[alnayyir]

>Sociopath is a tough word because it means a lot of things and it really isn't used in clinical diagnosis

When understood as a synonym for an acute case of antisocial personality disorder (this is how virtually all people educated in clinical psychology understand it), it's actually one of the primary commonalities of criminals and is an incredibly meaningful way to understand some people.

> Based on the historical patterns though a sociopath was typically someone lacking any type of empathy, so they would do things hurt other people just to amuse themselves by watching the results.

That's a pretty gross over-simplification, there are many comorbid behaviors with sociopathy and they form a whole constellation with which a clinician can diagnose/identify it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder

Here's a good start, you may want to educate yourself before you pontificate on the subject. Sociopathy is a very misunderstood disorder by most of the public, although there was a recent book that covered it semi-okay.