Nornagest comments on Downvote stalkers: Driving members away from the LessWrong community? - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Ander 02 July 2014 12:40AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 03 July 2014 10:32:09PM *  5 points [-]

regarding narcissism, the definition is: "an inflated sense of one's own importance and a deep need for admiration."

That's the dictionary definition. When throwing around accusations of mental pathology, though, it behooves one not to rely on pattern-matching to one-sentence definitions; it overestimates the prevalence of problems, suggests the wrong approaches to them, and tends to be considered rude.

Having a lot of ambition and an overly optimistic view of intelligence in general and one's own intelligence in particular doesn't make you a narcissist, or every fifteen-year-old nerd in the world would be a narcissist.

(That said, I'm not too impressed with Eliezer's reasons for moving to Facebook.)