Always understood the only meaningful distinction between the two, is psychopaths are born and sociopaths are raised. There's also a bit of argument within the mental health field over the discontinuation of the use of the terms. because while criminality is included in the criteria for ASPD, it isn't a requirement; so one could argue that while all psychopaths and sociopaths have ASPD, not everyone with ASPD is a psychopath or sociopath, and the element of criminality is the defining difference.
In Norwegian, I have always heard that the two terms are completely synonymous, reflected also by the fact that the Norwegian wiki redirects the terms to one and the same page.
If criminality is the defining difference, would that then mean that the difference between the conditions is determined by the laws of a country? :0
Either way, mostly pointing out the very unexplored understanding of a definition, that most people have. I dunno how to explain it. Most people seem to assume all concepts exist with a word attached from forever.
Something as trivial as a scientist naming a dinosaur. My friend thought of it as if there was some high, mighty, un-humorous authority, granting names to fossils from even before their discovery, not thinking of it in detail, rather never having given it any thought at all, and when pressured to, finding it very difficult to imagine.
For example - as an individual, according to ICZN rules and biological tradition, I am completely free to "lump" Albertosaurus into Gorgosaurus, and say they are the same.
My friend was almost offended by this, how can I possibly do that??? The _SCIENTISTS_ have found out that the dinosaurs were called so and so, I guess the scientists found the names inscripted in the fossil, and who am I to argue?
I then tried to explain that - this is how it works:
Species names represent, well, the species. If I am to fuck around w species names, I need to take measurements, careful study of the fossil, and create a list of my arguments - taking the features allready listed to define the species, and comparing the features to another species, making my argument. If my argument holds, and everyone's convinced, then the new species name will become the norm.
Genus names are much easyer, since they are not bound as hard to evidence. "Splitting" and "Lumping" is so common, almost every published dinosaur book has a few re-definitions of dinosaurs here and there, Tarbosaurus bataar is often accepted to be Tyrannosaurus bataar, since Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are close to identical, but named differently for sentimental and national-pride reasons (Tarbosaurus was found in Asia, mainly China, Mongolia and USSR, in the Cold War, so, something as lame as this contributed to this almost-identical-to-Tyrannosaurus recieving a distinct name).
Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus are also close to identical, only details separating them. It is quite clear they are two different species: libratus and sarcophabus. But it is up to each individual reader to accept or not that they are two different genera - so, it is completely free and open for me to synonymize them. Then, _according to the rules_ the oldest name will have priority, rendering them both to: Gorgosaurus libratus, and Gorgosaurus sarcophagus.
My friend disagreed. And added that according to the docu, they were all called "rex"
This all becomes even more boggled, since my friend is assuming that I am doing what HE is doing: just musing, just contemplating, just guessing what is more logical. "It's not logical to just change dinosaur names at will!"
And all he has to do is excamine the topic. And there it is. Yes. You can change dinosaur names at will - to a limit. You cannot re-define species as you please, but you can do almost anything you want with genus-names (just don't expect a lot of acceptance of your ideas)
One of the leading paleontologist "celebs" recently published a book, where he did a bunch of hardcore lumping, effectively "eliminating" a whole range of peoples "favorite dinosaurs"
He did not eliminate their species, so, in reality, he did nothing to them, he considers every single species as valid as ever. He just considered them spread out over a redundant ammount of genera, and similar enough to all be stashed under a single genus (like many modern mammals and birds are)
His publication was met with a lot of emotion. There were no practical arguments against his decision, because, to be frank, there were no good reason to keep all these similar genera as separate. People were just pissed off he went out of his way to remove a bunch of cool names. And of course, his changes are far from permanent. Everyone else just have to ignore what he did.
A bit of a rant here
tltr - the conflict between guessing how a methodology works, and actually having checked, gives rise to further confusion.
