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we will know about the the Psychopaths

enhance killer instinct there

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they're finely tuned vulnerability and

any but it may surprise you to know that

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there are some situations in which

psychopaths are actually more adept at

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saving lives

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then they are taking them so let me give

you an example of what I mean by that ok

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imagine you've got a train and it's

hurtling down a track in its path

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five people are trapped on the line and

cannot escape

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fortunately you can flick a switch which

diverts the train down a fork in that

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track away from those five people but at

a price

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there is another person trapped down

that fork and the train will kill them

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instead question should you flick the

switch now most people have little

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trouble deciding what to do under those

circumstances though the the thought of

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flicking the switch isn't exactly a nice

one

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the utilitarian Joyce as it were killing

just the one person instead of the 5

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represents the least worst option

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ok but now let me give you a variation

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you've got a train speeding out of

control down a track and it's going to

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plow into five people on the line but

this time you are standing behind a very

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large stranger on a foot bridge above

that track the only way to save the

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people is to heat the stranger over he

will fall to a certain death but his

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considerable bulk will block the train

saving five lives

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now we've got what we might call a real

dilemma on our hands okay

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while the scoring lives is precisely the

same as in the first scenario 5211

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choice of action appears far trickier

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now why should that be all the reason it

turns out all boils down to temperature

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ok case 1 represents what we might call

an impersonal dilemma

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it involves those areas of the brain the

prefrontal cortex the posterior parietal

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cortex in particular the anterior para

cingulate cortex a temporal pole and the

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superior temporal sulcus bit of

neuroanatomy for their primarily

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responsible for what we call cold

empathy for reasoning and rational

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thought

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k stew on the other and represent what

we might call a personal dilemma

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it involves the emotion center of the

brain known as the amygdala the

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circuitry of hot empathy

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what we might call the feeling of

feeling one another person is feeling

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now

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psychopaths just like most normal

members of the population have no

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trouble at all with case one they flick

the switch in the train diverse

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accordingly killing just the one person

instead of the five but this is where

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the plot thickens

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quite unlike normal limits of the

population

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psychopaths also experienced little

difficulty with case two Psychopaths

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without a moment's hesitation are

perfectly willing to chat a fat guy over

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the rails

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if that's what the doctor orders now

moreover this difference in behavior has

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a distinct neural signature the pattern

of brain activation in both normal

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people and Psychopaths is identical on

the presentation of the impersonal moral

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dilemma but radically different when

things start to get a bit more personal

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imagine that I were to hook you up to a

brain scanner a functional magnetic

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resonance imaging machine and were to

present you with those two dilemmas

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okay what would I observe as you went

about trying to solve them

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well at the precise moment that the

nature of the dynamics which is from

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impersonal too personal

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I would see the emotion center of your

brain your amygdala and related brain

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circuits the the media although frontal

cortex for example light up like a

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pinball machine

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I would witness the the moment in other

words when emotion put some money in the

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slot but in Psychopaths I would see

precisely nothing and the passage from

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impersonal to personal would slip by

unnoticed because that a motion

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neighborhood of their brains that

emotional zip code has a neural curfew

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and that's why they're perfectly happy

to check that fat guy over the side

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without even batting an eye