I was thinking recently about why I am oddly so tolerant. It's a great trait to have, particularly in the law when there are some clients with very very good cases who are very very bad people.
I thought one reason might be that we're just a little colorblind when it comes to social norms and morality. A very popular post for people finding this website is the one about love. A controversial segment in that post is where I say that sociopaths can often appreciate certain traditionally undervalued segments of the population at closer their true value than normal people do. I actually have forgotten why it's controversial. Maybe because some people make a moral judgment on that and think that I am arguing that sociopaths are out there doing good amongst the populace like some sort of superhero. But sociopaths are more like stock value traders or contrarians. The price of a stock is the price that the market values it (the price at which there are people both willing to buy and sell at the same price). But the value of a stock is based on how much the actual corporation is worth. It's quite possible to have a valuable stock that is underpriced, just as it is quite possible for society to undervalue a person. A sociopath naturally sees these areas as potential opportunities for arbitraging, or taking advantage of the gap in something's price and its value in another context.
But I also think there is another reason why some sociopaths may be this way is a related belief -- that all humans have value because it often is true and in any case it would be difficult to falsify. That is, assume that humans have value because a lot of people have had some value in the past and it's really hard to know ahead of time which are going to turn out to be fruitless. I think a theme of this is being expressed in this recent comment from an old post:
That actually bothers me in people, how easily I can see something from another's point of view, free of judgement and prejudice but other people can be so quick to criticize an idea just because they don't agree. They don't consider the possibility that they might be wrong but somehow the sociopaths that consider ideas as radical as Hitler's, Marx's or Stalin's on equal ground as democracy, freedom of speech and habeas corpus are the villains, for being impartial. People, jeez...
I thought one reason might be that we're just a little colorblind when it comes to social norms and morality. A very popular post for people finding this website is the one about love. A controversial segment in that post is where I say that sociopaths can often appreciate certain traditionally undervalued segments of the population at closer their true value than normal people do. I actually have forgotten why it's controversial. Maybe because some people make a moral judgment on that and think that I am arguing that sociopaths are out there doing good amongst the populace like some sort of superhero. But sociopaths are more like stock value traders or contrarians. The price of a stock is the price that the market values it (the price at which there are people both willing to buy and sell at the same price). But the value of a stock is based on how much the actual corporation is worth. It's quite possible to have a valuable stock that is underpriced, just as it is quite possible for society to undervalue a person. A sociopath naturally sees these areas as potential opportunities for arbitraging, or taking advantage of the gap in something's price and its value in another context.
But I also think there is another reason why some sociopaths may be this way is a related belief -- that all humans have value because it often is true and in any case it would be difficult to falsify. That is, assume that humans have value because a lot of people have had some value in the past and it's really hard to know ahead of time which are going to turn out to be fruitless. I think a theme of this is being expressed in this recent comment from an old post:
That actually bothers me in people, how easily I can see something from another's point of view, free of judgement and prejudice but other people can be so quick to criticize an idea just because they don't agree. They don't consider the possibility that they might be wrong but somehow the sociopaths that consider ideas as radical as Hitler's, Marx's or Stalin's on equal ground as democracy, freedom of speech and habeas corpus are the villains, for being impartial. People, jeez...