When I was in law school, we learned to think like a lawyer, right? Think rationally and like a lawyer, and these particular skills, thought, thought patterns that we would apply to different cases. And I learned, you know I learned just like everybody else to think like a lawyer before I did it. You know sort of like brain washing. But then, I would keep thinking like a lawyer, even when the situation was something very controversial. Like abortion, or the death penalty, or whatever it happened to be. And other people would have these knee jerk sort of emotional reactions, and I, that's when I actually first recognized how different I was from everybody else. Was that these people were having reactions, and at first I thought, is this just politicking, is this just people are saying you know, "You're killing babies," and they don't really think that, they're just trying too gain points in this battle of the debate.
But then I started realizing, no these people actually believe these things. Not only do they believe these things, they believe them more strongly than they believe the conclusions that they came to through their lawyer skills. You, you couldn't persuade somebody to change their opinion about abortion. You could persuade somebody to change their opinion about contract law, or something else. So I thought, this is very interesting that there's this sort of emotional reaction.
So ever since then, when I see things like this, scientists or psychologists saying, sort of these very unsupported blanket statements, then I think there must be something emotional going on here, that I'm not aware of.
Rob Kall: You know, that interview, that statement of his really got me thinking. That there needs to be a lot more research done on sociopaths and psychopaths. I really, it led me to conclude that there should be a lot more funding for it.
M.E. Thomas: Oh definitely. I, I whole heartedly agree.
Rob Kall: And, and some of my research I dug up that among the prison population, the level of, what do you call it when some some, recidivism , the recidivism level, when somebody goes back to jail, or commits crimes again for psychopaths is something, after three years, is eighty percent compared to thirty percent for non psychopaths. And this, this study continued to say that the estimated cost per year, not including effects on families or hospitalization, really didn't get into much detail on it, was close to a half a trillion dollars a year. The cost of psychopaths to society. That's huge.
M.E. Thomas: Right, yeah. I agree completely that the cost of psychopaths gone wrong, for sure, has to be extremely high. And it's a huge, it's a problem because of the huge social cost and the way society is dealing with it now, I don't think is a great way to deal with it. Not just for psychopaths, but for society. Why keep spending the money doing that? And some people say, "Well let's just get rid of them," that's the solution, well let's just kill them. Which I think is, *chuckles* I think is a little bit crazy, but if that's how, what people want to do, that's okay.
But you, you're statement about recidivism , though, a lot of, because there are, sort of competing definitions about what a sociopath is, and even some sort of question about, how do you go about diagnosing a sociopath, right? Do you define them just by their behavior? Do you define them by their personality characteristics?
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