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Super interesting. I can recognize this behavior with people playing multiplayer games. When there are no stakes, and everything is a game, people mess around –

by klabb3 3y ago

Super interesting. I can recognize this behavior with people playing multiplayer games. When there are no stakes, and everything is a game, people mess around – especially when they’re bored. If it’s just a game, who cares? People with extremely low “emotional reactivity” appear unlikely to share with others (why would they, most of us share stuff for empathy - and they may not see the point - or lose out socially). According to the Gervais principle, they are rewarded for their excellence of social deception in institutions like corporations. Then there are the worse, hardened criminals as well, taking assignments nobody else would, or for their own sadistic maladaption. The best fit in a healthy society, I think, is doing things that others can’t, like extreme sport type of stuff, or astronaut, brain surgeon - sound decision making under immense pressure. Alex Hannold for instance, has an almost non-existing amygdala response even compared to other extreme sporters, iirc. He apppears deeply aware of this, and seems to channel everything into his climbing, which overall seems really healthy.

nordsieck 3y ago
> The best fit in a healthy society, I think, is doing things that others can’t, like extreme sport type of stuff, or astronaut, brain surgeon Reminds me of the Bill Burr bit on Lance Armstrong[1] > The guy was a sociopath on a bicycle. As far as I'm concerned we got off easy. If that guy was working for a corporation he would have been pouring stuff in the water supply, doing god knows what. Just keep him on the bike. Let him go up and down hills. He's not hurting anybody. --- 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YL04v-J5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YL04v-J5U
- coldtea 3y ago
  Though on the matter of Lance Armstrong, well, tons of others, in the same races, did the same things.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    Armstrong ruined the careers of his colleagues that didn't want to participate in his doping. He was the doping kingpin. https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29240335 https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29240335 Here's Lance chasing down another rider and publicly threatening them to "zip their lips" when they were trying to go public about the doping in the peloton.
- Lio 3y ago
  > He's not hurting anybody. Well he did insist that other members of his team also take EPO, HGH, blood transfusions (occasionally with bad blood), etc. We don't know what the long term affects of that will be but he certainly wasn't thinking of health of his staff. He also destroyed Greg LeMond's career for exposing him.
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    “Well actually, Mr. Comedian …”
    - Lio 3y ago
      Hey, I'm not telling you the joke isn't funny. Burr cracks me up. I'm just saying that Armstrong did more than just cheat in bike races.
  - zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
    They're adults and can make their own decisions
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Might be a sociopath, look into it. Seriously though, this ignores that sometimes, being of age of consent ("an adult") does not mean there is a free will choice available. Edit: @bombcar Stealing that, thank you!
      - bombcar 3y ago
        The idea that consent is both necessary AND sufficient needs to be laid to rest. Consent may be necessary (there can be discussions when and where it is necessary and what that means, for example "consenting" to taxes, etc) but it is not sufficient in all cases.
        helboi4 3y ago
        Yeah its a bit of dangerous idea to act like its okay to do anything to people if they ostensibly "consent".
- gosub100 3y ago
  He's hurting all the other players who do not dope, and hurting the sport in general by creating an incentive for most people to dope, tarnishing the reputation.
  - pwthornton 3y ago
    He doped because extreme endurance events pretty much demand doping.
    - thephyber 3y ago
      Wrong. His doping and his coordination of doping across his team pushed other teams to dope to compete with his team. There was no obvious suspicion of doping prior to his team and that is clear that Lance and his team were performing far above the level of the other teams in his early doping days. Your statement is only true after the doping snowball exists within many teams of that sport. If the athletes didn’t lie or if they were caught in a reasonable amount of time, then there is no need for doping. I’m guessing you are making unstated assumptions because of your wording when you say “pretty much demand”. Are there any non-obvious assumptions that might be interesting to discuss?
    - gosub100 3y ago
      what does "pretty much demand" mean? You mean literally no human is capable of completing the event because they will drop to the ground of exhaustion? Of course not, you'll leave a vague comment that leaves you wiggle room instead of taking a precise position on the matter.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Reading this reminds me of someone I was friends with in high school who quickly turned out to be absolutely insufferable to play any sort of cooperative game with. They would take absolutely _everything_ that could be shared, and calmly and with complete conviction explain it was better off with them. They were blind to the bigger picture of quickly having nobody who would ever play with them. Magic the Gathering at lunch was also a terrible experience with this person...
- williamcotton 3y ago
  Teenagers are also experimenting with many philosophies and personas that don’t strictly align with personality disorders… unless you just want to call all of adolescence a personality disorder, which might not be far off…
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    Yeah, that's certainly something to consider. If the case, it's kind of interesting to look back and watch a teenager so heavily blacklist themselves from all social activities every chance they got. My experience with and as a teenager is that they're overwhelmingly focused on fitting in to whatever groups they identify with.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  Reminds me of something I learned about other cultures while playing DOTA 2 on ranked ladder. For reference: This is a 5 vs 5 team game where each player character has a loosely defined role, such as "healer", "lead combat", or whatever. The most effective play style is for four of the players to support the strongest attacker-class player, to the point of self-sacrifice. In Australia we would get random south-east asian players joining our servers, and generally we wouldn't even notice other than the alternative scripts in their usernames. Philippinos we would always notice, because they're all acted like sociopaths. Even if they were mute, and had an English alias, we could pick them out reliably. They'd be selfish to a point of absurdity, taking in-game gold away from desperate team-mates even when they couldn't possibly spend the gold themselves. As in, even when they had all item slots full with the best possible item, so they were "maxed out", they would cut off their own support players to take gold at any cost. I just couldn't wrap my head around why they were behaving this way. Also, why just that one country? Why not other countries in the area, like Singapore? Someone from the Phillipenes explained online: They had experienced sudden population growth and now there's too many young people with basically no job prospects. It's a dog-eat-dog world in their country, with fierce competition in every aspect of life. E.g.: There's no "study groups" in school, because why would you help someone else pass their exams? That would just enable them to steal the job you're competing for! So these kids while away their time playing competitive games in internet cafes, and this "stepping on others to get to the top of the pile" element of their lives is made manifest in the crystal clear simulated environment of a game. It made me think: Cooperation, social norms, collaboration, and all of the non-sociopath behaviours we're accustomed to aren't necessarily the norm, with only mentally-ill individuals deviating from it. Instead, it's possible for entire cultures to be sociopathic! Stress, poor job prospects, increased competition, etc... can push everyone towards these behaviours, all at once. In a situation like that, the natural sociopaths might prosper, and the "supports" might end up being horribly exploited or even starve to death.
DonHopkins 3y ago
Stewart Lee's impression of Ricky Gervais ("the Boris Johnson of stand up") literally saying what cannot be said because of political correctness and the woke brigade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHY5cFXqQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHY5cFXqQk
icpmacdo 3y ago
Not to conflate it with him not feeling fear though, here is a TV show episode with him talking about the subject, hard to timestamp but 14:10 for the busy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OGs1DehzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OGs1DehzA
ttepasse 3y ago
Astronauts in the last 50 years spending a lot of time together in a small group in an aluminium can, on the ISS for six month, sometimes for a year. Assuming the ideas of longer Moon and Mars mission will happen, that reality will be far more longer. Split-second decisions may be a thing, but mostly rare. For long term small groups who won’t drive each other insane, I'd rather select for agreeableness and conscientiousness than low emotional reactivity.
- klabb3 3y ago
  Sounds right. It was just an example, and it probably should go off the list.
barfbagginus 3y ago
[flagged]

by klabb3 3y ago

nordsieck 3y ago

> The best fit in a healthy society, I think, is doing things that others can’t, like extreme sport type of stuff, or astronaut, brain surgeon Reminds me of the Bill Burr bit on Lance Armstrong[1] > The guy was a sociopath on a bicycle. As far as I'm concerned we got off easy. If that guy was working for a corporation he would have been pouring stuff in the water supply, doing god knows what. Just keep him on the bike. Let him go up and down hills. He's not hurting anybody. --- 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YL04v-J5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YL04v-J5U

coldtea 3y ago
Though on the matter of Lance Armstrong, well, tons of others, in the same races, did the same things.
- freejazz 3y ago
  Armstrong ruined the careers of his colleagues that didn't want to participate in his doping. He was the doping kingpin. https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29240335 https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29240335 Here's Lance chasing down another rider and publicly threatening them to "zip their lips" when they were trying to go public about the doping in the peloton.
Lio 3y ago
> He's not hurting anybody. Well he did insist that other members of his team also take EPO, HGH, blood transfusions (occasionally with bad blood), etc. We don't know what the long term affects of that will be but he certainly wasn't thinking of health of his staff. He also destroyed Greg LeMond's career for exposing him.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  “Well actually, Mr. Comedian …”
  - Lio 3y ago
    Hey, I'm not telling you the joke isn't funny. Burr cracks me up. I'm just saying that Armstrong did more than just cheat in bike races.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  They're adults and can make their own decisions
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Might be a sociopath, look into it. Seriously though, this ignores that sometimes, being of age of consent ("an adult") does not mean there is a free will choice available. Edit: @bombcar Stealing that, thank you!
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The idea that consent is both necessary AND sufficient needs to be laid to rest. Consent may be necessary (there can be discussions when and where it is necessary and what that means, for example "consenting" to taxes, etc) but it is not sufficient in all cases.
      - helboi4 3y ago
        Yeah its a bit of dangerous idea to act like its okay to do anything to people if they ostensibly "consent".
gosub100 3y ago
He's hurting all the other players who do not dope, and hurting the sport in general by creating an incentive for most people to dope, tarnishing the reputation.
- pwthornton 3y ago
  He doped because extreme endurance events pretty much demand doping.
  - thephyber 3y ago
    Wrong. His doping and his coordination of doping across his team pushed other teams to dope to compete with his team. There was no obvious suspicion of doping prior to his team and that is clear that Lance and his team were performing far above the level of the other teams in his early doping days. Your statement is only true after the doping snowball exists within many teams of that sport. If the athletes didn’t lie or if they were caught in a reasonable amount of time, then there is no need for doping. I’m guessing you are making unstated assumptions because of your wording when you say “pretty much demand”. Are there any non-obvious assumptions that might be interesting to discuss?
  - gosub100 3y ago
    what does "pretty much demand" mean? You mean literally no human is capable of completing the event because they will drop to the ground of exhaustion? Of course not, you'll leave a vague comment that leaves you wiggle room instead of taking a precise position on the matter.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Reading this reminds me of someone I was friends with in high school who quickly turned out to be absolutely insufferable to play any sort of cooperative game with. They would take absolutely _everything_ that could be shared, and calmly and with complete conviction explain it was better off with them. They were blind to the bigger picture of quickly having nobody who would ever play with them. Magic the Gathering at lunch was also a terrible experience with this person...

williamcotton 3y ago
Teenagers are also experimenting with many philosophies and personas that don’t strictly align with personality disorders… unless you just want to call all of adolescence a personality disorder, which might not be far off…
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Yeah, that's certainly something to consider. If the case, it's kind of interesting to look back and watch a teenager so heavily blacklist themselves from all social activities every chance they got. My experience with and as a teenager is that they're overwhelmingly focused on fitting in to whatever groups they identify with.
jiggawatts 3y ago
Reminds me of something I learned about other cultures while playing DOTA 2 on ranked ladder. For reference: This is a 5 vs 5 team game where each player character has a loosely defined role, such as "healer", "lead combat", or whatever. The most effective play style is for four of the players to support the strongest attacker-class player, to the point of self-sacrifice. In Australia we would get random south-east asian players joining our servers, and generally we wouldn't even notice other than the alternative scripts in their usernames. Philippinos we would always notice, because they're all acted like sociopaths. Even if they were mute, and had an English alias, we could pick them out reliably. They'd be selfish to a point of absurdity, taking in-game gold away from desperate team-mates even when they couldn't possibly spend the gold themselves. As in, even when they had all item slots full with the best possible item, so they were "maxed out", they would cut off their own support players to take gold at any cost. I just couldn't wrap my head around why they were behaving this way. Also, why just that one country? Why not other countries in the area, like Singapore? Someone from the Phillipenes explained online: They had experienced sudden population growth and now there's too many young people with basically no job prospects. It's a dog-eat-dog world in their country, with fierce competition in every aspect of life. E.g.: There's no "study groups" in school, because why would you help someone else pass their exams? That would just enable them to steal the job you're competing for! So these kids while away their time playing competitive games in internet cafes, and this "stepping on others to get to the top of the pile" element of their lives is made manifest in the crystal clear simulated environment of a game. It made me think: Cooperation, social norms, collaboration, and all of the non-sociopath behaviours we're accustomed to aren't necessarily the norm, with only mentally-ill individuals deviating from it. Instead, it's possible for entire cultures to be sociopathic! Stress, poor job prospects, increased competition, etc... can push everyone towards these behaviours, all at once. In a situation like that, the natural sociopaths might prosper, and the "supports" might end up being horribly exploited or even starve to death.

DonHopkins 3y ago

Stewart Lee's impression of Ricky Gervais ("the Boris Johnson of stand up") literally saying what cannot be said because of political correctness and the woke brigade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHY5cFXqQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHY5cFXqQk

icpmacdo 3y ago

Not to conflate it with him not feeling fear though, here is a TV show episode with him talking about the subject, hard to timestamp but 14:10 for the busy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OGs1DehzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OGs1DehzA

ttepasse 3y ago

Astronauts in the last 50 years spending a lot of time together in a small group in an aluminium can, on the ISS for six month, sometimes for a year. Assuming the ideas of longer Moon and Mars mission will happen, that reality will be far more longer. Split-second decisions may be a thing, but mostly rare. For long term small groups who won’t drive each other insane, I'd rather select for agreeableness and conscientiousness than low emotional reactivity.

klabb3 3y ago
Sounds right. It was just an example, and it probably should go off the list.

barfbagginus 3y ago

[flagged]