Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader | Hacker News Reader

Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader

nytimes.com

85 pointstilt31 comments

I dont want to sound too hard, but I have an intuition that this is just a load of hogwash. The author racks his brain and comes up with a few examples of addicts who run big companies.

What about all the big companies run by non-addicts (the majority)?

What about all the addicts who don't run big companies (the majority)?

These things need to be addressed before I'll start to buy the argument. And this comment coming from a habitual risk-taking leader himself.

Is that me or the author is not implying that good leaders ARE addicts (to drugs) but that they seek success, progress, disruption, quality as an addict would seek pleisure "artificially"?

> What about all the big companies run by non-addicts (the majority)

Sure, but the real question is whether "addicts" are over-represented amongst successful CEOs more than the general population.

Looks like I should explain myself:

If there was no association between having an "addictive personality" and being a successful CEO, we would expect "addictives" to be CEOs just as often as non-addictives. If being an addictive helps with being a successful CEO, we'd expect a higher concentration of addictives amongst the population of successful CEOs.

The grandparent is presenting a argument a much stronger straw-man: that the majority of successful CEOs have addictive personalities. The original post does not make that claim.

That isn't how statistics work. If 10% of people are "addicts", and 20% of CEOs are "addicts", it's fair to say that there is correlation - despite the fact that there are still five times as many non-addict CEOs.

edit: Think this is actually the point you're trying to make, though I think you didn't quite nail it.

I mis-spoke when I wrote "expect 'addictives' to be CEOs just as often as non-addictives". I meant to write "expect to find 'addictives' amongst the population of CEOs at the same rate at which they occur in the general popluation" or something.

Would've been easier to write it out with math. :P

I definitely feel that in my life. The urge to create things, to grow, to change myself, the condescendence at anyone who is satisfied with current situation. It's like someone is itching my brain, it feels very similar to craving nicotine, or caffeine, or just mind-altering substances. It's like someone is shouting at me "common, this sucks, now go do something" even when everything is seemingly awesome.

You have said in two sentences what I have struggled to express for many years.

And here's Malcolm Gladwell making the argument that successful people are less likely to take risks:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/18/100118fa_fact_...

Reality is reality. If you take risks, you open yourself up to failures, but the potential upside might be greater as well.

The risk-taking, novelty-seeking and obsessive personality traits often found in addicts can be harnessed to make them very effective in the workplace. For many leaders, it’s not the case that they succeed in spite of their addiction; rather, the same brain wiring and chemistry that make them addicts also confer on them behavioral traits that serve them well.

This is ridiculous in some ways. Yes, certain personality traits predispose you to certain things. But environment also plays a role. I imagine most leaders suffer from something I would call "bored gifted kid syndrome". And if they find a means to be adequately engaged, it goes away and stops being a "personality problem".

In fact, framing it as "addictive personality" helps create problems by vilifying them in a way that seems inescapable -- like "you were born defective". My oldest son is profoundly gifted and was prone to "addictive" behaviors (not drugs or alcohol, but video games and such) and when we figured out how to meet his needs for mental stimulation adequately, he went from behaving like your typical grumpy, socially defective addict to being one of the calmest people I know. I never told him he was "defective". I didn't frame it that way. And it helped him find his way out of what often ends up being a psychological trap.

Edit: There is a book that addresses the social aspect of creating addicts by imposing expectations that it is out of their hands -- for example, cultures that blame alcoholism on the alcohol have higher rates of it than cultures that hold the individual responsible. Title: "The Truth About Addiction and Recovery". One wife of an alcoholic who tried to hand me my head for recommending this book then went on to talk about "dry drunks" (people who remain "addicted" to alcohol while not drinking for years at a time) and that the real problem with alcoholism was all the "isms" (by that I think she meant beliefs?) not the alcohol per se. She was on such a tear, I didn't bother to point out that her remarks supported mine rather than refuting them.

EDIT: Since comment scores are not visible, I will note that this is being upvoted, downvoted, upvoted, downvoted. I would be curious as to what is so seemingly controversial. Any thoughts?

>EDIT: Since comment scores are not visible, I will note that this is being upvoted, downvoted, upvoted, downvoted. I would be curious as to what is so seemingly controversial. Any thoughts?

Show me a parent who doesn't think their kid is "gifted".

Upvoted. I sort of "forget" people here don't really know me. In other circles, it's perfectly okay for me to say that. I used to give a lot of advice in "gifted" circles on the internet. He's actually had some testing. I was a very minor presenter at a gifted convention thingy. A presentation there and conversation with the presenter (big name in testing circles and such) clued me. (Due to professional ethics, she could not give me a number but did remark "It will be okay because you homeschool"...in other words "My sympathies. You have quite a challenge on your hands.") ...blah blah blah.

I don't think he's "gifted". I think he's a huge pain in the butt. But I also adore him.

Thanks for the feedback.

"Cultures that blame alcoholism on the alcohol have higher rates of it than cultures that hold the individual responsible."

I don't think either of those options squares with the science, e.g. http://www.nijc.org/pdfs/Subject%20Matter%20Articles/Drugs%2...

And also the science about genetic differences in the way people process alcohol and experience pleasure also contradicts that dichotomy.

I only know of one experiment on this: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park >. It concluded that morphine addiction in ordinary rats is not just influenced by their environment, but pretty much determined by it.

I'd be interested to hear how much that can be changed by breeding the rats selectively. Until you know that, I won't believe anything you say about genetic influences on addiction. It seems that no one has tried to find out. So I assume that Addiction Studies (or whatever it's called) has very little to do with science.

I honestly don't understand your point. I appreciate the link, but my initial skim of it gives me the impression that it says stuff that agrees with my point about "social"/experiential influences on addiction, which is not what I thought it would do. Did I miss something?

I am aware that there are physiological differences in how people process things like alcohol. (For example, men tend to tolerate it better than women.) I am hesitant to agree with framing that as "genetic" differences. I have a genetic disorder. I have changed my diet and lifestyle to reverse a lot of my symptoms and done a lot of reading and what not. I am reluctant to agree with the standard views on 'genetic' cause of stuff. It tends to not fit with my first hand experience with the subject. I am also hesitant to argue it as my views are backed primarily by my experiences so there is little I can cite to back them up and this gets me in enormous hot water in online discussions.

Also, my comment about environmental influences does not mean that things like physiology play zero role. That's a false dichotomy.

Nothing wrong with having an addictive personality. I'm like that, and I've never thought of it as an insult- rather, it's something I openly acknowledge. It's just one more thing I know about myself, that lets me try to make better choices to keep myself happy.

I would say there is nothing wrong with having certain personality traits. I think framing it as "addictive" does cause a lot of people to feel out of control and unable to deal with things in a comfortable manner. If it doesn't have that impact on you, more power to you. But most people don't take that as neutrally descriptive but, instead, as something to feel guilty about and like it is inherently socially unacceptable and so on.

Probably more important than "addictive" personality traits alone are social skills and/or understanding of politics and how to work people and manipulate because ultimately those are the ones who actually do get promoted; the higher up you go, the more this will ring true. In any big organization you don't just rise to the top for your work merits or being a "born leader" alone.

Isn't this the reason why doctors give people with ADHD amphetamines? So that they would feel content leading their somewhat mundane lives?

The article is mostly about addictive personality and the connections between addictive personality and innovation or success aren't really well drawn. Moreover, their anecdata suffers from the problem that people who are in a high stress environment may exhibit addiction-like behaviors which are are actually self-medication for stress.

Rediscovering sublimation? Again? ^_^

It is said thousands years ago - control your emotions or be controlled by emotions. Freud emphasized that energy bounded to some emotions and mental states can be redirected, transformed, controlled.

General Taosist example is a river overflowed with monsoon water. It sweeps out everything when uncontrolled, but if people have built some dams and walls in advance, then all flooding waters will run into more-or-less controlled way.

So, if one can control himself why not use ones obsessions instead of being used by them?

"Freud emphasized that energy bounded to some emotions and mental states can be redirected, transformed, controlled. General Taosist example is a river overflowed with monsoon water."

Freud was a pseudoscientific hack, and Taoism. while a nice philosophy, is not empirical science either. You've fallen far short of any decent standard of evidence here.

I have no time and intention to launch into a big discussion about scientific approach to mental states and their relation to the bodily ones. What I can tell for sure - describing and studying them scientifically in separation from other dynamic processes is deeply flawed approach.

You can, for example, find tons of studies about so-called 'attention window' or 'working memory span', but they didn't even mention that those characteristics could be dramatically reduced under stress or any other state of overload. There are a dozen variables on which it depends on, from the time of day to a noise level.

And, of course, calling Freudian works a hack is a little bit naive. Yes, you could call his Interpretation of dreams a hack, but he developed and extended a more general theory of mental dynamics, which, ironically, was known for aeons in the East.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=working+memory+under+str...

Yes, you could call his Interpretation of dreams a hack, but he developed and extended a more general theory of mental dynamics, which, ironically, was known for aeons in the East.

Which, by the way, is all scientifically unsubstantiated bullshit until you show me some properly documented and controlled experiments demonstrating otherwise.

Which, by the way, is all scientifically unsubstantiated bullshit this statement is too bold to continue any reasonable discussion. ^_^

Freud was extended and popularized the theory of unconscious mental dynamics which need not to be explained to any educated person. It covers almost anything from cognitive tasks and linguistics to somatic processes.

Secondly, he developed theory of therapist-patient relationships which was extended after him to anything from propaganda and advertisements to NLP and other influental techniques.

Of course, unconsciousness was known since Upanishads, but Freud was popularisator.

I'm not saying that Freud was unimportant in the history of ideas or anything; I'm saying there's no concrete evidence any of his theories have any predictive value over the actual behavior of human beings.

You see, I can afford to be categorically dismissive of Freud, Taoism, the Upanishads, and Miss Cleo because of a far more important development in the history of ideas: empiricism.

From the title I would have thought the article would be about personality spreading among people, not about the personality of addicts.

what is the claim here? that some great leaders were addicts, so addiction is a trait of a great leader? please. it is interesting to note that some can simultaneously battle substance addiction and lead productive lives, but nothing in this article even remotely resembles proof of causation.

that said, i can believe that the greatest thinkers and inventors in human history are those that were completely obsessed (addicted?) with what they were doing. people can become addicted to pursuing their vision, and in this sense the article has some merit. not well communicated however.

show me a neurological study comparing passion/obsession with substance addiction!

That applies to everyone. Everyone will be, is likely to be later, or most likely IS addicted to something: caffeine? their lovers? orgasms? money/credit? shopping? chocolate? unhealthy floury carbs? cheese? power over underlings?

if any of these are hard to go without in their current consumed amounts, they're addictions.

I guess that's because how brain receptors work for anyone. Still, author is talking about people that are LESS satisfied than the norm, so they always need more (like addicts).

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