People don't like venturing into territory where they aren't 100% confident in what they are doing. Especially when it comes to tasks that haven't been programmed into muscle memory.
Solution? Shut down all internet search engines for a year. When people aren't spoon-fed answers to every question maybe they'll start using critical thought as their default mode of operation.
Wasn't there a time not too long ago when tribes of people would go around raping, pillaging, and slaughtering others just for the hell of it? Because it was fun for them? If our world had respawn, I think life would turn into a sort of valhalla-ish existence for a not small percentage of people, and I bet many would learn about a part of themselves they did not know existed, or had supressed.
Maybe rampage shooters are just people born in to the wrong time period, where in another they would fit in perfectly. The line isn't fine, but they aren't as different as we make them out to be.
I've found that the best way to be more empathetic is to become a calmer more patient person. Putting myself in someones frame of mind is like taking a mental deep breath after every time they say or do something. I have to let the loop of consciousness run a few more times before allowing my thoughts to become opinions and express them in a response.
I recommend meditation. Empathy is consciousness of self and of others, consciousness is pre-frontal cortex executive function. Meditation is the expansion of self-awareness. When I was younger, sometimes after getting angry, like reeaally angry, seconds after calming down I would think "Shit, there was no reason to get that mad". It's a complete loss of self-control, executive function. The same thing happens after saying something stupid(hurtful) and then realizing it was hurtful(not empathy), if I have the ability to realize I shouldn't have said it, that means if I had just mentally waited a second or two and reassessed the thought I could have prevented myself from saying it. Meditation helps give me this time, stay calm, and assess situations(not only social) before acting. I think if scientists(if they haven't already) looked at the brains of empathetic people and stay calm in chaotic situations they would find the front of their brain buzzing with activity.
2) How to build a networked multiplayer game with above technologies. Possibly using impact.js or other game library.
3) How to draw sprites, character concepts, backgrounds for 2d Game.
I've always wanted to become a respectable artist, but the ability to draw was never enough of a motivator to make me really dedicate myself. Building a small mmo that others can enjoy and play together lets me become a better programmer, as well as gives me a reason to draw and exercise my creative side that I can really get behind.
Is "wanting to kill people" really so far from the norm as to have a gene associated with it? What would the gene be responsible for, "Propensity to give a fuck about other living beings"? Because in my mind, the line between being "sane" and killing everyone in sight is pretty fine.
One's logic could go like this, "Man, everything sucks, and those kids down at the preschool are always so damn happy. Fuck Them. If I'm not happy no ones gets to be happy. Lock and load assholes." Suddenly you've got another tragedy. I would imagine people that are suicidal sometimes feel like this. Maybe it depends on how introverted or extroverted they are. The introverts disappear quietly in the dead of night, and the extroverts start mowing down pedestrians in the town square and then blow their brains out standing on the Mayor's statue.
If a gene could be isolated for "suicidal tendencies" and also for intro/extro we might be able to reduce future events like this. But just because someone is a suicidal extrovert that hates everyone it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to start killing people. Maybe the ones that don't are just pussies and the gene for "guts" or "courage" would also have to be isolated?
I don't know I'm just rambling. I ask myself why I don't kill my neighbors. Is it because I'm "sane"? Well I guess so, if "liking others" and not wanting them to be sad is a characteristic of sane people. But I firmly believe that there's a tiny slice of murderer in all sane people, and I like to think of people like Adam Lanza as having just a bigger slice, because putting them in a different category of "mentally ill" sort of feels like I'm denying a part of my own nature.
He might be thinking of Ray Charles's probability of killing a Jew over any number of lifetimes. If the Ray Charles life simulation is run enough times it will eventually contain an event where he kills a Jew if the chance is non-zero. So statistically he has killed more Jews than happy marriages have ended in divorce.
Solution? Shut down all internet search engines for a year. When people aren't spoon-fed answers to every question maybe they'll start using critical thought as their default mode of operation.