Have you ever had Sympathy for a prostitute or a serial killer?

I pity the people who can't have sympathy for people. Take the Uni Bomber he was tortured by the US government when younger to see what would happen. People who say it is all bleeding heart liberal nonsense to consider somebody's upbringing but I think it says a lot about their own upbringing.

I think it is more fundamental than that. Some people never learn deductive reasoning and are emotionally stunted on top and very likely to encourage the same mentality in their own children.

Serial Killers are placed into a special compartment in my brain. You have "ordinary" murderers, the likes of Graham whatshisface. People who kill a single person out of malice/hate/whatever and cover it up. The level of cruelty and detachment is huge, but at a fundamental level they tend to be "normal" people who have committed a murder for whatever reason. I have only disgust for them.

Serial killers though are on a whole other level. They cannot be considered "normal" by any stretch of the imagination. They can be insanely intelligent and socially aware, but the extremes of cruelty and detachment they display to their victims and to the rest of society as a whole, can really only be explained by the individual being badly "broken" at a fundamental level.

Do I feel sorry for them? Not in the slightest. But I don't really consider them fully "human". In the same way that you don't feel angry at a wild animal for killing someone or doing damage, you accept that this is just what they are. And you take whatever measures are needed to contain them and protect everyone else.

The only reason he didnt end up as a serial killer is because he got caught after the first one. He would have found another vulnerable victim sooner or later and did the same.

How do you know they messed up their life? Lets say that women was rapped by multiple family members from the age of 4 till 16 when she ran away from home and turned to drugs then prostitution to pay for her habit. Still no sympathy from you?

Of course it is an assumption. I didn't know him personally. but the manner of the murder suggests he was unlikely to stop after one.

You can have both empathy and sympathy for somebody and still think they need to be in prison and a danger to others. There is no need to exclude the feelings and healthy thoughts

Ray you’re like someone that swallowed the DSM5, dial it back a bit for goodness sake.

Nobody is suggesting that anyone is responsible for anything they aren’t responsible for - they’re not responsible for their own upbringing for example, but they are entirely responsible for their behaviour as adults.

One can certainly either sympathise or empathise with another person or people, but being unwilling to do so doesn’t mean anyone is psychotic or any of the rest of it. It’s really basic stuff that doesn’t need to be complicated.

Using the example of the woman in question who the OP was talking about, Aileen Wournos - it’s as you suggested earlier, easy to have sympathy for the idea that she suffered a difficult childhood, but that doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on her choices either to enter into prostitution, or to kill seven men. I don’t suggest anyone have any sympathy for the men she killed, because they made choices too which indicate they were fairly shìtty individuals.

However she may have felt, or didn’t feel about them, Aileen Wournos had a choice as to whether or not she should kill them, and she knew that killing them was wrong. She initially argued that it was in self-defence, and later admitted that it wasn’t in self-defence at all. That’s where your comparison to our ability to sympathise with or empathise with animals also falls down - humans just don’t have an ability to empathise with animals. Certainly we can sympathise with them, but empathy is an entirely separate concept.

You’re again just falling into the trap of assuming that if we understand what motivates one individual, we can apply that knowledge to other individuals who exhibit the same behaviours. Same way you suggest that most serial killers are believed to be below average intelligence in contrast to Seamus’ point that they are above average intelligence, when in reality - both statements can be true, depending upon where you get your information from.

In Wournos case specifically, we know that she was capable of both empathy and sympathy, and that she was not psychotic or psychopathic, but entirely and fully responsible for her behaviour. Nobody has claimed she is responsible for what happened to her in childhood, and that cannot and should not be used as an excuse or an explanation for her behaviour as an adult.

We know for example that the vast majority of adults who experience abuse as children, do NOT go on to commit abuse as adults themselves. The reason surveys and statistics are often skewed to present a misleading understanding of reality is because they are based upon surveying people who have been convicted of offences, who are by reason of their behaviour, not the most trustworthy, reliable or credible subjects for any study.

They’re far more inclined to tell people doing the survey what they think that person or people want to hear, similar to the way in which parole hearings are conducted, and they wish to elicit sympathy from their audience - they’re doing it because there is often an incentive for them to do so. It’s the reason why when people who abuse children are being tried, they claim that they too were abused as children, evoking exactly the kind of reasoning you’re applying - that would explain why they thought their behaviour was acceptable, or they felt compelled by factors outside of their control to inflict cruelty and suffering upon another human being. In many cases it’s precisely because they ARE capable of understanding the effects of their behaviour upon another person is the reason why they do it.

Not because if they hadn’t been abused, they wouldn’t go on to do it to another person, but precisely because they have a fair idea of the effect their behaviour is likely to have on another person. That knowledge too, is based upon empathy, and their lack of sympathy for another person’s suffering. I think that’s the distinction you’re missing in claiming that on the basis of your disagreement with another person’s opinion, according to you they must be psychotic. That’s fairly shaky reasoning if you don’t mind my saying so.

You still didn't answer. I am saying you have impaired empathy based on what you have said

No different Ray than your own claim you were explaining something to someone in a way you imagined they would understand.

I won’t accuse you of having impaired empathy though for trying to deflect from the point being made, because that would be stupid.

Stupid is talking up an entire other subject and claiming they are the same. The empathy or sympathy levels or a perpetrator of a crime has nothing to do with that of the people hearing about the crime and their OWN empathy and sympathy. There is no relationship to what you spoke about and what I was speaking about

What, you mean like asking the question if someone isn’t taught to read or write is it their own fault? You did that Ray, nobody else.

The empathy or sympathy levels anyone feels towards another person is entirely based upon their capacity to sympathise or empathise with that persons circumstances, in this particular case, the case the OP was referring to - Aileen Wournos, and that’s why I used her as an example to make the point, one which I have no doubt you understood perfectly, one which you claim there was no relationship to what you were speaking about and what I was speaking about, based entirely upon what you had said.

You can choose to pretend you’re having difficulty understanding the relationship between what you said and my response, but I know that not to be the case, precisely because I know you’re NOT stupid.

then when I said it I was correct. That is therfore your problem and nothing I can solve for you. You should just accept you have the issue and trauma to a person means they will be damaged and have extremely limited choice. It is not the same as saying everybody is a product of their environment and they can brush it off as an adult and make good choices from then on. You might as well be asking a person with a broken spine to walk

Actually you do need them to know what is morally right from wrong. Because you lack them you have to be told which is right and wrong, that is you problem. It's like you are colour blind and nobody can see it for you. You are not fully functional and appear to be saying you are on the autistic spectrum. You need to accept that is part of your condition and understand others have conditions and can't see the world like you. You need to learn this restriction and see you can't change it the same way others can't change their behaviour if is damaging to them or not. You assume choices are equal for all when they clearly aren't