The criminal element

A reader writes:

I discovered I was a sociopath only several days ago. It took me 30 years of self-introspection. Finding you site finally connected me to something. I'm not sure what it means exactly that I've finally been realized by myself, but it's calming. I am not a criminal and have rarely been involved with the law on any level. I also have no craving to break the law. I DO have a craving not to go to prison, so that's probably part of it. I do not wish to psychologically harm others, but I do. Why am I not a criminal? I fit every exact thought and description of a sociopath, yet I do not commit crimes.

I find myself wishing there was a person who could help study us without being motivated by the fact that they need to be scared of us and that sociopath = criminal.

My response:

I think that sociopaths naturally exploit what is easiest to exploit. If a sociopath was born on a farm, maybe he would become a farmer. If his parents were academics, maybe he would become a scholar. If he was born on skid row, he would probably become a criminal. He would recognize that he has a natural advantage in a particular world and try to exploit that natural advantage. I have never been interested in being a career criminal, but I also don't have the sorts of connections or advantages that would lend themselves for that type of life for me. Instead, it has been much easier for me to play the racket that is the highly intelligent, consultant type role. People want me to tell them what their problem is, and that is easy and interesting enough to engage me. There is no pull to break the law just because it happens to be the law -- I get no particular thrill from breaking a law, just from the inherent interest of the activity itself. If I do break the law, it just happens without regard to the law.

I also wish that there were more people studying so called successful sociopaths.

Managing expectations

For several years I was in a very corporate environment (until I got fired for shirking almost all work assignments).  My bosses would always admonish us to manage our clients' expectations.  By that they meant that we should under-promise so we would look like the hero when we exceeded expectations, or at the very least always meet their expectations.  This was an ok strategy most of the time, particularly when there was some information asymmetry between you and the client that made it difficult for the client to assess for itself the likely outcomes from your type of services.  In situations where the client is not clueless and can actually make an educated guess itself about what you should and shouldn't be able to accomplish, this can be a self-defeating strategy.  If they know from their own experiences that they can expect x quality at y price, when they come into your office and you tell them that you can only provide (x-10) at (y+1000) price, they'll just look elsewhere for services.

As part of my current job, I often give training presentations or workshops, either in-house or for other organizations or conferences.  I just started one in-house presentation yesterday -- a multi-week affair that most people have to attend because it looks good for promotion.  I have done this particular series before and found that most people's complaints revolved around it being too much work.  It also was too much work for me.  This time around I've revamped it to be the sort of thing that people (including me) can just show up to and have an interesting discussion.  But there is always the worry that people will not take it seriously at all, and then things will truly fall apart before the end of the series with possible damage to my reputation from people thinking that I am a "joke" or can otherwise be taken advantage of.  My plan of action (a risky plan of action) is to have the class be easy but to maintain appearances is to be seen as an authority such that they are afraid of my judgment, and also highlight the accomplishments and good ideas of their colleagues to foment peer pressure.  This way they will feel both vertical and horizontal pressure to put forth their better efforts, despite the casual structure of the class.

To establish myself as an authority, I told them that I chose this particular topic because it is something that I didn't know much about but wanted to learn.  I then told a story about someone famous in my field who happens to be in his 80s, and how he does a similar series with an emphasis on technology because that's the only way he can keep up with the latest and still remain relevant.  Still, I really played up my ignorance, turning to particular articles written by experts and saying I don't even know what they're talking about, and could someone get more esoteric?  I then proceeded to lead the discussion by asking insightful questions that I knew would be some people's specialities or at least a handful of people would know because of current events.  I stirred up this almost feeding frenzy of bragging, everyone eager to try to show off their own knowledge and expertise lest they be thought the lone idiot in the seminar, but I never let anyone get too comfortable either.  Finally at the end I take them along a particular polished thought experiment that blew their minds.  The truth is that although I am not an authority in this general subject area, I am in the particular subject matter we discussed this week and will discuss next week.  So now I've basically told them I'm an ignorant dilettante... who can also blow their minds.  If my plan has worked correctly, the thing they should be asking themselves today is -- if I think I'm an idiot at something in which I am so far above them, how good am I at the things that I would actually admit expertise?

Thriving sociopaths at work

From a reader:

I'm a reader and I have been reading your blog for a couple of months. Since you seem to be very welcoming to readers, I decided to pitch this idea that came to me. I'm not sure I'm a psychopath, but I have a few traits I relate to, and it certainly affects the way I accomplish my job. I was curious to know how other sociopaths get by, so I made up this post.

We could cite a few individuals who achieved success in life: an accomplished career; a respected image; a strong family; security in wealth; a prestigious opinion.

Sociopaths have traits that set them apart from neurotypicals, like greater ease in face of prolonged stress, the backbone to make tough decisions, a keen eye for detail, a skeptical stance that freshens his/her view on others and a sincerity that can materialize changes around him/her.

Not all sociopathic traits work well for society's greater good. An utmost sense of individuality could be argued to fuel capitalism's invisible hand with providential effects, but so could fraud and corruption peak at catastrophic levels. The same individuals who were hired to promote change in big companies ended up achieving sole success at the expense of the system in the end line. Albeit personal success is a common goal for sociopaths and neurotypicals alike, legitimacy through the system can be a great way for a sociopath to trail his destiny.

Some job descriptions list sociopathic traits as valuable. Robert Hare advocates the use of the sociopathic courage in the police force and firefighting. It is common among them to suffer from PTSD, depression and anxiety after consecutive years under stress. Sociopaths, on the other hand, would suffer much less, maintaining good levels performances under such conditions.

Charm, sociability and appeal are listed traits for hosts, salesmen, lawyers and spokespersons. Are these career examples far fetched? Are there other legitimate careers that society looks high upon which sociopaths would inevitably succeed?

Sociopath as entrepreneur

One of my mentors just asked me, "What made you who you are." It was meant to be complimentary. The implication was that I am better than a lot of my peers. Particularly my mentor is impressed with how I seem to understand many more aspects of the dilemmas we are working with than some of my colleagues.

I guess you could call it an ability to think abstractly, or an increased awareness of the mechanics--a more intimate knowledge of the behind the scenes action that is motivating so much of what we look at. It allows me to Bayesian update like mad, like an excel spreadsheet with hundreds of inter-working, interdependent formula, but capable of adjusting in an instant based on new information.

My mentor actually calls it "alien." Again, he means it to be complimentary. He subscribes to the theory that great thinkers and entrepreneurs tend to be "aliens," people who are not really part of their culture. Aliens live parallel lives with different mindsets than the majority. They're readily able to think critically about the world around them because it already seems foreign to them. There's no effort in trying to maintain distance or perspective regarding the problem. The distance has always been there. The distance will always be there because that is the way the alien interacts with everything in the world.

My mentor thinks I must be an alien because my smart ideas are not just smart, they're groundbreaking. Even the way I explain my ideas to others is alien. It's like I am trying to translate my ideas into a language that others will be able to understand. The effort I am making to communicate is apparent, like figuring out how to instruct someone to hike from point A to point B when I had just teleported there instantly. My mentor thinks that you simply cannot teach people to think this way. You can open their mind and teach them some tricks, but they will never think fluently this way the same way that an "alien" would. I laughed off his comments, saying that I have plenty of stupid ideas too. "Well I do too," he responded, "we all do. That's part and parcel of risky thinking."

Here's an example of "alien" entrepreneurship, Tony Hseih, head of Zappos. From the NY Times:

At times, Mr. Hsieh comes across as an alien who has studied human beings in order to live among them. That can intimidate those who are not accustomed to his watchful style. “I have been in job interviews with him where you are expecting more, and it can be awkward silences,” said Ned Farra, who manages relationships with other Web sites for Zappos. “He is not afraid of it. It is almost like he is testing you.”

Mr. Hsieh said that he surrounds himself with people who are more outgoing than he is, in part to draw himself out. “My view is that I am more of a mirror of who I am around,” he said. “So if I am around an introverted person that is really awkward. But if I am around an extroverted person I will be whoever they are times point-5.”

***

Outwitting the system is something Mr. Hsieh has honed from a young age. In addition to describing his youthful business ventures (worm farms failed, personalized photo buttons succeeded), “Delivering Happiness” recounts a history of scam artistry. To fool his Taiwanese-born parents into thinking he was practicing piano and violin, he recorded practice sessions and played them back on weekend mornings.

***

Jason Levesque, another Harvard friend who worked at LinkExchange, recalled Mr. Hsieh’s self-effacement. When inviting friends to play a video game, “he was obviously the best at the game, but he would sort of hide that in order to get everyone to play,” Mr. Levesque said.

Like Mr. Zuckerberg’s, Mr. Hsieh’s success has been built in part on his ability to anatomize the way people crave connections with others, and turn those insights into a business plan.

***

Mr. Hsieh, who professes fascination with dating guides like Neil Strauss’s “The Game” and pontificated on his theory of the evolutionary futility of sexual jealousy, said he does not date. “I don’t usually define dating or not dating, together or not together,” said Mr. Hsieh, nursing another tall shaker of wine at the Downtown Cocktail Room. “I prefer to use the term ‘hang out.’ And I hang out with a lot of people, guys and girls. I don’t really have this one person I am dating right now. I am hanging out with multiple people, and some people I hang out with more than others.”

***

“I think of everyone I know in my life, he’s the best at not feeling jealousy,” she added. “But I think he’s human, whether anyone believes that or not.”

This is not the first time I have been called an alien. It is not even the first time that I have been called that with a positive or value neutral connotation. I never know what to say in these situations. I agree with them, obviously, but in terms of explaining to them why I might have grown up with the mentality of an "alien" in a foreign world...? "It's a mystery," I tell them. But it's not. It hasn't been a mystery since I became self-aware, or maybe since I learned of the term "sociopath".

Managing mental illness

This is an interesting NY Times article about managing Schizoaffective disorder that questions the typical advice of taking it easy. Particularly, it suggests that people with that particular disorder do better when they have a very busy, demanding job or otherwise keep busy with obligations:

She travels a lot to conferences, and when she is back in California she keeps her schedule as full as possible. Her mind runs on high, and without fuel — without work — it seems to want to feed on itself. Her elbows usually tingle when that is about to happen, she said, and she will often play number games in her head. If she needs to, she will make a quick phone call.

I remember being happiest in my childhood during the school year. Once the summer came around, it was very easy for me to get cripplingly bored and generally dissatisfied with life. When I was a teenager, I would actually have symptoms of depression in the summer--feelings of malaise and general mental unrest that would always quickly disappear once school started again. During the school years I had every hour of my life scheduled because I liked it that way. One time I got appendicitis and went for 10 days with it perforated without seeking medical attention--I just had so many things I was caught up with. Right now I am in a similar situation of possibly overdoing it. I'm sleep deprived and may be developing an ulcer, but at least my mind isn't eating itself.