To begin with I'd just like to say WTF is with the social significance or popularity of psychopathy or sociopathy? Seriously? I see psychopathy and sociopathy as wrongly romanticised and glorified, similar to vampires being revamped (pun intended) from what they were originally with Stoker's story and earlier legends to sparkling X-Men, its not a recent thing Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lector and a lot of other roles like it are not recent but I think there's definitely something going on.
No one really takes hystrionic, obsessive-compulsive (though there was that one movie), paranoic or other neurotic types or schizoid or psychotic types as examples to emulate or hope to conform to and they certainly dont look to autism, aspergers or learning disabled or learning difficulties types as a social norm.
Knowing what I do about social character from Erich Fromm I think it's pretty concerning, there's versions of the trolley question which do not involve sacrificing lives and I never hear them talked of, like questions of whether or not you could sacrifice social prospects to provide someone with life saving medicine that they can not afford, then further asking the question of whether or not what you can do has value or does nothing to effect the underlying structural inequalities which resulted in them not being able to afford life saving medicine in the first place. Those questions deal with empathy and sacrifice without involving loss of life, perhaps loss of life is more sacred and hence its use in the thought experiment but anyway. I even think that, properly understood, the trolly question is what ought to underpin A LOT of the questions which are fought over when it comes to minorities and social change, as opposed to strongly feelings about resisting oppression of one sort of another.
I'm not sure that the trolley question is a good test for anti-social behaviour, its pretty academic and remote, a lot of people do not often live their values these days, I'm happy to say that of myself too because I think there's a lot of structural, cultural and other reasons for that, the age of confusion and distraction are real things. As a result its easy to give answers which are remote from reality. There are a lot of other reasons too, age and stage of life, experience etc. etc. too many variables involved to conclude that its an indicator for being anti-social in choices.
That said I understand why that train of thought extists (pun again) because these scenarios can please people who lack empathy, its kind of like the jokes I've seen in pop culture, I think The Boys In The Hall did a great version of it, about someone starting out saying that there was nothing in life like clean sheets, then escalating up to saying there was nothing like "killing a man in self-defence" and the love of the idea of "justifiable homicide" or harsh natural consequences for unpopular types. It could be an opportunity to rationalise awful behaviour and valorise it. Taxi Driver was a movie about that too, there was nothing about that guy who made him a hero, he had some sort of a problem understanding others but his actions were taken up by the media while he was in hospital in their aftermath and they made him a hero.
I'm not sure that there are anti-social types looking for opportunities to channel those motives in socially acceptable ways, I think there is such a thing as authoritarian types and they do do that, but I think anti-social types, true types, the same as true psychopaths, are less likely to be able to exhibit enough control of themselves to get to that point. Its why I think that those criminals who do go undetected, who maybe do carve out a niche as cops, informers or whatever, are a mix of narcissism or something else.
No one really takes hystrionic, obsessive-compulsive (though there was that one movie), paranoic or other neurotic types or schizoid or psychotic types as examples to emulate or hope to conform to and they certainly dont look to autism, aspergers or learning disabled or learning difficulties types as a social norm.
Knowing what I do about social character from Erich Fromm I think it's pretty concerning, there's versions of the trolley question which do not involve sacrificing lives and I never hear them talked of, like questions of whether or not you could sacrifice social prospects to provide someone with life saving medicine that they can not afford, then further asking the question of whether or not what you can do has value or does nothing to effect the underlying structural inequalities which resulted in them not being able to afford life saving medicine in the first place. Those questions deal with empathy and sacrifice without involving loss of life, perhaps loss of life is more sacred and hence its use in the thought experiment but anyway. I even think that, properly understood, the trolly question is what ought to underpin A LOT of the questions which are fought over when it comes to minorities and social change, as opposed to strongly feelings about resisting oppression of one sort of another.
I'm not sure that the trolley question is a good test for anti-social behaviour, its pretty academic and remote, a lot of people do not often live their values these days, I'm happy to say that of myself too because I think there's a lot of structural, cultural and other reasons for that, the age of confusion and distraction are real things. As a result its easy to give answers which are remote from reality. There are a lot of other reasons too, age and stage of life, experience etc. etc. too many variables involved to conclude that its an indicator for being anti-social in choices.
That said I understand why that train of thought extists (pun again) because these scenarios can please people who lack empathy, its kind of like the jokes I've seen in pop culture, I think The Boys In The Hall did a great version of it, about someone starting out saying that there was nothing in life like clean sheets, then escalating up to saying there was nothing like "killing a man in self-defence" and the love of the idea of "justifiable homicide" or harsh natural consequences for unpopular types. It could be an opportunity to rationalise awful behaviour and valorise it. Taxi Driver was a movie about that too, there was nothing about that guy who made him a hero, he had some sort of a problem understanding others but his actions were taken up by the media while he was in hospital in their aftermath and they made him a hero.
I'm not sure that there are anti-social types looking for opportunities to channel those motives in socially acceptable ways, I think there is such a thing as authoritarian types and they do do that, but I think anti-social types, true types, the same as true psychopaths, are less likely to be able to exhibit enough control of themselves to get to that point. Its why I think that those criminals who do go undetected, who maybe do carve out a niche as cops, informers or whatever, are a mix of narcissism or something else.