Summary

In this post, we explore different ways of understanding and measuring malevolence and explain why individuals with concerning levels of malevolence are common enough, and likely enough to become and remain powerful, that we expect them to influence the trajectory of the long-term future, including by increasing both x-risks and s-risks. For the purposes of this piece, we define malevolence as a tendency to disvalue (or to fail to value) others’ well-being (more). Such a tendency is concerning, especially when exhibited by powerful actors, because of its correlation with malevolent behaviors (i.e., behaviors that harm or fail to protect others’ well-being). But reducing the long-term societal risks posed by individuals with high levels of malevolence is not straightforward.

Individuals with high levels of malevolent traits can be difficult to recognize. Some people do not take into account the fact that malevolence exists on a continuum, or do not realize that dark traits are compatible with moral convictions (more). Moral judgments and stigma can also make it difficult to think objectively about these topics, and can make it hard to acknowledge these traits when they are present.

Malevolence is often studied in the context of the so-called dark tetrad traits—sadism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Other dark traits relevant to the long-term future include vengefulness (related to retributivism) and spitefulness. Most dark traits positively correlate with each other, which may suggest the existence of a general factor of human malevolence (‘D’) (more).

Like all personality traits, dark traits occur on a continuum; categories such as “psychopath” and “narcissist” rely on relatively arbitrary cut-off points. It is also difficult to reliably measure someone’s levels of dark traits. Having said this, based on the information we have, individuals with concerning levels of dark traits could be common enough to influence the trajectory of the long-term future.

Available data suggest that the diagnostic categories of psychopathy (more) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (more) have prevalence rates of at least ~2% in the general population. And among those who have taken surveys at the DarkFactor.org, about 3% of them have given sets of answers which we would consider concerni...

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments