@adam-l

I'd be among the first to stipulate that my use of the term "mirror neurons" here is handwaving of the highest order.

Just what exactly is a "mirror" neuron? Does it differ structurally or chemically from other neurons? Or is it merely connected differently, leading it to fire on different occasions?

The fact that we have label something a "mirror neuron" predisposes us to assume it's of a different type, but this may not be the case.

What we do know is that some brain activity is the same when we do or experience a thing, AND when we see someone else do or experience a thing.

This is a brain phenomenon that I believe partially leads to such vaguely-defined behaviour-level concepts such as "guilt", "empathy", "conscience", etc.

However, it's not the only phenomenon that gives rise to these things. There's another idea for that, which I talk about here:

www.trp.red/p/whisper/4408

In short, I think that psychopaths partially or fully lack mirroring in brain activity, and this "un-anchors" them from the influence of other human beings. This, in turn, leads them to experience moral teaching not as "learning what is right", but as "learning what others want me to do".

In other words, it externalizes the superego.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/id,_ego_and_super-ego#super-ego

Since the super-ego is defined as the internalization of cultural or parental rules, and guilt is caused by having violated these rules, psychopaths have greatly diminished susceptibility to guilt, because when they violate a social more, they don't think "I have done something bad", they think "I have done something others do not wish me to do".

(In a twist that is almost like irony, the psychopath is actually correct, here.)

How the psychopath behaves, as a result of this externalization of the super-ego, is greatly dependent on intelligence, specifically the kind of intelligence that links actions to consequences.

And this is the important part to understand, because we can't understand psychopaths just by looking at psychopaths.

Why not? Because our sample of psychopaths has a huge selection bias. We only identify someone as a psychopath when we see them acting in an obviously anti-social way. So high-functioning psychopaths are massively underrepresented in any kind of sample we could study.

So how does ability to anticipate consequences affect psychopath behaviour?

I believe it's because guilt isn't solely, or even primarily, responsible for morally-aligned behaviour. It's a whole host of things... desire to fit in, desire to make friends, fear of punishment, fear of embarrassment, desire to feel superior, desire to connect, etc, etc.

So, while guilt, or fear of guilt, doesn't really impact psychopath behaviour, a lot of these other things can.... but only in those with certain levels of ability to connect actions with consequences.

So psychopaths are very different based on whether they are smart enough to have certain realizations. Some of these are simple, and only the dumbest of psychopaths fail to grasp them. Others are more difficult. I'll give some examples:

1. If I do stuff that offends other people, and they catch me, they will want to punish me.
2. Other people have feelings, just as I do, even if I don't mirror those emotions when I see them. They are going to react to how they feel.
3. Even if I don't mirror people's emotions, other people do. Normal people feel an echo of whatever emotion they see, and that's going to effect their behaviour.
4. I can manipulate people easily because their emotions don't effect me. But if I consistently make them feel bad, they will avoid me, even if they can't pin any specific wrongdoing on me.
5. My quality of life is dependent not just avoiding being detected and lynched, but actually having others in my life who voluntarily associate with me.

Thus, psychopaths can be as different as the habitual jailbird who puts his fist through a store window, in full view of the public, to steal something he sees and wants, to the master manipulator whose social circle consists of people who admire him and genuinely enjoy his presence, unaware that they are essentially being kept as pets.