I hate bitcoiners as much as the next guy, but this whole "dark triad" stuff seems like bunk psychology to me. Like a Meyers-Briggs test but only useful for pointing out what an asshole someone is. Especially when they just had people fill in an online questionnaire.
Edit: While re-reading the article I actually found something I think is pretty damning in this particular case. At no point does it mention these traits being statistically more likely in bitcoiners than the general population and in the un-paywalled preview of the actual study it does say that they didn't control against interest in other financial instruments. The title implies psychopaths like bitcoin, but the context of the statement is that impulsive psychopaths who like bitcoin do so because risk taking is a trait associated with psychopathy. This makes sense in terms of a journalist making sensational claims out of otherwise good science, but the article is written by the authors of the paper (the lead author has a PhD in marketing by the way), which means they're misrepresenting their own work to make it appear to support conclusions that it doesn't.
Machiavellianism is named after the Italian political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli. People who rate highly on this trait are good at deception and interpersonal manipulation.
This one specifically makes me think it's junk. Like, what, a doctor is gonna come in and go, "I diagnose you with Season-5-Overaching-Villain-In-A-Police-Procedural personality disorder!"
“dark triad” stuff seems like bunk psychology to me.
isn't it just describing psychopathy, narcissism, and manipulative behavior, which are all real things?
Maybe "bunk" isn't the right word to use. Categorising beliefs and behaviours can be useful, but the idea that any specific set of unique, definite personality traits exist, and that some are evil, is fraught with bias and assumptions.
My main problem though, is the way articles like this play on the drama of the "dark triad" to make it seem like a more meaningful and scientific concept. It's presented like a way to quantify immorality, which I think is pretty dangerous.
Fair enough, but that's just being an edge lord. People would rather pretend to be the joker than work on themselves.
Meyers-Joker-Briggs test. I'm an INTJ - an INTelligent Joker :joker-dancing:
