[SE] "Your child is a sociopath? Fear not, we will take care of this!"

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

• A complex Code of Honour (think expanded Code of Harry, but government-mandated and subordinated), a Sense of Duty, or a Fanaticism, is roughly 15 points. That's 15+ successes in Regular Contests.
• A brainwasher's workhours are 16/day, for at least a month per student (30 rolls, the minimum to be sure - maybe more). That seems like a high-stress job - not likely to be less than Comfortable, since it also has serious prerequisites.
• A 5-year old has roughly IQ/Will 7 and a 10-y.o. has roughly IQ/Will 9. This will budge the odds in favour of the brainwasher somewhat. However, it is not clear if brainwashing a sociopath to follow a set of rules counts as +3 to Will for 'actively opposed focus'.
• I suspect that modifiers can be stacked in favour of the brainwasher, such as:
  • -2 Will from drugs.
  • +1 skill from Psychology (Applied) and/or Friend Computer's advice..
  • Up to +5 from Extra Time, but this is unlikely to be a good strategy.
• It is unclear if it is possible to brainwash more than one person at a time by a single brainwasher without suffering huge penalties to skill.

If you want to use the GURPS mechanics, then when a brainwasher gets to skill 16 they will want to take the -9 for speed to get the maximum effect. This is because the brainwashing rate is on average (Targets chance of failure)*(your chance of success)*(number of attempts per day). At a skill of 7 that comes to 1.6 points a day*failure-chance.
Also a GURPS character could reach this too, base-skill 12. Good equipment +1, advice/psychology, effective+2 for the perk that lets you do things quicker. With that -2 will drug you should be able to get a point a day.

You could also reduce it to say... an 8-hour a day job and get half a point a day. Either way that is 12 people "trained" a year, or 24, which seems a significant improvement.
Also the crit fail rate goes up a lot and the effective skill goes down a lot for removal. So their may end up being a few flaws, but if you want mass-production this is much more efficient. Although I suspect in some cases you'll want to avoid easy reversion and critical failures.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

Neither "sociopath" nor "psychopath" are current clinical terms, though they are both commonly used loosely to refer to people with Antisocial Personality Disorder (psyschopath used to be a clinical term for a diagnosis which was replaced with this one.)

This is completely inaccurate. While ADS is in the DSM-IV, sociopath and psychopath are used clinically, particularly in the field of forensic psychology. Neither term is used loosely by professionals, although there is plenty of debate how precisely they are used. Essentially, sociopathy refers to the internal processes that transform interactions between the person and their environment into durable criminal, dysfunctional traits.

Psychopaths are a tiny subgroup within ASD, who almost entirely lack a conscience to appeal to. In brain research, they've been found to lack a normal brain response to suffering or shame, although they experience both, and hence do not effectively take consequences into account when planning future actions. Not all psychopaths are violent, but the distinction is one of style more than moral capability. Because of their lack of anxiety or moral apprehension, psychopaths are sometimes able to function parasitically off society in a somewhat productive fashion, at least for a time. Some recent literature on the subject is the fascinating book "Snakes in Suits," about the disproportionate permeation of psychopaths into the highly competitive world of corporate executives. A psychopath doesn't rationalize killing thousands of people to make a few extra bucks; they don't even worry about it in the first place.

As always, Wikipedia is not a bad place to start to get some basic info.

Some D&D adventurers would probably qualify as sociopaths in many respects. However, slaughtering people outside your culture for gain isn't sociopathy, per se. Not only does that not represent a psychological condition, for many times and places throughout history, it has been regarded as the proper vocation of the warrior class.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

Psychopaths would make terrible super-soldiers, as they lack impulse control, and lacking any sense of loyalty to the mission, would be easily corruptible. Since psychopaths lack a normal response to punishment, they would be a nightmare to train, and would be essentially impossible to impose discipline on.

Which is the whole reason why I'm looking at the idea of the Justicariate, instead of putting them into prisons/asylums or letting them ream, push them into this 'personality optimization' program I'm describing. Now, Fanaticism would likely be a wrong choice, but instilling a Sense of Duty, or a Code of Honour that mimics it, seems to be exactly the solution. On the plus side, you know these people will be unlikely to question having to do nasty stuff out of conscience or equivalent.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Lamech

If you want to use the GURPS mechanics, then when a brainwasher gets to skill 16 they will want to take the -9 for speed to get the maximum effect. This is because the brainwashing rate is on average (Targets chance of failure)*(your chance of success)*(number of attempts per day). At a skill of 7 that comes to 1.6 points a day*failure-chance.
Also a GURPS character could reach this too, base-skill 12. Good equipment +1, advice/psychology, effective+2 for the perk that lets you do things quicker. With that -2 will drug you should be able to get a point a day.

Problem #1 is that it is unclear whether it is rules-legal to make more than one attempt per day, even with haste penalties - perhaps it isn't.
Problem #2, it is unclear how well does the brainwasher (or analyst(s)) know the degree of success in the process.
OTOH, the idea that most brainwashers would benefit much from the Efficient (-2) perk is very true - it allows either reducing the workday, reducing the stress level by allowing some breaks (up to 20% of those 16 hours, which is more than three hourse!), or something like that.

Originally Posted by Lamech

You could also reduce it to say... an 8-hour a day job and get half a point a day. Either way that is 12 people "trained" a year, or 24, which seems a significant improvement.

Again, I'm not sure that would be rules-legal.

Originally Posted by Lamech

Also the crit fail rate goes up a lot and the effective skill goes down a lot for removal. So their may end up being a few flaws, but if you want mass-production this is much more efficient. Although I suspect in some cases you'll want to avoid easy reversion and critical failures.

Yeah, it's big question just how nasty the crits are (both successes and failures). 1/216 doesn't seem like much, but if you need 30 rolls per subject, easily 180 rolls per year per brainwasher, this accumulates fast. OTOH, with high skill there's a much larger amount of critical successes . . .

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Which is the whole reason why I'm looking at the idea of the Justicariate, instead of putting them into prisons/asylums or letting them ream, push them into this 'personality optimization' program I'm describing. Now, Fanaticism would likely be a wrong choice, but instilling a Sense of Duty, or a Code of Honour that mimics it, seems to be exactly the solution. On the plus side, you know these people will be unlikely to question having to do nasty stuff out of conscience or equivalent.

If you did manage to instill Fanaticism into sociopaths or psychopaths, I'd be freeking terrified of the results. Even if I was the supposed beneficiary of the Fanaticism - these are a group of people who are specifically very bad at appreciating that other people might define "benefit" differently than they do.

You run into this problem in Vampire: the Masquerade with a full Blood Bond, especially of a vampire more powerful than you are; some vampires are really dangerously alien in their mindset (not even getting into Malkavians here - I'm talking all the variant Paths never mind the huge piles of Flaws some players seem to treasure) and you can end up with a blood-bonded vampire thinking the best way to fanatically "protect" you is to stake you and stuff you in a fortified safe sunk into a concrete slab in the bottom of an armored vault, while they stand watch outside of it "forever".

It's a devils bargain - one side thinks they're defining terms one way, and the other side is interpreting them completely differently while nodding along.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If you did manage to instill Fanaticism into sociopaths or psychopaths, I'd be freeking terrified of the results. Even if I was the supposed beneficiary of the Fanaticism - these are a group of people who are specifically very bad at appreciating that other people might define "benefit" differently than they do.

Oh, so you perfectly visualize why Fanaticism is the wrong solution, and why I think a CoH-like, Dexter-inspired construct would be the best.

Originally Posted by Bruno

You run into this problem in Vampire: the Masquerade with a full Blood Bond, especially of a vampire more powerful than you are; some vampires are really dangerously alien in their mindset (not even getting into Malkavians here - I'm talking all the variant Paths never mind the huge piles of Flaws some players seem to treasure) and you can end up with a blood-bonded vampire thinking the best way to fanatically "protect" you is to stake you and stuff you in a fortified safe sunk into a concrete slab in the bottom of an armored vault, while they stand watch outside of it "forever".

It's a devils bargain - one side thinks they're defining terms one way, and the other side is interpreting them completely differently while nodding along.

It's also a reason why these agents would never be put into a 'people-friendly' positions. Seek-and-Destroy specops yes, highly-specialized technicians and scientists who barely ever see other people face to face yes, interrogators for enemy spies maybe, but obviously not a psy-counsellor. :)

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If you did manage to instill Fanaticism into sociopaths or psychopaths, I'd be freeking terrified of the results.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It's also a reason why these agents would never be put into a 'people-friendly' positions.

Maybe not. You described this society as a dystopia, after all.

Maybe they're so attached to their ideology that believe their indoctrination techniques to be flawless, and take no special precautions to protect society at large from the highly-trained sociopathic super-soldiers they've created.

Maybe occassionally the brainwashing doesn't take properly and the end result is a government trained serial killer. The people in charge would just cover this up for the good of society...

Just throwing out some ideas.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Maybe not. You described this society as a dystopia, after all.

No I'm not, it's got good parts and bad parts. Crime and poverty are nearly nonexistent, the gap between the rich and everyone else is smaller, quality of life is quite good, people are guaranteed an education, and a job they deserve, corruption is unheard of, and bigotry is rooted out. However, while nobody cares about stuff you do that doesn't harm anyone, there's a sharp line whenever you try to do something harmful: smoking is banned, unless you rent a sealed room with air filtering, immigrants are given strict prerequisites for gaining citizenship (notably, Native/Native language fluency and a match to a certain range of psychological profiles), taxes are in effect rather high and there's no private entrepreneurship to speak of, surveillance is rather high (though thankfully matched with an equal amount of sousveillance).
It was a dystopia several decades before.

Originally Posted by aesir23

Maybe they're so attached to their ideology that believe their indoctrination techniques to be flawless, and take no special precautions to protect society at large from the highly-trained sociopathic super-soldiers they've created.

I'm still deciding how the society treats them once they're adult and working. I'm inclined to see them as a totally different caste - legally not belonging to the same group as normal humans, but rather treated as a totally different (yet mostly convergent) form of sapient creatures. This might be getting Psi Corps vibes, but I'm mostly aiming at a group that doesn't need to be constantly bullied from the top down to keep acting civil. Rather, the creepiness factor should be about what they might do to others, but never have (for as long as the program exists).

The program is also highly linked to the concept of, but is more radical than, Self-Awareness 2.0 (which I'm not sure whether I gave any details on).

Originally Posted by aesir23

Maybe occassionally the brainwashing doesn't take properly and the end result is a government trained serial killer. The people in charge would just cover this up for the good of society...

I'm certainly planning an NPC who, through a series of coincidences and personal traits, managed to 'slip through' the program (essentially deemed dead in a big accident). But not of the serial killer sort, despite being easily mistaken for one by an empath. IMO the suspense and uncertainty would be more interesting than something that banal.

[Lamech]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Problem #1 is that it is unclear whether it is rules-legal to make more than one attempt per day, even with haste penalties - perhaps it isn't.

Well then you simply do a lot more people per day. The process will require stashing up the subject for half a year. It still averages the same number of people per year.

Problem #2, it is unclear how well does the brainwasher (or analyst(s)) know the degree of success in the process.

This is a problem with normal brainwashing too. I'm not sure which ends up having more variablility though. (Mine I think, but I didn't actually do any stats calc at that level.) A target with a will score even a point higher will take a big chunk more time. Two points higher and its a LOT more time.

[pawsplay]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Which is the whole reason why I'm looking at the idea of the Justicariate, instead of putting them into prisons/asylums or letting them ream, push them into this 'personality optimization' program I'm describing. Now, Fanaticism would likely be a wrong choice, but instilling a Sense of Duty, or a Code of Honour that mimics it, seems to be exactly the solution. On the plus side, you know these people will be unlikely to question having to do nasty stuff out of conscience or equivalent.

I just don't see how that would. Even the most deeply trained Sense of Duty of CoH due to brainwashing is going to be superficial. It's going to be super-superficial in the case of sociopathic types, who already have plastic self-concepts and tend to tell people what they think they want to hear. Even if you "instilled" such a code, most would impulsively disobey it, particularly in the case of the psychopaths. A well-indoctrinated sociopath will give you well-indoctrinated rationalizations as to why their misbehavior is excused, why they are justified, why everyone else is out to get them, etc.