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Worst Roommate Ever

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Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#21

Post by nwatson »

danielvf wrote: post #12

The author of ZeroMQ wrote a book on recognizing people like this, and more importantly how to get yourself out of prison they’ve put you in. The action plans have helped me. The lucky ones in the NYmag article here did many of the things he recommends. Free PDF here, look for the hard to find “read” button. https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details

Thanks for the pointer to the book, quite interesting so far.

The author talks of psychopathy as an "adaptation" and not a "brokenness" in an individual ... but the adaptation so far mentioned is only in the sense of "the relatively small number of psychopaths is adapted to prey on other humans". I suppose that having too many psychopaths would render human trust very frail and would make a society prone to failure (and so be a negative pressure) -- so psychopathy can only occur within limits to be successful.

I wonder though whether there's another use for psychopaths: when a society or humanity at large faces a "bottleneck event" where extinction is very possible, the psychopaths "rise to the occasion" and do all the nasty, non-empathetic, distasteful things that a society needs to survive in those weird situations.

If so, then, ... psychopaths are harmful to individuals and society, until they aren't.

EDIT: actually, there's the brilliant Marlon Brando speech in Apocalypse Now (https://simonamooon.deviantart.com/journal/Apocalypse-Now-Ho...), where he describes bastards with empathy, people who love their families yet are able to perform the unthinkable atrocities [on their family] to win. So these folks are the opposite of psychopaths -- they do terrible things when necessary and doubtless feel the anguish of it.

EDIT: in other words, psychopaths are society's ultimate catastrophic re-insurance, the last resort.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#22

Post by kelukelugames »

mtgex wrote: post #6
0x7f800000 wrote: post #5

One of the most important tools we have for social encounters like interviewing a stranger as a potential new roommate is our "gut" reaction, which is our hard-won evolutionary instincts warning us of potential danger -- warning that something is off about the person or their situation. Trust your gut.

I completely disagree. I think our "gut" is infinitely biased. No one is immune. If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you are wrong. And, if you read the article, everyone's gut reaction was that this man was an unassuming, down to earth, great guy, and they got along with him very well at first. The article makes clear that their gut reaction failed them.

I'm just going to post this quote about going with your gut from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"But one example of the unconscious bias that still exists was a Title VII suit brought in the late 70s, and the plaintiffs were women who had not succeeded in getting middle management jobs at AT&T. They did very, very well on all the standard criteria, but they flunked disproportionately at the last stage, and what was that last stage? It was what was called a “total person test.” The “total person test” was an executive interviewing the candidate for promotion. And why were women dropping out disproportionately? It was because of a certain discomfort that the executive had in dealing with someone who is different. If he’s interviewing a man, well, he sort of knows this person is just like me and he’s comfortable. But if it’s a woman, or a member of a minority group, he feels uncomfortable. This person is a stranger to him and that shows up in how he rates the candidate."

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#23

Post by simen »

It's crazy how people who were terrorized by this guy blame themselves for the fact that he turned out to be a murderer, and couldn't take the punishment. Must have been a master at gaslighting.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#24

Post by PascLeRasc »

I just lived for my last semester of undergrad with two people like this who really got on each others' nerves (all three of us just needed a semester of housing to finish school). They'd both brought their own toasters and just wanted theirs out and the others in a cabinet. I think they had less than 5 conversations in person, instead putting all their incredibly minor complaints in a group text so I'd have to see it. The bathroom just had two towel hangers and they both wanted to hang two towels and would put the other's on the floor even if it was just wet. One would go away for the weekend and try to calculate that they should pay 5% less in utilities for the month because of that. They'd buy something like paper towels and announce that we each owed them $1.50 for that. We had a mail slot and they'd pick up their mail off the floor when they got home and then step on everyone else's.

My only solace is that these people must be incredibly unhappy all the time.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#26

Post by monksy »

danielvf wrote: post #12

The author of ZeroMQ wrote a book on recognizing people like this, and more importantly how to get yourself out of prison they’ve put you in. The action plans have helped me. The lucky ones in the NYmag article here did many of the things he recommends. Free PDF here, look for the hard to find “read” button. https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details

I'm going to have to take a look at that book.

One of the books that I liked was: In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People and Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#27

Post by castle-bravo »

nwatson wrote: post #21
danielvf wrote: post #12

The author of ZeroMQ wrote a book on recognizing people like this, and more importantly how to get yourself out of prison they’ve put you in. The action plans have helped me. The lucky ones in the NYmag article here did many of the things he recommends. Free PDF here, look for the hard to find “read” button. https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details

Thanks for the pointer to the book, quite interesting so far. The author talks of psychopathy as an "adaptation" and not a "brokenness" in an individual ... but the adaptation so far mentioned is only in the sense of "the relatively small number of psychopaths is adapted to prey on other humans". I suppose that having too many psychopaths would render human trust very frail and would make a society prone to failure (…

I am not qualified to speak authoritatively on this matter, but here's how I see it: Psychopaths are mutant parasites. They lack certain abilities that enable them to integrate well into human groups and would not survive well in the paleolithic. With increasing population densities in the neolithic and in the modern age, it became possible for psychopaths to survive and pass on their genes. I think that psychopaths are still rare for a few reasons: the mutation may be recessive, or high population density is too recent for the mutation to have spread widely, or psychopaths may be more likely to die by violence, or they may invest too few resources in their children. In any case, I think increasing numbers of psychopaths would pose a long-term existental threat to human civilization. As far as productive uses for psychopaths go (if we can identify them before maturity), I have no suggestions; it is not wise to put guns into the hands of heartless people who would turn them on us if they perceived any advantage in doing so; one need only look at the example of Mexican cartels founded by special forces to see this.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#28

Post by mannykannot »

mtgex wrote: post #6
0x7f800000 wrote: post #5

One of the most important tools we have for social encounters like interviewing a stranger as a potential new roommate is our "gut" reaction, which is our hard-won evolutionary instincts warning us of potential danger -- warning that something is off about the person or their situation. Trust your gut.

I completely disagree. I think our "gut" is infinitely biased. No one is immune. If you believe you do not have racial, ethnic, and gender biases you are wrong. And, if you read the article, everyone's gut reaction was that this man was an unassuming, down to earth, great guy, and they got along with him very well at first. The article makes clear that their gut reaction failed them.

I agree with your second paragraph, but I suspect that a person holding your views is more easily persuaded that they are being unreasonable when things start to go wrong. One should be much more suspicious of one's gut instincts when one is in a position of power than when one might be a victim.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#30

Post by dredmorbius »

danielvf wrote: post #12

The author of ZeroMQ wrote a book on recognizing people like this, and more importantly how to get yourself out of prison they’ve put you in. The action plans have helped me. The lucky ones in the NYmag article here did many of the things he recommends. Free PDF here, look for the hard to find “read” button. https://www.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/details

"The author of ZeroMQ" was Peter Hintjens. I only came to know of him after his terminal diagnosis. An impressive man.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12650682

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