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Brilliant hypothesis. Worth exploring.
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Observation: psychopaths are often charming/reassuring and can put you at ease in a trusting, vulnerable state. Hypothesis A: Psychopaths learn to fake norms of trustworthiness and reassurance Hypothesis B: Societies evolve to normalize psychopath behaviors as norms for all
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Another way of framing B is that many of the manipulative elements of sociopathy are sublimations of violence, analogous to broad scale transitions from physical force as a means of control to, e.g., propaganda or economic control.
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At least one mechanism for this: witting application of force invites resistance, unwitting manipulation does no, leading to selection for ever subtler mechanisms of manipulation. In the limit, manipulators cannot see themselves as such, but have been selected into their roles.
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“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” — Whitehead. Manipulation operations definite.y count as important ones.
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