Additional comment to add: One other line of questioning comes to mind in the "what plot could we imagine where suppressing sociopathic / psychopathic / narcissistic traits in humans to the extent they are kept from amassing power leads to severe problems for society down the line" - what are people with such traits uniquely good at, if anything, which results in a net gain for society?
There's plenty of pop psychology which points out that people with at least some of these traits tend to be concentrated in roles like leadership (which may not be entirely due to self-selection) and first responders.
Just to look at one example, an additional trait (beyond limited prosocial emotions and willingness to violate the rights of others) which may or may not be necessary, and is not sufficient on its own, to constitute psychopathy is relative fearlessness. People with this trait typically aren't so fearless that they act completely irrationally with regard to self-preservation, but they very measurably experience far fewer of the effects of fear in dangerous situations. You can see how this may be useful among police, firefighters, soldiers, etc. How does this trait relate to the other traits in question? Does suppressing the other traits like limited prosocial emotions also suppress this trait, thereby depriving a society of General Pattons? And so on.
Hmm, that question of inevitable filling of the niche in a species with language is a good one, and one I hadn't thought of.
In part it seems to be downstream of questions about what sociopathy and/or psychopathy actually is, which have been in debate for decades and still very much are. "Limited prosocial emotions" is necessary but not sufficient. Willingness to lie and violate social norms established to preserve the rights of others at a cost to the actor, probably also necessary, I'm not sure (no coffee yet) if sufficient in combination with limited prosocial emotions.
My housemates have 3 cats, one of whom I would describe - as a cat lover who has lived with many cats the majority of my life and has one in my lap right now - as the cat equivalent of a violent psychopath. (I actually like that psycho cat and she likes me as much as she's capable of liking anything.) Since she's a cat, she's not capable of the sociopathic pattern of abusing and/or manipulating social structures at a high level, e.g. by deception, to further her aims.
She is basically limited to violence, either direct (you touch her, and if she's not in a good mood she shreds your hand) or instrumental as instrumental as an animal without complex planning ability can be (she stalks the cat currently in my lap who she hates, and maintains a more or less continuous campaign of suppressing fire to minimize that cat's territory in the house; if I leave the house for a few days, she quickly steps it up because I am the human in the best position to intervene in her suppression efforts).
In humans there is likely some distinction between those who are violent psychopaths with little to no manipulative behavior, versus ones with psychopathic traits (limited prosocial emotions, problems recognizing and thinking about certain emotions in others) who are manipulative and may or may not be violent. The question this brings me to is, is language necessary for such socially manipulative traits like the much-ballyhooed "superficial charm," and others like tendency to deceive, to arise? I'm not sure. And then subsequently, in a language-using species, is deceptiveness based on language and theory of mind - lying - for personal gain such an attractive niche that it must always arise?
I'm sure there's a lot lacking about my ramble here, it's early in my day. And I might be off topic. But I've been researching these traits as a layperson for decades because my life has been strongly impacted by people with psychopathic and narcissistic traits in several contexts, and thus I've developed an interest in understanding how their minds work.
Thank you for that recommendation, I hadn't heard of it!
I mention Watts because he seems to have a disturbing talent at imagining hair-raising fault conditions which are non-obvious at first.
I feel like - and this is a matter of opinion only - a "bog standard" left-authoritarian totalitarian state, and a "oops we eliminated all the General Pattons and now we need some due to facing an existential threat" scenario, are probably the most foreseeable issues with purging narcissists and sociopaths from human command structures. Not that there's anything wrong with these, and I'm quite sure some extremely compelling fiction can be created about either - I'm just wondering what kind of bone-chilling Wattsian failure mode I haven't thought of here.
Full context: I have a personal belief that the human species' lack of systematic development & deployment of technique to control dark-triad personalities in command structures may represent a potential Great Filter, so thinking of the possible drawbacks of doing so is kind of a big deal in light of that.
Blindsight changed my worldview in ways that are near impossible to articulate, and not for lack of trying on my part. At the very least it's led to years of fascination with fiction which digs into questions about consciousness and being-hood, especially those that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
More recently his Sunflowers series has been interesting. tl;dr, what if instead of writing a story which makes use of ancient stargates as a plot device, we write a story about the crew which built the stargates, traveling around the galaxy at sublight speed on a craft - term used loosely - with built-in anti-mutiny mechanisms?
Also I enjoyed his short story The Things, classic Watts. CW: rape mention.
"This has been a tremendous torment for me [and] it's been a tremendous torment for my family," Kruger said, his eyes filling with tears. "There's not a person on the face of this earth who can legitimately criticize my contribution and my service to my country and to my community."
Also, Mark Kruger retired from PPB several years ago after working the grievance process and securing himself a fat settlement and a nice pension at taxpayer expense.
"This has been a tremendous torment for me [and] it's been a tremendous torment for my family," Kruger said, his eyes filling with tears. "There's not a person on the face of this earth who can legitimately criticize my contribution and my service to my country and to my community."
Also, Mark Kruger retired from PPB several years ago after working the grievance process and securing himself a fat settlement and a nice pension at taxpayer expense.
I've long been meaning to start participating there - I was a daily-active BBSer til the mid 2010s - but life is oppressing me, so I haven't done it yet.
hmm, I haven't tried recreating the ones I made which were lost with the last instance crash, maybe that's a good thing.
I wish this server were more stable because low-fediblock nodes are important in the ecosystem, but sadly I'm only just starting with NetBSD and have almost no money to donate, so I can't help much. I did send in the random few bucks left in my paypal account when they got the server working again at least.
Hmm, I'm a fan of the "every setup no matter how well-intentioned eventually produces a dystopia" genre of storytelling, I wonder what kind of dystopia I would produce 🤔
I've been dreaming for years that one of my favorite authors, Peter Watts, will write a novel about the dystopia produced by a concerted global effort to prevent sociopaths and narcissists from positions of power. There's gotta be some kind of horrible emergent outcome that's more interesting than a relatively uninspired left-authoritarian totalitarian state. I'm interested in what goes wrong when the effort succeeds.
I'm the O-OP and it's relevant because the region in question has two dominant weather patterns, summer and winter, and this is the first appearance of the winter pattern for more than a day since probably sometime in May. Given that the PNW is crammed full of antisocial introverts who like clouds & rain - nothing wrong with any of that - some will be very happy to hear about it.
The less hard work offers a truly meaningful improvment in one's conditions - material, existential, hell even spiritual - the more people will opt out.
Rational actors, etc etc etc.
Also, if you - by which I mean the extractive class - make it difficult and humiliating to find work, and difficult and humiliating to retain work, then yes, as above, more rational actors will opt out.
The same site published an article a couple months ago about how private equity vultures are aggressively buying up those exact type of clinics to strip-mine them for their patient relationships while in many cases closing the clinic within a couple years 🙁
Necroposting for sure, but https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2 has appeared since this was posted.
That's very weird.
I see traffic from
lemmy.worldall over the place, so it can't be a full defed.Additional comment to add: One other line of questioning comes to mind in the "what plot could we imagine where suppressing sociopathic / psychopathic / narcissistic traits in humans to the extent they are kept from amassing power leads to severe problems for society down the line" - what are people with such traits uniquely good at, if anything, which results in a net gain for society?
There's plenty of pop psychology which points out that people with at least some of these traits tend to be concentrated in roles like leadership (which may not be entirely due to self-selection) and first responders.
Just to look at one example, an additional trait (beyond limited prosocial emotions and willingness to violate the rights of others) which may or may not be necessary, and is not sufficient on its own, to constitute psychopathy is relative fearlessness. People with this trait typically aren't so fearless that they act completely irrationally with regard to self-preservation, but they very measurably experience far fewer of the effects of fear in dangerous situations. You can see how this may be useful among police, firefighters, soldiers, etc. How does this trait relate to the other traits in question? Does suppressing the other traits like limited prosocial emotions also suppress this trait, thereby depriving a society of General Pattons? And so on.
Hmm, that question of inevitable filling of the niche in a species with language is a good one, and one I hadn't thought of.
In part it seems to be downstream of questions about what sociopathy and/or psychopathy actually is, which have been in debate for decades and still very much are. "Limited prosocial emotions" is necessary but not sufficient. Willingness to lie and violate social norms established to preserve the rights of others at a cost to the actor, probably also necessary, I'm not sure (no coffee yet) if sufficient in combination with limited prosocial emotions.
My housemates have 3 cats, one of whom I would describe - as a cat lover who has lived with many cats the majority of my life and has one in my lap right now - as the cat equivalent of a violent psychopath. (I actually like that psycho cat and she likes me as much as she's capable of liking anything.) Since she's a cat, she's not capable of the sociopathic pattern of abusing and/or manipulating social structures at a high level, e.g. by deception, to further her aims.
She is basically limited to violence, either direct (you touch her, and if she's not in a good mood she shreds your hand) or instrumental as instrumental as an animal without complex planning ability can be (she stalks the cat currently in my lap who she hates, and maintains a more or less continuous campaign of suppressing fire to minimize that cat's territory in the house; if I leave the house for a few days, she quickly steps it up because I am the human in the best position to intervene in her suppression efforts).
In humans there is likely some distinction between those who are violent psychopaths with little to no manipulative behavior, versus ones with psychopathic traits (limited prosocial emotions, problems recognizing and thinking about certain emotions in others) who are manipulative and may or may not be violent. The question this brings me to is, is language necessary for such socially manipulative traits like the much-ballyhooed "superficial charm," and others like tendency to deceive, to arise? I'm not sure. And then subsequently, in a language-using species, is deceptiveness based on language and theory of mind - lying - for personal gain such an attractive niche that it must always arise?
I'm sure there's a lot lacking about my ramble here, it's early in my day. And I might be off topic. But I've been researching these traits as a layperson for decades because my life has been strongly impacted by people with psychopathic and narcissistic traits in several contexts, and thus I've developed an interest in understanding how their minds work.
It's wild how these old ones looked less blurry on a CRT.
Very nice, reading this on my Poco F1
Thank you for that recommendation, I hadn't heard of it!
I mention Watts because he seems to have a disturbing talent at imagining hair-raising fault conditions which are non-obvious at first.
I feel like - and this is a matter of opinion only - a "bog standard" left-authoritarian totalitarian state, and a "oops we eliminated all the General Pattons and now we need some due to facing an existential threat" scenario, are probably the most foreseeable issues with purging narcissists and sociopaths from human command structures. Not that there's anything wrong with these, and I'm quite sure some extremely compelling fiction can be created about either - I'm just wondering what kind of bone-chilling Wattsian failure mode I haven't thought of here.
Full context: I have a personal belief that the human species' lack of systematic development & deployment of technique to control dark-triad personalities in command structures may represent a potential Great Filter, so thinking of the possible drawbacks of doing so is kind of a big deal in light of that.
Blindsight changed my worldview in ways that are near impossible to articulate, and not for lack of trying on my part. At the very least it's led to years of fascination with fiction which digs into questions about consciousness and being-hood, especially those that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
More recently his Sunflowers series has been interesting. tl;dr, what if instead of writing a story which makes use of ancient stargates as a plot device, we write a story about the crew which built the stargates, traveling around the galaxy at sublight speed on a craft - term used loosely - with built-in anti-mutiny mechanisms?
Also I enjoyed his short story The Things, classic Watts. CW: rape mention.
To expand on that scuttlebutt:
The Ice Man Weepeth: A Portland cop denies a new video's accusations of Nazism. Willamette Week, October 13, 2009.
Updates to OP:
Based on this article, it looks like Mark Kruger was divorced by 2009, so perhaps his ex-wife did get around to changing her name solely for that reason and unrelated to her not calling 911 or poison control after a child at the school she was principal of was forced to eat crack cocaine.
Also, Mark Kruger retired from PPB several years ago after working the grievance process and securing himself a fat settlement and a nice pension at taxpayer expense.
To expand on that scuttlebutt:
The Ice Man Weepeth: A Portland cop denies a new video's accusations of Nazism. Willamette Week, October 13, 2009.
Updates to OP:
Based on this article, it looks like Mark Kruger was divorced by 2009, so perhaps his ex-wife did get around to changing her name solely for that reason and unrelated to her not calling 911 or poison control after a child at the school she was principal of was forced to eat crack cocaine.
Also, Mark Kruger retired from PPB several years ago after working the grievance process and securing himself a fat settlement and a nice pension at taxpayer expense.
Yeah same. Seeing that they're working on these issues increases my resolve to keep using the server as long as it stays viable.
Yeah, as of a few weeks after it came back up I've noticed it's seemed faster and less broken.
I was not on my game when it comes to OP click-saving!
I've long been meaning to start participating there - I was a daily-active BBSer til the mid 2010s - but life is oppressing me, so I haven't done it yet.
It also looks like the sidebars got nuked.
hmm, I haven't tried recreating the ones I made which were lost with the last instance crash, maybe that's a good thing.
I wish this server were more stable because low-fediblock nodes are important in the ecosystem, but sadly I'm only just starting with NetBSD and have almost no money to donate, so I can't help much. I did send in the random few bucks left in my paypal account when they got the server working again at least.
Hmm, I'm a fan of the "every setup no matter how well-intentioned eventually produces a dystopia" genre of storytelling, I wonder what kind of dystopia I would produce 🤔
I've been dreaming for years that one of my favorite authors, Peter Watts, will write a novel about the dystopia produced by a concerted global effort to prevent sociopaths and narcissists from positions of power. There's gotta be some kind of horrible emergent outcome that's more interesting than a relatively uninspired left-authoritarian totalitarian state. I'm interested in what goes wrong when the effort succeeds.
I'm the O-OP and it's relevant because the region in question has two dominant weather patterns, summer and winter, and this is the first appearance of the winter pattern for more than a day since probably sometime in May. Given that the PNW is crammed full of antisocial introverts who like clouds & rain - nothing wrong with any of that - some will be very happy to hear about it.
The less hard work offers a truly meaningful improvment in one's conditions - material, existential, hell even spiritual - the more people will opt out.
Rational actors, etc etc etc.
Also, if you - by which I mean the extractive class - make it difficult and humiliating to find work, and difficult and humiliating to retain work, then yes, as above, more rational actors will opt out.
The same site published an article a couple months ago about how private equity vultures are aggressively buying up those exact type of clinics to strip-mine them for their patient relationships while in many cases closing the clinic within a couple years 🙁