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Comment by threethirtytwo | Hacker News Reader

God why do people frame things in such extremes? Neither person is a psychopath. If anyone is closer to a psychopath it’s Altman, but he doesn’t completely fit the monicker.

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For all his weirdness and moral failings, I don’t see Altman saying things like whites being under apartheid in the US. And worse. Multiple times a day. Every day.

Outcomes matter, when both people are leading you to undemocratic societies why should I care about their messaging when both result in worse material lives for 100s of millions of people?

Psychopaths wear a mask of sanity but underneath they have no moral framework. Some people can hate black people or Muslims or anything like that but these qualities are very human. Things like racism has existed across cultures for more than several millennia among many people. A psychopath is a different ballgame.

A psychopath can plunge a knife into a babies face and feel no emotion. The only reason why the psychopath doesn’t plunge a knife into a babies face is because he has nothing to gain from it. The psychopath appears more sane then a racist because the psychopath is usually better at pretending to be sane simply because he is unable to comprehend the passionate yet racial hatred that the racist feels.

What I am saying is musk does not fit that archetype as much. Altman fits that archetype more. Neither actually crosses the threshold to be called a “psychopath” but if psychopathy was a gradient Altman is further down the line then musk. Much further.

That is the literal definition of what a psychopath is. You’re operating from a lack of understanding of the definition.

You’re trying to tell me, in an infinitely smug, condescending, and unnecessarily long-winded manner that you know as a clinical fact that Sam Altman is a psycopath?

No. Read it.

The way you're interpreting what I said makes you lean more towards psycopathy. It's deliberate and manipulative. You're a bit of an ass.

They are absolutely psychopaths. These are people that will flagrantly lie to your face and feel no remorse. They cause mass suffering and feel no remorse. They don't have empathy. They don't have normal human emotions.

Gleefully boasting again and again about ruining tens of thousands of lives is about as clear as it gets for evidence of psychopathy. Along with ~0 instances of empathy.

would you prefer sociopath? they're willing to lie to accumulate massive wealth irrespective of the harm.

When you're arguing the degree to which such powerful people fit the definition of psychopath, you're at extremes. You've just been in the warming pot too long to see it.

Haven't you heard? Psychopath, like Pedophile, is a mere epithet these days, to indicate a person's favoured status with the in-crowd. In contrast to the equally meaningless epithet "woke".

> like Pedophile

I really wouldn’t conflate these two. People with documented allegations of child rape are in a separate category from diagnosed-over-the-TV types.

Outside of Elon Musk's Twitter, I think pedophile is actually used pretty appropriately in most spots.

who's calling people pedos that don't at least have credible allegations against them of that crime (eg trump)?

Musk has a history.

Except Psychopath and Pedophile are actual words that weren't lifted straight off of gen-z slang.

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