Comment by r3vo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by r3vo | Hacker News Reader

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It seems pretty likely to me that Steve Jobs was a high functioning sociopath. The line about how his demeanor changed dramatically when Carmack's wife asked for a favor was indicative to me.

"One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote."

I find sociopaths fascinating, but I would sure never want to work for one. It must take an incredible amount of calculation and self discipline to keep a semblance of normality for an incredibly high profile sociopath like Jobs.

On a side note, the late Pieter Hintjens of ZeroMQ wrote an excellent book about psychopaths available online for free here.

https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta....

Also want to disclaim that I am not a psychiatrist and my opinion of Job's sociopathy is only my speculation.

If psychiatrists generally frown upon diagnosing people who are not their patients, as a non-expert, I would be fairly careful in labeling now deceased people based on anecdotal data. Especially if I was not familiar with the person. Jobs had obvious pathological facets in his interactions with other people - but inventing labels on top of the anecdotes really does not add value in any way.

Mr. Hintjens was not a psychiatric expert either. That he wrote a book on the subject, is not entirely to his credit. As such, he could have just described "predatory behavior".

There is popular material available on psychopathy and socipathy written by subject matter experts. For example "The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain" by James Fallon is written by a neuroscientist who accidentally discovers he is a psychopath.

Generally I agree with you but there's a really, really clear pattern in everything anyone's ever written about an encounter with Steve Jobs. Over the space of decades he was unpredictably charming or abusive, a consummate manipulator and user, completely untrustworthy and seemingly without a conscience.

It's not a clinical diagnosis and should never be treated as such. But after you've run into a couple of people in your own life with those same attributes and that same pattern of behaviour, that's plenty to go on.

Yes, some people have a pattern of behaving badly. Respectively, I still don't think it's a non-clinicians place to make armchair diagnoses based on anecdotes, especially since,

a) Not every pathological behavioral pattern has some underlying psychiatric or neurological condition to explain it. Some people just behave badly.

b) Often diagnosed psychological conditions don't really manifest in how people think they manifest

and

c) Completely dissimilar conditions can create similar behavior in some situtations.

Of c) especially: For example aspergers and narcissists can behave exactly the same in some situations. They both can lack in reciprocity, but for completely different reasons.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-goulston-md/just-listen-...

"...after you've run into a couple of people in your own life with those same attributes and that same pattern of behaviour, that's plenty to go on."

I agree that it's really critical to understand that there are people who don't engage in reciprocal relationships and can be abusive.

> I find sociopaths fascinating, but I would sure never want to work for one.

I think it would be very difficult to not work for one since they're at the top of pretty much every successful company.

There is a ton of truth to this:

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

great article

Or just maybe getting hit by that kind of counter offer when you were bothering someone by pushing to move their wedding date hits you like cold water and you are like right, I'll leave this person alone and avoid making it weirder.

There is also this book - "Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas" which seemed to be popular a few years ago. It's unclear how reliable the narrator is but I remember it had a jarring effect on me: https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sociopath-Spent-Hiding-Pl...

It appears your link is invalid.

https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta...

Sorry about that!

https://legacy.gitbook.com/book/hintjens/psychopathcode/deta...

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