Without conscience

What Hacker News says

1. rofo1Mar 2019
   Anything less than the following is just displaying lack of morality in our whole society:

   Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Balwani are absolute psychopaths without remorse or conscience. We should not give them this much attention. I can't help but feel that we are doing something wrong by talking and writing about them, as if they are something special. They should be in jail, and the facts of the case should be made public, and that's it - end of story.

   If we portray them in any other way, we are just doing disservice to everyone.

   For further reading, Carreyrou's book is OK-ish (can be read in a day) but really - it's a bunch of stories about how psychopaths lie to stay in power. It's a nice book, but in the end we are talking about people that pathologically lie, and even dumber* investors that throw money based on signalling/stories and not facts/prototypes/verification of any kind of anything. That's pretty much it.

   Much better literature would be 'Snakes in Suits' and 'Without Conscience', both by Robert Hare, the guy that has created the psychopath checklist (the tool used to clinically diagnose psychopaths, like a psychopath test). I highly recommend both of the books (especially 'Without Conscience'!)

   * that's just my opinion: throwing millions without anything close to a prototype that works AT ALL is just something that an imbecile could only do. Goes to show what kind of people hold capital in the millions. Remarkable.

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2. spitfireSep 2015
   I've been burnt by people like this too. It hurts, you think you've done something wrong. You haven't, and I'm glad Bobby has shone some light on this guy.

   Everyone - and I mean EVERYONE should read Robert Hare's work on psychopaths. "Without Conscience" is a good introduction.

   There's a saying "be afraid when the pretty people show up.". They've shown up in droves, the party is over.

   NB: Also, Billy may own the company, But the contributors own their code and contributions. They can and should control this.

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3. XcelerateMay 2014
   You should read "Without Conscience" by Dr. Robert D. Hare. He has been studying psychopaths for decades, and gives a detailed overview of what they are like. Everyone is falsely claiming that Elliot Rodger was a psychopath. He was not. Psychopathy consists of a collection of particular traits together, and while he has a few of them, he does not have the correct combination.
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4. mtdewcmuFeb 2014
   To get a decent depiction of psychopathy, one really needs read a book like Without Conscience, by Robert Hare. Psychopathy is truly bizarre. You have to consider that this article was coming from a psychopath, and psychopaths have certain characteristic ways of speaking; those characteristic speech patterns, I think, are the reason this article sounds weird.
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5. oseibonsuAug 2013
   A more accurate description of sociopaths can be found in Robert Hare's Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. This article seems to romanticize the term. http://www.amazon.com/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-World-Ps...
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6. etiamJul 2013
   Keith Alexander's way of bending words, and his facility with swinging a crowd and lying skillfully under pressure once again reminds me disturbingly of accounts I've read about psychopaths, and of probable psychopaths I've encountered. Those patterns could of course be stuff you pick up anyway as a top player for power, but I find the parallels highly worrisome. For those who have never read anything about the subject, may I suggest browsing e.g. "Without conscience" by Robert D. Hare. The sections with court proceedings in particular illustrate well what I mean.
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