If I could name a single psychological and easily transmitted "disease" that a vast majority of programmers have, it'd be: insecure narcissism I think much of our problems with online discourse are b/c the programmers who made these systems are insecure narcissists.
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The very thin common thread between the programmer communities and the larger online authoritarian communities is insecure narcissism combined with a cause, enemies of that cause, and easy safe communication. To me, programmers baked this all right into their tech.
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Reading through this paper, I wonder if the economic backgrounds of most programmers (many were Gen-X poors from the 80s recession) could be an additional factor. It could be this weird storm of a bunch of poor disease ridden kids feel cheated out of their narcissist destiny.
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Finally, a way to tell the insecure narcissists who are just joining a cause to kill someone from real freedom fighters is who they go after. Real fighters attack the powerful and spare minor players. Insecure narcs are...insecure...so they like to attack weak individuals.
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Addendum: I find another sign of insecure narcissism is an absolute LOVE of rules. I believe this is because they're waiting to be discovered, and that requires appeasing an authority that will discover them by following the authority's rules. It also defends against criticism.
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