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by retrac 1576 days ago
I wish I had your optimism. My take is even a true utopia of boundless affluence and perfect childrearing will still produce the odd psychopath and plenty of people prone to crimes of passion.
2 comments

The oil sheikhdoms in the Gulf are pretty rich.

From what I have heard, there is still quite a lot of domestic violence going on there, not to mention raping of female servants. And it has zilch to do with material insecurity.

Genghis Khan didn't build towers out of severed heads because he lacked gold and silver. Some people are just, sorry for saying that, sick fucks.

Prevalence is actually fairly high.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6610...

"The prevalence of psychopathy in the general adult population can be estimated at 4.5%." Remember: it's much more frequent in males, where that number can be 2-3x of that, can be close to 1 in 10 in males.

"prevalence of psychopathy among university students is significantly higher than among people from the general community". I'd guess increased affluence and better childrearing will result in more university students as well.

I'd go as far as to say that "boundless affluence" and "perfect childrearing" may in fact produce even more psychopaths, not less, as it is not quite a pathology many assume. Many traits are actually more adaptive vs general population.

It's probably important to point that there is further nuance. in primary(as in born that way) psychopathy the hallmark is total absence of anxiety and remorse. In secondary (upbringing, trauma, etc) psychopathy, anxiety can often be fairly high.

You might reduce some secondary cases of psychopathy with your proposed measures, but boundless affluence will also result in higher SSRI usage to prevent unwanted anxiety or stress (the rich tend to use antidepressants more, don't have the reference handy now, but its fairly obvious the rich have fewer problems with access to mental health services), and SSRIs tend to increase some psychopathic traits (charm+boldness), which perhaps can push some borderline cases into the proper psychopathic territory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202964