It boggles my mind how anyone can write such nonsensical rambling comments while at the same time coding a 64 bit operating system from scratch.

FWIW, from what I've read (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_...) there were (at least) no therapies or treatments that reproducibly help psychopaths:

The psychiatric profession wanted little to do with psychopathy, for several reasons. For one thing, it was thought to be incurable. Not only did the talking cure fail with psychopaths but several studies suggested that talk therapy made the condition worse, by enabling psychopaths to practice the art of manipulation. There were no valid instruments to measure the personality traits that were commonly associated with the condition; researchers could study only the psychopaths’ behavior, in most cases through their criminal records.

And now there are, at least in the sense of reducing criminal behavior:

In a landmark 2006 study of a specialized talk-therapy treatment program, conducted at a juvenile detention center in Wisconsin, involving a hundred and forty-one young offenders who scored high on the youth version of the checklist, Michael Caldwell, a psychologist at the treatment center and a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, reported that the youths that were treated were much more likely to stay out of trouble, once they were paroled, than the ones in the control group.

But note that the linked article is from 2008. Perhaps things have changed since.

Judging by the comments here, the letter has done just that. One comment below notes that "Jeez, that's the single most interesting, insightful, and well-written piece I've read on the internet in a long time." Others are expressing a desire to meet the author or expressing how they can identify with the author. It's incredible to see just how effectively this letter resonates with the people who read it.

Don't get me wrong: It's both impressive and admirable that the author was able to not only admit that he needed therapy but to press on long enough to make therapy work for himself in an effective manner. I don't want to downplay his accomplishments. However, it is still interesting to dissect and observe all of the persuasiveness of the letter and the fluidity with which the author transforms psychopathy from a very difficult personality disorder into somewhat of a super power that the reader can't help but envy by the end of the letter.

As you read the letter and experience strong feelings of empathy for the author, consider his own poignant words at the end: "In the end, psychopaths need to be given that very thing everyone believes they lack for others, empathy."

The letter begins with the psychopath distancing himself from the traditional destructive psychopathic traits in the most admirable and self-aggrandizing way possible: He went against all odds and admitted himself into treatment, where he claims the health agency had never seen someone of his nature walk-in before and he was too incredible of a case for anyone but the highest-ranking therapist to handle.

He continues by setting up various straw-man caricatures of psychopathy ("cartoon evil serial killers" and the CEO who prizes profits over people) and knocking them down one-by-one, leaving the reader feeling guilty of possibly embracing those stereotypes at one point. With the reader feeling a bit guilty, empathetic, and as if the author's condition is simply misunderstood, the author has set the stage to rebuild the reader's view of psychopathy in a way that benefits the author.

Toward the end, he even goes so far as to put words in the reader's mouth just so he can turn around and undermine the very caricature of a psychopath he suggested you might hold : "Such as statement might tempt you to say 'well obviously you're not a real psychopath then'. As if the definition of a psychopath is someone who exploits others for their personal power, satisfaction or gain."

The rest of the article explains the author's psychopathy the way the author wants you to view it: As "a highly trained perception, ability to adapt, and a lack of judgment borne of pragmatic and flexible moral reasoning." He goes on to say that he "enjoy[s] a reputation of being someone of intense understanding and observation with a keen strategic instinct." At this point, the author has completely distanced his psychopathy from the purely negative caricature he painted in the first half of his letter. Who wouldn't be envious of such incredible, valuable, and morally-neutral abilities as he described them?

I've read the letter several times over, and I'm still amazed at how effective it is at garnering empathy from the reader and cultivating a sense that the author is an impressive individual who has triumphed over adversity after a great struggle. And it's true that overcoming your own objections to seek, and stick with, treatment for such a severe personality disorder is both impressive and admirable. His points about the general public's misunderstanding of true psychopathy are equally true, although he crucially omits any and all explanations of how psychopathy can actually be dangerous and destructive to others. It's an incredible piece of writing, and incredibly persuasive and manipulative in a way that I'm sure PR and marketing teams everywhere would be jealous of.

Think about the similarities. A good entrepreneur/venture capitalist should be:

-Ruthless, selfish, unsympathetic

-Capable of manipulating, good at acting, great at selling a concept and convincing others to drink the kool-aid

-Unfazed by negative outcomes

-Unaware of (or at least, unfazed by) social norms and the status quo

-Creative, capable of thinking radically differently than everyone else

I've seen this comparison a few times, and now I can't seem to find any of the articles that I have read.

A small population of actors, inclined to gain power, and ruthless in conduct forces all members of the community to act in concert, lest they be cast out entirely.

This might also explain the disconnect of an organization like the NSA, made up of mostly decent, sincere people, engagin in profoundly anti-social, if not downright illegal, activities.

Some of the commenters on this topic seem to ascribe superhuman rationality and brainpower to psychopaths. I don't think that's a correct way to look at it. They can be very smart, but they suffer from the same set of biases and blind spots and Dunning-Kruger type of phenomena as other people. I think the defining characteristic is the complete lack of empathy and the willingness and ability to manipulate people (practicing the skill from early childhood, hence very good at it).

I was just looking up one of the smartest and most pronounced psychopaths I've met in recent years. Apparently he got his MBA and started an offshore private equity fund, seems to be doing well for himself. The guy had monumental talent for manipulating people. I wonder how far will he go before people catch on to his true nature...

Unfortunately, society does not seem to have yet evolved the mechanisms to deal with these parasites effectively. The law is hardly a useful tool, given how "flexible" and corrupt it is, and how money aka power is so important in manipulation of the law versus "truth". Economists aka amateur sociopaths are finally beginning to realize an obvious truth - that most humans are not rational actors strictly concerned with profit and loss but that decisions are based on emotion much more than they'd like to admit and so this has a significant effect on economic behavior.

All this does matter because ask yourself - what of the effects these people have on the lives of those they exploit? what sort of setbacks do the good people end up facing and how much of a drain is it on their lives and their efforts to -contribute- to society as a whole? I see so much waste because of the unnecessary chaos the sociopathic introduce to society as a whole. They are a threat and capital punishment is a logical response, because they can not be rehabilitated. But given how society is organized, rich white people are never going to be executed, or even prosecuted, for their crimes unless they're so egregious they can't be ignored.

Even then, the case of Jimmy Savile (in the UK) is an example of how humanity still is little nothing more than talking chimpanzees who respond more to and are controlled by instinctual behavior patterns versus the ability to cogitate like "we" think we are able to. Jimmy was a sociopath, everyone knew he was a pedo, but nothing was done because no one wanted to speak up because of the social cost. Things are better these days, of course, so maybe in another 100 years, there will be a test toddlers are given to track whether they are likely to be sociopathic, and more effort will be put into preventing the development of such evil monsters. It is like the Head Start program in the States - prevent issues down the road by ensuring children have the best psychological foundation established as early as possible.

Sounds about right. I thought it was pretty 'normal' to feel this way sometimes...

There seems to be confusion about what constitutes 'strength' and what constitutes 'weakness' in regard to human personalities (or 'hard' vs 'soft')

For example, compulsively manipulating other people is more properly regarded as a weakness, I think. Whereas getting up on a stage and being open and vulnerable in front of a crowd, that's strength. It can inspire people and produce lasting change.

People with heavy streaks of psychopathy, or narcissism, or whatnot, are on a different path to the rest of us. It's better to avoid them where possible, tempting though it is to hope they will eventually acknowledge their faults and apologise. However, not having access to various feelings is going to create straightforward problems in their lives which can in principle lead to private acknowledgement and progress being sought. So I refuse to regard them as incurable cases

Birds of a feather?

I personally think we should look into what we can learn from this set of behavioral algorithms (the good, the bad and the ugly) and how you can balance it to leverage its benefits while not suffering from its drawbacks. That's at least how I deal with it.

"The test of their self-superiority is their ability to rapidly find weaknesses in others, and to exploit it to its fullest potential.

But that is not to say that this aspect of a psychopaths world view cannot be modified. These days I see weaknesses and vulnerabilities as simple facts - a facet of the human condition and the frailties and imperfections inheritent in being human."

I would like to meet this person.

I find it very helpful to surround myself with people that have a different way of seeing the world.

Anyways, it is scary to realize that there are lots of powerful people out there like this.

Actually, I think there are many powerful CEO's and political leaders that are psychopaths.

How else could they convince people to give them the power, money, and influence they have?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013...

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ramble. I have no criticism or suggestions to offer, just vague frustration and helplessness. But it does frustrate me, it's something that's been on my mind a lot of times, so thanks for the opportunity to say it, FWIW.

AFAIK some of his comments are auto-generated. Markov chains from the bible.

Comments like this show exactly how poorly our culture handles mental illness. Imagine if someone had said, "It boggles my mind how anyone can be deaf while at the same time coding a 64 bit operating system from scratch."

He isn't stupid, he's schizophrenic. Aside from his disease, all of his other faculties are as fine as yours and mine.

Like many other mental disorders, schizophrenics alternate between total detachment and relative sanity. Also, many schizophrenics maintain their full intellectual horsepower even when affected.

Schizophrenics can also go into remission late in life (after 50) and reach a point where, at least with medication, they're relatively unaffected. Spontaneous remission isn't common with SZ but it does happen.

This depends largely on one's idea of "help". Nobody is going to cure psychopaths any time soon, but I'd be surprised if one can't (reproducibly) help them channel their drive into something productive.

It was the literary equivalent of the cup-and-shell game. I saw the con happening right before my eyes and still got duped. Brilliant writing.

(Note: I refer to it as a con, but only for convenience. I don't think it's necessarily negative to leave the reading thinking exactly what the author wants you to think. The process C undertook for doing so was simply so well constructed that it didn't dawn on me that I was being expertly manipulated until tomstokes pointed it out.)

Judging by the comments here, the parent's been pretty successful. One comment below notes that "What's brilliant about this letter is how easily I stepped into it." Others are calling the parent's analysis "fantastic". It's incredible to see just how effectively this parent comment resonates with the people who read it.

Don't get me wrong: It's both impressive and admirable that the parent was able to not only paint the original author's analysis as manipulative, he was able to build such a persuasive and fluid dissection of it. What's truly amazing is how the parent transforms the original author's letter from an anonymous insightful expression to a vile manipulation of the reader that the reader can't help but feel fooled by the end of the parent's comment.

As you read the comment and experience strong feelings of guilt about having been manipulated by a psychopath, consider this: You can paint pretty much anything effective as a psychopath's manipulation. For an author to be effective, she must portray her beliefs as effectively as she can. Discrediting the words of any person - psychopath or otherwise - on grounds of them being capable of effective manipulation serves little purpose and just perpetuates a stereotype.

If your position is that all convincing self-accounts by psychopaths are themselves only convincing because the psychopath is somehow 'tricking' you, then you can take that statement and s/psychopath/any group you care to name/ and you'd never know the difference.

Don't believe me? Try substituting various bogeymen of the twentieth century: crack dealers, pedophiles, etc. You see what I mean? It always works: You shouldn't trust what pedophiles say because, well, they're pedophiles!

Generalizing, there's always a reason why someone's supposed perfidy makes them an untrustworthy speaker, and that's a problem.

One floor down, what's going on is 'begging the question' -- not in the colloquial motivates-the-question sense, but in the sense that you are assuming what you set out to prove (circular reasoning).

Watch:

CLAIM = C is a psychopath; therefore, don't trust him when he says C is good.

CLAIM' = X is a Y; therefore, don't believe X's claim that Z.

But there's still an implicit claim hiding! In fact, it's the value of Z. Let's suss it out:

CLAIM'' = X is a Y; Ys are untrustworthy; therefore, don't believe X when X says that Ys are trustworthy.

There you have it: a textbook case of circular reasoning. That's the sort of thing C is talking about: people get so emotional when they think about psychopaths, they fail to hold themselves up to the same standards for rational discourse at which a psychopath ironically excels.

Unless you believe that your motivational orientation is made of some magical pixie dust handed down by the Holy Ghost, you should keep in mind that your instincts, your sense of morality and right and wrong and all those gut feelings are engendered by a truly massive utility computation; your feelings of selflessness as you drop the coins in the bell ringer's jar, your protectiveness toward your children, your lesser protectiveness toward your more distant kinship relations, all of it is equivalently cold-blooded. It's just dispersed enough that you don't see it for what it is.

So when you stop talking to your friend because he's annoying, or you don't give money to that homeless guy because you've already gave enough money, and maybe he's a drunk; and you buy a nice present for your nephew but not your coworker's kid, and you think it's best that your grandmother died because she was suffering so terribly, you're a psycopath, too. There's just a lot of epiphenomenal stuff larded on top of it.

Instead, reading it gave me the impression of somebody obsessed with themselves - somebody with a superiority complex. Nothing more, nothing less, and I've met plenty of people who have that in different amounts. But maybe that is what psychopathy is?

You might be right, but you seem to accuse the writer of a hidden agenda because he tries to gain the sympathy of the reader. If he didn't try at all, would you see callousness and cold detachment (and therefore a psychopathic trait) in this? What would constitute for you a honest, non-manipulative account of the same facts described in the post? How should it have been written to be consistent with the 'psycho no more' scenario?

If it's true, that is. Pathological lying is a part of Hare Psychopathy Checklist. The entire article may well be totally made up.

Also, maybe I am wrong, but I don't think there are people who "just are" psychopaths? I mean, if it's chemical/hormonal, it could theoretically fixed that way... and if it's not, then it might not be "fixable", but it's not magic either, and layers and layers and layers of defense, redirections and rationalizations are expected. Nobody wants to accept that the center of their pearl is some banal, useless, accidental piece of dirt someone else or the wind put there. But that's usually what it is, I think. And pearls can kill, they're not pretty at all. They're like a scab turned cancer.

I agree that considering psychopaths as some spooky "other" is silly, it's all a matter of degree, and I guess we only call it psychopathic once it crosses a threshold. That is, I doubt anyone here can claim they never used someone, or calculated more coldly than they let on, or looked down on sentimentality when they didn't feel sentimental about a particular thing. Or maybe I'm projecting, I don't know. I know putting others down because I felt crappy, and for me that letter sounds like a much more elaborate and Machiavellian version, but still kinda the same.

TL;DR: The thing about the powerful is that they're not, that's why they need power, and of course the alligator part of the brain gets real good if that's all you use. Use your mammal brain to see what a small achievement that really is.

Also a fantastic example of why real world psychopaths are so dangerous. Most don't kill or commit any serious crimes. They just win people over and draw them in, smoothly and very easily. Until it is to the psychopath's advantage (or impulse, really) to use, hurt, and leave others behind them.

Here's something even more fascinating, and surely much more controversial - now re-read that letter, and try and count how many times you hear in it echoes from Ayn Rand's characters, or from the writer herself.

I was actually waiting for a reveal of something like, "And I discovered the reason I connected with the top therapist so well was because she was a closet psychopath!"

Nah. I'm kidding. I'm just generally distrustful of words and people that utter them.

No, no no no no. No you would not. Not unless you mean it like "I'd like to meet a serial killer, just for the experience." Maybe it'd be interesting to get their point of view, sure, but you are far better off without them in your life. And certainly without having any form of relationship with them.

One of the main reasons this guy wrote this letter was probably self-aggrandization. The very fact that you find him more interesting is exactly what he wanted. That's not inherently a bad thing.

What's inherently a bad thing is that when human remorse and guilt have been genetically disabled, those people will do things to you which are fucked up. I have experienced the blunt, raw force of their emotional carpet bombing firsthand from a certain family member.

Everyone needs to remember that these people are hardwired to be deliberately manipulative, because they feel good only when you're giving them attention. Then they feel good only when you're doing things they've conned you into believing you want to do; sometimes things you'll feel shitty about for the rest of your life, once you snap out of it and realize you've been a puppet.

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

Mostly a human gene pool's survival and prosperity is best served by community co-operation, mutual support and self sacrifice for the good of loved ones and other community members. Sometimes though, the group as a whole has had it and the route to the survival of any of the gene pool is for one or a few to sacrifice the rest and make an all-out bid for personal survival. E.g. a terrible winter in which there is insufficient food and everyone is starving to death.

Another situation where psychopathy could be useful is warfare. Sometimes having a cold blooded killer with no remorse on your side isn't such a bad thing.

Ultimately, it's a matter of variety. You never know what challenges your community is going to face, and what range of behaviors are going to be optimal. Having a full range of behavior types available in your community gives it flexibility in it's response, especially to to existential challenges.

As for the advantage, it seems pretty clear to me: higher chances at being the alpha-male(female?), plus the resource advantage due to not having the ability for reciprocal altruism (and the ability to get away with that).

All few human psychopaths I have personally met were natural-born leaders. One is now occupying a high-level position within a successful company that produces manupulative F2P games. Another was a woman who, despite her being deaf-mute, was able to organize a successful remote web studio (before it fell apart due to her politicking and other members, including me, bailing out).

Also, quoting Wikipedia: "In Mongolia alone as many as 200,000 of the country's 2 million people could be [Genghis] Khan descendants".

Edit: if I remember correctly, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene discussed cheaters (that is, individuals who didn't reciprocate) as being a viable evolutionary strategy, as long as they are in a minority.

Every now and then someone is born with one of their balances in an extreme position. The genes that express the balance either missing or just heavily surpressed.

It is not necessary for every kind of gene expression to be beneficial to mankind in general, as long as the average range of gene expressions are beneficial to our survival.

tl;dr: A certain amount of variation in genes is beneficial to survival of our species, extreme variation (like psychopathy) is less relevant (unless a psychopath wipes out all of us, which is a commonly known weakness of evolution in general)

The second thing to keep in mind is that many traits form a spectrum (particularly psychological traits). While the endpoints of the spectrum will likely be very problematic, there may one or more areas in the middle of the spectrum which are advantageous. Furthermore, it may be advantageous to have a variety of the trait in a population.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEnklxGAmak

If psychopathy is genetically linked to say, a better resistance to cold or hunger, then it might stay even with the disadvantage of psychopathy, just because people with it will survive better.

Being a sincere participant in social groups has probably provided an advantage for just as long, if not longer.

Yes, and there still is. Evolutionary survival is not about living long; it's about passing on genes.

Psychopaths are great at reading people and exploiting emotional weaknesses. Humans are not naturally monogamous, and psychopaths are perfectly equipped for high-frequency sexuality. They've had Game for millions of years.

No. I, and I suspect most ambitious people, also desire power, control, and have inflated egos to some extent. Psychopaths are still human (though broken) and also have these traits, but since they lack other traits like compassion, generosity, etc., the former tend to show through more.