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My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent."

I don't have enough experience to tell you which side is higher than the other, though the fact that we do not live in some kind of absolute hellhole suggests that the curve is tipped toward the right (benevolence). Yet I do get the impression that it's one extreme or another.

The sociopaths do tend to burn themselves out eventually though. There seems to be some kind of what's effectively karma, which probably comes from peoples' lies eventually catching up with them. It's overall better to be benevolent.

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If PG is right, then sociopath's will be fairly indistinguishable from nice people.

True sociopath's don't care about your feelings, either positively or negatively, they just care about advancing their own agenda.

If the best way to advance their own agenda is by being nice to people, then that's what they'll do. That's what vegabook got mercilessly downvoted for saying.

And as PG said, lies are really expensive, so smart sociopaths won't use them.

So maybe Ron Conway is a sociopath. But who cares why he's doing so much good? What matters are the results, not the inner reasons.

While sociopaths can plan ruthlessly they're not necessarily more longterm oriented than non-sociopaths (since they bore more easily I would even expect them to tend to be less longterm oriented). So I consider it highly unlikely that a sociopath would play nice to everyone for years and years.

I'd like to see more nuance to the argument.

What does 'nice' actually mean? It's famous for being a low-entropy word.

In fact not everyone agrees that Conway is 'nice', or that everything he does and says is good:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/09/eruption-over-sf-housing-an...

Or even:

http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/12/09/ron-conway-twee...

So it matters whether or not Conway or anyone is a sociopath, because IMO the only useful definition of 'nice' is an inclusive one. The more inclusive, the better.

Being a charming marketer while benefiting yourself, your network, and primarily yourself and your network, doesn't make you nice, it makes you an exemplary professional.

There is a difference, and it's not a trivial one.

That Ron Conway SF housing debate clip is so mellow, I mean, only a west coast millenial could call that an eruption. ;-)

But seriously, I am all for challenging the notion that anyone who defends torture is "nice." However, if that is an example of Ron Conway angry, he really is one of the nicest dudes I've ever seen. They are discussing a topic that matters, and where ideas matter. Regardless of who is right, it is much more "not nice" to allow flawed thinking to propagate in matters of public policy, and shouting from the back of the room may be the "nicest" thing a person could do. An asshole would just snicker to himself and count his money.

> What does 'nice' actually mean? It's famous for being a low-entropy word.

Brooke Allen got a bit of attention on HN recently with a post he wrote (incidentally called "How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire"), but that's not the one I mean to point to here. Instead I mean to point to an earlier one in which he touches on the fickleness of "nice". < http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-... >

"My albeit limited experience suggests to me that there's a U-shaped curve with super-rich / powerful / "effective" people. One end of the curve is "pathological sociopath," and the other is "extremely benevolent.""

Time also changes people for better in many cases.

Want to add that something that I have noticed is that people may start out one way (assholes or very self centered) and then move toward "extremely benevolent" when money, fame or power is already "in the bag" and as they age. At that point they will become more generous and it's quite possible that people that they didn't treat nice are no longer around or visible to tell the story. Not taking a jab at Ronco here but do we really know what he was like in his 20's on the way up? (It's only a question for discussion so everyone keep calm..)

I can think of at least one person in the valley who is very well respected now and more or less a father figure that was viewed as quite the asshole back in the 90's when he actually was still working hard to make his mark on the world. (This isn't the only example actually the others were more or less meat and potatoes business people who wouldn't give anyone the time of day if there wasn't any benefit to them).

In the big picture, mutually beneficial cooperation works. That's what civilization is, and why we still have it. What we consider sociopathic is often highly cooperative, in an absolute sense. It's just that our standards have risen so high that that basic level of cooperativeness isn't enough.

Illustrative example: hooligans riding loud motorbikes stopping at red lights.

Hooligans riding loud motorbikes are at least riding together, too. Most problems don't come from sociopaths because individual sociopaths can only do the work of one person, and are only motivated by their own personal gain. Most problems come from groups of people working together and against an outgroup, either for their perceived collective benefit or for some ideological or religious cause.

I like the traffic lights example, because it demonstrates civil obedience; cooperation with their fellows in society, in general, regardless of their relationship, or agreement on ideology or religion.

I agree on in-group/out-group (and, eg, monomanical movie villains, abusing their blindly obedient minions, are unrealistic). I'm claiming the benefits of civil cooperation are so enormous that these in/out-group clashes will occur on an increasingly higher base of mutually beneficial cooperation. Because an in-group too separated is too weak.

I think that's mostly true, although there's also the case of the pathological sociopath that after making their pile of money, decides to whitewash their legacy through philanthropy, in order to appear to jump over to the other side of the U.

Armchair psychiatry is unwise. It's very possible for someone to be extremely ruthless in business while still being a genuinely empathetic and kind person in general. Not all sociopath-seeming executives are actual sociopaths.

I agree. It's important to keep in mind that non-sociopaths can be as ruthless as sociopaths to people when they don't think of them as people.

People are what they are, in business or private, there is no such thing as 'another person'. Unless you're suffering from some form of multiple personality disorder.

Most people act differently in different contexts. (Do you tell your wife "Before I agree to take out the trash, I just want to make sure we're on the same page on what compensation for this will be?" Do you tell your investors "Shit, my investors are assholes. I'm getting reamed on this deal") It's not uncommon that different people will have different perspectives on whether someone is a nice guy or an asshole.

They even use Hitler as an example of this... "The evilest person, but he was good to his grandchildren" etc

That's a questionable point, whether it is ethically right to be an "asshole" through your career and then donate it all once it ends.

I would say it (up to a point) is right. Donating/helping early in your life has a low impact, so the main reason I think it's reasonable to argue that way is that not everyone will donate at the end of their lives. So by gaining leverage early on (not contributing to philanthropy, not helping, etc) you will compensate for those who wouldn't donate and help make the world a better place once they got rich.

If you look a the billionaires out there quite a few will sit on their growing pile of cash until they die.

You may not care but that curve you are talking about is called a bimodal distribution. Just writing for information not pedantry. :)

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