Poll: Are those without conscience evil or simply the next step in human evolution?

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cuddly_tomato

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george144 said:
cuddly_tomato said:
Seriously, if you can't be hurt by love or sadness you have my pity, because you also must be failed to be moved by them. That sounds like a hollow existence to me.
Well I don't know what there like so I can't miss them, I've read about them and had people try to describe it to me and it doesn't sound great to be honest as from what I've seen love makes people sad often and feeling sad is like feeling sick. Maybe I am missing out on some great experience but as it stands I don't know what I'm missing, as I'm sure people blind since birth don't miss sight as they've never had it.
Love is like your heart breathing. You can feel something, deep inside, a kind of warmth that spreads all over you and pushes all of lifes pain out. Someone elses happiness and well-being means more to me than my own. But the thing is, because of that one, I don't ever feel helpless, or despairing, or truly depressed. I feel there is someone out there who I can live for and do my best for. Someone who will always take my side, who will always be ready to pick me up when I fall in life (and we all fall from time to time).

Seriously, if you can't love or properly be moved and powered from the love of another then you have a serious disadvantage compared to someone who can.
 

Lord_Of_Plum

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Although others have already made this point this quote from 1984 came to my mind upon seeing this thread, and I couldn't resist throwing this out. I don't think there are any spoilers.
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process -- by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute -- the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
This text's purpose is to say that empathy and love is the foundation of progress and humanity in general. Or, at least, that's how I interpret it.
 

PumpItUp

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People without a conscience often have lost either their capacity for compassion (psychopaths), completely disregard social restraints (murderers), or are emotionally damaged (Blue Screen of Death-style shutdown of emotional ability).
So how you see the evolution of humanity coming from emotionless psychopathic murderers is beyond me.

Unless, you know, your garage band Emotionless Psychopathic Murderers broke up and formed punk rock band Evolution of Humanity. Then, maybe I could.

Jokes aside, humanity cannot progress unless human emotion is kept intact. Sci-fi movies have taught me such.

Also, you know the CEOs of big-name company like Enron and Tyco? They don't have conscience either.
 

Sion_Barzahd

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lack of empathy? Could be you just hit puberty late.
Believe it or not people with higher empathy tend to have hit puberty sooner since when you hit puberty it stops the shrinking of your corpus collosum.

Your corpus collosum is the part of the brain that sends messages across the two hemispheres.
Since things like recognising and feeling emotion use both sides of the brain apparently a thicker corpus collosum means the messages can be transfered through the brain faster.

Or at least thats what my psychology lecturer told us.

OP: Not feeling emotion isn't the next step in human evolution, how could it possibly help our survival?
The manipulating of others would only work if they themselves were empathetic. Thus making the apathetic ones not the next step but merely a leech.
 

Anton P. Nym

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There are no "next" or "higher" stages of evolution; evolution doesn't have a direction, it's a random process dependent upon contemporary conditions. The definition of "fittest" changes from time to time, and species that were doing incredibly well (like most dinosaur species) under old conditions can get wiped out by random changes.

That being said, I'll agree with the opinion that sociopathy isn't an advantage because humans are a social species (like wolves and most great apes) and inability to fully experience social cues can be a strong disadvantage. As an aside, I somehow don't see sociopaths making terribly good parents... they might have more kids, but without inspiring maternal/paternal impulses in their parents to invoke nurturing I doubt they'd survive better than kids of parents who can experience empathy.

-- Steve
 

AntiAntagonist

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fix-the-spade said:
Those totally without conscience are a step backwards in evolution. As such they frequently destroy themselves or leave others with no choice but to destroy them for the greater good.
This.

We are one of the first steps in evolution that has had the abilities and means to have a conscience.
 

Doug

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george144 said:
An argument I was having with my GF today which I though might interest the fine people here is

the idea that humans without any from of conscience could be the next stage in human evolution rather then "evil" humans, as I myself feel no guilt for anything I do and I'm not opposed at all to hurting or manipulating people to get what I want, but this talent has served me well and has helped me many times throughout my life, the way I see by being emotionless and lacking empathy I am not evil or bad but rather an improved human, I'm free to do what I want whenever I want and I can't be hurt by love or sadness. I think its likely I will have a happier existence by only focusing on my own needs and whims.

I would be delighted to hear your views and opinions on this, are people who are without morality and empathy "evil" or simply a new state of human evolution.
I have to wonder how you got a girlfriend given you openly admit you have no care for another human being.

Anyway, no, its not the next step in human evolution. If anything, its a throwback. Humans are social animals. This is the skill that allowed a bunch of defenceless monkeys to end up in the place where we are now. People without the empathy would not form a social network - one would have to exist for them to exploit. In essence, they are social parasites, tricking people to do what they want through that system. Whilst this is a strategy that can work, as the groups evolve, more and more complex systems for detecting and removing these people will develop. Long term, I don't think its a winner. Short term, it does.
Anton P. Nym said:
There are no "next" or "higher" stages of evolution; evolution doesn't have a direction, it's a random process dependent upon contemporary conditions. The definition of "fittest" changes from time to time, and species that were doing incredibly well (like most dinosaur species) under old conditions can get wiped out by random changes.

That being said, I'll agree with the opinion that sociopathy isn't an advantage because humans are a social species (like wolves and most great apes) and inability to fully experience social cues can be a strong disadvantage. As an aside, I somehow don't see sociopaths making terribly good parents... they might have more kids, but without inspiring maternal/paternal impulses in their parents to invoke nurturing I doubt they'd survive better than kids of parents who can experience empathy.

-- Steve
Agreed.
 

Ace Jackson

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The kind of people who have no feelings whatsoever are usually the kind of people who make lampshades out of human skin, or a coffee mug out of a skull. They only think of people as tools, or things. Without feelings, there are no real emotional consequences, so without consequences, you can do pretty much whatever you want and no matter what happens to you, you'll always be the same, which is pretty depressing. There would be no room for improvement upon yourself, which is pretty much the basis of humanity, to improve yourself. All attempts to mature as a human being would be in vain, but then, if you had no feelings, you wouldn't care anyway. So, if it is the next step in human evolution, I think I'll pass, because I'd rather be miserable than feel nothing, because happiness is worth the wait. Not to say that people without feelings are evil, just ill, in a way. There's a difference between having no feelings and not acknowledging them. Sociopathy is an actual physical sickness, but ignoring your feelings is pretty much a defense mechanism gone crazy. If you scrape your knee, you might wear your kneepads for a few days, but if you don't take them off, your knees will get numb, and even if you take them off, the damage will already be done, and there's no fixing it, which is a bit ironic. While protecting yourself from damage, you damage yourself. So, not evil, and not human evolution.
 

Lord George

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After loads of people calling me a sociopath I looked into the word (had heard it before but never explored the meaning)and I don't think I fit some of the criteria such as

-Need for Stimulation,as while I have a very low attention span I don't think I constantly need to be amused.

-Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature, I do what i want but I can easily restrain myself if needed.

Promiscuous Sexual Behavior- well I'm not a rapist or child molester as its never really appealed to me, and I can stick with one girl for a bit.

Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency- Never been arrested, and the worst I do is key cars and set spiders on fire, (which is really fun).

In fact the criteria for socipathy seems to be quite general and could be applied to anyone, for example Obama could be seen as a socipath by the logic of it. Sounds like an illness made up by sociologists to give them something to do in my mind.

Haxordude said:
OK Mr. emotionless would you kill your girlfriend for 10$?
hmmm well if I weight it up, £5 doesn't seem worth it compared to occasional sex and I bet I can drain more cash from her directly. I'd do it for £10,000 if I could get away with it though.

Sion_Barzahd said:
lack of empathy? Could be you just hit puberty late.
Believe it or not people with higher empathy tend to have hit puberty sooner since when you hit puberty it stops the shrinking of your corpus collosum.

Your corpus collosum is the part of the brain that sends messages across the two hemispheres.
Since things like recognising and feeling emotion use both sides of the brain apparently a thicker corpus collosum means the messages can be transfered through the brain faster.

Or at least thats what my psychology lecturer told us.

OP: Not feeling emotion isn't the next step in human evolution, how could it possibly help our survival?
The manipulating of others would only work if they themselves were empathetic. Thus making the apathetic ones not the next step but merely a leech.
That's an interesting theory though I have been my way in every memory I can remember, but its possible maybe one day I'll feel empathy that would be interesting and new.

Doug said:
I have to wonder how you got a girlfriend given you openly admit you have no care for another human being.

Anyway, no, its not the next step in human evolution. If anything, its a throwback. Humans are social animals. This is the skill that allowed a bunch of defenceless monkeys to end up in the place where we are now. People without the empathy would not form a social network - one would have to exist for them to exploit. In essence, they are social parasites, tricking people to do what they want through that system. Whilst this is a strategy that can work, as the groups evolve, more and more complex systems for detecting and removing these people will develop. Long term, I don't think its a winner. Short term, it does.

Agreed.
I get girlfriends and friends for that matter by not telling them about it in the first place, and maybe I am a parasite but I'm a content parasite at that, and in the short term of my lifespan I hope to remain this way, it may not work for humanity as a whole but it sure does work for me.
 

J-Man

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Most people will call you indecent and not understanding "good". How can one even quantify or define "good"? It can be a great advantage to lack empathy.
 

RetiarySword

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Its not so much a step up the evolutionary chain. Its more of a lack of development bought on by emotional holes in ones lives.
 

Neosage

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MaxTheReaper said:
Neosage said:
MaxTheReaper said:
Neosage said:
No the reason why we are here is because of emotions and stuff.
The eloquence of your argument has caused me to see the error of my opinions!
So you think you are a comedian eh?

If we didn't give a damn about anyone else, we would not have music or science or any great things. If no-one gave a damn about anyone, why would you even start a family? Why would you care for people? Humans would just die out if we didn't care about people.
I'm amusing occasionally?
That's not entirely true, though. You're going to tell me everyone in the history of the world who has contributed to music or science has done it for other people?
Some people just want to tell a story, or learn more about the world around them. Not everyone is in it to bring happiness or cure cancer.
I won't argue on that last part, though.
And caring about people doesn't always mean you're going to start a family. I have a select few people I care about, but I despise children, and I don't ever want to get married.
I'd live with someone, sure, but getting married is a waste of my time.
What I meant was that humans wouldn't have even got to the state of making music or contributing to science without teamwork and other people and co-operation!
 

Hawgh

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A lack in your upbringing has ensured that you've not developed the ability to feel empathy.
That, or your brain's damaged.

Back to history, how's it a new thing? as far as I know, people who've been severely lacking in the empathy-area have been around for quite some time.
Also, why is the absence of some few traits going to help you out much? Apart from swindling and extorting people, it's not really that useful.
And that usefulness would go fast down the drain if everyone did it, ya see, a society cannot exist if it cannot trust it's members to behave according to plan.

Lastly, I do not like the poll options, as they all seem crafted to make emotional lightweights seem unique.
 

Doug

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george144 said:
Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency- Never been arrested, and the worst I do is key cars and set spiders on fire, (which is really fun).
Yes, that counts. Especially seeing as you had to add "which is really fun".

george144 said:
Doug said:
I have to wonder how you got a girlfriend given you openly admit you have no care for another human being.

Anyway, no, its not the next step in human evolution. If anything, its a throwback. Humans are social animals. This is the skill that allowed a bunch of defenceless monkeys to end up in the place where we are now. People without the empathy would not form a social network - one would have to exist for them to exploit. In essence, they are social parasites, tricking people to do what they want through that system. Whilst this is a strategy that can work, as the groups evolve, more and more complex systems for detecting and removing these people will develop. Long term, I don't think its a winner. Short term, it does.

Agreed.
I get girlfriends and friends for that matter by not telling them about it in the first place, and maybe I am a parasite but I'm a content parasite at that, and in the short term of my lifespan I hope to remain this way, it may not work for humanity as a whole but it sure does work for me.
Yeah, ok. Either you're an attention seeker, or an awful human. I suspect your from /b/? As for it working for you: Yes, but once people realise you see other people as tools to be used, I bet most (not all) of them end up just avoiding you. And I do feel sorry for your girlfriend who, from the way you describe it, you leech off.
 

Booze Zombie

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george144 said:
Haxordude said:
OK Mr. emotionless would you kill your girlfriend for 10$?
hmmm well if I weight it up, £5 doesn't seem worth it compared to occasional sex and I bet I can drain more cash from her directly. I'd do it for £10,000 if I could get away with it though.
This should help you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath#Description

Apparently, you're a psychopath. I'm not sure if this shall worry you, what with that abillity possibly being non-existent for you.

As long as you never kill another person though, feel free to be a psychopath.
 

Neosage

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MaxTheReaper said:
Neosage said:
MaxTheReaper said:
Neosage said:
MaxTheReaper said:
Neosage said:
No the reason why we are here is because of emotions and stuff.
The eloquence of your argument has caused me to see the error of my opinions!
So you think you are a comedian eh?

If we didn't give a damn about anyone else, we would not have music or science or any great things. If no-one gave a damn about anyone, why would you even start a family? Why would you care for people? Humans would just die out if we didn't care about people.
I'm amusing occasionally?
That's not entirely true, though. You're going to tell me everyone in the history of the world who has contributed to music or science has done it for other people?
Some people just want to tell a story, or learn more about the world around them. Not everyone is in it to bring happiness or cure cancer.
I won't argue on that last part, though.
And caring about people doesn't always mean you're going to start a family. I have a select few people I care about, but I despise children, and I don't ever want to get married.
I'd live with someone, sure, but getting married is a waste of my time.
What I meant was that humans wouldn't have even got to the state of making music or contributing to science without teamwork and other people and co-operation!
You don't have to care about someone to work with them.
Have you ever worked a job? Or even a school project? Chances are, you've had to work with someone you absolutely hate.
I know I've had to work with people I thought were worthless, even though I didn't really hate them.
If we didn't help people, because we didn't care, we would have died out before we even got to that point.