I completely agree with Phil Osborne that our behavior
should be impeccably honest regardless of
whether we believe in the existence of other
conscious beings who are being impacted
by our behavior or not.
As for sociopaths, I regard them
as having fallen victims to their
fears of their being victimized
should they trust the honesty
of others. In their own defense,
they point out to instances
in which they indeed have suffered
after trusting others. They probably
see a causal connection between their
trust and their suffering. Trying to
escape from their own unacknowledged
fears, they seek relief by making others fearful.
The irony is that by doing so,
they unnecessarily perpetuate their
own suffering and that of others.
It thus takes quite a bit of courage
to trust others in spite of the
apparent existence of evidence
pointing to a causal connection
between trust and suffering,
and the arguments presented by
Ayn Rand, Richard Dawkins, and others
in defense of selfish behavior.
I like to compare sociopaths to black holes.
In the same way that today's leading cosmologists
theorize that black holes will eventually disintegrate
after a very long time, sociopaths will eventually join
the rest of humanity -- at the Omega Point???