Interesting article! Thanks for sharing it. And the clergy thing is actually what it sounded like, haha!
I'm also very interested in reading about psychopathy and read an article earlier this year about (some) psychopaths actually being capable of empathy. If they're explicitly asked to emphasize. The article also touches upon morality and how being deficient in empathy doesn't necessarily equal being a less moral person: https://aeon.co/essays/you-have-more-in-common-with-a-psychopath-than-you-realise
Then there's an interview with a psychopath I also found somewhat interesting: https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/my-life-as-a-psychopath.html
I like how "biology isn't destiny" was mentioned in the article. :) Biology is limiting, though - but other factors play into how a person ends up acting.
Besides morality and empathy (or a lack thereof) I'm also quite interested in philosophical angles like free will. How responsible is anyone ever if there's no free will?
Sam Harris calls humans biochemical puppets:
Harris says the idea of free will "cannot be mapped on to any conceivable reality" and is incoherent. According to Harris, science "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet." People's thoughts and intentions, Harris says, "emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control." Every choice we make is made as a result of preceding causes. These choices we make are determined by those causes, and are therefore not really choices at all. Harris also draws a distinction between conscious and unconscious reactions to the world. Even without free will, consciousness has an important role to play in the choices we make. Harris argues that this realization about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.
There's an interesting article about the dark sides of empathy here where empathy's potential role in violence-proneness is mentioned: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/12/712682406/does-empathy-have-a-dark-side
I think a lot of terrorists may not lack empathy. Rather, they see some plight of a group they identify with — they see them suffering and see it as something horrible, and that becomes more extreme and activates them to become active terrorists.
I think that's highly likely as well.
I'm on the left and call myself a libertarian (or anarchist) if I have to describe it. But at the same time I'm not really identifying with the left to a point where I only want to hang out with people with highly similar ways of seeing the world. Grimes - who has received negative comments because she's dating someone who's a very rich centrist - still considers herself to be very left-leaning. You can be friends with someone or date someone and disagree on some things.
I wouldn't personally be friends or otherwise in a relationship with someone way less left-leaning, but I could easily see myself having a conversation with someone I'm "supposed to hate" (like a very conservative person).
I hate actions I don't like/I hate bad outcomes. There a some really rotten aspects about human nature.
But I don't hate a person for having a brain that makes them less capable of, say, being polite. I might think they're not someone I want to be around a lot, but I don't blame the individual for having that specific brain.
Some people can hate someone else based on the smallest thing: "I don't like how they swear a lot! I hate that person." To me, I would probably think that the area of the brain that filters curse words could be smaller than average. I would usually search for an explanation in other words (instead of jumping into a very judgey attitude from the get-go).
I read recently that Eminem, according to a neuroscientist, probably had a smaller dorsolateral prefrontal cortex than the average person. And that makes it more likely he'll use more curse words. It might not be someone's cup of tea to listen to that, but I'm more interested in the explanation behind behavior.
The partisan brain - how someone strongly agreeing with either far-left or far-right politics actually have something in common - is someone I recently read about.
(Sorry for having written so much if it's overwhelming. My brain is filled with thoughts!)