Should psychopathy be eliminated?

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i had a psycopathic nephew who caused a great deal of grief for his mother my aunt. but he was an excellent student [rotc] soldier when he wasn't finding ways to bully his officers around. he died from misadventure. i wonder if armies could exist without psychopaths to man/lead them.

I had a friend who didn't seem much bothered by morals.
But he also didn't have much drive to abuse people.
He just instinctively looked for what would or wouldn't pay off - and as allies are more beneficial than enemies, he usually chose to be neutral-nice.
Yes, he was my real friend. We did quite a lot of good teamwork.
His dream job was to be a coroner.

I didn't hear from him for a long time, I'm awful in maintaining old friendships. Last time I heard from him, he was happily married, had two children and a job in a pharmacy.

I don't know what his neurology was but, apparently, lack of strong emotional reaction to morals does not automatically make one abusive - unless in abusive environment, I guess.

my experience in the military and in the uncivil service was that those places were vipers' dens of sociopathy. about every third person i'd have to seriously watch my back around. i am told the world of business is similar, lots of scorpions in that bottle. the most dangerous thing was that the sociopathic types were the ones most often promoted in positions over me.

Historically the military needed two types of people: those who had very little regard for other people and who had no trouble killing, and those who had huge regard for other people and would kill to protect them. Most people were unable to kill in cold blood.

These days our training methods are much better and most people can be conditioned out of their “don’t kill people” instinct.

Video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs

While your question is phrased as "eliminating psychopathy" as in the condition, the reality is your actual intention is to "eliminate psychoPATHS", the people. So basically you're asking if we should murder anyone who (theoretically) tests positive for being a psychopath (if such a test even existed), even if they've never done anything wrong.

Your reasoning seems to be that all psychopaths are violent bullies, and if we killed them all the world would be safe. I've heard the phrase "the world would be better if we just got rid of all the (group of people)" far too many times to be ok with it. People say literally the same thing about autistic people. "They are dangerous, and we should just eliminate them". Even your excuse of "psychopaths aren't really even people, and they serve no purpose" has been said about autistics and other disabled and non-typical people. Deciding that groups of people aren't actually people, has been the excuse given for some of the worst treatment inflicted upon other human beings throughout history, from slavery to genocide. I can't help but feel that treading that path is a fairly universal mistake.

I don't think you actually know what a "psychopath" or a "socaiopath" are. I think you know what pop culture and movies and tv make them out to be, mixed with some personal bias. Most people don't actually know what the terms mean, or meant, since they don't really apply anymore. We (science) understand the underlying conditions a lot better than we used to.

I think you've been hurt, and are lashing out at what you see as an easy solution. But I think you'd be disappointed to find out that life isn't that simple, and neither are people. Being a "psychopath" is far from the only reason or factor when it comes to someone being a bully or having violent tendencies. And, being a "psychopath" does not mean someone has harmed, or ever will harm, another living thing.

The violent "psychopath" is just a sensationalized stereotype. A minority at best, along with all the other most extreme cases of things we see in movies, from the tourette person who won't stop screaming profanity and smacking people, the adhd person who acts like a speed freak and never stops talking, the ocd person who cant step on cracks and has to wash their hands every 5 minutes or they'll freak out, the schizophrenic with a colorful array of unique and amusing multiple personalities, the autistic person who can do calculus in their head but cant be trusted to live on their own without burning the house down, and every other cliche stereotype that's been distorted from reality in order to make a more entertaining "reality".

Plans like this inevitably devolve into "kill anyone who's different", and eventually swallow even those it was meant to protect. It's a fear reaction, and as it continues to not-solve the problem it was meant to, the atrocities get committed more and faster, in order to affect the desired change which continues to not come, and as the scapegoats get fewer, the blame intensifies, for surely these last few must be causing all of the remaining problems. Until finally they're all gone, and the problem still remains, so they turn to the next group to "eliminate".

Bad idea.

I would rather help people who have mental problems that they cannot help. Allow them to live in a way that lets exist as close to being normal as possible.

if we can send blinkin' men to the blinkin' moon multiple times, we should long ago have been able to establish a treatment protocol that IDs the psychos early on and tailors education and counseling to suit them and steer them in a more positive direction.

Something on the topic that I just encountered:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 190000.htm

They are trying to understand the difference between the "violent" and the "successful" psychopaths.
Apparently, it's one's ability (maybe also willingness?) to self-control.

^^^i wonder how much of that is nature, and how much is nurture or something else as yet unknown?