What does “sociopath” tell you that “habitual liar who casually exploits other people” doesn’t? (Or “un-lawful oathbreaker”?)
These all are in the same reference class in my mind, so I don’t really know what you are referring to. Of these “sociopath” is the shortest, though relatedly also the lossiest (like, it sure is a frequently misused concept, but also, my guess is its vaguely mapping to something real in the world, despite me despising like 90% of the times that it is used).
What prediction would you make about Torres based on psychologizing that you wouldn’t be able to make using the information that led you to psychologize in the first place?
For example, let’s assume that (I do not have strong evidence for it, but it seems at least vaguely plausible to me) that Torres suffers from psychotic episodes. By observing their behavior over the course of a few years, and e.g. seeing whether they have used anti-psychotic medication in the past, I come to the conclusion that it’s the case that there are some periods in which interfacing with Torres will reliably go bad, and in which their behavior will be erratic, and some other periods in which they will probably be pretty sane.
This seems really helpful to me! If I am now engaging with Torres online or in-person, I might find myself having a surprisingly good and calm conversation, but if the person often has psychotic episodes, then we should expect the behavior during the good times to generalize less well to their behavior during bad times.
Again, this is all a hypothetical, I don’t think I have much of any evidence to suggest that Torres has psychotic episodes, but I do think that considering the hypothesis and thinking about it can pay off pretty well.
As another concrete example, there were 2-3 commenters over the years on LW whose behavior was best explained by realizing that they are bipolar, and when they were in a manic episode, they would write very differently and engage very differently than if they were in a depressive episode (or in no episode at all). One thing that actually helped a good amount in two of those cases was sending a message being like “Hey, btw, I think you are having a manic episode (I saw on your blog that you said you were bipolar). I would suggest maybe taking a step back from commenting until you are in a better place”, and that (surprisingly) actually went quite well, and I think prevented the person causing a decent amount of self-harm.
(I’m a moderator, but I’m speaking personally here.)
These all are in the same reference class in my mind.
Like you, I see “sociopath” as lossier than the others, but I think I care less about brevity (vs. precision) than you do.
Brevity is crucial in cases where the same thing is discussed repeatedly, but I think people are different enough that we lose a lot by rounding off to terms like “sociopath”.
I also think it helps w/community legibility to share details on behavior. “Don’t engage with X, they have a personality disorder” tells me nothing if I have no context. “Don’t engage with X, they have bad intentions and lie frequently [insert links]” tells me something.
And if I know that X is a bad actor already, and I have context on their habitual lying, comments like “X is a binge drinker” still add nothing (and worsen the overall tone/quality of discourse).
By observing their behavior over the course of a few years, and e.g. seeing whether they have used anti-psychotic medication in the past, I come to the conclusion that it’s the case that there are some periods in which interfacing with Torres will reliably go bad, and in which their behavior will be erratic, and some other periods in which they will probably be pretty sane.
I can imagine this being valuable sometimes, and I appreciate the general point. I also liked the LW example — seems like you were being a good moderator there! (Ithelps that at least one of the people you messaged was open about their condition.)
To add my own example: I read a lot of Freddie Deboer, and he’s been very open about his struggles with bipolar disorder. If Freddie suddenly made a bunch of weird comments on the Forum, I might reach out to him the same way you did to your users.
*****
But I think watching someone this closely is only merited if there’s an important reason to engage with them. This applies in the case of the LW users you mention (I assume you saw them as valuable contributors to the LW community). I also think it applies to someone like Donald Trump, who had so much power and influence that it made sense for psychologists to speculate about his condition. (Same goes for all U.S. presidents.)
I don’t think Torres is a valuable contributor or a figure of towering influence. To the extent that we care about their behavior, it’s about their arguments (and how others receive them). And the best way to address their arguments is by (a) presenting facts, and (b) cataloguing their long history of dishonesty.
*****
I also don’t want to lose sight of the various negative things that come along with psychologizing, which trade off against brevity and predictive value:
It opens up space for insults and ad hominem attacks.
It distracts from discussion of ideas and arguments (e.g. when “has a personality disorder” replaces “consistently lies and makes bad-faith arguments”).
It’s a turn-off to readers.
If someone visits the Forum, sees speculation on the mental conditions of the community’s critics, and finds that deeply unappealing… that’s the kind of user I want to attract.
However, I also want the kinds of users that are drawn to thoughtful discussions of Forum norms. So I appreciate Habryka’s comment!
I care about politeness and friendliness because I see them as ways to keep our focus on ideas rather than people.
Many points here, many of which I agree with. Here is one that I disagree with:
I don’t think Torres is a valuable contributor or a figure of towering influence. To the extent that we care about their behavior, it’s about their arguments (and how others receive them). And the best way to address their arguments is by (a) presenting facts, and (b) cataloguing their long history of dishonesty.
I definitely have personally changed my relationship to Torres after thinking more about their history of behavior in other contexts, and the underlying psychology that might explain those behaviors. For example, I have updated the degree to which I expect Torres to take much higher-variance actions like becoming paranoid, or accusing others of major crimes, or potentially even attacking someone physically (I wish I did not have to track the risk of physical violence, but alas, I sure am tracking the likelihood that people will try to attack others physically after the whole Ziz situation).
I also think in terms of public communication I am generally in favor of honesty, and if the honest reason why I am hesitant to engage with someone is because they have a history of unstable behavior that causes harm to themselves and people around them, then I think I want to be honest about that.
I just want to say that there are a lot of reasons why interfacing with someone in one context can work out well but not generalize to other contexts, and just because “this person experiences psychotic episodes” can explain this well, it does not mean that your guess of psychosis is actually correct.
You can just say: ”A lot of people I know who have had positive interactions with them in one context turns out to have had very bad interactions in other contexts. They also have a pattern of what I would consider erratic and unpredictable behavior. For example, ___. So I would be careful about these positive experiences and not take that to mean they will always respond positively.”
I don’t think the LW analogy tracks. There’s a difference between messaging someone (in private?) about a mental disorder they have publicly talked about and doing so with the intention of helping them, and speculating on someone’s mental health based on their behavior, with no intention of helping them.
I basically second all of Aaron’s comments about the harms of psychologizing—I can’t trust that everyone will use this with good intentions, I think it risks spreading harmful misinformation about people, I think the information transmitted can be vague and open to different interpretations.
One thing I disagree with is the predictive value—I don’t in fact think a bunch of nonexpert speculations on someone’s psychiatric diagnosis adds to predictive power. I think (as you mentioned earlier) focusing on examining the facts that lead you to the conclusion is more useful. If this was a medical forum filled only with psychiatrists that’d be a different story. But the potential harm and misunderstanding of people using loaded psychiatric terms in different ways and different intentions just seems clearly worse than focusing on describing the facts.
These all are in the same reference class in my mind, so I don’t really know what you are referring to. Of these “sociopath” is the shortest, though relatedly also the lossiest (like, it sure is a frequently misused concept, but also, my guess is its vaguely mapping to something real in the world, despite me despising like 90% of the times that it is used).
For example, let’s assume that (I do not have strong evidence for it, but it seems at least vaguely plausible to me) that Torres suffers from psychotic episodes. By observing their behavior over the course of a few years, and e.g. seeing whether they have used anti-psychotic medication in the past, I come to the conclusion that it’s the case that there are some periods in which interfacing with Torres will reliably go bad, and in which their behavior will be erratic, and some other periods in which they will probably be pretty sane.
This seems really helpful to me! If I am now engaging with Torres online or in-person, I might find myself having a surprisingly good and calm conversation, but if the person often has psychotic episodes, then we should expect the behavior during the good times to generalize less well to their behavior during bad times.
Again, this is all a hypothetical, I don’t think I have much of any evidence to suggest that Torres has psychotic episodes, but I do think that considering the hypothesis and thinking about it can pay off pretty well.
As another concrete example, there were 2-3 commenters over the years on LW whose behavior was best explained by realizing that they are bipolar, and when they were in a manic episode, they would write very differently and engage very differently than if they were in a depressive episode (or in no episode at all). One thing that actually helped a good amount in two of those cases was sending a message being like “Hey, btw, I think you are having a manic episode (I saw on your blog that you said you were bipolar). I would suggest maybe taking a step back from commenting until you are in a better place”, and that (surprisingly) actually went quite well, and I think prevented the person causing a decent amount of self-harm.
(I’m a moderator, but I’m speaking personally here.)
Like you, I see “sociopath” as lossier than the others, but I think I care less about brevity (vs. precision) than you do.
Brevity is crucial in cases where the same thing is discussed repeatedly, but I think people are different enough that we lose a lot by rounding off to terms like “sociopath”.
I also think it helps w/community legibility to share details on behavior. “Don’t engage with X, they have a personality disorder” tells me nothing if I have no context. “Don’t engage with X, they have bad intentions and lie frequently [insert links]” tells me something.
And if I know that X is a bad actor already, and I have context on their habitual lying, comments like “X is a binge drinker” still add nothing (and worsen the overall tone/quality of discourse).
I can imagine this being valuable sometimes, and I appreciate the general point. I also liked the LW example — seems like you were being a good moderator there! (It helps that at least one of the people you messaged was open about their condition.)
To add my own example: I read a lot of Freddie Deboer, and he’s been very open about his struggles with bipolar disorder. If Freddie suddenly made a bunch of weird comments on the Forum, I might reach out to him the same way you did to your users.
*****
But I think watching someone this closely is only merited if there’s an important reason to engage with them. This applies in the case of the LW users you mention (I assume you saw them as valuable contributors to the LW community). I also think it applies to someone like Donald Trump, who had so much power and influence that it made sense for psychologists to speculate about his condition. (Same goes for all U.S. presidents.)
I don’t think Torres is a valuable contributor or a figure of towering influence. To the extent that we care about their behavior, it’s about their arguments (and how others receive them). And the best way to address their arguments is by (a) presenting facts, and (b) cataloguing their long history of dishonesty.
*****
I also don’t want to lose sight of the various negative things that come along with psychologizing, which trade off against brevity and predictive value:
It opens up space for insults and ad hominem attacks.
It distracts from discussion of ideas and arguments (e.g. when “has a personality disorder” replaces “consistently lies and makes bad-faith arguments”).
It’s a turn-off to readers.
If someone visits the Forum, sees speculation on the mental conditions of the community’s critics, and finds that deeply unappealing… that’s the kind of user I want to attract.
However, I also want the kinds of users that are drawn to thoughtful discussions of Forum norms. So I appreciate Habryka’s comment!
I care about politeness and friendliness because I see them as ways to keep our focus on ideas rather than people.
Many points here, many of which I agree with. Here is one that I disagree with:
I definitely have personally changed my relationship to Torres after thinking more about their history of behavior in other contexts, and the underlying psychology that might explain those behaviors. For example, I have updated the degree to which I expect Torres to take much higher-variance actions like becoming paranoid, or accusing others of major crimes, or potentially even attacking someone physically (I wish I did not have to track the risk of physical violence, but alas, I sure am tracking the likelihood that people will try to attack others physically after the whole Ziz situation).
I also think in terms of public communication I am generally in favor of honesty, and if the honest reason why I am hesitant to engage with someone is because they have a history of unstable behavior that causes harm to themselves and people around them, then I think I want to be honest about that.
I just want to say that there are a lot of reasons why interfacing with someone in one context can work out well but not generalize to other contexts, and just because “this person experiences psychotic episodes” can explain this well, it does not mean that your guess of psychosis is actually correct.
You can just say:
”A lot of people I know who have had positive interactions with them in one context turns out to have had very bad interactions in other contexts. They also have a pattern of what I would consider erratic and unpredictable behavior. For example, ___. So I would be careful about these positive experiences and not take that to mean they will always respond positively.”
I don’t think the LW analogy tracks. There’s a difference between messaging someone (in private?) about a mental disorder they have publicly talked about and doing so with the intention of helping them, and speculating on someone’s mental health based on their behavior, with no intention of helping them.
I basically second all of Aaron’s comments about the harms of psychologizing—I can’t trust that everyone will use this with good intentions, I think it risks spreading harmful misinformation about people, I think the information transmitted can be vague and open to different interpretations.
One thing I disagree with is the predictive value—I don’t in fact think a bunch of nonexpert speculations on someone’s psychiatric diagnosis adds to predictive power. I think (as you mentioned earlier) focusing on examining the facts that lead you to the conclusion is more useful. If this was a medical forum filled only with psychiatrists that’d be a different story. But the potential harm and misunderstanding of people using loaded psychiatric terms in different ways and different intentions just seems clearly worse than focusing on describing the facts.