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On Sociopaths and Progress

zdziarski.com

1–10 of 32 posts

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#2
The jump from criticising OceanGate to Americans loving when sociopaths run companies, doesn't make any sense. I guess he believes Rush was a sociopath and not just a cheapskate. It is a hell of an assumption to make with no backing. Especially weird when the author thumbs his nose at the general consensus that OceanGate was run in an unsafe manner, a position with a lot of evidence behind it

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#3
Some harm is even willfully hidden: the tobacco industry hiding that they knew about cancer risks, oil & gas hiding that they knew about climate change, chemical companies that knew about the risks of PFAS and environmental leakage; it goes on and on.

Profits over people.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#4
There's something to the idea that Americans tolerate devil-may-care risk-takers but the idea that Stockton Rush and Elon Musk are sociopaths is absurd. Hell, Rush went down with the ship (so to speak).

What's of interest here is not the (small number of) deaths caused by "captains of industry" but the irrational fixation of people like the author on these figures.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#5
The argument that musk is a sociopath because his cars have had 17 fatalities on autopilot, despite that being less than human drivers, is ridiculous. That proves the exact opposite point - that musk cares about human life.

Garbage article.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#6
post #5

The argument that musk is a sociopath because his cars have had 17 fatalities on autopilot, despite that being less than human drivers, is ridiculous. That proves the exact opposite point - that musk cares about human life. Garbage article.

Heh. Your average human driver will have zero fatal accidents in their driving career. The fatalities happen in the margins, in the fractional percentage points.

Arguably, this makes autopilot, with its singular set of fuzzy logic, worse than human drivers. It’s flaws, after all, will continue to exist even if it kills its host.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#7
This article seems to assume that this is an isolated incident or that the CEO and other CEOs in question are somehow not responsible for the murder of their consumers. This wasn't somehow being risky trying to find a solution to cold fusion or how to grow food the size of a car to solve world hunger...they wanted to skim money from the wealthy to go see a monument to the folly and decadence of wealth.

This is as true of Tesla, meta, Amazon, alphabet, M$ and apple and the reason this incident has sparked such catharsis is that it happens constantly. There is a great article to be written on why there is such hatred for these people but it has to start by admitting that people's feelings are valid and this article simply didn't have the spine to explore that idea. It was clearly written to allow the author to convince themselves of something they know they don't really believe and it doesn't deserve to be read by anybody on here, go read a vacume manual and you will find more thought provoking content.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#8
post #6
post #5

The argument that musk is a sociopath because his cars have had 17 fatalities on autopilot, despite that being less than human drivers, is ridiculous. That proves the exact opposite point - that musk cares about human life. Garbage article.

Heh. Your average human driver will have zero fatal accidents in their driving career. The fatalities happen in the margins, in the fractional percentage points. Arguably, this makes autopilot, with its singular set of fuzzy logic, worse than human drivers. It’s flaws, after all, will continue to exist even if it kills its host.

Absent in both point and counterpoint is the number of fatalities per distance driven with and without autopilot

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#9
It is worth a reminder that a healthy human's emotions are calibrated to perform optimally in a That moral framework doesn't function at the extremes of how human societies work these days. People keep demanding that leaders behave in a way that makes sense for a tiny community, and therefore regularly get ineffective or deceptive leadership. One of the reasons capitalism is so powerful is it puts rationalist guidelines in place instead of religious ones.

Re: On Sociopaths and Progress

#10
post #4

There's something to the idea that Americans tolerate devil-may-care risk-takers but the idea that Stockton Rush and Elon Musk are sociopaths is absurd. Hell, Rush went down with the ship (so to speak). What's of interest here is not the (small number of) deaths caused by "captains of industry" but the irrational fixation of people like the author on these figures.

One way to define sociopaths is that they are willing to do what it takes to achieve their goals without regard to others.

It certainly seems Stockton was willing to do this, ignoring the evidence that his sub was safe and willing to kill others on the off chance that it failed.

That he died as a result is not relevant to his disregard for others.

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