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The Psychopathy Epidemic
Psychopathy - a lack of empathy, a lack of remorse. A fascinating topic. Not so long ago an Ultimate Hacker @Troler sent me a video about psychopathy. A normal video basically just explaining what it is. I thought it would bore me. I know what it is. But instead it made me think.
We live during a psychopathy epidemic. And while it is true that a lot of psychopaths born psychopathic, others acquire psychopathy. Which means that psychopathy is contagious. A very funny example of it could be seen in the film Wolf of Wall Street, where Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort. A character that says in the beginning of the film that it's good if you help your customer. An empathetic statement from a normal person. But then the job turns him into a person of complete psychopathy. A drug and sex addict which makes money by stripping poor people off their savings. It's not your typical psychopath. It's not a guy with a knife that is trying to break into your house. The type of a psychopath that Jordan Belfort was, was harder to spot, harder to understand why he was wrong, and in some forms was even encourage-able.
In every business, the drive to outwit and outperform the competition against all odds is absolutely and utterly psychopathic. People may loose their freedom, their privacy, their jobs... Workers being deprived and manipulated out of their rights. Slaves are used. People with injuries not being compensated. Safety tests being bribed away. And all for what? For a single numerical metric to be better than of that other company.
And young people see this. They understand how unfair it all is and strive with the last breath of their will to just try and become, what they call, "strong enough" to be able to be as remorseless as required to withstand this intense competition. Those young people actively pursuing their own psychopathy, just for a chance to be noticed at all.
"I don't understand" - said Sheiny, still looking at a screen on which she just finished to watch a video about psychopathy - "How is that they first saying, that to spot a psychopath you need to check upon his records. And that not having any records is a bad sign. And then saying that to avoid a psychopath, you need to increase your own privacy and destroy your own records? This seems like either they just didn't see the paradox in their own statement, or that they are hypocritical."
Mr. Hambleton: Are you talking about me?
Sheiny: Relax, Ham, you are not a psychopath.
Mendel looked at them from his corner.
Mendel: Yes he is!
Sheiny: He is not.
Mendel: He likes little kids.
Mr. Hambleton: Please, Mendel...
Mendel: You are scared of your wife? We have a psychopath pedophile here!!!
Mr. Hambleton tensed his features and walked around the room in agitation. Praying, so to speak, that his wife would not hear what they are talking about here.
Sheiny: Stop! He is not a psychopath. I understand your logic, but that's not the whole story. Ham, here is an empathetic pedophile.
Mendel: What's that?
Sheiny: A pedophile that is not a psychopath. A psychopath is a person that lacks empathy. You know. A rapist that doesn't feel sorry for what he does. A killer that doesn't get frightened from seeing people stabbed. This is a psychopath. Ham is the polar opposite of a psychopath. Ham?
Mr. Hambleton: Yes?
Sheiny protruded her hand toward him.
Sheiny: Touch my hand, please.
Mr. Hambleton took her wrist into his own. Mendel looked at it puzzled.
Sheiny: That is probably the first time he ever touched me. And we are producing pornography in this house. Do you think if he was a psychopath he would have held himself so well?
Mendel: Okay, perhaps he is not a psychopath.
Sheiny: Still, the message of this video is rather annoying.
Mendel: Well, perhaps they are right. In order to stop a psychopath you need surveillance after all.
Mr. Hambleton: No. They are right on something else. That to avoid a psychopath you need privacy.
Sheiny: And I think that we have a problem here, because they cannot be both right, since one contradicts the other. While both are quite right if we look from the different side. So what do we do?
Mendel: I know. We take privacy only from psychopaths.
Sheiny: Well, a lack of empathy doesn't necessarily mean that the person is a killer.
Mendel: He can be a rapist.
Sheiny: Not necessarily. Smart psychopaths usually go into business. And they don't do anything illegal.
Mr. Hambleton: That is a problem. They don't break the rules, but they squeeze around them, since they don't feel that the rules matter.
Sheiny: So AI is psychopathic?
Mr. Hambleton: Exactly. They operate almost exactly like AI. And we know that we don't know how to sustain AI if it will start killing people. Psychopath businessmen is the reason he fight against proprietary software for so long.
Sheiny: That does make some sense.
Mendel: I can't follow.
Sheiny: At your work, what are you doing?
Mendel: We cut wood.
Sheiny: For what?
Mendel: Ah... I don't know. People will build something with it.
Sheiny: So at your business you are serving the customer's needs.
Mendel: Yeah, you can say that.
Sheiny: Well, a software company, should in theory serve a customer too. They are developing software solutions so the customer could benefit from having them. But proprietary software companies care only about how to screw the customer. There is no empathy toward the customer. Because the company is psychopathic. Lacking empathy.
Mr. Hambleton: And the reason for this is because the CEO or the director of the company is probably, usually a psychopath. A tame one. One that doesn't break laws. But a psychopath non the less.
Mendel: So I was right. We should not let psychopaths have any freedoms.
Sheiny: Well. For what?
Mendel: So they will not violate people.
Sheiny: So they will not undermine people's freedom?
Mendel: Yeah, something like this...
Sheiny: So freedom is important?
Mendel: Ah... For non-psychopaths.
Mr. Hambleton: I see, we can justify stripping away their freedom only by freedom itself. Which in effect reverts us back to not being able to justify stripping their freedom.
Sheiny: Psychopathy paradox. Funny thing is, psychopaths operate on paradoxes. Like, for example, they use our own empathy against ourselves.
Mendel: And so they use our desire for freedom against ourselves too.
Sheiny: So what is our proposal?
Mendel: To get freedom away from psychopaths.
Mr. Hambleton: But that's too shallow.
Sheiny: We need them.
Mendel: What?
Sheiny: For example, a surgeon. He has to keep cool while cutting a patient. It's better to be somewhat psychopathic in this position. Of course he does it for the money, not for the patient. But an empathetic surgeon might not be able to keep his cool. And how about butchers? They need to murder animals so people around the world would have something to eat. We need psychopaths.
Mr. Hambleton: More than that, how do you spot, for example, a difference between a psychopath and a person with Asperger's Syndrome? Both appear to lack empathy. But only the psychopath doesn't have it. We can't just oppress people for being weird.
Sheiny: More than that. They will not let you. Politicians and other people in power are often psychopaths.
Mr. Hambleton: And yet, I agree with Mendel that something has to be done about the effects of psychopaths.
Sheiny: With them empathy doesn't work. And threats do not work, since they don't have empathy to their future selves. I think the only thing that we can use against them is logic. But there is a problem. Because they don't have empathy to their future selves everything for them seems to be immediate. They almost cannot think long term. This causes them to not want to do anything for self improvement if it's more than a surface level thing and doesn't come with immediate benefits. They do not pursue greatness. For them, if something can look great without being great, is exactly what they rather want.
Mr. Hambleton: AI again.
Mendel: How? What? How did you get from this to AI?
Mr. Hambleton: Well, not pursuing greatness. But cheating your way to greatness. It's like instead of painting a picture. Actually thinking about color, composition and other things. And actually putting in the hours to produce something great, you use AI. You type a short input and it spits out the picture for you.
Sheiny: That's a good analogy for psychopathy. No wonder AI is pursued by big tech.
Mr. Hambleton: But I get what you mean about immediate versus long term benefits. It's basically the whole difference between Free Software and Proprietary Software. Free Software is empathetic and focuses on long term benefits. Proprietary Software is psychopathic and focuses on immediate benefits. Hm...
Sheiny: You know those people who do not want to use GNU / Linux because they just must use some proprietary bullshit app? This is rather similar to the example you gave with AI. It's short term thinking. They need this feature now! Because they are most likely not prepared to put in the hours and understand how the damn thing works, so they could be actually great.
Mendel: So you are saying that everybody in every professional industry is a psychopath?
Sheiny: Well, psychopathy seems to be rather contagious.
Mendel: Like everybody?
Mr. Hambleton: Well, think about it. In military they are trying to condition people into psychopathy by training. Because if there is an enemy and you can't pull the trigger, you may loose. In business, similar psychopathy is present. Natural psychopaths, those born with it, raise up very quickly by every mean of cheating the system. And the rest have to either learn to cheat as well, or to loose. And therefor we see this same mindset developing in business too.
Mendel: Shit! But we can't do nothing about it?
Sheiny: It does seem to be like a bad situation. We already discussed why outlawing psychopathy is a bad idea for our own sake. But how can we keep being descent people without loosing?
Mr. Hambleton: How about pursuing greatness?
Sheiny: Psychopathic elite has enough money to buy greatness, or to cheat it somehow.
Mr. Hambleton: Somebody once cut the strings on Vivaldi's violin before the concert. Probably a psychopathic cheater. But Vivaldi played it through without loosing a single note. Even though one string fell and then another. Psychopathic people, do not pursue greatness. So they will eventually fall to such small traps. But we can be like Vivaldi. Hm...
Happy Hacking!!!
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