6 ms·

One day this kid will make a reddit account and a few months later he'll be the Hegemon.

jerf 14y ago
The only unique attribute this particular kid has is that he happens to have gotten picked for a NYTimes article. Psychopathy's/Sociopathy's incidence rate is hard to nail down due to both definition and detection problems, but estimates are generally 1% of the population, give or take a bit. It's not that rare.
- planetguy 14y ago
  And yet, I've never met anyone who claimed to be one. I've never read an article entitled "Here are what my experiences are like, as a psychopath". There has never been a reddit "IAMA psychopath, AMA". If it's that common surely there should be more first-person accounts of it? Or at least interviews with psychopaths? I remain unconvinced that "psychopath" is actually a real thing, rather than a label we stick on people who are really just plain ol' jerks.
  - drumdance 14y ago
    http://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath http://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath
    - planetguy 14y ago
      Well, I guess I walked into that one. Even reading those, though, I'm not convinced that being a psychopath is a real thing -- that is, a difference from normal human behaviour that is one of kind, not of degree.
      - lerouxb 14y ago
        So what real thing does this kid have, then? Or what _degree_ is it?
        planetguy 14y ago
        He's a brat. He's also a brat who has learned he can get more of a reaction out of adults by acting in a certain way that they find unsettling, thus reinforcing that behaviour. From the sounds of things, his bad behaviour has been getting reinforced by feelings of specialness ever since he got sent to a psychiatrist at the age of three for being a little more bratty than usual. At this point, being a brat has got him all the way to being profiled in the New York Times, so I doubt there's much hope for him now. He's internalized "I am a kid who misbehaves, misbehavior makes me special".
        amalter 14y ago
        And kids, like one who grew up on my block, who got their kicks dunking people's cats in gasoline and throwing fireworks at them? Was that just being a brat?
        planetguy 14y ago
        No, he was an asshole.
        amalter 14y ago
        Now your dancing around the wording. This one boy got pleasure bullying the rest of us neighbor kids, and more disturbingly, killing and maiming animals for fun. This was elementary school since he was shipped off to some special place by middle school. He had two really nice brothers who seemed as relieved as the rest of us when he was gone. As already recommended in this thread, I urge a viewing of "We Need to Talk about Kevin" Asshole, brat, jerk ... We all might fall in and out of these fugues as we mature. But, very few of us are evil. You do disservice to those trying to understand these conditions (whether biological or environmental) by minimizing them.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        mynameishere 14y ago
      - astrodust 14y ago
        If you consider the mind to be a series of complicated, inter-connected components, then one consequence of that is sometimes things get disconnected or incorrectly connected. Sometimes that leads to people who see sound or taste colors, other times you get people that simply cannot empathize or feel zero remorse. It's a real thing. Sometimes it's by degrees, the connections are weak or malfunctioning, but sometimes there's never been a connection or anything to connect with. They're damaged by definition compared to the "norm".
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - joshu 14y ago
    There have been several claimed sociopath IAMAs.
    - spudlyo 14y ago
      I felt that this was was an interesting read. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_psychopath_im_female_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_p...
      - ralfd 14y ago
        Interesting and cold.
  - Dn_Ab 14y ago
    http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-show-differences-in-structure-and-function/32979 http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-... The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety.
  - jerf 14y ago
    In the end, there are no bright shining lines in psychology. It is likely that psychopaths are on one end of a bell curve rather than being a distinct, binary pathology. Neveretheless, we are free to observe that there is such a dimension and discuss those on the extremes in certain ways using certain terms, just as we do with depression or OCD, both of which have the same characteristic of not having a "bright line", yet clearly existing. One of the most powerful ways to understand psychology is to see its history, like math's history, as one long attempt to create and refine definitions that let us discuss the field. Except where math is using those definitions to create the field from scratch and the effort is to build up useful systems from the bottom, psychology is trying to understand an incomprehensibly complicated system from the top down and using those definitions to try to break things into comprehensible and consistent pieces in a landscape that is being aggressively fuzzy and resistant to classification. I do find myself wondering if you have not encountered any apparent interviews or research on psychopaths not because it doesn't exist, but because you've never gone looking for it. There's quite a bit of it. There's still some professional skepticism on the topic of it being something distinct, but that's rather different than the skepticism you seem to be expressing. The phenomena aren't so much what the debate is about as what the best way to slice and dice it up with the definitions are. For them to professionally agree that psychopathy is a real thing carries additional implications beyond just what Merriam-Webster writes in their next dictionary edition, but it's easy for a layman to misread that as an argument about whether the phenomena described by the debated term exists. So, of course it's a label. But it's used to describe something far more different-than-baseline than just being a plain ol' jerk. In fact, psychopaths are often not jerks at all. "Jerk" is usually used to describe someone openly abrasive and simply randomly hostile, and that's not what a psychopath is. At least, not as an adult. As the article says, they lack emotional empathy but develop a cognitive empathy, and generally learn by adulthood the thing that jerks never do, which is that open hostility really has no advantages to anybody. They learn far, far more subtle manipulation techniques than that. (We all learn how to manipulate; I'm not convinced they are "extra skilled" at that. They simply learn how to do it with one less constraint than most of us.)
StuffMaster 14y ago
Locke registered a long time ago...maybe he'll go straight to hollywood!
javert 14y ago
Reddit is way too stupid for an intelligent person to make progress there. Much more likely, the kid will create a Hacker News account and become the Hegemon.
- philwelch 14y ago
  On the contrary, it takes a lot of intelligence, of a certain kind, to bend a mass of common idiots to your side. It takes dishonesty as well, but certainly there is some skill involved.
  - javert 14y ago
    I thought this would come up. I think redditors are too stupid even for that. I mean, there is a certain point where you're preaching the Gospel to a group of orangutans, no? Anyway, it matters not.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  >the Hegemon. Okay, after searching the web I give up. Can you please explain what that is? (I get a general gist from related words but it would be nice to know what you're specifically referring to.)
  - mdanger 14y ago
    I believe it's a reference to the Ender's Game series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon), as lampooned here: http://xkcd.com/635/ http://xkcd.com/635/
  - javert 14y ago
    It's a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) More specifically, a pair of kids (neither of which is the main character) create online pseudonyms ("Locke" and "Demosthenes") and eventually use them to convince the world of their great ideas (that they post in online forums). One of the kids eventually becomes "Hegemon," or the world leader. By the way, I'd extremely highly recommend "Ender's Game" (the first book). Besides being an utterly awesome book, I even got a friend who "hated" reading to try it, and even he liked it. I mean, it's that good.

jerf 14y ago

The only unique attribute this particular kid has is that he happens to have gotten picked for a NYTimes article. Psychopathy's/Sociopathy's incidence rate is hard to nail down due to both definition and detection problems, but estimates are generally 1% of the population, give or take a bit. It's not that rare.

planetguy 14y ago
And yet, I've never met anyone who claimed to be one. I've never read an article entitled "Here are what my experiences are like, as a psychopath". There has never been a reddit "IAMA psychopath, AMA". If it's that common surely there should be more first-person accounts of it? Or at least interviews with psychopaths? I remain unconvinced that "psychopath" is actually a real thing, rather than a label we stick on people who are really just plain ol' jerks.
- drumdance 14y ago
  http://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath http://www.reddit.com/search?q=iama+psychopath
  - planetguy 14y ago
    Well, I guess I walked into that one. Even reading those, though, I'm not convinced that being a psychopath is a real thing -- that is, a difference from normal human behaviour that is one of kind, not of degree.
    - lerouxb 14y ago
      So what real thing does this kid have, then? Or what _degree_ is it?
      - planetguy 14y ago
        He's a brat. He's also a brat who has learned he can get more of a reaction out of adults by acting in a certain way that they find unsettling, thus reinforcing that behaviour. From the sounds of things, his bad behaviour has been getting reinforced by feelings of specialness ever since he got sent to a psychiatrist at the age of three for being a little more bratty than usual. At this point, being a brat has got him all the way to being profiled in the New York Times, so I doubt there's much hope for him now. He's internalized "I am a kid who misbehaves, misbehavior makes me special".
        amalter 14y ago
        And kids, like one who grew up on my block, who got their kicks dunking people's cats in gasoline and throwing fireworks at them? Was that just being a brat?
        planetguy 14y ago
        No, he was an asshole.
        amalter 14y ago
        Now your dancing around the wording. This one boy got pleasure bullying the rest of us neighbor kids, and more disturbingly, killing and maiming animals for fun. This was elementary school since he was shipped off to some special place by middle school. He had two really nice brothers who seemed as relieved as the rest of us when he was gone. As already recommended in this thread, I urge a viewing of "We Need to Talk about Kevin" Asshole, brat, jerk ... We all might fall in and out of these fugues as we mature. But, very few of us are evil. You do disservice to those trying to understand these conditions (whether biological or environmental) by minimizing them.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        mynameishere 14y ago
    - astrodust 14y ago
      If you consider the mind to be a series of complicated, inter-connected components, then one consequence of that is sometimes things get disconnected or incorrectly connected. Sometimes that leads to people who see sound or taste colors, other times you get people that simply cannot empathize or feel zero remorse. It's a real thing. Sometimes it's by degrees, the connections are weak or malfunctioning, but sometimes there's never been a connection or anything to connect with. They're damaged by definition compared to the "norm".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- joshu 14y ago
  There have been several claimed sociopath IAMAs.
  - spudlyo 14y ago
    I felt that this was was an interesting read. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_psychopath_im_female_ama/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/otl8z/iama_diagnosed_p...
    - ralfd 14y ago
      Interesting and cold.
- Dn_Ab 14y ago
  http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-show-differences-in-structure-and-function/32979 http://www.med.wisc.edu/news-events/news/psychopaths-brains-... The study showed that psychopaths have reduced connections between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), the part of the brain responsible for sentiments such as empathy and guilt, and the amygdala, which mediates fear and anxiety.
- jerf 14y ago
  In the end, there are no bright shining lines in psychology. It is likely that psychopaths are on one end of a bell curve rather than being a distinct, binary pathology. Neveretheless, we are free to observe that there is such a dimension and discuss those on the extremes in certain ways using certain terms, just as we do with depression or OCD, both of which have the same characteristic of not having a "bright line", yet clearly existing. One of the most powerful ways to understand psychology is to see its history, like math's history, as one long attempt to create and refine definitions that let us discuss the field. Except where math is using those definitions to create the field from scratch and the effort is to build up useful systems from the bottom, psychology is trying to understand an incomprehensibly complicated system from the top down and using those definitions to try to break things into comprehensible and consistent pieces in a landscape that is being aggressively fuzzy and resistant to classification. I do find myself wondering if you have not encountered any apparent interviews or research on psychopaths not because it doesn't exist, but because you've never gone looking for it. There's quite a bit of it. There's still some professional skepticism on the topic of it being something distinct, but that's rather different than the skepticism you seem to be expressing. The phenomena aren't so much what the debate is about as what the best way to slice and dice it up with the definitions are. For them to professionally agree that psychopathy is a real thing carries additional implications beyond just what Merriam-Webster writes in their next dictionary edition, but it's easy for a layman to misread that as an argument about whether the phenomena described by the debated term exists. So, of course it's a label. But it's used to describe something far more different-than-baseline than just being a plain ol' jerk. In fact, psychopaths are often not jerks at all. "Jerk" is usually used to describe someone openly abrasive and simply randomly hostile, and that's not what a psychopath is. At least, not as an adult. As the article says, they lack emotional empathy but develop a cognitive empathy, and generally learn by adulthood the thing that jerks never do, which is that open hostility really has no advantages to anybody. They learn far, far more subtle manipulation techniques than that. (We all learn how to manipulate; I'm not convinced they are "extra skilled" at that. They simply learn how to do it with one less constraint than most of us.)

StuffMaster 14y ago

Locke registered a long time ago...maybe he'll go straight to hollywood!

javert 14y ago

Reddit is way too stupid for an intelligent person to make progress there. Much more likely, the kid will create a Hacker News account and become the Hegemon.

philwelch 14y ago
On the contrary, it takes a lot of intelligence, of a certain kind, to bend a mass of common idiots to your side. It takes dishonesty as well, but certainly there is some skill involved.
- javert 14y ago
  I thought this would come up. I think redditors are too stupid even for that. I mean, there is a certain point where you're preaching the Gospel to a group of orangutans, no? Anyway, it matters not.
unimpressive 14y ago
>the Hegemon. Okay, after searching the web I give up. Can you please explain what that is? (I get a general gist from related words but it would be nice to know what you're specifically referring to.)
- mdanger 14y ago
  I believe it's a reference to the Ender's Game series (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enders_Game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_Hegemon), as lampooned here: http://xkcd.com/635/ http://xkcd.com/635/
- javert 14y ago
  It's a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_(series) More specifically, a pair of kids (neither of which is the main character) create online pseudonyms ("Locke" and "Demosthenes") and eventually use them to convince the world of their great ideas (that they post in online forums). One of the kids eventually becomes "Hegemon," or the world leader. By the way, I'd extremely highly recommend "Ender's Game" (the first book). Besides being an utterly awesome book, I even got a friend who "hated" reading to try it, and even he liked it. I mean, it's that good.