Re: Sociopaths (was Re: Reforming Education)

From: Clint O'Dell (clintodell@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Oct 19 1999 - 21:17:55 MDT


>A happily married man, for example, might take up with prostitutes >and
>start bouncing checks.

I'm starting to hate playing Devil's Advocate but I think it's necessary.

Are you certain this person was, in fact, happily married? Did the accident
change him emotionally? That would account for the prostitutes and the
bounced checks. Not cairing to balance the check book (or remembering to),
he decides prostitutes are more fun that his wife, etc.

Here's what I think. Since the frontal lobe is responsible for reasoning,
and my hypothesis is it does this through association of connected memories,
then when this part of the brain is damaged new associations are made by
crossing wires so to speak. This part of the brain still works the same
way, but a new philosophy has been programmed in his mind. This could
effect him emotionally (by associating emotional memories with other random
memories) and cause him to act irrationally (his "social norm" programming
has been rewritten by crossed wires). Cognitive therapy would be the easy
fix for this. It's long and tedious but all you need to do is create new
associations to override the new programming. I think I wrote about this
ineptly a few weeks back.

Any way, that's what I'm writing about in my book "Consciousness as a Widely
Distributed 'I'". Of course I don't hold any degrees so probably noone will
take me seriously but I'm writing it anyway.

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