> At no time did David display a lack of social skills, lack of empathy, or antisocial behaviour
I don't remember David much, but let it be noted that the essay uses "sociopath" in a different way than the commonly understood definition, much like the essay's use of "losers" doesn't mean what people usually mean by loser (as in "so and so is such a loser!"), it means "made a bad economic bargain / they are losing in the capitalist maximum profits & power game".
According to this theory, the Clueless are the ones who suffer the most.
They invest most, they care about made up goals nobody else cares about, they play by rules everyone else thinks are dumb, they feel loyal to a company that doesn't love them back, and because they are more invested in the company, they are the ones who feel the loss the most when the sociopaths pull the rug.
I think it's actually the Losers who have it better: they are simply not invested enough, they are replaceable but also find their place in other companies, and in any case, failure affects us-- I mean, them -- less simply because they are not invested as much and they never felt any loyalty.
"Loser" is a loaded term because it sounds like the cultural, lowercase loser ("so and so is such a loser!") but it actually means "loser in the game of maximum capitalist profit and power". But if you're not really playing that game, being a loser at it isn't so bad.
Yeah perhaps a better term for Loser is Abstainer. Because the Sociopaths also can certainly lose at the game of maximum capitalist profit. Loser/Abstainer just chooses not to play the game.
Fully agreed. I think "Loser" is a misnomer. And indeed, going by the essay, the Sociopaths can also lose big... they are willing to risk it all for personal gain, but it can end very badly for them if they miss their window, their manipulations get exposed, or decide to do illegal things to get ahead (high profile cases in my mind: Enron, Epstein, etc).
The names come from a cartoon that predates Rao's essay. He simply reused them because they mostly work. Just like the Sociopaths are not all literal sociopaths, the Losers are not all literal losers.
Yes, I understand this. I was simply making this explicit, it was a good idea to clarify that neither Losers nor Sociopaths match the common definition of those terms.
> The losers are strictly those who put in more effort than they get in return but who cannot see it!
I think those would be the losers who get promoted to clueless, at least in this metaphor. The losers who aren't clueless are putting in the bare minimum work that doesn't get them fired. If they overperform, they (according to the theory) get promoted.
I fully agree this nasty "vibes-as-compensation" bullshit, "we're all a family", etc, is in the interest of the top leadership. The sociopaths, if you will.
> Brent (Gervais) is neither a sociopath nor the top dog he thinks he is, he's a middle manager who it's implied was legitimately good at sales, but is not at all good at the role he's been promoted into because it's a completely different one.
I think in this hierarchy Brent is supposed to be Clueless rather than Sociopath.
I agree it doesn't 100% match the characters.
By the way, I like Steve Carell but the British show was much better than the US one.
As a two for one, we could also chemically excise the need to enjoy food, so we could consume some tasteless nutritive slop while spending 100% of our time in front of a computer, being that mythical 10x programmer.
> Have you ever gone through a whole a week without eating anything? Have you seen your kids go through that
Have you? And did you murder your neighbor to steal their food? Did you believe the best course of action was to fight your neighbors?
Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In your imagined scenario, are they the poor starving family who must kill and steal to survive?
Dude. Think hard before getting backed into absurd metaphors.
I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you, virtuous claims about how I would act in that situation. Maybe you should do the same.
>Your ridiculous analogy doesn't even apply to the US, one of the wealthiest countries in the world
And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth. If a external entity can choke your economy and if your government just stand-by, virtue-signaling to people such as yourselves, your wealth will disappear in no time. BOOM! Back to zero...
> I haven't, and that is why I am not making higher-than-you [...]
Then maybe stop making up hypotheticals that don't apply to me, you, or any of the nations involved? What are you hoping to achieve here? "Let's assume we live in a Mad Max world, would you steal all the women and water"?
> And where did that wealth come from? Sure, you have smart people, but it also require a functioning economy to mobilize and convert all those talent into wealth
So you think the US doesn't have a functioning economy or smart people, and therefore must resort to war to get their resources?
> BOOM! Back to zero...
So, in your bizarre logic, it's best to resort to theft and murder?
Yes, agreed 100%. Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent. The smaller states in the areas are under constant threat.
However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
> Some groups see it as their mission to dominate Eastern Europe, or the entire Middle East, or the entire southern Asian continent.
Agreed that some countries seek to dominate other regions by force or threat, but you and I are not thinking of the same "groups".
> However in the case of Iran, who openly calls for the destruction of America and is blatantly developing technology that seriously threaten America and other Middle Eastern states, decisive military action to prevent the threat is important. Don't watch the bully themself and wait for him to confront you, when he is telling you the whole time his intention to destroy you.
No, Iran poses no real threat to America, and according to Trump last year suffered a 10+ year setback in their nuclear ambitions. Do you think Trump was lying back then, now, or both?
The US is asserting dominance. Even Trump occasionally says so. Iran mostly poses a danger to their own citizens and, arguably, against Israel when conflict flares up in the region, but not to the US.
By the way, the current situation in Iran is heavily influenced by actions by the UK and the US in the region, back in the 50s. So maybe meddling is not the right course of action?
> Do you think a continuation of the firebombing campaign and an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have resulted in fewer deaths of civilians (particularly of the 'volunteer fighting corps')?
I don't know, but there's a lot of evidence this wasn't a factor in the decision to drop the bombs on Japan. The planners for the invasion and the planners for the bombing weren't exactly talking to each other and coordinating the strategy.
They had the bomb and they were going to use it. Everything else was an a posteriori justification.
Now think what will happen with easily deployed AI-powered weapons.
I don't remember David much, but let it be noted that the essay uses "sociopath" in a different way than the commonly understood definition, much like the essay's use of "losers" doesn't mean what people usually mean by loser (as in "so and so is such a loser!"), it means "made a bad economic bargain / they are losing in the capitalist maximum profits & power game".
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