Yes, definitely. OTOH, Scott (author of OP) constantly makes cool fun things, so even if he's slightly sociopathic, he's also a geek and a creator and a vast long-term asset to his subculture(s).
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Yeah I'm definitely not commenting on the person but on the essay which describes subcultures as vehicles to easily gain status. IMO that is not what subcultures are about for most people.
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But one reason why we don't have subcultures like in the 80s anymore is probably that society as a whole has become more permissive of difference.
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A punk in 1977 was an outcast, but now you can do all sorts of things without being ejected from polite society, so the identity and community factor is much weaker, there is no 'us against them' anymore.
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New advertising slogan: “Join LessWrong, it’ll be great, you’ll be despised by everyone and can share a bedroom with three other outcasts!”
(Your point seems insightful and correct :)
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not sure what you guys are talking about... your implied definition of sociopath appears to have drifted enough in the 2-3 indirections here that it has no real relationship with mine
my usage is in terms of being *out* of status games and being able to program them for others
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iirc, scott's self-assessment in his gloss on the gervais principle was that he was mostly clueless in that scheme, if that is accurate, any sociopath moves he might make would be unconscious/accidental
I don't know enough about him to form an assessment one way or another
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as a longtime observer i'd say that things go suspiciously consistently well for scott in achieving personal and social goals, for someone who self-ids as clueless. it's a good persona but i don't buy it
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a (venkat-defined) sociopath in the rationalist community would present as ____?
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which is not to say that he's insincere or ill-intentioned ofc! one good criticism of the gervais principle is that effective sociopaths probably need to drink their own koolaid (become clueless) pretty often. the psychological "standing apart" frame is often not effective
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ime, that's usually a degeneracy mode in a medium-maturity organization that becomes a limiting self-perception and arrests development of the org as a whole... the org is able to grow only for as long as the leader is able to resist getting drunk on their own kool aid



