Additional comment to add: One other line of questioning comes to mind in the “what plot could we imagine where suppressing sociopathic / psychopathic / narcissistic traits in humans to the extent they are kept from amassing power leads to severe problems for society down the line” - what are people with such traits uniquely good at, if anything, which results in a net gain for society?
There’s plenty of pop psychology which points out that people with at least some of these traits tend to be concentrated in roles like leadership (which may not be entirely due to self-selection) and first responders.
Just to look at one example, an additional trait (beyond limited prosocial emotions and willingness to violate the rights of others) which may or may not be necessary, and is not sufficient on its own, to constitute psychopathy is relative fearlessness. People with this trait typically aren’t so fearless that they act completely irrationally with regard to self-preservation, but they very measurably experience far fewer of the effects of fear in dangerous situations. You can see how this may be useful among police, firefighters, soldiers, etc. How does this trait relate to the other traits in question? Does suppressing the other traits like limited prosocial emotions also suppress this trait, thereby depriving a society of General Pattons? And so on.
Yeah, if we accept that leaders and heroes are generally afflicted by this, then the suppression itself would cause a lack of those people in society, which could have really interesting effects. Lack of parasocial role models to project on to, as a subtler one than the obvious lack of leaders and front line troops.
As you say, the method of suppression could lead to some interesting emergent properties too. I keep thinking of Soma from Brave New World or Prozium from Equilibrium, or even social suppression like in 1984, and how difficult it is portrayed to be to suppress human nature, and how it seems to bubble up no matter what you do. That’s a pretty nice theme that would surely fit in to any mechanism that would suppress “bad” traits.
Additional comment to add: One other line of questioning comes to mind in the “what plot could we imagine where suppressing sociopathic / psychopathic / narcissistic traits in humans to the extent they are kept from amassing power leads to severe problems for society down the line” - what are people with such traits uniquely good at, if anything, which results in a net gain for society?
There’s plenty of pop psychology which points out that people with at least some of these traits tend to be concentrated in roles like leadership (which may not be entirely due to self-selection) and first responders.
Just to look at one example, an additional trait (beyond limited prosocial emotions and willingness to violate the rights of others) which may or may not be necessary, and is not sufficient on its own, to constitute psychopathy is relative fearlessness. People with this trait typically aren’t so fearless that they act completely irrationally with regard to self-preservation, but they very measurably experience far fewer of the effects of fear in dangerous situations. You can see how this may be useful among police, firefighters, soldiers, etc. How does this trait relate to the other traits in question? Does suppressing the other traits like limited prosocial emotions also suppress this trait, thereby depriving a society of General Pattons? And so on.
Yeah, if we accept that leaders and heroes are generally afflicted by this, then the suppression itself would cause a lack of those people in society, which could have really interesting effects. Lack of parasocial role models to project on to, as a subtler one than the obvious lack of leaders and front line troops.
As you say, the method of suppression could lead to some interesting emergent properties too. I keep thinking of Soma from Brave New World or Prozium from Equilibrium, or even social suppression like in 1984, and how difficult it is portrayed to be to suppress human nature, and how it seems to bubble up no matter what you do. That’s a pretty nice theme that would surely fit in to any mechanism that would suppress “bad” traits.