35 Comments

These last two have been really something. So I'm thinking that if I ever had to flee the country (US) that I'm heading to Cartel country in Mexico. Not Canada

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I can understand that

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Canadian here! Good plan tbh. Canada is turning into a libbed out sh*thole under Trudeau and our cost of living here has never been higher.

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Not Canada!! So true!! but I live in Mexico for 20 years now!!

Government fought the payouts even when Motherall and other sex criminals ran the ladies programs.!. The abuse that keeps on giving. They fought as "good citizens" and right good managers of the public interest. And, their names will never be published, even for those like us, who might care.

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This Barker dude shouldn't even be entrusted with a potted plant or a Sim (I can totally picture him throwing infant Sims in a swimming pool and removing the ladder for good measure), and yet, here we are... What a messed up story. It's delightfully ironic to see you, an actual psychopath, showing more mercy and empathy towards human beings than this so-called "normal" doctor. If anything, it goes further to show how the "psychopath" label can be used as a convenient scapegoat to avoid dealing with the darkest aspects of human nature...

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I don’t think it takes huge amounts of empathy or mercy to see how completely unethical, irresponsible and from my perspective, purposefully abusive this experiment was. I think this is an example of what happens when humans wired for tribalism get into a field like psychiatry- psychiatrists encounter “others” or those different from themselves everyday and their job is to provide relief to these individuals. When a person overrides their job responsibilities and ethical promises for their primal tribalistic tendencies, their empathy switches to abuse when encountered with individuals who are “different” in some way. Your so right Alicia, this is a very dark aspect of most of humanity. I believe this is a case of a doctor, although with qualifications, was subconsciously driven by fear (leading to hatred) and status power and recognition at the expense of people he deemed “less than” bc their psychological make up differed from his own.

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Agreed

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The dude "shouldn't be able to run a bath"... Because he would DROWN a BABY in it!

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Thank you for that view of the truth. . . Doesn't get much shitier than that.

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No sarcasm intended.

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Interesting documentary. It’s shocking that Elliot Barker was given free reign to try whatever he wanted without answering to anyone. There are other cases where similar experiments were conducted. Dr Ewan Cameron was another, he conducted experiments on patients in a UK psychiatric facility. The CIA were quite interested in his work as it happens. They made out that they were looking into preventing American soldiers from being brainwashed if they became prisoners of war. SERE ( Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In reality they wanted to know how best to interrogate prisoners of war themselves. The work of Ewan Cameron helped the CIA to come up with the Kubark Counter Intelligence Manual. You can actually read this manual, for free online! I’m part way through it.

Amazing what people can get away with isn’t it? All in the name of science, medicine, defending our countries or whatever excuse they care to dream up at any given moment. Neurotypicals can be equally as ruthless as psychopaths under the right circumstances. Really, in many ways, it seems to me that those circumstances are based on ‘if I can get away with it.’ Simple as that.

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I agree, yes

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Some psychiatrists are on the wrong side of the keys.

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That is an excellent way of putting it

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I mean I think it’s fair to say that the term doctor goes out the window when you have “professionals” with an MD actually partaking in something like this. I see no difference between the mentally insane prescribing meds and the doctors in this scenario besides the obvious “qualifications”. Just sayin, this article confirmed the vibe of heavy incompetence I feel around me sometimes. Maybe it’s just me

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It's pretty messed up

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I think it’s interesting if you saw the first video clip listed, that there is a bar graph shown between non-psychopath criminal offenders and psychopath offenders. The graph clearly shows that “psychopath” offenders were MORE likely to offend after treatment than non-psychopaths. Firstly, the whole experiment is a joke and completely unethical. Secondly, their focus on psychopathy as even a problem that needs to be fixed is the problem. If they would have focused solely on criminal offenders and treating maladaptive traits such as impulsiveness, aggression, sexual deviance- regardless of psychopathy diagnosis the experiment, although completely ridiculous, actually would have had more effective results, as seen on the bar graph shown in video clip.

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Indeed, I agree

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Power is a construct. Neurotypicals are the majority and that in itself gives them influence. You can pathologize neurotypicals and point out traits that ineffective for society regardless of any perceived power. Those two concepts are not directly related.

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Pathologise? These are neurotypicals we are taking about, that won't go in. We need to make jokes that's what we need to do.

What do you call a dancing neurotypical? A drunk.

I remember when I was in University and I knew a nice girl from upstairs. She was called Sophie. We used to chat infrequently. It wasn't sexual, at least not to my awareness, she had various boyfriends while I knew her. When I first got to know her she liked my generally off the wall political ideas. I was very political back then. I was actually studying politics.

Then the EU referendum came in. This was BIG in the UK. It was rather like the Trump vote but people knew Trump was going to win. Most of the London elite had convinced themselves Brits would never vote to be "Un European" as they saw it.

Anyway, there was a tension at this point for us. I posted a few anti EU things, she posted a few pro EU things. We basically stayed in touch. The disagreement was respectful on my behalf I think. I do remember acknowledging an unexpressed anger from her though. Or a kind of withdrawn bitterness.

Then, the result came in. The British voted to leave the EU, and she blocked me. That was the end of us, she never spoke to me again. Even when I messaged a few years later and things. (She actually moved to the same town as me a few years after our disagreement since she had seen it with me and liked it a lot.)

The point here, is that she did not care what my political viewpoints were, and even would engage with me as though she agreed with my anti establishment ideas at the time, seeming to listen. (Everyone thinks they are anti establishment). While these viewpoints held no power. The second they did hold power and they impacted her reality in a solid way. That is the point that it got to her.

And that's what neurotypicals are like. In general. They will agree with what you say in general if it is convenient to do so. But they are very aware of POWER. They will only respond and respect someone who wields it.

This is the aspect of neurotypicals that is less understandable to say... autists. Autists don't have that button. The 'Alpha' in the room is not the person but the information. The rules. This is why you see videos on tik tok with autists talking about the 'neurotypical animal heirarchy' and things.

We will see, I believe, probably fairly soon some very very large events in our lives that will shift the NT's perception. There is a lot going on.

If you click 'reply' on the post you want to respond to rather than starting a new response to a post. It will work like a normal conversation rather than individual posts.

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Wow... that is unfortunate that she blocked you so indiscriminately

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That is not the only time this general dynamic has shown itself in my life. It might be unfortunate but it is kind of inevitable as well.

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Very good advice, just click reply. I see this now. I am neurodivergent but not autistic, though I see through their lens more clearly than I do an NTs. To me, ending a seemingly content, nice relationship based on a differing political view is, bizarre. That would be like me breaking up with my partner after an election because we disagreed on candidates (which wouldn’t happen bc I have my viewpoints but politics not so much) and his candidate won.

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I'm using the term NT for the more negative connotation of the term as in the casual social groups you meet in an office job. I know some NT's that are positively admirable psychologically. One guy I know. Kind of simple but lacking any malice as a person. Has his kid and his work, does LOADS of exercise, and who just has it worked out. Far nicer to hang around than some of our other large personality peers.

But, I feel like my point with that girl is kind of missed. A better example might be male friends I have that sabotage other guys relationships with women, or the enabling of narcissism that coincided with a borderline friend of mine killing herself.

There is a troubling lack of awareness with many NT's in my experience. The doctors here that were playing god could very well have narcissistic traits.

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I’m a little confused. Your female friend named Sophie stopped a relationship with you because her views weren’t supported. How does that resemble the two examples you just cited? Regardless of gender narcissism is enabled in specific countries

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Yes, I did not go into it I suppose. But the power element is there. The guy friends carefully watch how much power another guy has in order to decide whether he can meet their friends and push back on a guy based on various indices. It is very power based.

There are additional examples of NT's carefully watching how much power is in a situation. I am sure that they do not respond until power is relevant in a lot of cases.

The borderline example is super complex, and, as with all things borderline, not especially clear since she kind of started strategically lying to everyone. It does not include power directly, but it includes inefficient mind reading and such. However, the narcissists in that situation were given a free ride by the NT's in a destructive manner. In my understanding.

I heard a philosopher once say that narcissism is more of a philosophical problem where someone rejects objective reality. I think there might be something in that. This would account partly why many people that become aware of such realities come to the viewpoint that a lot of people are narcissistic.

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After reading peter's bit, I wanted to know. I see some people saying that psychopaths are possible of having mood disorders co-morbidities. Is that really possible?

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No, it isn't possible to have dysregulated emotions when the experience of emotions is missing several and the rest are muted. They simply don't have that kind of power in the brain of a psychopath.

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I’ll end with this, I’m a realist and I truly believe if we want an optimal effective society, the ideals or traits we consider to be normal should be constructively criticized. This isn’t supposed to be offensive it’s necessary.

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As Athena likes to point out, politics is the paint brush used to create the masterpiece of idiots the world is run by. So yeah, that def makes sense J.L.W.- thanks for input

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I will say one more thing. It seems like the majority of the human population (neurotypicals) really like to pathologize disorders, mental illnesses, brain variance, learning disabilities, etc. that is needed and I get that. At this point, regardless of the fact that neurotypicality is the majority, it needs to be pathologized. I am not trying to offend or making dramatic assumptions that the people involved in this experiment were in fact neurotypicals, but this type of thing happens on a smaller scale on a near constant basis every day. The very characterter traits, cognitive dissonance and high emotional reality of neurotypicals combined with their near laser focus on social hierarchical achievements is sometimes simply a recipe for disaster. To study and pathologize neurotypical traits and characteristics as a way to improve society would be beneficial- and maybe it’s been done already but sometimes everyone else can really actually be the problem. This sounds insulting and I am not attempting to put them all in one box, we are all individuals. There are certain innate traits and characteristics that I think are pretty strongly programmed and wired into the majority but they can also be studied and improved upon.

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Yeah... But... The neurotypicals have the power. Many of their behaviours are so completely baked in that they are not even aware of them. When people do things the NT's disapprove of, so the NT's subtly or overtly ostracise the neurodivergent - hoping to change the behaviour. This is not clearly thought out it's just a general 'ick' they feel but it is worked out below the conscious. The behaviour has been repeated probably almost every day of their life.

One of the strongest ways though this can get challenged in the real world is when there is a large political change that they are not expecting.

Why did the neurotypical cross the road? ... Because everyone else was doing it.

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You know, when I watch the clip in the article, the thing that is so infuriating is that they are basing this whole experimentation on a definition of psychopathy that is inaccurate. I truly do think they were under the impression that psychopathy and psychosis were interchangeable. Psychopathy is not madness or a bunch of uncontrollable emotions swirling around and acted out- it’s a brain variance where most emotions are dialed way down and some not present at all. Psychosis quite literally is madness. What’s even more frustrating is that the doctor speaking and the book author speak as though they are all knowing geniuses but everything they speak is completely inaccurate. It’s also, amusing. But not so amusing bc these poor people who were subjected to these treatments and made to suffer because of someone else’s idiocy. It seems to be the rule these days. Keeping in mind actual psychopaths have an inability to experience emotional suffering, the physical effects of high doses of LSD are detrimental across the board.

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Indeed, it truly was a baffling choice for an experiment

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Well, it's good there is legal action against these individuals.

Are we... the bad guys?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK-kWRAVmRU

It also really shows what I've seen from others that says that psychiatry doesn't know what it is doing. A lot of times they say xy or z is due to some brain chemistry mismatch but they have no idea what the correct brainchemistry should actually be. If they can't do a blood test to confirm someone has a suboptimal neurotransmitter; then they can't state, as they do, that a condition is due to that. The genetic stuff is even worse.

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