wrongcitizen wrote:
I've gotten really good at spotting them, because they all have the same traits and rarely change their behavior, and don't recoil from criticism, but instead resisting it equally. It's like being an empath but not the same.
Actually, to tell you a funny story, I sort of attract sociopaths because they see me as a challenge. I am doing my own thing and they decide to come out of nowhere and start up a chat, but I'm cold towards them so I confuse them. They know I'm somewhat socially stupid but they don't know why, or how to take advantage of it. AS hasn't often been useful but in this case it is, because I feel like I can see right through their BS.
That's a great skill to have developed! I'm better than average at spotting them, they try to use empathy against other people (it's like they know what the other person is feeling but can detach and take in into their calculation instead of being affected). It's also domain-specific (based on observation of past examples), so I can become needlessly mistrustful in certain situations due to a false positive.
I've met sociopaths who operated on motives of simple amusement, regular salespeople, money, charitable donations, religion, political thought (often quite extremist or radical), even conspiracy theories. The latter few types are no doubt valuable assets to the various armed terrorist groups worldwide.