James Fallon - Oslo Freedom Forum 2011

James Fallon begins the first session of the opening day of the 2011 Oslo Freedom Forum with a fascinating tour of a hypothetical dictator's brain. Since almost no studies have been conducted on the brain chemistry of tyrants, Fallon uses tests performed on psychopaths, who share many of the same characteristics, as a foundation for his theories. Virtually all dictators can be classified as psychopaths—they exhibit malignant narcissism, lie pathologically, and many are involved in murder. Furthermore, psychopathy can be viewed as a three-legged stool, as Fallon explains. When the presence of genetic alleles that are at high risk for aggression and violence is combined with functional brain loss and abuse in childhood, the three legs are intact and the conditions for psychopathy are met. Fallon also points out specific areas of the brain that are likely to be damaged in dictators, such as the orbital cortex and amygdala, which balance each other in a normal individual. Interestingly, our society actually encourages psychopathic traits; psychopaths are often successful in fields ranging from medicine to business. Of course, psychopaths only form a small percentage of the population, but when one rises to power the results can be disastrous.


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• James Fallon
• Oslo Freedom Forum
• human rights
• dictator
• neuroscience
• brain
• genetics
• psychopathology
• psychopaths
• criminal behavior
• serial killers
• Hare Psychopathy Checklist
• murder
• narcissism
• pathological lying
• prefrontal cortex
• orbital cortex
• amygdala
• warrior gene
• MAOA

[longfootbuddy]

well when you have your scientific utopean n.w.o, you can remove all these undesirable genes from the population of sheep.. i mean the citizens of the world

[klafuenfde]

@DennisnLuu:

Good Point!

I am German, but I am not a researcher.

But I live near Heidelberg, one of the research centers of Germany on Genetics and Epigenetics ... on occasion I WILL ask THEM.

THX

[MrFaisel34]

The reason the UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA harbors psychopaths: Society asks the successful psychopaths to do the dirty work for us, and not just the dirty but the good work. For example, you don't want your neurosurgeon to be empathetic and caring emotionally when working on you. You want them to be cold machines that don't care...society almost demands that we have psychopaths...because their traits, sometimes, seem to be very useful to a society...so society almost asks for it

[DennisnLuu]

Commenting on the last section, it seems all societies will have concentrations of warrior-genes since each one arose from war. Africa has been at war longer so perhaps they will have a higher frequency of the gene. My point is all societies at one point were warrior societies. I wonder if that's why the Germans are so successful as they are descended from barbarians.