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Comment Re:Do a test to find the psychopaths/sociopaths... (Score 4, Informative) 204

The reversible argument is just a common pastime that allows people to try to dump blame for something on others. It is not unique to sociopaths. What you are looking for is a systematic disregard for the rules and standards of society and violating the rights of others, especially including breaking those in such a way as they do not usually get punished for it. This can be either because of careful planning, manipulation of peers, making it a hassle for others to stop them, appealing to pity, political influence, etc...

To put it frankly, you are looking for a pervasive, but not necessarily omnipresent, pattern.

A few things to help you out though:

- They do not honor commitments unless it is specifically in their self interest to do so, such as to impress someone important.

- When they are confronted, they will almost never admit responsibility unless they themselves recognize it is advantageous to do so. They will usually either fly off into a rage to scare you away or others into stopping you or launch into a ridiculous appeal for pity, complete with all sorts of BS mind-games like the one you mentioned.

- They get board easy and are frequently impulsive. So, they like to find people to brag about their exploits to if they cannot find something or someone new to torment and destroy, bonus points if they can torment someone while bragging to them.

- They feel that being antisocial makes them smarter than everyone else, because having a conscience retards us and makes us easy to mess with.

- They like collecting tools to do their dirty work for them. But, will actively eliminate anyone deemed to be a competitive threat to them, often using the aforementioned.

- They can mimic complex emotional expressions, but the top half of their face frequently does not match the rest of the body.

- One tell tail I have noticed is the wicked "I have won!" gleeful smile accompanied by hollow eyes when they are actively terrorizing someone or something and getting away with it.

That ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would...

Comment Re:Do a test to find the psychopaths/sociopaths... (Score 2) 204

I cannot say for Great Britain, but the estimated occurrence rate of people with Antisocial Personality Disorder is ~4%, about 1 in 25 people. Four times that would be about 1 in 6. Beyond that, it all ignores the broader issue of Cluster B personality disorders (IE: Antisocial, Narcissistic, Histrionic, Borderline) in general, which make up just under 10% of the US population. I am curious as to how many of those make it into the board rooms, executive suites, and public offices. If that factor is even close to 4x, sweet lord...

I would take that 4 times with a grain of salt unless it is backed up with some evidence or at least some sound reasoning, though.

Comment Re:So... (Score 2) 156

Personally, if the $3 went to the court, I would not bother the clerks with pennies. But, if it went directly to the spammers, I would be sorely tempted to send 300 one cent USD international money orders in seperate envelopes with signature confirmation for the spammers to cash.

Sign here, please! ...and here...and here...etc...

What? It's just a signature. You can't just write your signature? We all can. What's the big deal?

Comment Re:I am the author of the spreadsheet in question (Score 1) 386

For what it's worth, some of us do realize that you are stuck in between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, you will get criticized for overbearing censorship. And on the other, when someone's precious little angel shows their true colors, they would rather blame you guys and imply that it is you that are not doing their jobs to protect their precious sainthood bound prodigy.

Basically, they shovel off the blame for their kids imperfections on you so they don't have to feel responsible for any of it: It's your fault they failed. It's your fault they will never make more than minimum wage. It's your fault they will be on welfare the rest of their lives. They deserve better and they did not get it not because of the choices they made, but yours. The mentality of selfish entitlement, victim-hood, and the near complete externalization of blame it engenders is all to common and extremely toxic.

In short, you are damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

If you will divulge my jaunt into the bigger picture for a moment: My personal ideals prefer realistic, informed decision making over irrational fear of social rejection. But, that is because I prefer reason for making such decisions. Experience tells me that the majority of the population just wants to know if it will make them feel good in the short term, adult or child. Consequences tend not to show up until someone needs to rationalize the choice they have already made. I can kind of understand the idea of limiting the availability to reduce the temptation. Unfortunately, negative feedback is still feedback, and will remind people of it, thus making it a topic of note in their minds. And, it is also worth noting that strongly negative feedback tends to promote abnormal, maladaptive behavior in general, especially in regards to human development.

I wish I could help you out. But, I cannot think of any sane way to handle this. The general direction stinks of politics and marketing. I.E: Use the populations' tendency towards predictable, irrational decision making as a boon instead of a bane.

Oh, and be careful, you would not be the first guy to take it in the chops for someone higher up because you spoke out of line. Thank you for treating us like reasonable adults. That is ... extremely rare.

Comment Re:Dear Apple (Score 1) 345

I am just one guy with a limited sample of experience to draw from. But, most of the creative professionals I know gave up and moved to the PC platform. The people I find using apple's creativity (IE: not including dedicated phones and mp3 players) oriented products nowadays are usually or similar too hipsters and nearly IT clueless house-moms that are thrilled to play solitaire on the go with a screen thats big enough to see the cards. In other words, the actual work gets done elsewhere.

Comment Why not... (Score 2) 692

In all seriousness, if you are willing to spend enough construct floating cities, why not just buy a small island nation who's population is fleeing anyway? You can keep the remaining population as I image most of them are fishermen. And, I would imagine keeping experienced food gatherers around would come in handy. As an added bonus, you would have actual land you could grow traditional crops on as well, feasible materials extraction, permanently connected infrastructure, etc...

As a minus, though, you are kind of stuck in place if any disasters show up (typhoons, earthquakes, volcanoes, the hostile military of an authoritarian nation with tiny dicked leaders....)

Comment Re:"...in 2008 and 2009" (Score 1) 93

There is a difference between knowing what is right and what is wrong, and actually caring about what is right and what is wrong. You would think a would lead to b. But, for some people a is just a tool for telling people it's raining while they piss on them and b is for losers and stupid people. I cannot say this is the case in this case. But, it sure reminds me of it.

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