Psychopathy is an Adaptation

Negative dependency selection is what gives this argument validity. Psychopathy probably really is a mix of both

I've just discovered your channel and now you have a new subscriber. I'm a guy who spends a huge amount of time reading studies on PubMed about the brain (especially on subjects such as prenatal hormones, atypical brains and causes of mental disorders), so this was right up my street. We need more informative content like this on YouTube!

Fascinating subject. To me it’s an adaptation as the psychopath knows to fake the requisite behavior of a social animal while keeping his motives secret. And it also would be more likely in big population centers where one could avoid community scorn with new victims and an ability to remain anonymous

Its no wonder some cultures are still suspicious of people that are left-handed, and some even seeing this trait as bad luck or associated with negative things. Hence why schools in past forced children who were left handed to learn to use their right hand.

Great video! Some of the things that are adapted that are so unexpected. I hope you keep releasing videos on “surprising adaptations”

What we might describe as psychopathy might just be the human evolutionary lineage of politicians...? Like seriously, where in ancient history would there be an advantage for pure narcissism? Politics, it would seem! The more things change... :)

this was perfect homie the more chilled back music had me zoned in to where by the time the video was over I was surprised haha

Overall (for society) psychopathy is a bad thing that causes us harm. And a critical factor for being able to properly protect ourselves from any threat is to UNDERSTAND it. To understand how it works, and why. You can't fix something if you are making false assumptions about how and why it exists. Which is why your video is so important. We (as a society) should be putting way more effort into identifying why and how harmful and dangerous social behavior exists. What causes it, from both a nature and nurture perspective. Then we could put preventative measures in place. But for some reason, there is a segment of the population that seems to be morally opposed to the concept of "using my tax dollars" or "my resources" for preventative measures.

idk how this video managed to sneak in my recommended but your channel seems to cover a lot of interesting topics that have been ruminating in my head for a long time, in a fair amount of depth no less I'm definitely looking forward to what else you're cooking up back there

Hey, you just earned yourself a new subscriber. The content you provide is just mind blowing. Keep it up dude and mark my words, " someday not very long from yiu your channel videos will have hundreds of thousands of views and subscribers.

I’ve went through and watched all your videos you’ve currently uploaded, almost like a podcast, while I work. Great stuff! Hopefully what you are doing is a niche people are looking for… I know I’ll be a longtime fan of you if you keep up this kinda content, and personally would be further intrigued if you were willing to touch on philosophical ideas too as you continue, or maybe some more personal perspective stuff, a bit similar to your video on how understanding evolution helped cure your depression!

Great video 👍 well done

For further conversations about how psychopathy can be adaptive I can't recommend Tristan Vivian Adams The Psychopath Factory enough

The thing bugging me during this whole video is the assumption that illness and adaptation are exclusive. Why not BOTH? I do get the feeling that there is some semantic confusion here. Maybe it's that "neuropathy" and "adaptation" are exclusive, and we really mean to say "neuropathy" instead of "mental illness". The funny thing to me is that notions like "disorder" and "illness", in the context of psychology, seem to have a component that's similar to moral judgement, or value judgement. It's only a disorder if it's BAD, with BAD meaning something like "unable to function in society or perform daily life activities". Like, what does it MEAN to function in society, and why must one do certain activities? For example: it makes sense for something to be considered quite alarming if it prevents someone from eating, but if it prevents them from being able to seek employment or fill out tax forms, then that might be a disorder, but it also might just be that society has some very ableist assumptions that discriminate against neurodivergent individuals (many of whom are extremely productive, just not the way some neurotypical individuals want them to be). Sorry, tangent, but it has a point: there's a lot of "relativism" snuck into the idea of disorders and mental illnesses. Then we look at the concept of "adaptation". It's from biology. And it's actually pretty objective: a trait is adaptive if it allows the organism to survive until it can have sex AND (really important) it does the sex thing A LOT and has a lot of kids, or at least, some very survivable kids that also do the sex thing a lot. There is no moral judgement in this process, or even societal relevance: a lineage well adapted to "survive and make kids" might also be full of individuals that suffered immensely throughout their lives, or brought immense suffering upon others. Another individual might live a blissful life, free of the burden of child rearing, and thus possess traits that are quite the opposite of adaption, despite how they might have a nice, enjoyable, fulfilling, and content life. Adaptation is strictly about "survive and have kids". Quality of life, for the individual/organism, is completely irrelevant. And perhaps even more important in this context: ANY competency besides "survive and have kids" is extraneous and unrelated to (evolutionary) adaptation. So a lineage with a strong "adaptation" can also suffer greatly and cause suffering for others, because adaptation resolutely permits such things. Such suffering would almost certainly cause these individuals to be "unable to function in society" or even be "unable to perform daily life activities" (well, they'd still have to be able to eat, but they can certainly get away with failing at employment/career if they find other ways to subsist). So they would have a "disorder" or "mental illness". BUT. (Or should I say, AND.) These individuals were excellent at the "survive and make kids" thing. So they had an "adaptation", too. It's both. That's why it seems really odd to me that this would be an "either-or" thing to me. These things seem like completely different dimensions. They are "linearly independent", if not entirely orthogonal. And it might be easy to miss, because in most cases, good health and social functioning tend to also be Adaptive (feature an adaptation). The two things (functionality and adaptation) usually go well together. But, I would say, psychopathy would be exactly the kind of thing that is an exception to that trend. It'd be an exception by it's very nature: it fundamentally involves finding ways to lose (mental) health and social functioning while gaining survivability and reproductive success in return. Normally that doesn't work, but the psychopath genes found a way to MAKE it work. Now that I've probably spent way too much of your time explaining my understanding of these things, I'll take a step back: I wonder if some of the players/scientists in this are using different definitions than what I've been taught. Or maybe I've just missed something in the video. And perhaps, more importantly, I wonder if the researchers are trying to make some distinction that isn't about morality or reproduction, but is instead about different kinds of _etiology_. And THAT would be nice to know. So I think this video would be greatly improved if it began by defining what is meant by "adaptation" and "disorder" and explaining why these definitions are exclusive to each other. Or better yet, really pin down WHY there is a debate in the first place. Like, why is there a group of scientists looking at left-handedness and neurological differences (and not just in terms of dysfunction vs adaptation, or "is this a comorbidity?") and how does this research connect to the thing that (I think) everyone else is going to care about: "What do we do about these people that compulsively harm other people? Can we use things like neuroscience and evolutionary biology to come up with a better, more humane, solution than 'suffer and fight back' until someone's injured, dead, or in prison?" (I might sound negative in this critique, but it's really more like I'd like to see a better version of this. This is an important topic, one that profoundly affects how I feel about the world around me, and I appreciate it when someone gathers modern scientific knowledge and clarifies the trends in the literature. Thank you.)

finally someone shares my hypothesis

The last of us music is a lovely background to the video. I just finished your video on autism and was wondering if you could maybe confirm something I have noticed. I am trans and I find that a surprising amount of people in the community are on the spectrum, i wonder if these are linked or if it is a product of looking inwards to find the cause of our distress. This kind of soul searching and understanding of ourselves is something I think is more common in small communities like this. But maybe genetics explain this link?

I think it's both an adaptation and an illness. It's something genetic that has to be activated through trauma or something similar that allows those individuals to thrive in their way.

I definetly think that psychopathy can be an advantage BUT i think if it was adaptation on greater scale i think we would loose so much that is natural to aa humans and on greater scare more advantageous

Also, people need to be able to distinguish psychopathy from mere limited emotional range aswell...i notice time and time again that folks get these two mixed up since the saying is, "psychopaths" have no emotions..this is quite the a myth tbh because when we look at past manifesto's, it was clear that the criminal had deep feelings of resentment from society which resulted in long lasting intervals of pint up anger, depression and rage, or most of these mass M******s (careful using that word😂)felt that they were essentially let down by society while someone with limited emotional range (still falsely believed to be the pet peeve of psychopathy) typically will not care about anything revolving society, politics, religion, and etc etc...i truly believe that most people diagnosed or believed to have the disorder don't, and suffer from something else..i knew a female who claimed to have apd, diagnosed early on, but at the same time, was an all out sucker for love and relationships while i never cared or had the drive, energy, or time to deal with anything longer than 1 month duration...all in all, psychotic, narcissistic, and delusional folks are the most dangerous regardless of what emotions they experience or don't experience, either way tho, great video,A+ put together...

4:14 I heard "Wakefield" and panicked for a second before realizing it was a different one. Luckily not the "vaccines cause autism" guy.