TED
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2022
18:02 · 25M views · Aug 15, 2012
Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, gives a TED talk on the blurry line between sane and crazy and on psychopathy as a spectrum, with stories of how the label gets applied.
Praised as one of the great non-technical talks, appearing in best-talk lists.
3 comments from Hacker News
There's a mind bending TED Talk on this which really opened my mind on this topic: this video I highly recommend checking it out. In my opinion it is one of the greatest talks of all time and it gave me goosebumps. But if you are really busy, a summary is that everyone has varying degrees of psychopathy that make a gray area in between extreme labels.
Here's mine: 1. Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams [LINK] 2. Strange answers to the psychopath test | Jon Ronson this video 3. The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology | Pranav Mistry [LINK] 4. Steve Jobs MIT Class: What he learnt after he was fired from Apple? [LINK] 5. Eric Liu: Why ordinary people need to understand power [LINK] 6. Peter Lynch 1994 Lecture [LINK]
Jon Ronson, a journalist, told a story[0] about a guy he interviewed in an Asylum that had pretended to be crazy to get out of a minor crime (I think shoplifting). The promise to the Judge was, you do a month of psych ward, get some counseling, and get out. "Sweet!" he said, "Better than doing a year in the can for stealing". His psychiatrist branded him a sociopath and put him on some pills that he, a liar, didn't need. They changed him for the worse, a sane man entered the asylum and day after day he was turning into a raving lunatic. "I'm not crazy!", he said - but that was only more fuel for the doctors, as it was clearly something a crazy man would say to get out. The attitude around here was that if you yelled, you got more pills, maybe a beating by an angry male nurse too. If you stay quiet, you don't get out. "I don't need any of this! I was pretending! Please let me out!" he cried. The nurses held him back and tossed him back into a padded room. As they dragged him, he kicked and screamed that he was not crazy and didn't need help, but it was all pointless. His psychiatrist later told Jon that the alternative was worse, that he was a liar, a pretender, and someone that willingly gets in here for any reason clearly belongs in the bobby hatch. He would never get out again. Jon met him on his 18th year in the tin, he clearly wasn't right in the head when they talked, the pills, electroshock sessions and pointless talks with the Psychiatrist every week had clearly sapped