The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even though this is totally out of date with Facebook, it was still really interesting. It makes you wonder if Gladwell's theory fits with how the Russian ads for Trump were implemented. They were mostly used in the relevant electoral vote swing areas, so they were tailored in a way not described in the book. The "connector" was not a person but the Facebook and Twitter ad technology itself, which according to the book is not supposed to work especially well- especially considering that we are overwhelmed by Facebook and Twitter information. They were definitely "sticky"- racism often is.

Anyway, the book could definitely use an update in the post-social media world. Is everything different now? Or is social media really just like email? I'm thinking everything is different now.

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Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us by Robert D. Hare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was written in the 1990s, so there's a lot of new science on the topic. I recommend reading this along with The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist's Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain by James Fallon- but possibly start with that one. That one will give you the basic science known today, and the author is a functioning psychopath himself who gives a lot of insight into his personality.

This one focuses more on criminal psychopaths because those are the people that more often come to the attention of specialized experts though there are some mentions of more functional psychopaths. It's very heavy on personal accounts of psychopaths and their crimes which certainly keeps the book entertaining but is a little low on the actual science for my taste, perhaps because as previously mentioned there was just less known on the topic in the 1990s.

I think it's important to understand that there's this group of individuals at large in society (and likely heavily rewarded in business and politics) that just aren't subject to the same rules of empathy as the rest of us. Certainly, a lot of non-psychopath people can be emotionally damaged or even assholes for no reason at all, but this complete lack of empathy or authentic feeling is unique and especially dangerous in both criminal and successful noncriminal psychopaths.

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