Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Ask a sociopath: high-functioning

This blog has been a good outlet for me -- in the past couple years that I have been writing it, I have had a more stable life. I've answered questions and had questions answered, I've seduced and been seduced, I've lived vicariously through you and you through me. It's been a very unique experience -- fascinating to see the breadth and depth of humanity and to be forced to contribute regularly to that type of dialogue, particularly since I would never do so otherwise (I get very bored with purely philosophical discussions). Anyway, I thought I would share just a few recent questions and answers.

I asked a socio reader what it was like to be in a relationship with another sociopath: "What we were able to share was more than manipulation and sexual mind games. It was a simultaneous hollow connection that would eventually come to an end due to lack of further interest, or one of us ultimately winning."

One socio reader who describes herself as low-functioning but high-functioning enough to recognize it asked me, "How is my perspective interesting to you?" I answered:
I think everyone that has their feet in two different worlds (e.g. you being both high/low functioning) is interesting. For instance I am interested in someone who is transgendered, or black but light enough to pass for white, or poor but very educated. They are about the only people I trust to speak honestly about their own circumstances because they have a rare objectivity about what it really means to be a certain gender, or a certain race, or a certain social class. It's an objectivity about one's own personal circumstances that I think I lack in a lot of ways.
Another question, "How functional are you? like in maintaining an image?"
I'm single, so do poorly at relationships, but haven't really wanted to be in a committed relationship yet either (not enough). I've never been to prison, but have been "officially disciplined" several times, discharged from my employment a couple times, progressed from career path to career path while still managing to "climb" rather than slide in terms of prestige and money. Right now I have a relatively stable life in which I basically do what I want within reason in a field where micromanaging is frowned upon as stifling of creativity.
"Have you ever been this low in your life?"
No, but yes in some ways. I have made mistakes before and had my bad actions revealed to everyone that mattered, lost my good reputation and had to start over from scratch. Does that count?
"How did you manage to change yourself?"
I had a problem with self-deception, believing my own lies, which got me into trouble because I was blinded to the real risks inherent in my actions. Recognizing self-deception as being the root of my problems, I went on a dishonesty fast for about a year until I could trust myself to lie to others while still maintaining a knowledge of the truth for myself. Sometimes I fear that I have again strayed too far into self-deception, but I don't have the luxury of another complete fast from being dishonest at my current stage in life. Instead, I try to be as honest as I can and only lie if it is necessary.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Generosity

Maria Konnikova writes for Scientific American Blogs about the psychology behind gift giving. She cites research on how generosity is a winning game theory strategy, even seen from an self-maximizing economic perspective, because it is so difficult to tell whether you'll ever see that person again:

A group of psychologists from UC-Santa Barbara set out to test the long-standing conundrum that even in anonymous, one-shot games—in other words, in situations where you know that (1) you will never again encounter your partner and (2) no one has any idea what decision you’ve made—people more often than not choose to incur costs themselves in order to allocate benefits to others; an irrational behavior by traditional economic standards if ever there was one. In their model, the team managed to isolate an asymmetry that had previous been ignored: in an uncertain world, it is far more costly to incorrectly identify a situation as one-shot when it is in fact repeated than it is to mistake an actual one-shot encounter for a repeated one. Put differently, it is better to always assume that we will in fact encounter the same partners over and over. So costly is it to make a mistake in the opposite direction that, even absent any reputational or other mechanisms, it makes sense for us to behave generously to anyone we encounter. As the study authors conclude, “Generosity evolves because, at the ultimate level, it is a high-return cooperative strategy…even in the absence of any apparent potential for gain. Human generosity, far from being a thin veneer of cultural conditioning atop a Machiavellian core, may turn out to be a bedrock feature of human nature.”

That makes a lot of sense to me. Often people ask me, as a sociopath, whether I would leave a tip for a service professional whom I thought I would never see again, but I find that hard to imagine because one time I was accosted outside a restaurant by a service professional who felt that I undertipped him. Tipping generously not only had prevented that from happening since, it has also made a positive impression on my some of my dining companions that have had the chutzpah to actually check the tip that I've left, to ensure it was generous enough. So I find the hypo of never seeing a victim again difficult to imagine.

And if you're going to bother giving a gift, better make it count by getting something that they would particularly appreciate, or perhaps that could only come from you. Ariely describes these gifts:

Instead of picking a book from your sister's Amazon wish list, or giving her what you think she should read, go to a bookstore and try to think like her. It's a serious social investment.

The great challenge lies in making the leap into someone else's mind. Psychological research affirms that we are all partial prisoners of our own preferences and have a hard time seeing the world from a different perspective. But whether or not your sister likes the book, it may give her joy to think about you thinking of her.

I understand exactly what Ariely is talking about, having always made this type of tailor-made gift-giving myself. Konnikova suggests that people could do just as well with empathy (or maybe she is saying that this can only be done with empathy?):

Ariely singles out this type of gift as one that makes the mental leap from your own vantage point to that of someone else. It’s a leap that is incredibly difficult to take—exhibiting empathy, let alone perfect empathy to the point of complete confluence with the mind of another person, is a tough feat even in the most conducive of circumstances—but that may be worth taking all the same. For, even if you fail to make it as accurately as you may have wanted, the effort will be noted. The actual accuracy is somewhat beside the point. What matters is that you try to make the shift from your own mindset to someone else’s, that you make the effort to think about what present would be best suited to another person.

What if you don't use empathy to make the leap from your own vantage point to that of someone else? Is it still the thought that counts? 

Monday, December 23, 2013

Film: Nightmare Before Christmas

When I was younger I really identified with the film Nightmare Before Christmas (currently streams on Netflix). It's about Jack Skellington and the people of Halloweentown, whose job is to scare people ("that's our job but we're not mean" because "life's not fun without a good scare"). They end up taking over Christmas and making a mess of it, largely because they can't quite grasp the concept of it (regarding stockings hung by a fire, "Oh, yes! Does it still have a foot? Let me see, let me look. Is it rotted and covered with gook?"). Their misplaced attempts at Christmas reminded me of this idea, from a father of an autistic child regarding his philosophy in placing autistic individuals in places of employment that take advantage of their strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses:

 “A weed is a beautiful plant in an unwanted place,” he says. “An herb is the same plant where it is wanted. Who decides if something is a weed or an herb? Society does.”

Jack Skellington and his band undoubtedly do bad things, chief among them ruining Christmas. And he does it all gleefully and selfishly, although unintentionally. Rather, he just does things in a way that comes naturally to him but is wholly inappropriate for that particular context. I really identified with that growing up. There were plenty of bad things that I actively intended, just like Jack's terror filled Halloween celebrations. But there were also times when I felt like I was using my prodigious (I thought) talents for good. Like Jack, those times were largely because I misunderstood the complexity of what I was trying to imitate. For instance, Jack in trying to decipher the secret of Christmas magic finally gives up, assuming that it can't be as complicated as it seemed:

Or perhaps it's really not as deep as I've been led to think.
Am I trying much too hard? Of course. I've been too close to see.
The answer's right in front of me.
Right in front of me.
It's simple really, very clear,
like music drifting in the air.
Invisible, but everywhere.
Just because I cannot see it doesn't mean I can't believe it.
You know, I think this Christmas thing
is not as tricky as it seems.
And why should they have all the fun?
It should belong to anyone.
Not anyone, in fact, but me.
Why, I could make a Christmas tree.
And there's no reason I can find
I couldn't handle Christmastime.
I bet I could improve it, too, and that's exactly what I'll do.
(evil laugh)

There were many times as a young sociopath that I felt similarly about the emotional worlds of others. Even though I didn't relate to my own emotions or feel empathy, I figured that there couldn't be that much to it, so I didn't tinkering around with the emotions of others.

Jack decides that although he is naturally talented and well suited for scaring people, he would like to try something new -- bringing Christmas cheer. Once Jack decides to take over Christmas, there is nothing that he won't do to accomplish his goals, largely through manipulating his minions. He tells the trick or treaters Lock, Shock, and Barrel to kidnap Santa Claus, appealing to their pride and love of the nefarious ("The job I have for you is top secret. It requires craft, cunning, mischief.") He tries to explain the spirit of Christmas to the residents of Halloween but when they don't get it, he decides to instead just tell them what they want to hear in order to get their support -- the story of the monster Sandy Claws ("Everyone, please! Now, not so fast. There’s something here that you don’t quite grasp. (Well, I may as well give them what they want…)"). It's clear that they never quite understand the spirit of Christmas because when news reports of Jack saw that he is "mocking and mangling this joyous holiday," they cheer.

When Jack realizes he has utterly failed, he is disappointed for a hot minute ("how could I be so blind . . . everything's gone so wrong"). This sentiment falls just short of repentance and he is soon feeling quite pleased with himself and his ability to do as much as he did: "for a moment why, I even touched the sky." So pretty resilient self-esteem. Again I related to this, the knowledge that I had spectacularly failed, but never really seeming to feel badly about it all or change my behavior.

So, is there a role for Jack Skellingtons in this world? Or are they weeds wherever they sprout?

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Sociopaths = slightly less violent than toddlers

David Dobbs writes for the NY Times about the progression from violent toddlers (everyone), to become less violent children (most everyone) to becoming hardly violent at all adults (a lot of people):

To understand the violent criminal, says Richard E. Tremblay, imagine a 2-year-old boy doing the things that make the terrible twos terrible — grabbing, kicking, pushing, punching, biting.

Now imagine him doing all this with the body and resources of an 18-year-old.

You have just pictured both a perfectly normal toddler and a typical violent criminal as Dr. Tremblay, a developmental psychologist at University College Dublin in Ireland, sees them — the toddler as a creature who reflexively uses physical aggression to get what he wants; the criminal as the rare person who has never learned to do otherwise.

In other words, dangerous criminals don’t turn violent. They just stay that way.
***
“It’s highly reliable,” said Brad J. Bushman, a psychology professor at Ohio State University and an expert on child violence, who noted that toddlers use physical aggression even more than people in violent youth gangs do. “Thank God toddlers don’t carry weapons.”
***
The rate of violence peaks at 24 months, declines steadily through adolescence and plunges in early adulthood. But as Dr. Tremblay and Daniel S. Nagin, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, found in a pivotal 1999 study, a troublesome few do not follow this pattern.
***
To Dr. Tremblay, the findings suggest cause for optimism: that humans more readily learn civility than they do cruelty.

We start as toddlers. We learn through conditioning, as we heed requests not to hit others but to use our words. We learn self-control. Beginning in our third year, we learn social strategies like bargaining and charm. Perhaps most vital, we use a developing brain to read situations and choose among these learned tactics and strategies.

I wonder if the non-violent sociopaths were the ones that as children started focusing more on negotiation and charm to get their way (as opposed to the violent sociopaths who remained heavy-handed in their techniques).

The rest article is interesting, especially when it discusses how Tremblay became interested in human violence only because he grew up with a father who was a professional football player and was fascinated that there were certain areas of life in which violence was not only accepted, it was praised. See also, glorification of violence in media, video games, and many other areas of our entertainment lives.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

6 Surprising Findings About Good and Evil

From Mother Jones, moral psychologist Joshua Greene and author of the recent book "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them", presents "6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil". Some of the more salient points for this audience:
  • According to Greene, while we have innate dispositions to care for one another, they're ultimately limited and work best among smallish clans of people who trust and know each other.
  • "We have gut reactions that make us cooperative," Greene says. Indeed, he adds, "If you force people to stop and think, then they're less likely to be cooperative."
  •  We also keep tabs and enforce norms through punishment; in Moral Tribes, Greene suggests that a primary way that we do so is through gossip. He cites the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found that two-thirds of human conversations involve chattering about other people, including spreading word of who's behaving well and who's behaving badly. Thus do we impose serious costs on those who commit anti-social behavior.
  • [J]ust as we're naturally inclined to be cooperative within our own group, we're also inclined to distrust other groups (or worse). "In-group favoritism and ethnocentrism are human universals," writes Greene. What that means is that once you leave the setting of a small group and start dealing with multiple groups, there's a reversal of field in morality. Suddenly, you can't trust your emotions or gut settings any longer. "When it comes to us versus them, with different groups that have different feelings about things like gay marriage, or Obamacare, or Israelies versus Palestinians, our gut reactions are the source of the problem," says Greene.

His conclusion:

Based on many experiments with Public Goods Games, trolleys, and other scenarios, Greene has come to the conclusion that we can only trust gut-level morality to do so much. Uncomfortable scenarios like the footbridge dilemma notwithstanding, he believes that something like utilitarianism, which he defines as "maximize happiness impartially," is the only moral approach that can work with a vast, complex world comprised of many different groups of people.

But to get there, Greene says, requires the moral version of a gut override on the part of humanity—a shift to "manual mode," as he puts it.
***
To be more moral, then, Greene believes that we must first grasp the limits of the moral instincts that come naturally to us. That's hard to do, but he thinks it gets collectively easier.

Maybe one of the quickest way we can do that is to stop using gossip (i.e. public shaming) as a blunt instrument enforcement mechanism for misplaced social (not really even moral) enforcement (see also Duck Dynasty scandal).

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