I like this because I like to flatter myself that I have a good intuition about people after seeing them, and this shows that I’m completely wrong about that—barely better than random.
It turns out with the trappings of how serial killers are presented in media (bad black and white photos from odd angles), everyone looks like a serial killer.
There's a security camera monitor displayed prominently in one store near where I live that makes everyone look dodgy — something about the frame rate and fuzzy image just looks like shoplifting footage you'd see on the news.
I see myself on the screen as I enter and think "yeah, that guy's going to hold up the shop or something".
surely in this case the very fact that it looks like a security camera feed is why? wouldn't most security cameras do that right? :) its an interesting thought, that the only place most people see stuff like that is recordings of incidents
I think it's because it looks like an _ancient_ security camera feed, which reminds me of watching security footage on television news as a child. Most modern systems I see don't have that kind of noisy distorted "bad analogue" look so I think they just don't trigger the same reaction in me.
Probably you are still right. Seeing a photograph is different from seeing a person in real animated life. I guess there are micro expressions, the way people laugh, and the exact point at which people laugh and such that some people are really good at reading, but it is hard to articulate what exactly the process of interpretation is.
Well, I think so, too. But only after seeing them in real and not just on some blurry, distorted picture.
But I also think, most people have the potential to become serial killers. Hunting and killing is deep in our genes after all and society can mess up people pretty bad, so some turn their animal instinct against society, while maintaining the facade on the outside.
In psychiatry, you reach the coveted status of Antisocial Personality Disorder (the remorseless manipulative sociopath with a charming personality, but no compassion) by starting out with Conduct Disorder (the kids that hurt animals, lie, cheat, and steal) and not snapping out of it by adulthood
Humans are social animals. If your animal instinct is hunting and killing, and you feel like you're just maintaining a facade... good! You don't choose the instincts you're born with, but please keep maintening the facade thank you! :)
Modern civilized society tries hard to negate and channel all violent impulses from early on and only unleash it in ritualistic scenarios like sports.
(Or after a 180 degree turn - for real in the military.)
And this is mostly successful, but push someone hard enough and violence will be the result. Otherwise there would not be so many murders and violent crimes.
Most people will just explode violently (and then regret) and the path of the silent serial killer is (luckily) rare.
But if you look at other (savage) societys where violence is still baked in, there simply are no pacifists there, so pacifism is not something we were born with, but a learned trait. And one that makes sense, to keep society stable, but I don't think it makes sense to fool ourself about what humans are capable of. Just look at Ukraine to see what ordinary civilized people are capable of, if put in a different environment.
That's fair, but I think there's a huge gap between that and being a serial killer.
We can point to war or to the Stanford prison experiment. People in unusual stressful situations have the potential to be abusive, or to follow abusive orders.
But there's a large gap between that and the kind of trouble that results in serial killers. Soldiers in a war are under terrible living conditions, and commit atrocities in the name of taking it out on the enemy.
But even the soldier does not stoop as low as torturing animals. The enemy, maybe, but not the innocent. Serial killers are completely indifferent to the pain of the innocent. Soldiers only hurt the outgroup, the enemy.
And I think you're being unfair to people living in more primitive societies. There's crime in every society, but you will not make friends anywhere by being antisocial. A small village doesn't survive by people turning against each other. It would simply cease to exist.
My claim is that most people do not have the violent impulses, and don't need to channel them. Some people do. And they benefit from channeling them, because bad outcomes happen much more often to those who don't.
Nature will beat the violence out of people, over generations. You simply survive less in aggregate with a harmful set of instincts. Most people have no need for hard to control violent impulses, and indeed tend to be born without them.
"That's fair, but I think there's a huge gap between that and being a serial killer."
Oh for sure. Otherwise we all would live in fortresses surrounded by minefields.
"My claim is that most people do not have the violent impulses, and don't need to channel them. "
My claim is most people do not have them anymore (or buried deep inside). But most if not all kids do - they just (hopefully) learned at some point it is not beneficial to use violence to get what you want. Humans are very adoptable.
My main point actually is to prevent new serial killers from emerging by not treating them as a different species(where you cannot really do anything), but as ordinary humans where many things have gone horrible wrong in their upbringing.
I know back in my school were quite some canditates, but there was 0 official reaction towards doing something about it. As far as I know, none of them turned actually into a serial killer (yet), but I am quite sure with some it would not take much perceived injustice or merely boredom to take a dark path. But I actually have been through the limits of the legal system to get something to be done about someone who makes open violent threats. Largely unsuccesful.
Ah, I see what you mean. Trauma definitely doesn't help.
I think this might come down to a question about nature vs nurture if we keep digging too far, but I fear I'm not qualified to argue much further than this :)
