice “porn citation cheat-sheet” a friend cooked up long ago (long story short – no convincing reproducible “lab” evidence porn affects likelihood of sexual violence, no epidemiological connection observed “in the wild” at all.

I think the same could probably said about video game violence.

@ Lanius

Supposedly, there is a good statistical connection between widespread adoption of the Idiot Box and murder rate.

Debunk’d due to not controlling for confounding variables

http://reason.com/archives/2001/03/01/missing-link

Ohh, even better way to see it: Norms are a pack-predator version of psychos. The ’empathy’ tweak is reliably switched off for suffering of the out-group. Commands by the upper one in the hierarchy, regardless of the upper one’s actual power, have higher weight than empathy in majority of normals, which puts the empathy at a very low weight, a mere default behaviour that is effective for a pack.

Ohh, even better way to see it: Norms are a pack-predator version of psychos. The ‘empathy’ tweak is reliably switched off for suffering of the out-group. Commands by the upper one in the hierarchy, regardless of the upper one’s actual power, have higher weight than empathy in majority of normals, which puts the empathy at a very low weight, a mere default behaviour that is effective for a pack.

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter…

Ummm…if a dog does something, that behaviour is, by definition, dog-like. There is a big range in socialibility, for sure, but all dogs are

Dmytry makes a fine point there. Empathy seems to be an individualistic trait, in the sense that it will show (if it exists – not like every human individual is overflowing with it) when the person is acting individually. It is also often an impulse reaction. On the other hand, following group hierarchy – at the cost of showing increasing cruelty to that which is outside the group – is our oxytocin making sure we belong. But I’d sure love to measure this guy’s oxytocin levels.

WWII is certainly a powerful thought-experiment, it being the collective emotional burden of the whole western civilization, in a way.

Yukon Val, I’m aware that most dogs are wolf-like but certain dog populations lack certain of the wolf behaviours of their ancestors that make wolves easily domesticated.

I’m sure the basenji is an example of this, because this African landrace is notoriously independent, with ‘cat-like’ interactions with humans and other dogs, and famously reluctant to obey commands, and remember that the reason dogs obey commands is because of the evolved ‘social brain’ they inherited from their own wolf ancestors.

As such the explanation given by basenji admirers that their dogs are primitive in their behaviours because they’re an ancient wolf-like breed cannot be true, Their behavioural traits must result from social brain impairments becoming typical for their landrace.

If i’m right that these breeds lost their evolved sociability, then they’re a canine paralel to autism and sociopathy in humans.

@Ondurdis…basenji admirers are exactly right. There was a dog breed DNA study a while back in Science?…can’t find the original article on-line quickly, but link to the run-down is here http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_dogbreeds.html . All tested breeds descended from wolves and some breeds showed a much closer genetic relationship with them: Siberian huskies, akitas, malamutes and basenjis included. So, several breeds known to be independent, aloof with strangers and stubborn about obeying specific commands.

Those traits are actually wolfish, though. Wolf packs consist of a dominant pair, several year’s worth of offspring and (maybe) one or two less or unrelated wolves if they manage not to piss off the dominant pair and there is enough food to go around. Dominant wolves don’t ask pack-mates to perform specific tasks, sit/stay/whatever. They initiate activities, get first dibs on food and get to breed. Packs hunt communally, defend the pups, den and territory against other predators…and other wolves. Wolf sociability does not extend to other animals and tolerance of wolves is not universal. Packs members are mostly related/grow up together. Strange wolves will be driven away, attacked/killed under most circumstances.

To me, basic dog domestication is re-direction of pair and pack-bonding to include (favour) humans…which is a huge thing all by itself… and a general quashing of true dominance. Humans may tolerate or even want some level of self-reliance in a dog and pack leaders make great second-in-commands for some kinds of multi-dog chores. Dogs that discipline human children or threaten humans over household food aren’t likely to survive/breed. So, they have been selected for more or less permanent adolescence. Dogs were likely domesticated first as protective companions, to help track/hunt animals and to give warning around settlements. Those skills are all closely related to wolf behaviour and wolfish dogs will do those things well.

Dogs that wiggle with submissive joy on meeting strange children, can focus on the hunt in the presence of dozens of strange dogs/people, watch humans for dozens of subtle command gestures or be trusted to guard herds of tasty prey animals without supervision have had big chunks of their original wolf behaviour seriously overwritten selected against or cherry-picked and bred to extremes. Wolves are very unlikely to do any of those things.

And I would say that some of those extreme breeds show social problems arising from having had their bonding behaviour selected against in favour other qualities. it goes way beyond general aloofness/unwillingness to follow orders. Border collies were bred to organize and move large groups of sheep, sometimes without human help/direction. The breed is characterized by an obsessive drive to work, and little interest in social interaction with other dogs or humans. They use stalking behaviour and hard stares to control sheep. If not carefully socialized, they can provoke terrible fights when they try to stare down other dogs regardless of status.

Seek out “A Kodiak Bear Mauling” by R.Keith Rogan.

I really like the guy, and sometimes chat with him. Wish I had a father like him.. mine is a passive-aggressive electronics geek. Not that I have anything against electronics, just the passive-aggressive bit.