Comment by chasing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chasing | Hacker News Reader

Ugh.

Firstly: Yeah, you should be aware of what things cost and what benefit you get from them. Yeah, be prepared. And, yeah, think about the world in which you live and the other people you share it with. If you really want something, make a plan to get it. The words that describes these are "thoughtful" or "responsible," not "sociopathic." (Disrupting academic conferences and acting obnoxious on airplanes -- that's what we call "childish.")

What bothers me here, though, is that it feeds into this dipshit notion I keep running into that in order to be successful you have to be some kind of self-centered asshole. "Yeah, well Steve jobs would yell at people to their face when they said something he thought was stupid." Yeah, well for every asshole Steve Jobs, there are a million assholes no one wants to have anything to do with.

This woman, for example: she sounds awful. I'm sure she thinks she's some awesome-sauce lion-tamer of the universe, wielding her wiles and "remarkably beautiful breasts" like a ninja and slicing her way through life. The people who have to deal with her on a regular basis probably see right through her, roll their eyes, and try to leave her out of their lives as much as possible because whenever they invite her to a dinner party she makes a huge annoying scene and then steals a bunch of food from the fridge.

I tend to agree, although I find some of the advice in the article useful when taken from a perspective of trying to disrupt personally inhibiting patterns of thought (as opposed to demonstrating brazen disregard for others).

Another thing is that there is plenty of evidence that leadership through inspiration and good character, rather than coercion and sociopathic behavior, is effective. It was only yesterday that I ran across this pretty enthralling anecdote about how Elon Musk handled the second launch failure at SpaceX[0].

Your words echo my feelings about this trend of needing to be reckless and bloodthirsty (likely at the expense of others) in order to be successful. Perhaps many people these days are just too cynical to accept that compassion, persistence, and determination can yield success.

[0]http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Elon-Musk

Holy buckets, what an obnoxious website. I think I count 10 sign-in links, including the modal dialog that requires JS to be dismissed.

This is the first time I've visited Quora, though I've seen it mentioned here before. People actually use this abomination? Yikes.

It's gotten worse over time, and the user base has correspondingly shrunk AFAIK. But the causation is probably in the opposite direction.

Yeah, and it also feeds into a very narrow idea of what success means. If you're not naturally an asshole, then having the same life goals as an asshole is really fucking stupid. Most people would be better off adopting the goals of Mr Rogers than this sociopath - at least he lived a happy life and people loved him.

I don't accept this premise. True sociopaths are typically not "assholes", or someone you don't want to be around. I'd bet this woman is probably VERY charming.

Entirely possible. But part of my reaction is due to my not entirely buying that this woman is a "sociopath" and not just an "asshole." As noted elsewhere in this thread, sociopathy is weirdly trendy right now.

She's probably very charming, but on a very superficial level.

I've met many people like this, and some of my friends date women like this. They can be fun and exciting at first. But their charm usually wears off very quickly, once their personal motivations (i.e., a singular focus on their personal gain) becomes clear, and it transforms into something quite repellent.

The sociopath usually doesn't care once you catch onto them. They're already working new people, or focusing their attention on those who are easiest to manipulate.

Until you get to know her, and then you realise that she is manipulative and unable to make real friends.

I would argue that you would never be able to see the manipulative aspect of her personality clear enough to have it affect the relationship.

What I took away from chasing post was a distast for articles like the linked that describe sociopathy more often in terms considered positive. Traits such as charming, compared to the negative traits such as anti-social, harder to form personal relationships, harder time learning from experience or the other negative traits often found attached to sociopathy in a dictionary.

I find this distast understandable because it leads to two or more populations that have desperate definitions of sociopathy and the resultant definition based arguments and disagreements.

"True sociopaths."

The state of the peer-reviewed literature on this topic is a pathetic shambles. At this point in time, there isn't a "true" sociopath.

This reminds me of a website with weird dating insights. In that women would categorize a man either as wimp, asshole or leader. ;-)

I guess people like Steve Jobs don't accomplish their leadership through people liking to follow but through intimidation. Both things can work, in particular if you are as successful as Steve Jobs but the former probably works better most of the times.

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