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Worst Roommate Ever

nymag.com

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Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#41

Post by seizethecheese »

throwaway_4321 wrote: post #31
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 sure this will be unpopular, but: I once had a psychopath like this turn up in my life. Like a lot of these stories, it escalated slowly, one creepy / inappropriate thing at a time. There really is a frog in hot water effect in play here. If you haven't experienced it, it might be hard to understand why someone let themselves be in that situation at all. What I don't understand, however, is why people don't deal…

I've known people to label others as psychopaths in order to relieve guilt over their own behavior...

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#42

Post by busterarm »

dredmorbius wrote: post #30
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

I miss him, his writing and his perspective severely.

He was like the little voice of encouragement telling me that I was on the right track.

I hadn't thought of him in a little while and this hit me kind of hard. :(

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#43

Post by crazythrowaway »

siddharthdeswal wrote: post #36
throwaway_4321 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this will be unpopular, but: I once had a psychopath like this turn up in my life. Like a lot of these stories, it escalated slowly, one creepy / inappropriate thing at a time. There really is a frog in hot water effect in play here. If you haven't experienced it, it might be hard to understand why someone let themselves be in that situation at all. What I don't understand, however, is why people don't deal…

Dude you seem to have a problem. Beating folks into one inch of their life looks to me a significant overreaction. I understand your frustration, I've wanted to behave similarly many times in life, but actually doing it is a different thing altogether.

> Dude you seem to have a problem. Beating folks into one inch of their life looks to me a significant overreaction.

Without further articulation on the un-crossable line, this is by no means true. My brother is a bonafide, diagnosed psychopath, so I have much more experience than most in the subject. Sometimes such things are necessary.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#44

Post by 3131s »

bvod wrote: post #18

This article does not belong on HN.

Actually it does revolve around a guy who essentially hacked the laws around tenancy through extreme cleverness, and social engineered his way through a very peculiar life. This story is really wild and it looks like you and many others didn't actually read it before commenting. It's one of the best longform pieces that I've read in a while.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#45

Post by lr4444lr »

throwaway_4321 wrote: post #31
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 sure this will be unpopular, but: I once had a psychopath like this turn up in my life. Like a lot of these stories, it escalated slowly, one creepy / inappropriate thing at a time. There really is a frog in hot water effect in play here. If you haven't experienced it, it might be hard to understand why someone let themselves be in that situation at all. What I don't understand, however, is why people don't deal…

How did you feel viscerally...

... in the moment when you were exacting your vengeance ... when you left the hospital the first time? ... when you were going back to visit ... when you left the second time?

Your instinct resonates with me. I am intensely interested in how you processed it.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#46

Post by sterlind »

castle-bravo wrote: post #27
nwatson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Excellent, open access genome-wide association study here: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

No SNP was significant, nor any single gene. MAO-A (the "warrior gene") is ruled out. However, many genes showed strong association with Anti-Social Personality Disorder, with multiple alleles working together.

My read is that these behavior patterns emerge in certain brain phenotypes, combinations of which were advantageous in antiquity. But much of that genetic information was stored as allele distribution, and we've lost a lot of that data with generations of assortative mating.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#47

Post by Johnny555 »

kstrauser wrote: post #34
throwaway_4321 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure this will be unpopular, but: I once had a psychopath like this turn up in my life. Like a lot of these stories, it escalated slowly, one creepy / inappropriate thing at a time. There really is a frog in hot water effect in play here. If you haven't experienced it, it might be hard to understand why someone let themselves be in that situation at all. What I don't understand, however, is why people don't deal…

Sadly, that's all some people seem capable of reacting to. Those who say that violence never solves problems have never had to live around a sociopath.

But unless you actually kill them, by beating them up, don't you just run the risk of the other person escalating the violence and ambushing you later?

You've already established that he's a psychopath and doesn't live by the rules of most normal people, so if you push him down, maybe tomorrow he'll stab you with a knife, run you down with his car, or just shoot you.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#48

Post by zxcmx »

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 (…

Not sure about psychopaths (I imagine they fit in there somewhere) but as a less extreme version the complainers and confronters and grudge holders of this world do those of us who are less confrontational some service at times.

I tend to think of "social enforcement" as a sort of commons good. It often doesn't benefit the person doing it that much but overall it helps keep everything balanced.

Someone cuts in line? I'm the kind of person who would usually let it go because well, maybe they're having a bad day. And is it actually worth getting worked up about? Say it's an older lady and maybe she's rude but is it worse to get in an argument with her?

There are some people in this world who will really not let that stuff go. I am glad I'm not one of those people but in many ways I am also glad that those people exist, even if I find myself on their bad side once in a while.

I suppose there are some people who would simply call this assertiveness and describe it as an unmitigated positive. But it's really quite exhausting to do on a continuous basis unless you have the personality for it. I think of it as a boundless capacity to "sweat the small stuff" and I am actually glad that some people have it.

Re: Worst Roommate Ever

#49

Post by mark_edward »

seizethecheese wrote: post #25
bvod wrote: post #18

This article does not belong on HN.

Variants of this comment pop up a lot. HN is a democracy. By definition, if it makes it to the front page, it belongs there.

HN is an oligarchy, the mods have a lot of arbitrary and invisibly operating power, they're not elected, not subjected to popular control.

I'm not necessarily complaining, it's what make the site what it is, but it's definitely not a democracy.

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