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Comment by framecowbird | Hacker News Reader

I scored incredibly far on the left and now I feel woefully inequipped for everyday life.

I also scored far on the left and I'm doing okay in life. You don't need to be evil to get shit done. Just get shit done.

As someone else on the left it's pretty eye opening just to read some of the questions.

Would you take a punch if someone you hated took two punches?

Would you go to hell if you could ensure your rivals ended up there with you?

Jesus. Who goes through life collecting people they hate this much? Maybe I've been lucky but I don't have any rivals that I'd want to see with anything more serious than a papercut or mild social embarrassment.

Likewise. I am definitely on the Light Side of the Force and have done well. While I would say it cost me earlier in my career, the reputation and quality benefits that have accrued through life were more than worth the early struggle. I just really do try to do /good/ to people as it's broadly defined on a "typical" issue.

TBH, nobody really likes working with such jerks, you might not realize that they also don't get ahead in their careers more often than not. I'm fairly certain most highly dark people are in prison, especially the spiteful.

The sad part of the story is people often cognitive dissonance themselves about the bad they do in the world, or make it abstract because most people don't like to be the bad guy of their personal story and might score as being a fairly light person, even if they do harm.

I scored 2.88 (77%) and still can’t live it well. As all tests, it may bring random acute thoughts at each question and you doubt if you should answer honestly and situatively, or “generally”, which you are not, in every situation. Maybe I just suck at tests and someone has to tell me.

I scored 30%, which seems like enough self interest to survive but not enough to hurt others regularly.

Don't feel bad about being on the left! I would much rather have you in my life than someone on the right (unless perhaps we're in a war or something).

Scoring on the left but knowing and not succumbing to how a high D-score person thinks is a good sign :)

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I feel like if someone actually took sun tzu's teachings to heart, they would almost certainly lean to the right on this test.

Not only Sun Tzu, I think any warrior can tell you that war is knowledge and misinformation. War is not an everyday life (for the lucky ones), which I assume this test tests.

For real, it's heavy business just to read through the items. I'll bet at least some of the researchers had to set serious boundaries with their own work. I wouldn't be surprised if their personal worlds got very dark for a time, even if they knew in advance that this kind of work was ahead of them.

Only if success in life is a function of psychopathy, sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder.

The "darkness" metric is meant to sample the traits that, in high quantities, make for some pretty pathologic - sometimes criminal - disorders.

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