Comment by different on Inner Goodness · 2008-10-24T06:58:40.000Z · LW · GW

"I hate everyone else in the world and want to hurt them before they die, and also I have no interest in right or wrong; I am restrained from being a serial killer only out of a cold, calculated fear of punishment"

I don't quite hate everyone else, I'm not a sadist, and nor am I tempted toward violence. But I do in fact dislike most people; I have relatively little interest in "right" or "wrong" as general concepts; and I deeply resent the fact that other people's interests are different from mine, and that society would be willing to conspire at a moment's notice to prevent me from imposing my will.

In short, I am like Zaire or Dennis, living in anguished resentment of my inability to seize the entire pie.

Now, because I'm a human equipped with the standard cognitive circuitry, I feel all the usual social emotions: empathy, jealousy, generosity, constant fretting over tribal status, etc. But on a deep level, I wish I didn't. I wish I could reprogram myself not to care about other people at all.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking "ethically"; thinking of myself as a "good" person, or at least that it would be desirable to be good. This always makes me feel "slimy" after a while; when I reflect upon myself with detachment, I am appalled by the smugness of the person I see. Further reflection reveals that the only reason I am (apparently) interested in being ethical is that the few people I like are interested in being ethical, and I think it's cool to be like them. Pure social reinforcement, and it drives my reflective self crazy.

So while I'm not a sociopath on the object level, as it were, perhaps I am on the meta-level.

I post this for the sake of seeing whether I fall into a category that EY had contemplated.