How to identify psychopaths
Now, the question is: “What is the percentage of kids who inherit these high-risk genes, the copy variants, like I did?” You may come up with a few percent of the population. On the other side, people who inherit the other type, the other alleles that I mentioned, which are very peaceful, are maybe 5%. So there are 5% hardcore in either side. If we expand, if we widen the gutters, it could be 10% on either side.
The next question is: “How much does the environment affect the kids at the protected end?” The answer is: “Nothing at all”. These are the kids that, when they are growing up, anything can happen to them and they just bounce right up. They are happy as larks, nothing gets to them, nothing sticks with them. Whereas the other type that is vulnerable, they are the dangerous ones. There may be 10% of the population where the nature vs. nurture answer is: if you have the right combination of genes and brain connection patterns, then the environment is everything. And these are the kids and the families that are most at-risk.
Now, the public policy thing is: “How do you identify those kids, especially if you are a libertarian?” I am a libertarian, so the idea of people coming in and asking your family to see all the medical records bothers me. But it is not just that. Some of the conflict in this place is because of the difficulty to identify these kids early on. Just like the first guy I worked with back in the 70s, a pediatric neurologist, told me back then: “I am never going to tell anybody outside this room, but I can tell a psychopath kid at 2 or 3 years old. I know and I would follow them their whole lives”. He was right, but he would never admit it because, like a lot in science, you don’t want to really tell the truth. It is just like: “let it go”. It could be anything, climate change, anything. You just go along with the crowd because you do not want to end your career, you do not want to answer questions from media or angry parents your whole life, brandishing sticks and stones. He never said anything.
We do know how to identify these kids. But again, it is up to the society to say: “do we really want to do that?” Because in this sort of epigenetic landscape, you look on the left, everything’s nice and sweet. You look on the right, the same genes can be changed, which sends you down a different valley. During development, there are a couple of breakpoints along the way that depend especially on the early environment. The same genetic package can send you to a very successful career as a leader or to jail. I will get very quickly to why people who are sent down the path to the left can be wired as psychopaths and end up being great leaders. There is something different about them. If we go back to the question about nature vs. nurture, the answer is: it depends on their genetics and the environment will have a differential effect, either great effect or very little effect.
My own experiment
To just finish this part, I then ask the question: “What do you do with this knowledge in your personal life?” I had this information, so I thought what I would do and I tried to use my own narcissism against me. I became my own experiment. I said: “I know that you can’t turn around a psychopath or borderline psychopath; you can’t cure them, there is no record of one”. But I also said: “I can do it because I am different”. This is how I talk to myself, I really do it, honestly. I can do it because I am just more powerful than the rest of them. It sounds like a crack pop, but that is the way I did it.
So I tried to treat my wife like a regular guy would. I would do it every day, in every interaction, whether it was about washing dishes, pouring the wine, or going to a funeral. I usually pop away from a lot of things that regular guys would go to and I’ll find a way to get out of it, to go party somewhere. I was monitoring every behavior of mine, about 300 times a day, when I was doing very simple things like pouring the wine first, cleaning up, being a good roommate, but also larger things. What I was doing was the most selfish thing at each choice point and I never thought of it that way. I said that is not how a regular guy would do it. It turned out that it is really tough to be a good guy, a good nice gal. After about a month, I was so exhausted that I went from sleeping four hours a night to six-seven hours a night. It wasn’t as I was exercising, which I hate. I like fishing, but that’s about it. The whole thing was so exhausting.
After a couple of months, my wife goes: “what is going on with you?” I said: “what do you mean?” And she goes: “you are nice all of a sudden”. And I told her: “don’t take it seriously, I am just doing an experiment”. I had to because she can read me, I mean it, I can’t lie to her anymore about anything. And she said to me something so curious, she goes like this: “I do not care if it is sincere or not, you are just treating me better”. And I said: “do you just want me to treat you better, even if I do not have it in my heart?” Now, I am a pooh, because this was a big revelation to me that people just like to be treated better. That was the first big lesson. I am 66 years old and I am learning this. I am like a 14 year old learning these things, like the environment hasn’t affected me anyway. And I did that.
Then I did it with my other friends and they all said the same thing: “what is going on here?” They kind of gave me similar responses, so I was learning about real human behavior. I am still trying to do it, but I am sleeping my life away because I just fall in bed. God, that is so exhausting. I started to watch my friends, especially my male friends of my age, with their kids and grandkids. I watched them when they didn’t know anybody was watching, their real behavior, not trying to put on for somebody like what a great father they were. I would just sneak peeks all the time. I realized that they were doing things that were so unselfish. I am watching them and say to myself: “I would never do that, I would be out at the corner bar at this move or I would be doing this and that at that move”. I realized that a lot of the people I knew I didn’t really know because they were really sacrificing. I had to learn these very fundamental things that are not natural to me.
When I sat down with a psychiatrist friend of mine, I said: “what do I do that is psychopathic?”. They went through like this: “you remember this thing and this thing”. It was a litany of stuff they said it is psychopathic. They said: “you are not a full-blown psychopath, you are right at the edge”. But, in a way, I do not need it. You know what I mean. It is not like I grew up poor. I didn’t grow up needing anything. I was athletic, sort of good-looking at the time, and all this stuff. I had a lot of friends. I didn’t need any of that stuff. Whenever I would see a psychopath doing something like lying or killing or raping, I said: “these guys are chumps, this is not the real way to manipulate people”. That is how I used to think. I said: “there is such an easier way to manipulate that person”. It is all about manipulation and not really caring about that person, everybody is a game on everybody. And that I do have.