[cm2187]

Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences, this is why those rules are codified in law and don't just rely on your own appreciation.

Most assassins are psychopaths in one way or another. It might be interesting to study them but it doesn't mean they get a free pass for their actions.

[bilekas]

I don't think it's a free pass, but it's not intentional by any means and I believe there is certainly some room for leniency in such edge cases.

[oxygen-crisis]

It was by all means intentional. He packed as much hurt as he could into his short messages and expertly targeted the people those words would hurt the most.

[eurasiantiger]

Understandable, given his condition.

Autism can be an experience of having all your senses, empathy and emotions turned up to 11 while everyone around you is behaving in seemingly irrational ways you have no way of understanding except through the vicious pain other people steadily inflict on you.

Imagine growing up like that. Not just occasionally but every day for decades. It dulls something.

[Scandiravian]

Psychopaths are always dangerous and has a desire to do harm. They have no empathy at all. Because of this the currently only way to protect others from their behaviour is to incarcerate them

People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

Your lack of empathy and understanding for people on the autism spectrum is honestly scary

[winReInstall]

There certainly is a fascination with strong, reproduceable emotional reactions in some autistic cases though. They also seem to be fascinated by certain emotional reactions, that make no sense to them.

They do understand that they hurt people, but the fascination of finding something adhering to rules, is stronger.

@Scandinavian: Relatives of mine. One in particular, enjoys trolling me, and i sincerley hope its limited to me. Others might not understand the sense of humor, and it particular, the endless "reproduce" joke and reaction sequence.

[Scandiravian]

Who are they? What combination of symptoms from autism are you referring?

[laserlight]

> People with autism are not psychopath and it's honestly insane to bring psychopathy into a conversation about autism as some kind of comparison

I don't think it's insane to bring the comparison into this conversation, because the behavior of this autistic person is clearly a psychopathic one, regardless of the intention.

[bsjanmelttq]

Autistic people feel emotions but don't understand them [0].

Psychopaths understand emotions but don't feel them.

They might seem similar but really are polar opposites.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexithymia

[Scandiravian]

The motive was a desire to be accepted and have a connection to other people

Excluding intention as a part of judgement is also excluding a desire to rehabilitate the offender, which makes the goal of punishment revenge

What ends up happening is that people with autism are sent to prison, where they will be the victim of psychical and mental violence almost every day, in an environment that's torturous to them, with no ability to understand why they are there or how to change their situation. All this simply because of a desire to hurt someone who's perceived as "bad".

I'm not sure we agree who's displaying psychopathic traits in that situation

[badcppdev]

Seems like someone could be on the autism scale and a psychopath.

I'm aware that the concept of a disabled person also being 'bad' in some way is not an intersection box that modern world has the tools to discuss at the moment. Outside the Overton window so to speak.

[Scandiravian]

They could, but what does that have to do with the situation? Psychopathy affects approximately 1.2% or the population, so given that autism affects 2.2% of the population, the combination would have a prevalence in 0.027% of people

I think that's a number so low, that it's not worth discussing, given that a psychopath with full mental capacity would undoubtedly be more dangerous

[prewett]

I'm not sure that you can just multiply those probabilities (are they both uncorrelated? Can autistic people even become psychopathic?), but, 0.027% * 300 million people in the US = 81,000 hypothetical autistic psychopaths, which is over 1600 per state. That's plenty to worry about from an administrative (e.g. police) standpoint.

[Scandiravian]

Why would you be more worried about autism + psychopathy over a psychopath who doesn't suffer from a developmental disorder?

[deafpolygon]

> People with autism are not psychopath

And psychopaths are not autistic.

Yet it does not make the two things mutually exclusive. They can be both present and exhibit in individuals at the same time.

[Scandiravian]

Sure. The occurrence of this combination would be so rare that I don't think it's worth discussing, unless your argument is that an autistic psychopath would somehow be more dangerous than a psychopath without autism?

[coldtea]

>Being a psychopath doesn't shield you from legal consequences

You'd be surprised:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense