Psychopaths sometimes have trouble recognizing stuff that is supposed to make them ashamed, i.e. stuff that would reveal their character were it exposed publicly.
Maybe that seems like an over the top comment, and on any individual case, who knows? But I think it explains a good number of these sorts of scandals. Sometimes, the people who get on top are not "ambitious"... sometimes they are actual monsters.
Please don't do the internet psychiatric diagnosis trope on HN. Casually invoking a category like 'psychopath' significantly lowers the signal/noise ratio in a thread, and even if you don't direct it at a specific person, someone else will. Moreover the frame of this article means your comment is insinuating something about someone whether you mean it to or not, and that's beyond gross and into hideous.
Internet threads are like tag-team wrestling: the first guy drags a metal chair into the ring and then the second guy bashes a third guy over the head with it. Keep the chair out of the ring.
So by daring to say that this behavior might be caused by someone who is characterized by the worst kind of lack of ethics, I'm in the wrong?
This is a phenomenon that studies show occurs at something like 2-3% in the population at large... but more common among CEO's. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/15/silicon-v... Interesting how you ban my argument because I don't have a credential (do you even know which logical fallacy that is?) but when an article in which experts take the same opinion, HN bans it with a different excuse.
Do you think that, just perhaps, this could have an effect on the amount of abuse of people by some companies, that we see day-to-day? Especially when it seems to go to an absurd point, as in this case?
It doesn't require a degree to detect people who are willing to treat those around without scruple, as long as they're not exposed. It's a fairly simple definition and these people disproportionately cause abuse... so censoring mention of this, or suggesting that a degree is needed to even contemplate recognizing this sort of bad actor, means you are acting to ensure people are ignorant about it, to their potential harm. I hope you never encounter one of these people close up, dang.
I'm not all that surprised that HN's despicable form of soft-censorship was used here... as I realize the statement I made was sort of controversial. But I'm looking forward to more people realizing how rotten you guys have become at censorship, at which point the interesting conversation will finally move elsewhere. Unfortunately, you can't keep doing it with such a heavy hand and have people not catch on, over the long term.
In fact, the level of censorship has gotten so high here (or I have finally noticed how bad it is) that I don't want to participate anymore. Maybe this is a marginal case, but I've realized you guys are just rotten overall. I don't really think it's ethical to participate in a form that's so dramatically manipulated, especially so often in the direction of SV companies. I'm going to kill my account, if that's possible.
Or, since it looks like HN is too arrogant implement this feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7841742 I'll just, you know, stop using it and monitor the potential security hole for the rest of my life.
I really don't think it takes being a psychopath at all. All it takes is convincing yourself that the company's mission is inherently noble, instead of just a way to generate profit. I've seen this many times, where nice, reasonable people convince themselves of the morality of some business decision, without really questioning that all these "moral" decisions also just happen to be the ones that make the most profit.
Studies have shown that psychopaths are, on average, more successful as CEOs than non-psychopaths. This certainly seems like a good example of that (his reaction and behavior with the reporter were perfect!).
In my experience they have meteoric careers that then suddenly crash and burn spectacularly. Unfortunately after a big crash they're usually able to find more fools and repeat the pattern. You'll often see someone whose career looks like a sawtooth wave.
There is a book called Political Ponerology, with a fascinating provenance, which basically claims society at large (macro scale) goes on sawtooth pattern like this. The argument is that during the good times, people stop taking the steps needed to keep these people from attaining high positions... they remain in denial and make excuses for pyscho behavior. Then people finally take action only when it's just blatantly obviously necessary again. Which, if you think about it, is also the basic story of good & evil presented in Harry Potter :)
IIRC the book was written by the scientific wing of the Polish Resistance movement during authoritarian occupations of the 20th Century. Apparently, many of the people involved in sourcing the data (and, oh yeah, who had secretly diagnosed many of the Nazi/Communist leaders as psychopaths) were killed, when the first edition of the book was discovered in progress. And that first manuscript was destroyed, but the lead author wrote it again -- not once, but two more times -- and ultimately, had to wait for the fall of Communism in order to get it out of Poland. It was finally translated and published during the Bush administration, by New York liberals.
Maybe that seems like an over the top comment, and on any individual case, who knows? But I think it explains a good number of these sorts of scandals. Sometimes, the people who get on top are not "ambitious"... sometimes they are actual monsters.