Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcims | Hacker News Reader

One of my first experiences with Unix was getting an angry email from Steve Jobs.

He had a default message in the NeXT mail client back in the early '90's. I for some reason felt it was a good idea to send him an email and enable 'return receipt'. He replied, fuming at the violation of his privacy and never answered my question.

Edit: The internet never forgets, the default email in question - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCPlGgA6tE4

View on HN

He was mad at you because he didn't like his software made by the company he owned?

That is perfectly, perfectly believable. He was never interested in being accountable to others. As Steve Wozniak said, "He had very, very, very negative sides and he didn't seem to care what other people felt."

Actually a lot of success people are like that. For successful careers you got to be comfortable stepping on others' toes and persuading others to do things in your way. Human nature. Most of us are just herds who secretly want to be led by a strong, charismatic leader.

Top level executives very often lean to psychopthic tendencies than your average worker bees at corporations. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-... . You have to be a cold person to do a lot of what they do or at the very least have a very strong conviction that what you're doing is for some greater good (good chance it's yourself). I also suspect that ratio increases the larger the corporation.

I think another way to put it is that organizations created by sociopaths tend to be set up for sociopaths. There is also the possibility we could create organizations set up for other kinds of people to succeed.

> There is also the possibility we could create organizations set up for other kinds of people to succeed.

“My exciting insight came in 2001 when I read Bernard Lietaer’s book, The Future of Money. It helped me see the ways our monetary system has shaped our culture and even our sense of humanity. That’s when I realized the things we had invented (in my company) were in fact new kinds of currencies, and that currencies are the main tools we use to shape patterns in community and culture. They are the DNA of our social organisms.”

- Arthur Brock [1]

[1] https://www.artbrock.com/2014/11/21/designing-social-flows-c...

Another way to put it is that once you have one sociapth/whatever setting up an organization/country/community and won a few battles the infection quickly spreads and eventually people secretly accept that only a sociopath/whatever looks like a good leader (so that their interests can be protected and their conscience untouched).

I don't think there's more psychopathic tendencies in those positions because it's a necessity to being a successful leader. I think a lot of people crave power, and with a disregard for morals and other people in general, it's easier to attain it. Good people also make good leaders, they just need more luck and hard work to get there without kicking on everyone across their path.

I strongly disagree that this is some essential property of humankind. I think what you're describing is the learned helplessness [1] associated with trauma and abuse created by people like this. Is it common? Yes. Is it something we should shrug at? Fuck no.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

This is, to me, not doing enough tribute to humanity, & carrying too much water for Dark Triad psychopaths. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dark-triad on

I think far too few of us are given avenues to see our own competence & capabilities. Consumerism & the media & school each dilutes the genuine locus of control that lies within. Fear of losing shelter & health care & food drives our ability to exercise our "man, the tool maker" spirit, our willingness to venture forward.

Praising the wolves who don't seem to care, as somehow the rightful tenders of the herd, is not how I see things.

> Most of us are just herds who secretly want to be led by a strong, charismatic leader.

Why do ‘most of us’ want this?

Because the world is incredibly complex and following great leaders is a great risk reward ratio. It's also a great way to learn

What you miss here is that "great" leaders are often great at creating harm for those who don't follow them. The risk/reward ratio is artificially skewed.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reply on news.ycombinator.com