Ethics and Nature

[Anirudh Silai]

Hey everyone,

Here's an interesting thought to consider:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/the-objectivist-ethics.html - Here Rand says, "if some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing...The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals...Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own." - By destruction, she means physical and psychological (with regard to self-esteem).

But what about criminals who get away with it successfully?

Consider that man must act with reason in order to survive. Consider a thief who reasons that the risk of getting caught is very low, even that the likelihood of his victim even reporting the crime is low. Finally consider that criminals, on average, even those who are caught, have higher-than-average self-esteem, according to the APA.

Or, as an insignificant example, consider that once, when I was in school, I was feeling hungry and I easily snagged a couple of potato chips from a friend.

[merjet]

When criminals aren't caught, it still remains true that their gains are made possible by their victims.

[BaalChatzaf]

53 minutes ago, merjet said:

When criminals aren't caught, it still remains true that their gains are made possible by their victims.

You are so right. It is the hard work and prosperity of the honest that provide thieves with their loot....

[SteveWolfer]

35 minutes ago, Anirudh Silai said:

Finally consider that criminals, on average, even those who are caught, have higher-than-average self-esteem, according to the APA

My Masters was in Clinical Psychology, I studied under Nathaniel Branden (the expert on self-esteem) for many years while going through California's licensing for psychotherapists.   And I've watched, with great sadness, what has been done to the concept of 'self-esteem' since the late 60s.

I've read that research paper you refer to.  It was commissioned by the APA and the psychologist who carried it out, Roy Baumeister,  (who was associated with the APA in the past), 'measured' self-esteem with a Likert scale drawn from answers to a set of 5 questions given prison inmates.  Questions like "Do you think you have high self-esteem?"  Or, "Do you like yourself?"  He did an almost identical study where the same asinine measurement technique was used to rate the self-esteem of bullies in elementary school.  The conclusion was that high self-esteem leads to bullying.  This particular psychologist has done a number of what I'd call anti-self-esteem 'studies.'  He has some strange, negative ideas about self-esteem.

Roy Baumeister is a "social psychologist" who has done a great deal of research, written or edited about 20 books,  and is respected in the field (which says a lot to me about the state of psychology as a discipline).  Much of his work has been about what he has posits as the "need to belong" which is at the heart of his theoretical orientation.  He has written that “the defining thrust of human psychological evolution was selection in favor of cultural capability" by which he means a socializing capability, and in his view the major capacities that we exercise are all used to help us act in pro-social means.  He describes free will as an evolutionary advanced mechanism that helps us act in more pro-social ways.

The misunderstandings about what self-esteem really is have been increasing with time.  About 15 years ago I edited the self-esteem page in Wikipedia... or at least I tried.  It was a mess and I wasn't able to make enough head-way to continue.  I just took a look at the page and it has grown worse.  The current set of editors believe that "Self-esteem is attractive as a social psychological construct because researchers have conceptualized it as an influential predictor of certain outcomes..."  Modern psychology is more about research (much of which is ill-conceived and shoddily conducted) while a kind of political correctness drives theoretical orientation, goals and purposes.

Like every other soft science it has become about society, about social constructs, about cultural relativity, and subjectivity.

[Brant Gaede]

10 hours ago, Anirudh Silai said:

Hey everyone,

Here's an interesting thought to consider:

http://aynrandlexicon.com/ayn-rand-ideas/the-objectivist-ethics.html - Here Rand says, "if some men attempt to survive by means of brute force or fraud, by looting, robbing, cheating or enslaving the men who produce, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by their victims, only by the men who choose to think and to produce the goods which they, the looters, are seizing...The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals...Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment, at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own." - By destruction, she means physical and psychological (with regard to self-esteem).

But what about criminals who get away with it successfully?

Consider that man must act with reason in order to survive. Consider a thief who reasons that the risk of getting caught is very low, even that the likelihood of his victim even reporting the crime is low. Finally consider that criminals, on average, even those who are caught, have higher-than-average self-esteem, according to the APA.

Or, as an insignificant example, consider that once, when I was in school, I was feeling hungry and I easily snagged a couple of potato chips from a friend.

What about those criminals? Why do you think they got "away with it successfully"?

That's an existential or social evaluation. It is also the nature of pseudo self esteem that it is bestowed from without not created from within.

Real self esteem is from the inside out--with appropriate help from friends, family, teachers, et al.

It's hardly this simple, of course, for pseudo self-esteem can also be self made. And then there's subjective/objective. I have no idea how self esteem obtains and/or is experienced by a sociopath. And does a hit man have self esteem because he's a great hit man?

To experience oneself as competent and worthy of living implies an objectivity tied into general human nature after all. I think the hit man only gets half way there, which means he doesn't make it.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

2 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

My Masters was in Clinical Psychology, I studied under Nathaniel Branden (the expert on self-esteem) for many years while going through California's licensing for psychotherapists.   And I've watched, with great sadness, what has been done to the concept of 'self-esteem' since the late 60s.

I've read that research paper you refer to.  It was commissioned by the APA and the psychologist who carried it out, Roy Baumeister,  (who was associated with the APA in the past), 'measured' self-esteem with a Likert scale drawn from answers to a set of 5 questions given prison inmates.  Questions like "Do you think you have high self-esteem?"  Or, "Do you like yourself?"  He did an almost identical study where the same asinine measurement technique was used to rate the self-esteem of bullies in elementary school.  The conclusion was that high self-esteem leads to bullying.  This particular psychologist has done a number of what I'd call anti-self-esteem 'studies.'  He has some strange, negative ideas about self-esteem.

Roy Baumeister is a "social psychologist" who has done a great deal of research, written or edited about 20 books,  and is respected in the field (which says a lot to me about the state of psychology as a discipline).  Much of his work has been about what he has posits as the "need to belong" which is at the heart of his theoretical orientation.  He has written that “the defining thrust of human psychological evolution was selection in favor of cultural capability" by which he means a socializing capability, and in his view the major capacities that we exercise are all used to help us act in pro-social means.  He describes free will as an evolutionary advanced mechanism that helps us act in more pro-social ways.

The misunderstandings about what self-esteem really is have been increasing with time.  About 15 years ago I edited the self-esteem page in Wikipedia... or at least I tried.  It was a mess and I wasn't able to make enough head-way to continue.  I just took a look at the page and it has grown worse.  The current set of editors believe that "Self-esteem is attractive as a social psychological construct because researchers have conceptualized it as an influential predictor of certain outcomes..."  Modern psychology is more about research (much of which is ill-conceived and shoddily conducted) while a kind of political correctness drives theoretical orientation, goals and purposes.

Like every other soft science it has become about society, about social constructs, about cultural relativity, and subjectivity.

If it is "hard science" you want,  stay with neuro-physiology.   

 

[SteveWolfer]

One day in the future we will be able to see and understand the parallels between neurophysiology and psychology but today the neurophysiologist think they know more than they do... they are still along ways from being able to map mental/emotional events to electro-chemical events in a meaningful way.  Today, it is like a society of say 100 years ago, taking apart an iPhone and scientifically examining each of its bits and pieces to understand how an app can transcribe spoken words into text.

If the hard determinists among the neuro people and the hard behaviorists on the psych side continue to deny any volition or even  speak of concepts they won't go anywhere worth being.

[BaalChatzaf]

8 minutes ago, SteveWolfer said:

One day in the future we will be able to see and understand the parallels between neurophysiology and psychology but today the neurophysiologist think they know more than they do... they are still along ways from being able to map mental/emotional events to electro-chemical events in a meaningful way.  Today, it is like a society of say 100 years ago, taking apart an iPhone and scientifically examining each of its bits and pieces to understand how an app can transcribe spoken words into text.

If the hard determinists among the neuro people and the hard behaviorists on the psych side continue to deny any volition or even  speak of concepts they won't go anywhere worth being.

Perhaps.  One thing for sure.  The neurologists know more than the Shrinks.  Psychiatry and Psychology are pseudo science by Popperian standards. 

[SteveWolfer]

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

The neurologists know more than the Shrinks.

They know more about neurology and there is a great advantage to working in a field whose content isn't as directly linked to human choices, as is history, sociology, economics, philosophy, political science, psychology, etc.  But because those fields that attempt to understand the principles at work in human domains shouldn't be thrown out. 

My point was that they don't know as much about psychology as some people think they do. 

 

1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Psychiatry and Psychology are pseudo science by Popperian standards. 

Both psychiatry and psychology are historically still in a period where they don't have a settled theoretical base.  Different schools of thought still contend with each other as to who's theoretical orientation best represents reality.  In the hard sciences, this only exists, now a days, at the leading edge of the science where a new theory conflicts with an older theory.  Progress will come out of the experimentation and exploration that decides for one over the others... and so on.

But many of the assertions made in psychiatry and psychology can be framed as a falsifiable hypothesis... Is there some other way of looking at these fields such that, by your lights, they can't participate in Popper's standards?

And "pseudo-science"... Really?  There is no substance to that designation.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, SteveWolfer said:

They know more about neurology and there is a great advantage to working in a field whose content isn't as directly linked to human choices, as is history, sociology, economics, philosophy, political science, psychology, etc.  But because those fields that attempt to understand the principles at work in human domains shouldn't be thrown out. 

My point was that they don't know as much about psychology as some people think they do. 

 

Both psychiatry and psychology are historically still in a period where they don't have a settled theoretical base.  Different schools of thought still contend with each other as to who's theoretical orientation best represents reality.  In the hard sciences, this only exists, now a days, at the leading edge of the science where a new theory conflicts with an older theory.  Progress will come out of the experimentation and exploration that decides for one over the others... and so on.

But many of the assertions made in psychiatry and psychology can be framed as a falsifiable hypothesis... Is there some other way of looking at these fields such that, by your lights, they can't participate in Popper's standards?

And "pseudo-science"... Really?  There is no substance to that designation.

A discipline that purports to say something about the world can do it in an empirically based falsifiable manner or not.  If so, it is a science.  If not, it is not a science.  It is something else.,  And if the Shrinks can found their discipline properly why haven't they?

I composed this little ditty:

Oh Doktor. Freud,  Herr Doktor Freud

How we wish you had been differently emploiyed

Instead of fiddling with neurosis 

You could have cured sclerosis,

Oh what a waste Herr Doktor Freud

 

[SteveWolfer]

3 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

A discipline that purports to say something about the world can do it in an empirically based falsifiable manner or not.  If so, it is a science.  If not, it is not a science.  It is something else.,  And if the Shrinks can found their discipline properly why haven't they?

Why did it take thousands of years for astrology to be replaced with astronomy?  Why are some people still using math in fortunetelling (Numerology)?  As far as human history goes, science as we know it today is very new.  Popper wasn't publishing till about 1930.  What Popper and others who study the philosophy of science know is that it is a process and in some areas we seem to be far along and others we have hardly started.

We have mental/emotional natures and we should study that.  (If you are saying we don't... well, then I guess I'm exchanging posts with some kind of AI software and not a human).  The difficulty of studying what mediates our mind's activities using our minds might be difficult, but not impossible.

[BaalChatzaf]

Just now, SteveWolfer said:

Why did it take thousands of years for astrology to be replaced with astronomy?  Why are some people still using math in fortunetelling (Numerology)?  As far as human history goes, science as we know it today is very new.  Popper wasn't publishing till about 1930.  What Popper and others who study the philosophy of science know is that it is a process and in some areas we seem to be far along and others we have hardly started.

We have mental/emotional natures and we should study that.  (If you are saying we don't... well, then I guess I'm exchanging posts with some kind of AI software and not a human).  The difficulty of studying what mediates our mind's activities using our minds might be difficult, but not impossible.

Once European thinkers got away from Aristotle and the a priori disease Astronomy progressed rapidly.  Galileo made the breech and he also produced a workable astronomical telescope.  Copernicus  made the breech on the grounds that Ptolmaic Cosmology was too ugly to be true.  Unfortunately Copernicus was still bound by Aristotle's circles.   Kepler made the definitive breakthrough and he plowed the road for Newton.

As long as Greek a priori thinking strangulated science  and the Greek disdain for get-your-hands-dirty empiricism persisted  astronomy could not fully progress. Even so,  Aristarchus,  an Ionian thinker nearly got it right. Unfortunately the Athenian a priori mafia  Socrates, Plato and Aristotle  got the high ground first and held up real science for over fifteen hundred years. 

[Brant Gaede]

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Perhaps.  One thing for sure.  The neurologists know more than the Shrinks.  Psychiatry and Psychology are pseudo science by Popperian standards. 

That some may have claimed psychiatry and psychology were scientific disciplines doesn't make them so. I suppose you can construct some studies and move numbers around but that doesn't strike me as science. A hard science deals with physical reality. A soft science human reality. I'm not aware--probably out of ignorance--what falsifiable experiments might be done in geology, but likely you could apply heat and water. Much the same could be said about biology. The multiplicity of experimental data and investigation seems to be in chemistry with physics rounding out the true, hard sciences. (Did I miss any?) Here's where it sort of gets interesting: geology and biology seem to be mostly about observation, evaluation and data accumulation. That's what  you do in the soft sciences too. (Doesn't neurology belong to biology?)

--Brant

[SteveWolfer]

Psychiatry is a mix of medical science and psychology.  Psychiatrists prescribe medications (and in some states psychologists do as well).  As a medical science the efficacy of medications is examined with double blind tests after a long period of biomedical studies that don't involve humans.

The definition of psychology: the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context.

30 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

A hard science deals with physical reality.  A soft science human reality.

That is the way they are described.  But humans are part of reality, thoughts and emotions are part of reality.  And the disciplines of logic and reason that are used to understand reality aren't hard science.  Nor is philosophy, yet our thoughts and emotions and logic and reason and beliefs and values are, to my mind, every bit as important to understand as any hard science.

I'm biased of course, but I find the condescension one often sees directed towards psychology as laughable.  As a therapist I've seen how small mental shifts can change a good life into a state of misery, and a bad time into a depression, a traumatic event into lasting anxiety.  And I've seen people brought from the edge of suicidal despair to having a happy life.  Psychology might be as primitive today as medicine was 100 years ago, but it isn't unimportant.

If a person's purpose in life includes being happy, then whatever you want to call that area of knowledge to which happiness belongs, it should be of seen as a discipline of some importance.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

8 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

That some may have claimed psychiatry and psychology were scientific disciplines doesn't make them so. I suppose you can construct some studies and move numbers around but that doesn't strike me as science. A hard science deals with physical reality. A soft science human reality. I'm not aware--probably out of ignorance--what falsifiable experiments might be done in geology, but likely you could apply heat and water. Much the same could be said about biology. The multiplicity of experimental data and investigation seems to be in chemistry with physics rounding out the true, hard sciences. (Did I miss any?) Here's where it sort of gets interesting: geology and biology seem to be mostly about observation, evaluation and data accumulation. That's what  you do in the soft sciences too. (Doesn't neurology belong to biology?)

--Brant

Physics is The basic Hard Science.  Chemistry is derived from physics (it is mostly based on thermodynamics and quantum theory).  The key to the behavior of molecules (their composition and folding)  is the electron orbital which are eignvector components of the Schroedigner Equation.  Geology  is more of descriptive science but has at its base the thermodynamics of the earth's  inner (hot) core. Astronomy is the oldest quantitative discipline but was joined at the hip to Astrology until  about  450 years ago after which it parted company from Astronomy and became a real science.  Mechanics, the science of motion and force equilbrium is the oldest form of physics and goes all the way back to a time before Archimedes.  Mechanics took its current from with Newton and Descartes. 

you can always spot a "real" science.  Real science is quantitative  and requires mathematics for its proper expression.  If the math is missing what you have may be a discipline but it is unlikely to be a science.  History is not a science but recent work in history has shown there is an important role for Bayesian Statistics in evaluating  historical premises.  Here is an example of a historian deconstructing Christianity and the Gospels using Bayes Theorem.   Please see  http://www.richardcarrier.info/CarrierDec08.pdf

[merjet]

36 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 Chemistry is derived from physics (it is mostly based on thermodynamics and quantum theory).  

That's a gross oversimplification. Comparison of chemistry and physics.

[Brant Gaede]

55 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Physics is The basic Hard Science.  Chemistry is derived from physics (it is mostly based on thermodynamics and quantum theory).  The key to the behavior of molecules (their composition and folding)  is the electron orbital which are eignvector components of the Schroedigner Equation.  Geology  is more of descriptive science but has at its base the thermodynamics of the earth's  inner (hot) core. Astronomy is the oldest quantitative discipline but was joined at the hip to Astrology until  about  450 years ago after which it parted company from Astronomy and became a real science.  Mechanics, the science of motion and force equilbrium is the oldest form of physics and goes all the way back to a time before Archimedes.  Mechanics took its current from with Newton and Descartes. 

you can always spot a "real" science.  Real science is quantitative  and requires mathematics for its proper expression.  If the math is missing what you have may be a discipline but it is unlikely to be a science.  History is not a science but recent work in history has shown there is an important role for Bayesian Statistics in evaluating  historical premises.  Here is an example of a historian deconstructing Christianity and the Gospels using Bayes Theorem.   Please see  http://www.richardcarrier.info/CarrierDec08.pdf

"Real science"--please, stop this. It's just you slamming "soft" science again implying it's phony. Again, the bailiwick of hard science is physical reality and the soft science is human being and action. Each has its own correct and applicable methodologies sometimes overlapping somewhat. Thanks for mentioning astronomy and mechanics. Deconstructing Christianity is putting your brain in a playpen because you can't deconstruct faith--that is Christians. It's only having fun with mental meandering. Monotheistic religions have to be taken as they are and dealt with as part of our surrounding human reality. Ayn Rand had little idea what she was up against with her all but now dead philosophy as expoundable as opposed to used in part to counter moral totalitarians, political and religious.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

9 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

Psychiatry is a mix of medical science and psychology.  Psychiatrists prescribe medications (and in some states psychologists do as well).  As a medical science the efficacy of medications is examined with double blind tests after a long period of biomedical studies that don't involve humans.

And quackery.

Psychiatry ruined the lives of three relatives of mine and contributed to their deaths. A sister, niece and aunt. (Note the female bias.) Psychiatry is all about control for a social benefit sublimated by the lie of the benefit of the patient. Since there can be some benefit for the patient with all the pill pushing if not electroconvulsive therapy it's hard to tell psychiatry what it's doing wrong because psychology as it is can't pick up all the slack. The basic problem is mixing law with medicine. There should be no licensing of physicians for starters. That way psychologists can be psychiatrists and vice versa and the professions become one. (A problem with this, however, is the safety net of going to a psychologist knowing he can't fill you up with medicine would be gone. Well, everything costs something.)

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, merjet said:

That's a gross oversimplification. Comparison of chemistry and physics.

The electron orbital is purely a quantum construct.  The shell model is grounded in quantum theory. 

The classical portions of chemistry are grounded in Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics.  The big player is enthalpy and Gibbs free energy.  (NB  free energy does not mean at no cost.  It means that part of the energy which is capable of doing work)

[Guyau]

.

Welcome to OL, Anirudh Siiai.

Valhalla is more modern than I had realized. I’ve just received a fax down from Rand up there. She wanted me to direct you to a passage in Galt’s speech. It concerns those potato chips you stole.

“Whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else—that was the act of subverting your consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders form a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch—and a censored reality is the result, a splintered reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn’t, held together by that embalming fluid of the mind which is an emotion exempted from thought.”

She goes on to say that it is the causal network in which those cookies (or chips in your case) came into existence that one should not neglect, and that this should dissuade you from the theft. I think, rather, that the disunity of mind she spoke of in the paragraph I quoted has as much to do with severance of other persons from one’s own person, with good treatment of and presence with other persons as persons, as with absent recognitions of causal realities. Rand’s is a stilted view of human nature, to the end of her stilted morality.

[BaalChatzaf]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

"Real science"--please, stop this. It's just you slamming "soft" science again implying it's phony. Again, the bailiwick of hard science is physical reality and the soft science is human being and action. Each has its own correct and applicable methodologies sometimes overlapping somewhat. Thanks for mentioning astronomy and mechanics. Deconstructing Christianity is putting your brain in a playpen because you can't deconstruct faith--that is Christians. It's only having fun with mental meandering. Monotheistic religions have to be taken as they are and dealt with as part of our surrounding human reality. Ayn Rand had little idea what she was up against with her all but now dead philosophy as expoundable as opposed to used in part to counter moral totalitarians, political and religious.

--Brant

Soft science is not science unless it is empirically falsifiable (in principle, if not in practical fact).  The disciplines  of metaphysics , psychology, ethics, aesthetics are NOT sciences and never were.  Only parts of economics is well founded on proper statistical analysis.  That are quantitative disciplines such as scheduling, logistics, cost estimation and software construction which are not science (they lack generality)  but are very akin to engineering which is supported by scientific principles. 

The "soft sciences" are basically bullshit and their practitioners sometimes use the appearance of scientific method and rigor to hide the rot.

Of the things that are not science,  I like art.  Art of various sorts make no pretense to being "scientific".  They appeal to our non-rational, non-quantitative aspect.   Artists generally do not pretend to be what they are not. 

[SteveWolfer]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Psychiatry is all about control for a social benefit sublimated by the lie of the benefit of the patient.

I completely and totally disagree with you.  What you are saying reminds me of when Obama was pushing ObamaCare and accused doctors of cutting people's feet off to make a buck.  Your view is very warped and certainly doesn't represent the reality of psychiatry.

[william.scherk]

22 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

I've read that research paper you refer to.  It was commissioned by the APA and the psychologist who carried it out, Roy Baumeister,  (who was associated with the APA in the past), 'measured' self-esteem with a Likert scale drawn from answers to a set of 5 questions given prison inmates. 

Is this the paper you and Anirudh describe? --   Relation of Threatened Egoism to Violence and Aggression: the Dark Side of Self-Esteeem

[SteveWolfer]

34 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Is this the paper you and Anirudh describe?

I don't know for sure about Anirudh, but that is the paper I had in mind.   I didn't see the section where he went into detail on his measurement method... maybe I got that from another source.  But it makes me as angry today as when I first read it.

Here are some tidbits I picked out of it:

Quote

The focus on egotism (i.e., favorable self-appraisals) as one cause of violent aggression runs contrary to an entrenched body of wisdom that has long pointed to low self-esteem as the root of violence and other antisocial behavior.

Note that "egotism" is equated with "favorable self-appraisals" and then they are both throw in with self-esteem.  How sloppy can you get?

Quote

Indeed, if high self-esteem is a cause of violence, then the implications may go beyond the direct concern with interpersonal harm.

As the paper unfolds, he wants to make high self-esteem a root cause for domestic violence, wars, terrorism, and crime.

Quote

...we propose that highly favorable self-appraisals are the ones most likely to lead to violence.

To him "favorable self-appraisals" are synonymous with high self-esteem.  If some dodo answers a researchers questions about how does he view himself in a way that indicates he views himself favorably there is no question asked about whether or not the guy is stupid and mistaken, delusional, or deceptive - and that is bad enough.  But to not question whether the population being examined might have a bias for false statements is just bad research.  And worst of all, to mistake these answers as measures of self-esteem just shows that the very subject of the paper isn't understood.

Quote

Kernis, Grannemann, et al. (1989) found that the highest levels of self-reported angry and hostile responding were associated with participants who had high but unstable self-esteem scores.

What I know about high-self esteem is that it contributes to mental/emotional stability and it isn't, in itself unstable - there is a persistence in one's level of self-esteem.  It changes slowly, when it changes.   Again, it all goes back to really bad research design that is built around ignorance of the subject which makes possible a totally faulty measurement.

Quote

... psychopaths' sense of superiority is accompanied by a tendency to regard other people as simply objects to be exploited. Thus, psychopaths seem to fit the view of highly favorable opinions of self as a source of violence.

Most psychologist wouldn't use the term "psychopath" in a clinical paper or research paper.  It has too shallow of a meaning and is more a term in use among laypeople.  Sociopath is the term associated with a clinical diagnosis of someone prone to violence.  And it has long been held that a sociopath's failure to empathize with others as humans is either a deep-rooted and early acquired defense or the product of some kind of conceptual function that might even have genetic roots (this is the least popular view).  Again, we see the completely muddled conflation of self-reported highly favorable opinions of self with self-esteem and in this case completely mixed up with the very diagnostic nature of sociopathy.  Add to that, the correlation of violence that is often part of sociopath behavior with the favorable self-opinions as if the correlation were causation.

 

Quote

What, then, is the self-esteem level of people who consume alcohol? Evidence indicates that alcohol raises the favorability of self-appraisals. Intoxicated people rate themselves more favorably than they would otherwise .... Apparently, then, alcohol generally helps create a state of high self-esteem.

Wow!  If Branden had only known!  Baumeister reveals that the path to high self-esteem only requires getting plastered.

Quote

Is there any way to salvage the view that low self-esteem contributes to violence? And do narcissistic, inflated, arrogant self-appraisals really constitute high self-esteem? To be sure, definitions of self-esteem may vary. We have used the term in a broad and inclusive sense to encompass all favorable self-appraisals, including confidence and self-respect as well as arrogance and narcissism.

So, all you have to do to come up with his conclusion is to ignore any definition of high self-esteem that isn't subjective, inflated, arrogant, narcissistic, superficial, or left undefined (like confidence or self-respect).
 

[Brant Gaede]

3 hours ago, SteveWolfer said:

I completely and totally disagree with you.  What you are saying reminds me of when Obama was pushing ObamaCare and accused doctors of cutting people's feet off to make a buck.  Your view is very warped and certainly doesn't represent the reality of psychiatry.

Regardless, I have no objection to psychiatric interventions per se.

--Brant

just to be clear on that point

you "completely and totally disagree" with one sentence I wrote in a nine-sentenced paragraph which doesn't refute those eight others or by me your comment