zvi—when I first saw this, I thought, OMG, a two-hour read time seems excessive for a book review. But, I started, and got immediately hooked, and found this very compelling. And insightful. And oddly funny in many places. Good job summarizing the new Michael Lewis book, but also calling out his gullibility on many issues.
To me, one big takeaway here is that EAs really, really need to learn some basic psychology. Specifically, they need to understand the common symptoms of the ‘Cluster B personality disorders’—e.g. antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline disorders. (‘Antisocial personality disorder’ is the newer, more politically correct euphemism for ‘sociopathy’, and they both overlap substantially with ‘psychopathy’. Of course, to a large degree, the term ‘sociopathy’ is simply a medicalized, formalized label for what ordinary folks used to call ‘evil’).
SBF revealed many thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are typical of sociopaths: disregarding rules, acting coldly towards others, having few close relationships, taking unneeded risks, acting impulsively, lying about big and little things, committing crimes, tricking others for personal gain.
Especially revealing is the email SBF sent to Caroline Ellison, regarding whether they should have an ongoing relationships, as quoted by zvi in this post: “In a lot of ways I don’t really have a soul. This is a lot more obvious in some contexts than others. But in the end there’s a pretty decent argument that my empathy is fake, my feelings are fake, my facial reactions are fake. I don’t feel happiness.”
Psychopaths tend to show many of the traits that SBF showed: easily getting bored, manipulating others, showing no remorse or guilt, having shallow affect (e.g. not feeling happiness), failure to accept responsibility, taking advantage of others, physically moving around a lot, having many unstable relationships, etc.
My hunch is that, in an alternative time-line, if more senior EA leaders had a little more awareness of Cluster B personality disorders, they would have seen SBF much earlier for what he apparently was: a very high-functioning (smart, capable) sociopath with many psychopathic traits. (Caveat: it’s not feasible or ethical for a licensed clinical psychologist to give a professional diagnosis of a mental disorder without doing an in-person meetings with the person being diagnosed. But I’m not a clinical psychologist, and I’m not making an official diagnosis here; I’m just observing some apparent similarities between SBF’s behavior, and symptoms typical of some Cluster B disorders.)
The Cluster B issue also becomes important in other EA contexts, such as disputes that involve people with narcissistic, histrionic and/or borderline disorder. There again, it can be extremely valuable to get familiar with the typical symptoms of those disorders, to understand the ways these people weaponize their victimhood status, to act very cautious about trusting anything that people with those disorders say or do, and to understand the ways in which they can seduce and manipulate naive people into become their defenders and advocates.
zvi—when I first saw this, I thought, OMG, a two-hour read time seems excessive for a book review. But, I started, and got immediately hooked, and found this very compelling. And insightful. And oddly funny in many places. Good job summarizing the new Michael Lewis book, but also calling out his gullibility on many issues.
To me, one big takeaway here is that EAs really, really need to learn some basic psychology. Specifically, they need to understand the common symptoms of the ‘Cluster B personality disorders’—e.g. antisocial, narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline disorders. (‘Antisocial personality disorder’ is the newer, more politically correct euphemism for ‘sociopathy’, and they both overlap substantially with ‘psychopathy’. Of course, to a large degree, the term ‘sociopathy’ is simply a medicalized, formalized label for what ordinary folks used to call ‘evil’).
SBF revealed many thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are typical of sociopaths: disregarding rules, acting coldly towards others, having few close relationships, taking unneeded risks, acting impulsively, lying about big and little things, committing crimes, tricking others for personal gain.
Especially revealing is the email SBF sent to Caroline Ellison, regarding whether they should have an ongoing relationships, as quoted by zvi in this post: “In a lot of ways I don’t really have a soul. This is a lot more obvious in some contexts than others. But in the end there’s a pretty decent argument that my empathy is fake, my feelings are fake, my facial reactions are fake. I don’t feel happiness.”
Psychopaths tend to show many of the traits that SBF showed: easily getting bored, manipulating others, showing no remorse or guilt, having shallow affect (e.g. not feeling happiness), failure to accept responsibility, taking advantage of others, physically moving around a lot, having many unstable relationships, etc.
My hunch is that, in an alternative time-line, if more senior EA leaders had a little more awareness of Cluster B personality disorders, they would have seen SBF much earlier for what he apparently was: a very high-functioning (smart, capable) sociopath with many psychopathic traits. (Caveat: it’s not feasible or ethical for a licensed clinical psychologist to give a professional diagnosis of a mental disorder without doing an in-person meetings with the person being diagnosed. But I’m not a clinical psychologist, and I’m not making an official diagnosis here; I’m just observing some apparent similarities between SBF’s behavior, and symptoms typical of some Cluster B disorders.)
The Cluster B issue also becomes important in other EA contexts, such as disputes that involve people with narcissistic, histrionic and/or borderline disorder. There again, it can be extremely valuable to get familiar with the typical symptoms of those disorders, to understand the ways these people weaponize their victimhood status, to act very cautious about trusting anything that people with those disorders say or do, and to understand the ways in which they can seduce and manipulate naive people into become their defenders and advocates.