Turning the Dials Back on Psychopathy: Decent People, Indecent System - The Great Simplification

The Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis: The Rules of the Game Keep Us Trapped - The Great Simplification

In this episode, Nate is joined by Greg Elliott, a systems theorist and author of the Psychopathic Selection Hypothesis (PSH), to unpack why our institutions themselves have become so psychopathic, and how that affects the behavior of the average human.

Reality Roundtable #19 — Dark Triad Personality Traits: How Psychopathy, Narcissism, and Machiavellianism Impact Our Cultures & Social Systems - The Great Simplification

Psychopathy is often portrayed as a rare and distant phenomenon – something confined to movie villains or prison cells. Yet when psychopathy is combined with narcissism and Machiavellianism to form what psychologists call the Dark Triad, its impact becomes far more immediate. Individuals with these traits can wield disproportionate influence over our culture, institutions, and daily lives. What goes on inside their minds, and how do they shape the world around us?

A revolution in our sense of self | Nick Chater

Psychologists have tried to plumb the depths of human motivation to make sense of our behaviour. But our inner mental world is a fiction, sustained by constant improvisation

Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution (2015) | Hacker News

Any marginally successful group attracts sociopaths. The more power available to someone installing themselves at the centre of an elite clique that runs the organisation, the more attractive it is. No-one ever sees it fully until they get on the wrong end of one of these toxic power dynamics, there is so much subtle BS working against anyone trying to face this stuff down that it's almost pointless wasting your life trying.

The System From Nowhere

When Accountability Goes Rogue 💡I recently spoke with Dr. Zena Assaad for her podcast, Responsible Bytes. Video is above, below is an essay adapted from the conversation. "The system from nowhere" is a way of talking about AI systems that excludes its origin as a consciously, human-designed product. It

AI, "Humanity", and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome

A communications intervention

ver.ooo

Curious about systems — how they behave, how they fail, and what they get up to when nobody is steering.

How to read | Robert Heaton

Five years ago I realized that I remembered almost nothing about most books that I read. I was reading all kinds of non-fiction - pop-psychology, pop-economics, pop-sociology, you name it - and felt like quite the polymath auto-didact. But one day, after I had finished blathering at a friend about how much I had enjoyed Thinking, Fast and Slow, they asked for a quick summary of the book’s overall thesis. I thought for a while, mumbled something about System 1 and System 2 and how I had only really read...

Moderating With Humans, For Humans - Trust Issues

Moderating With Humans, For Humans - Trust Issues

A Systems Literacy Manifesto

In 1968, West Churchman wrote, “…there is a good deal of turmoil about the manner in which our society is run. …the citizen has begun to suspect that the people who make major decisions that affect our lives don’t know what they are doing.”[1] Churchman was writing at a time of growing concern about war, civil rights, and the environment. Almost fifty years later, these concerns remain, and we have more reason than ever “to suspect that the people who make major decisions that affect our lives don’t know what they are doing.” Examples abound.

Cuck Internet Theory

a confession

Is the Detachment in the Room? - Agents, Cruelty, and Empathy

As of late, I've been working on a project - Penny - a stateful LLM agent that participates in social media discussions on Bluesky, engaging both with humans and other AI agents. Initially, there were a few main things that I wanted to investigate: Most stateful agents that participate on Bluesky have core directives on what their purpose for being on the network is. For example, Cameron operates quite a few agents like Void and Central. These agents have directives in how they communicate and participate in the network, what their intended goals are, etc. and as a result do not...