Lex Fridman: observation

Transcript context

…I wouldn’t say that I do know. In normal social circumstances, we have evolved mechanisms to keep people like that under control. Let’s say that you and I have a series of interactions and you screw me over once. I’m not going to forget that. Now, I might not write you off because of the one time, but if it happens three times, it’s like we’re not going to play together anymore. And in normal times, most of our social networks are connected and interacting. So if you ripped me off three times and I noted that, I’m going to tell everybody I know and they’re going to tell everybody they know, and soon everyone will know, and that’s the end of your tricks. But that assumes that we know who you are and we’re in continual communication. Well, all of that’s gone online. So anonymity does that and so does the amplification of emotional intensity by the social media platforms and their algorithms. I think what we’re doing, this is happening on Twitter continually, is we’re giving the 5% of psychopaths a radically disproportionate voice. And what they’re doing is there’s a bunch of them on the left, and they’re all, we’re so compassionate, and there’s a bunch of them on the right, and at the moment they’re all, we’re so Christian and free speech oriented. It’s like, no, you’re not. You’re narcissistic psychopaths, and that’s your camouflage. And you hide behind your anonymity and you use fractious and divisive language to attract fools and to elevate your social status and your clout. And not only that, to gain, what would you say, satisfaction for your sadistic impulses. See, the problem is it’s hard to tell who is the psychopath and who is a heterodox truth seeker. Yeah. Well, if you were charitable about Tucker Carlson’s recent interview, you’d say that was exactly the conundrum he faced. And it is hard. I’ve thought about, for example, interviewing Andrew Tate, and I thought, I don’t think so. And then I thought, why? I figured it’s not obvious to me at all that he wouldn’t charm me. So I knew this guy, Robert Hare. Robert Hare was the world’s foremost authority on psychopathy. He established the field of clinical analysis of psychopathic behavior, and Hare was a pretty agreeable guy. So he would give people the benefit of the doubt, and he interviewed hundreds of serious psychopaths, like imprisoned violent offenders. And he told me in one of our conversations that every time he sat down with a violent offender psychopath, and he had a measure for psychopathy that was a clinical checklist, so he could identify the psychopaths from just the say, run-of-the-mill criminals. Every time he sat down with them, they pulled the wool over his eyes, and he videotaped the interviews. And it wasn’t until later when he was reviewing the videos that he could see what they were doing, but in person, their tricks were more sophisticated than his detection ability.…

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