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Comment by illustriousbear | Hacker News Reader

People in the security industry have told me that this sort of thing often comes down to ego and self-importance.

In Intelligence, people have been caught selling state secrets for 10-20k a pop. The kind of secrets that can land you decades in jail. It makes no sense from a monetary standpoint.

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This phenomenon has been known from ancient times. A slighted ego is a powerful incentive to turn to the other side. For example, in the ancient Indian work on statecraft, the Arthashastra, Chanakya lists the kind of personalities who can become spies: See Chapter XIV of the Arthashastra:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Arthashastra/Book_I

One contrast I can think of between people in intelligence and Levandowski is tens of millions of dollars in pay... which actually causes me to agree with you. It seems mostly guided by an overinflated ego and a sense of invincibility.

Gotta remember not to drink your own Kool-Aid ;)

MICE or RASCLS

Never underestimate the power of the ego trip...

https://www.google.com/search?q=mice+rascls&oq=mice+rascls&a...

Intelligence screening essentially tries to select for more financially conservative people and in the cases so far people only go that far due to extenuating situations like divorce, addictions, etc. rather than standard American Greed motive. Until relatively recently people didn’t make $500k+ / year as individual contractors or founding random boutique firms. As such, one of the oddities of the US IC demographics is that a really high number of them are Mormon. It helps explain the Salt Lake City presence and investment when most other sectors of technology are relatively lukewarm there.

That reads like a total 'just so story'

Once decision makers are Mormon, of course they're going to hire more and more Mormons. They don't even have to be doing it corruptly, thats just how networks of humans work.

The Mormon thing was started in the FBI and goes back to Hoover

You should probably provide some evidence for those assertions.

It's likely Levandowski has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), as is evident by his founding The Way of The Future, which is his own church to worship artificial intelligence.

Which I have to believe is a joke based on the end of "The Aviator"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Pbx9mvWPY

More like The Way of Shielding Assets From Creditors

Maybe. I took the liberty to look up their 990 form [1] and it looks like it's an empty non-profit (no assets or activity).

Interestingly enough, Lior Ron (Otto co-founder) was appointed CEO of the church.

1 - https://990s.foundationcenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/814/8147...

In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody.

It's totally frowned upon by psychiatrists and psychologists, who are experts in the field, because it's actually impossible and can do a lot of damage.

This has nothing to do with Levandowski not being a full blown greedy asshole and now a criminal too. But the problem is really that doing that can potentially hurt people with mental issues.

> In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody.

As a counterargument: I am extremely annoyed by the people who publicly criticize the personal traits of others without even considering that they might be affected by a mental disorder.

Those two things aren't necessarily in opposition.

For example we can choose to have sympathy and empathy for Kanye West during his public struggles. (Or not. I'm not telling anybody what to do. I don't have strong feelings about the guy myself.)

We can recognize that yes, clearly, the man is struggling with something. We can also simultaneously refrain from hamfistedly trying to figure out what, specifically, he's struggling with.

So in your view noting that someone has some issues that they need help with is not the same as remote diagnosis?

In your view, are those merely different degrees of the same thing? I mean, yeah, I guess. I suppose "that guy is struggling" is something of a diagnosis in and of itself.

For me, the clear differentiator is that "that guy is struggling" is a "diagnosis" I think just about anybody would be qualified to make. We have all struggled. And people generally don't go on Twitter posting sprees of alternating jumbled, grandiose, and vaguely worrisome thoughts when they're doing well. Nor do they make tearful public appearances, etc. And his wife confirms he's struggling. So assuming he's not putting on an elaborate ruse - I think your average layperson is qualified to say he's struggling.

Being more specific than that would require a level of training and direct contact with him that, obviously, a layperson doesn't have. And mental diagnoses are rather uh, fuzzy even when handed out by qualified professionals under ideal circumstances.

It's like the difference between me saying, "my car won't start" (a thing I'm qualified to say!) and "the fuel injector controller is faulty; Honda screwed up the design and Nissan's version of the same thing is much more robust." (a thing I just made up, and am not remotely qualified to say)

This seems like good advice. Amateur diagnosis of mental syndromes seems to happen a lot these days.

It raises an interesting question though. Every time narcissism / NPD comes up, the general advice seems to be that you should stay they hell away from these people. There seems to be plenty of evidence that they can wreak havoc on the lives of people around them, particularly anyone in an intimate relationship with them.

So it's arguably a good idea to learn how to "diagnose" these people, at least for self-preservation.

Please don't do Internet Psychiatric Diagnosis (IPD) on HN.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20di...

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