nessa238 wrote:
Well I like him and I'm interested in hearing what he has to say
Surely if he can fool NTs he's someone to learn from
If you want to learn to fool NTs, sure. But think about it: Do you want to learn to manipulate and deceive without caring--or do you want to learn to understand, communicate, and cooperate? A psychopath might be able to live without caring about others, but if you care, even a little bit, then that kind of approach just leads to your becoming more and more bitter, cynical, detached, and lonely--no matter how many friends you have or how popular you are--because none of them knows and likes the person you really are. They like the mask you wear, and that's all.
No, if you want to learn about socializing, the best way to do it is to learn about other people. You can talk to people at the borders of the spectrum, or older autistics, those who know more than you do but are still autistic enough to understand how to put things in terms you can understand. You can also learn from those who are highly socially skilled, because they are more likely to be able to understand you even though you are different from them--not popular folks, necessarily, but the sort of person who seems to be able to fit into any social group without compromising their own personality. You can go theoretical and learn psychology, sociology, or even theater. You can seek out people with common interests, which can serve as a bridge to communication. But learning from a psychopath? No. Even if they could teach what we needed to know, they'd only see us as amusing toys to be discarded and broken if it pleased them to do so. A psychopath knows what other people feel, but doesn't care--we have trouble finding out, but once we know, we care. Trying to learn from a psychopath would be like a bird trying to teach a clam how to fly. (Hint: Most seagulls just drop the clam onto the rocks and fish out the juicy meat inside.)
I know; I've dealt with psychopaths before--and, yes, won, despite being autistic, because I simply ignored their social charm and used my analytical ability. Being manipulative only goes so far, and believing you are superior will make you very over-confident--enough for a fourteen-year-old autistic child to learn how to investigate, uncover your secrets, and land you in jail; enough for an autistic young woman who can barely keep her job to detect a con man not by seeing through his scam but because her mental calculations don't match his claims. Once people know psychopaths truly don't care, the psychopaths either have to learn to pretend to the point of actually being helpful, or they have to move on and find someone else to con. Many of them, if they don't die or end up imprisoned long-term, do learn how to play the game to the point of not being harmful to society anymore. From what I gather, many become CEOs and lawyers, whose lives I don't envy because they are essentially alone, more alone than any autistic person can ever be.
Me--I'll stick with the folks who actually care whether I live or die, and who know that I care whether they live or die. Humans are meant to take on the world as a group, and while we'll make use of the occasional psychopath to do the lawyering, in general we're happiest when we care.