Pro-social sociopath? (part 2)

So here's what people had to say regarding the legitimate foundations for the negative stigma against sociopaths (hit me up again if you feel like I've missed yours):

• The issue is that you willingly and knowingly manipulate people to meet your own selfish desires and needs, with little regard for the well-being of your targets. 

Ok yes, this is admittedly ugly behavior and I try to not do this extensively/non-consensually/harmfully anymore for various reasons, not least of which is that it is toxic to relationships and I've started to acknowledge that in dehumanizing others, I devalue my own self  However, I'm not sure the "knowing" manipulation of the sociopath (how conscious and intentional does it have to be?) is much worse than the unknowing selfish manipulation that is commonplace in all humanity. No one behaves selflessly all of the time. Every empath chooses to intentionally hurt or manipulate another at some point in their lives (and sometimes regularly). They suffer the consequences (eventually) and so do sociopaths (even though, admittedly, sociopaths probably won't be as broken up about rocky relationship troubles as an empath would).

• You may make people feel better about themselves, and they may love to have your attention and interest, but you are deceiving them, planting the seeds of false hope that the average person would accept them for who they are. Social dictums are as good as law, and you encourage people to break them by accepting what should be unacceptable. You're not doing them any favors. Failure to adhere to social norms has very real consequences, and it is in every individual's best interests to conform in order to be happy and comfortable in life.

This is crazy. So the husband who tells his wife, "you're the most beautiful woman in the world" when really most people would consider her to have average looks is setting her up for a lifetime of false hope and accompanying failure?

• But to lie at the person encouraging her handicap it is not pro-social; you are not doing that person a favor at all.

Hilarious, I'd love to see someone tell an overweight person that they have a handicap ("fatness") to their face. There is nothing inherently (and particularly not morally or even socially) wrong with carrying a little extra weight and wearing clothing that most would consider unflattering. Despite that being true, many normal people would make the girl's appearance their own business somehow, whereas the sociopath would think (rightly) that it is no concern of his. So the sociopath is not being a fraud or perpetuating a scam by pretending to not care when really he is bothered by the girl's weight -- he sincerely does not care. And is it devious to be nice to someone because you know they'll be nice in return? No, at least according to the Sesame Street-esque lessons on good manners I remember from my childhood.

• The fact that the pure selfishness of the sociopath might have sometimes accidentally benefits for others, don’t make them any kinder, because their intentions are not kind.

Pro-social does not necessarily mean kind and vice versa. Is it kind to share child sex slaves with your friends? Maybe. Is it pro-social? Probably not. Is it kind to open a sandwich shop across the street from an existing restaurant? Probably not. Is it pro-social? Yes, society benefits from the competition and increased variety of eating options.

• Sociopaths behave as the worse type of xenophobes. They do a selection according on how exploitable somebody can be for them, and in this selection there are parameters like class, income, origins, etc.

No, this makes sociopaths the ultimate meritocrats, where people are judged on actual value (to the sociopath, of course, but of course there is no objective value for anything in this world, least of all for people).

• Where things become ethically problematic in my mind is if that positive interaction opens a door to exploitation of the tube top girl.

What would exploitation look like in this scenario? If there is something to exploit in propping up the girl's self-esteem, it's because normal people have chosen (irrationally) to tear it down in the first place. It's like saying that someone who gives a member of a disenfranchised class of persons a job is exploiting them by benefiting from their work when that disenfranchised person could probably have gotten a better job somewhere else (or even a better career) if they were not disenfranchised. The problem here is not the sociopath being normal to the fat girl, but everyone else treating her as less than her true value. (This is similar to the way that value stock traders "exploit" the systematic underpricing of certain stocks by buying low and selling high, which is also pro-social because it helps the market reflect the true value of stocks.)

• Empathy is the essential ingredient needed for the healthy emotional growth of a child.

Maybe, but this is far from certain and not at all proved. I think there's a big difference from a wire monkey and an actual human being who just happens to not feel empathy.

That's all I saw for reasons how or why the stigma/stereotype for sociopaths is founded. If you missed this opportunity or I missed yours, just email. Otherwise, it seems like the there are not as many legitimate reasons to hate sociopaths as previously thought?