Ask HN: Psychopaths/Sociopaths
&gt; <i>1) Are you a sociopath?</i><p>No.<p><i>2) What do you think of society&#x27;s labeling and marginalization of so-called sociopaths?</i><p>Who cares? This is a non-issue for the following reason: even experts can&#x27;t positively identify a sociopath, and even the definition&#x2F;diagnosis isn&#x27;t widely agreed-upon. A smart sociopath would exhibit mostly pro-social behaviors, even though he has anti-social motivations.<p>People can&#x27;t be persecuted as a group if they can&#x27;t be identified in that group. People can rage about sociopaths all they want, but they can&#x27;t identify them in order to do anything to them.<p>&gt; <i>Nobody is offended if you say sociopaths should be rounded up and killed. According to society, as long as you can sufficiently label someone a sociopath, it becomes within your rights to deny them freedoms and torture or kill them.</i><p>I don&#x27;t know what country you live in, but this is not true in the US. If you can show me some examples that aren&#x27;t random nutjobs on the internet, I&#x27;d be very interested to see them.<p>(You may, of course, be referring to sociopaths who are accused of murder or some other anti-social act, which is not the same as persecuting them just for their personality.)