A funny story about the perils of diagnosing yourself with a machine (somewhat related): http://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/episte...

Raymond Smullyan is a fun guy; really good logic/puzzle books.

This is a good point. Science doesn't prove things by working backwards (although it can be used to generate hypothesis).

This is the exactly same reason why the FDA makes you form your hypothesis before you run a clinical trial, not after.

You can't run a clinical trial and say you're looking X, not find it, but then find Y (something you never thought you'd find) and have the FDA approve your drug. It's weak science.

When the topic of psychopathy comes up for lunch room discussion, I sometimes go into depth of what I've personally learned on the subject (just something I'm interested in). When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths. It's funny how consistent that is.

Maybe, despite the evidence pointing in that direction, he just didn't manifest a psychopathic brain.

maybe.

> When I go into it, most people I've talked to immediately ask me if they are psychopaths

I think a good answer is "if you care about the answer, then probably not - all a psychopath would care about is whether anyone found out".

IMHO "brain scans" are not quackery but how they are represented can be.

In a scan like Dr. James Fallon (low frontal lobe activity) he could be impulsive and absent minded but not psychopathic. It all depends how the imaging data is normalized and interpreted. Also the PET scan doesn't show connective activity between neurons.

Disclaimer: I'm not a PhD neuroscientist.

Okay, so the way that imaging data is interpreted is typically quackery, particularly when it is used to diagnose psychopathy

the guy probably wants to sell books. so is he really being hard on himself? Or just pretending?

If he understands he's an a-hole because he doesn't let his grandkids win, probably means that he has enough empathy to understand that his grandkids should win sometimes in order to let them gain some confidence, etc.

from what i get from reading about the stuff, it seems like a real psychopath would not even be able to comprehend that he is a jerk.

Understanding on a purely cognitive level what is moral and what is not has nothing to do with what you're actually going to do, if you're a psychopath. That's really one of the most striking characteristics. Psychopaths are perfectly able to understand what can hurt others, but the lack of empathy is what causes them to behave the way they do when the time comes to act. Depending on other personality traits, and intelligence, it can manifest in a range of ways, from being a cold calculated monster to being a successful, ambitious professor who's a jerk with the grandkids.

of course that's true. I think in this one particular case, I'm skeptical. That's all.

The guy says he had to check the PET machine before he removed the blinding.

He says his parents showed him a lot of love. he would have to understand how love plays out in other families to really claim that.

little things make me feel skeptical. but it's possible that he's a psychopath.

I agree. I mentioned in another comment -- he may be completely faking his state in order to write an engaging story and sell the book. But he is describing very well how a well adjusted person with psychopathic traits would behave. The book and this article are just good illustrations of the phenomenon written in a way that's digestible for general lay readership.