
Ask HN: Should sociopaths be banned from business/power? - CM30
Okay, this is gonna be an incredibly controversial question I know, but after seeing a bunch of stats saying psychopathy is apparently more common in business leaders and politicians, I&#x27;ve often thought:<p>Would it be morally right to just outright ban sociopaths (and maybe narcissists) from even getting into those fields at all?<p>I mean, imagine if by some miracle technology we could test for the presence of empathy in an individual&#x27;s brain or what not. Would it be right to say &#x27;you cannot ever become a CEO, start a business or run for president&#x27; if someone had no capacity to empathise with&#x2F;care for others?<p>Would that improve society (and stop dictators) or make it worse?
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nobody271
This is a terrible idea. When you give someone the ability to label someone
else as mentally ill you will get abuse. You know the Stanford Prison
experiment? The people doing the judging become like the guards. They have no
personal responsibility for the lives they ruin and at the same time are so
full of themselves that they cannot process any state other than they are
doing a good thing. It's not like they are incredibly wise and thoughtful
people. No, lol, they're the same idiots who stop in the middle of the
intersection when the light turns red. They're just people doing a job that
pays well. They're looking out for #1. The end. If you replaced "can't be a
business leader" with "needs a lobotomy" they would not bat an eye.

So while I agree with your sentiment we as a society are just not wise enough
to implement that.

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CM30
True, it's a terrible idea to let people label others as mentally ill or what
not. And also true, something like this would be a horrible idea now, since
there'd be no good, objective way to measure it.

But the question really dealt with a situation where it was objectively
possible to figure out if someone was a sociopath. Like if you could do a DNA
test and have cast iron evidence one way or the other.

Would that change the moral aspect somewhat?

~~~
nobody271
Okay, I guess not. It wouldn't be right to deny someone a position based on
that feature unless there were a way to link it to being abusive or something.
When I said I agree with your sentiment I was just trying to avoid pissing OP
off rather than connecting on something I thought all the way through. So what
I'm really trying to say is I'm a liar.

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zenexer
> a bunch of stats saying psychopathy is apparently more common in business
> leaders and politicians

How do you know that being a business leader or politician doesn't induce
psychopathy?

Furthermore, how do you objectively assess whether someone meets the threshold
for being banned from a position of leadership?

If you're not opposed to watching anime, you might be interested in Psycho-
Pass. It describes a future in which society persecutes people based on such
assessments.

~~~
zorga
> How do you know that being a business leader or politician doesn't induce
> psychopathy?

Psychopaths are born, sociopaths are made.

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jolmg
Correlation does not imply causation, but that doesn't mean that correlation
cannot be by causation. It sounds likely that these negative features arise
from having received power. It's like Abraham Lincoln said, "Nearly all men
can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him
power."

Also, I'm sure that to get to such positions, these people were thoroughly
reviewed by others in all their aspects before being given such positions, so
what you suggest is already done to an extent. It may be however that those
people doing the reviewing may find these features desirable, or at least not
bad enough to outweigh the features they found that are desirable.

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zepto
I think not. However what I think we should do is;

1\. Recognize culturally that sociopathy is real and present in a noticeable
percentage of people.

It’s commonly seen as an exotic phenomenon that means someone is a tv serial
killer, rather than someone who has a social deficit.

2\. As well as teaching skills of empathizing, we need to also teach about the
limits of empathy.

There is currently a trend towards teaching empathy in both schools and
workplaces. I think that without also teaching the limitations and that
different people genuinely have different capacities, this actually makes
people more susceptible to sociopathic manipulation.

3\. As a result of 1&2 we can make more discriminating choices of who should
have power.

I think sociopaths can do a lot of harm from positions of power, but I don’t
think they are somehow inherently evil.

We probably don’t need so many of them in unaccountable positions, but I think
that ultimately it’s common form of neurodivergence and if we culturally
understood that it’s not something to worship, but to come to terms with, we
would be able to collectively mitigate the negative effects.

4\. I think we are a long way away from any of this. Understanding the
experience of a person who is neurodivergent in any way is not a common skill
yet. This works both ways.

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amyjess
No. I would recommend reading the works of Thomas Szasz.

Declarations that somebody is "mentally ill" are almost universally done to
target undesirables for persecution.

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krapp
>I mean, imagine if by some miracle technology we could test for the presence
of empathy in an individual's brain or what not.

This is close to the plot of the anime "Psycho Pass", except they were testing
for some vaguely defined, emotion based "crime coefficient" rather than
empathy specifically. Society was covered in surveillance gear that constantly
scanned a person's "hue" and the moment it got too "cloudy," they could suffer
social and legal consequences, including being locked away or shot on sight by
the police.

Sometimes without even committing a crime, mind you. Merely witnessing a
traumatic event can cloud your hue. Artists and musicians have to be licensed
because of the societal risks of exposure to their work. One character was
permanently outcast from society for merely questioning the system.

What resulted was a society that was, outwardly, peaceful and crime free, but
seething with pathological issues just under the surface, a facade of utopia
over a violent and ruthless fascist dystopia. Nothing good ever comes from
declaring people with certain traits to be undesirable, then making them a
permanent underclass.

The problem isn't that sociopaths exist, so much as our society encouraging
and rewarding sociopathic behavior at the highest levels of power. If, rather,
we rewarded and encouraged empathetic and moral behavior, then sociopaths
would either have to conform to that to succeed, or wouldn't succeed.

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tc313
Why do you want to ban them? If it’s to stop them from harming society, the
legal system is already set up to do that. If punishing behavior isn’t
working, trying to punish potential behavior doesn’t seem promising either.

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theredbox
As a psychopath I do not knwo. My “mild” psychopathy does not prevent me from
functioning in the society but I will for sure seize every opportunity to
climb the ladder without even thinking about the consequences.

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LoSboccacc
it's not controversial at all, the answer is simple: no.

even assuming it's beneficial, who would define who's a psychopath and who
isn't?

~~~
CM30
The judgement side wouldn't be done by a person, but by an automated DNA test.
So I'm thinking of a situation where (in theory) there'd be no way to game the
system on an accuracy level, since it'd be based on a scientific fact.

Of course, that doesn't stop it being abused for exactly what you say, since
someone has to write the code or what not.

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candiodari
You have to ask yourself. The creators of the Gulag, what were they trying to
do ?

Because that answer contains the answer to your question.

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eof
I will say maybe, if and only if, you have an objective measure of such.

As it stands the slippery slope of abuse far outweighs any potential benefits.

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nopriorarrests
And logical next step is not allowing them to procreate, and boom, congrats,
you have re-invented eugenics.

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neilk
I’ve thought about this topic a lot, ever since I had a boss who I believe was
both sociopathic and sadistic. The sociopathy made him remarkably effective at
recruitment and strategy. The sadism was more self-destructive since, well,
developers have employment options. Maybe sociopathy and sadism together are a
more precise way of describing evil.

But that implies other possibilities. For instance, Vinay Gupta describes
himself as an ethical sociopath. He thinks that being freed from emotional
empathy gives him an edge when thinking about topics like disaster planning.

Similarly, I’ve heard it’s common for surgeons to have a bit less empathy than
normal. Not full sociopaths. But enough to look on a bloody, twisted body
pulled from a motorcycle accident, and operate a bone saw.

In the imaginary future where we can precisely test for qualities like
sociopathy, it might be sufficient to have candidates for positions of power
publicly disclose the ways in which their minds deviate from the norm.

Sociopathy might have some functions in human society, and maybe it’s been
preserved by evolution for a reason. (Or maybe there’s some game theory thing
happening where there’s a stable equilibrium of cooperators and defectors).

The real problem is when the rest of us are deceived into getting into a
relationship with a sociopath, where we have to rely on their conscience.

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takanori
What sort of precedent would this set? If you ban sociopaths whose attributes
(lack of empathy for one) are perfectly suited to oversee thousands of
individual people, would it lead to banning, for example, a brilliant person
with Aspergers from writing code because they can be a difficult on a team?

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adamzerner
I remember reading The Sociopath Next Door a few years ago, and the author, a
Harvard psychologist who studies this stuff, claims that 4% of people are
sociopaths.

My impression is that we aren't at the point where we can detect sociopathy
reliably enough for a ban like this to be realistic. With such subjectivity
and unreliability, it can just become a tool for governments, and those who
influence governments, to abuse their power. I could even see it _increasing_
the amount of sociopathy amongst those in power. But once we develop the
ability to detect sociopathy more reliably, I think the question changes, and
I'm not sure what I think.

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Nokinside
Sociopathy is not on/off thing. It's a scale. Some people have more callous
and unemotional traits than others and different capacity for empathy.

Personality disorders are not considered mental illness under the law.

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tuesdayrain
I recall reading that "sociopaths don't feel empathy" is largely a
myth/misunderstanding. It's more like they do feel empathy, but they're
capable of turning it off in certain situations. I can see that in myself to
some extent. I would say on I'm more empathetic than the average person, but
if someone threatens me (like a robber) then my empathy for them drops to 0
and they basically stop being a human in my eyes. Just a nuisance that needs
to be removed permanently.

~~~
chongli
Empathy as typical people experience it isn't something that can be turned on
and off at will, it's controlled by external factors. Sociopaths can learn to
develop a cognitive model to emulate empathy but it's not the real thing.
That's why sociopaths can turn it on and off; it's just another con game to
them.

~~~
theredbox
Exactly. It's not the real thing. As soon as you realize this it totally
changes the way you see things. It's emulation, it's pretending and sometimes
you can even convince yourself that the empathy you feel it's real. But it's
not and at the end of the day the only thing that matters is you.

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ohiovr
Not all of them are law breakers. At the end of the day who gets to label you
a sociopath? Seems pretty subjective to me.

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rlvesco7
I think the way to achieve your goal is different. Allow non-sociopaths a
fighting chance to compete. If you are parent, and you love your family, it is
impossible to put in the hours. Only the broken will rise to the top and work
12 hr days. One way to minimize this is cap working hours.

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mimixco
Who would run the companies, lol? A friend once pointed out that big
corporations and governments reward sociopathic personalities and let them
rise to the top. In a small group, we might spot those people and throw them
out, but big orgs encourage them.

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gigatexal
Would there be any successful companies at that point? You kind of have to
have a machevallian/sociopathic take on achieving your and the companies goals
to be successful I would think (I’m no CEO so maybe I’m wrong).

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Air_Marshall
No.

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Apreche
yes.

