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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong
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Of course if you look at a term in a broader sense you can look broadly enough that everything qualifies.
What purpose do you want to achieve by having a broad notion of narcissism?
Mainly whether it is more widespread now, a generational illness or not, does social media seem to increase or enable it, and do I or my loved ones "suffer" from it and to what extent.
Maybe focus on the social media aspect, perhaps it is the best approachable. Suppose social media is drifting towards validating posts like "When I was done laughing and taking pictures, I helped him clean his beard." What class of behaviors are this an instance of? Of course an LW favorite would be "status seeking" but I think is, at best the other kind of status because nobody gets actually useful, usable social status through this. It just feels that way - and is this felt-status as opposed to real status something that maps to narcissistic supply?
It's a fair starting point to assume people are always wrong when they talk about generational pathology. It's the sort of thing that's possible, insofar as the social environment matters, but nostalgia goggles and technical changes totally dwarf it in terms of plausibly explaining any particular generation gap.
If you wan to know whether narcissism is now more widespread, why not use clinical definitions of narcissism. Do people on average score higher or lower on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory than they did in the past?
That's a specific measurable question. There no point in having a broader notion.
Playing reference class tennis is not useful as an end in itself.
If your goal is to judge people as being bad because they are narcissistic but wouldn't be labeled that way by well researched academic scales by more clear about your goal.
I think that the point is just to be able to talk about the thing that people mean when they talk about somebody being narcissistic, which generally is not the clinical diagnosis.
It usually means that the person doesn't like the person they call narcissistic. If Alice calls Bob narcissistic that might tell you more about Alice then it tell you about Bob.