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Steering large things doesn't need to be about fight of sociopaths. Having a governmental system with checks and balances also helps with keeping the sociopaths

by mrtksn 5y ago

Steering large things doesn't need to be about fight of sociopaths. Having a governmental system with checks and balances also helps with keeping the sociopaths inefficient, by the time they assume any significant power they run out of energy, people catch up with the situation. Nothing of these are original problems, some societies managed to build quite robust machines where sociopaths can't really cause huge damage.

lazide 5y ago
I’ve never seen or heard of any society that has pulled it off for long. Where you see it even in the short term, that is more likely due to extreme effort put forward on a day to day basis by people both in the machine and outside it. If you care to put forward some examples, I’m happy to try to provide more concrete information on what I mean. It’s easy to write off leaders as sociopaths - but very few seem to check the boxes, if you pull yourself out of the politics. More often often you see someone acting with a set of incentives and a problem that you don’t understand, making a decision you don’t agree with. Which sucks. Add on top that the extreme pressure, visibility, power, and wealth can cause some unique looking (but all too common) pathologies at those levels, and it gets even easier to us vs them them. Someone can’t make hard decisions if their heart bleeds (for real) for every bad situation. No group will survive long with no one able to make hard decisions leading it. No matter what anyone does, if the group size is large enough bad situations will happen no matter how good a system is, or how perfect anyone attempts to make it. For anyone to be able to be effective at that level, they have to be able to make decisions somewhat free of emotional affect, and to be good, they need to do that without completely losing it. Which is incredibly difficult. It’s easier to just go ‘meh’, make the decision that’s better for them right now and move on. And being an experienced leader - emotional contagion/forcing empathy as a manipulation tool is super common, and commonly used to try to ‘should’ someone into making a decision that is terrible for everyone. We all do it (hopefully positively) - give a smile (regardless of how we’re actually feeling) to the boss, or try to relay how terrible it feels to them when a family emergency happens, etc. hoping they’ll empathize and treat us nicer. And good bosses do, but also know how to draw the line if someone is abusing it. A sociopath (by definition) acts anti-socially, and they won’t be at the head of any social group for long, if ever.

by mrtksn 5y ago

lazide 5y ago

I’ve never seen or heard of any society that has pulled it off for long. Where you see it even in the short term, that is more likely due to extreme effort put forward on a day to day basis by people both in the machine and outside it. If you care to put forward some examples, I’m happy to try to provide more concrete information on what I mean. It’s easy to write off leaders as sociopaths - but very few seem to check the boxes, if you pull yourself out of the politics. More often often you see someone acting with a set of incentives and a problem that you don’t understand, making a decision you don’t agree with. Which sucks. Add on top that the extreme pressure, visibility, power, and wealth can cause some unique looking (but all too common) pathologies at those levels, and it gets even easier to us vs them them. Someone can’t make hard decisions if their heart bleeds (for real) for every bad situation. No group will survive long with no one able to make hard decisions leading it. No matter what anyone does, if the group size is large enough bad situations will happen no matter how good a system is, or how perfect anyone attempts to make it. For anyone to be able to be effective at that level, they have to be able to make decisions somewhat free of emotional affect, and to be good, they need to do that without completely losing it. Which is incredibly difficult. It’s easier to just go ‘meh’, make the decision that’s better for them right now and move on. And being an experienced leader - emotional contagion/forcing empathy as a manipulation tool is super common, and commonly used to try to ‘should’ someone into making a decision that is terrible for everyone. We all do it (hopefully positively) - give a smile (regardless of how we’re actually feeling) to the boss, or try to relay how terrible it feels to them when a family emergency happens, etc. hoping they’ll empathize and treat us nicer. And good bosses do, but also know how to draw the line if someone is abusing it. A sociopath (by definition) acts anti-socially, and they won’t be at the head of any social group for long, if ever.