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Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Fake Humans

[In dealing with a psychopath] we are not dealing with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly. This smoothly operating psychic apparatus not only reproduces consistent specimens of good human reasoning but also appropriates simulations of normal human emotions in response to nearly all the varied stimuli of life. So perfect is this reproduction of a whole and normal man that no one who examines him can point out in scientific or objective terms why he is not real. And yet one knows or feels he knows that reality, in the sense of full, healthy experiencing of life, is not here.

Dr. Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, 1941

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