61–70 of 119 posts
Similar discussion from 5 months ago about an 2014 article: "Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath (2014)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584565 (122 comments)
I can recommend Athena Walker's (pseudonym of a psychopath) answers to Quora questions. [1] However, one must always be careful with the writings of a psychopath. These people are cunningly manipulative. [1] https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simon Baron-Cohen's book Zero Degrees of Empathy explores this very idea. Might be worth a read if you're curious.
He's wrong though. Alexithymia is more common in autistic people, but it's neither suffient nor required for an ASD diagnosis. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-with-autis... This linking of alexithymia to autism has caused harm by making it harder to get the diagnosis for people who can recognise emotion within themselves and others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems like the hawks and doves Nash equilibrium in game theory: http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/kprestwi/behavior/ESS/H... On one hand you want some doves because they work together well and society is nice, but on the other hand if there’s too doves then hawks will thrive. But if everyone is hawks, then society as a whole doesn’t work as well together. So there’s push and pull of both and in the end the na…
I’ve worked in teams comprised entirely of “hawks” that were entirely functional, and incredibly effective. As long as you all share a mission and respect each other then it can be great and involve almost no conflict.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can recommend Athena Walker's (pseudonym of a psychopath) answers to Quora questions. [1] However, one must always be careful with the writings of a psychopath. These people are cunningly manipulative. [1] https://www.quora.com/profile/Athena-Walker
I was wondering if she was the interviewee.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve worked in teams comprised entirely of “hawks” that were entirely functional, and incredibly effective. As long as you all share a mission and respect each other then it can be great and involve almost no conflict.
Probably disagreeing over the meaning of hawk then.
Makes me wonder if a society of 100% psychopaths could function or would fall apart. In that society, there would be no reason to wear a mask and pretend. Everyone feels (or fails to feel) basically the same way. If you knew that anyone would take advantage of you given the opportunity, then how does society function? Kind of like how the Dark Mirror Universe in Star Trek managed to get so far.
Moreover, afaik development of language is hypothesized to be interlinked with social behaviors (and empathy as a whole), so a species of antagonists would probably have trouble establishing civilisation in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably disagreeing over the meaning of hawk then.
I’m pretty sure we’re not. They can work very well together as long as they all see each other as competent.
Judging by how many people in this comment thread identify with the traits described in the article, it probably just shows that those traits are pretty ordinary, just a facet of the normal diversity of humanity, and have probably been with us forever. The true problems of recent societies might in fact be overdiagnosis and Hollywood-style oversimplifications, not the traits themselves. Not everyone needs to be hyper…
Many people get anxious, and this causes them to look at people with anxiety disorders and think "That's like what I've got. Why don't you just pull yourself out of it?" but what they don't consider is that the difference is one of degree, not of kind.
> I have no comprehenion of why people enjoy opioids. We also can’t get addicted to things because of the way our brain works. There are psychopaths that use drugs, but you can cut them off cold turkey and they will not have any withdrawal. They don’t have any cravings, and they can just go on with their day like it was nothing. This is the first time I've seen it explained by someone else but it's how I feel all the…
The bits of the transcript about having to wear a mask in order to function, having to internalize algorithms of human behavior that are totally unintuitive, and realizing that one’s deepest interpersonal instincts are out of sync with the rest of your kin remind me strongly of some individuals I’ve known with Aspergers/severe ADHD. Additionally, her descriptions of not feeling fear, processing emotions at a lower in…
The bitter irony is, psychopaths are far more dangerous and yet they make better imitators, and can avoid triggering the uncanny valley instinct. That's why they can be so charismatic and attract followers.