People with borderline personality disorder generally lack “insight,” i.e. they are typically unaware that they have BPD; will deny having it; and will get extremely defensive at the suggestion they have it.
One can contrast with, for example, obsessive/compulsive disorder sufferers who usually do have pretty good insight.
So a survey based on self-reporting is not going to be very helpful.
Anyway, I doubt that there are many people on this board with BPD. This is based on my interactions and observations.
Also, this discussion board doesn’t seem like it would be very attractive to someone with BPD since it doesn’t offer a steady stream of validation. For example, it’s common on this board for other posters, even those who agree with you on a lot of stuff, to challenge, question, or downvote your posts. For someone with BPD, that would be pretty difficult to handle.
The main mental issue I sense on this board (possibly disproportionate to the general population) is Asperger’s. There also seems to be a good deal of narcissism, though perhaps not to the point where it would qualify as a mental disorder.
So if a person with BPD would discover LW and decide they like the ideas, what would they most likely do?
My model says they would write a lot of comments on LW just to prove how much they love rationality, expecting a lot of love and admiration in return. At first they would express a lot of admiration towards people important in the rationalist community; they would try to make friends by open flattery (by giving what they want to get most). Later they would start suggesting how to do rationality even better (either writing a new sequence, or writing hundreds of comments repeating the same few key ideas), trying to make themselves another important person, possibly the most important one. But they would obviously keep missing the point. After the first negative reactions they would backpedal and claim to be misunderstood. Later they would accuse some people of persecuting them. After seeing that the community does not reward this strategy, they would accuse the whole LW of persecution, and try to split apart their own rationalist subcommunity centered around them.
People with borderline personality disorder generally lack “insight,” i.e. they are typically unaware that they have BPD; will deny having it; and will get extremely defensive at the suggestion they have it.
One can contrast with, for example, obsessive/compulsive disorder sufferers who usually do have pretty good insight.
So a survey based on self-reporting is not going to be very helpful.
Anyway, I doubt that there are many people on this board with BPD. This is based on my interactions and observations.
Also, this discussion board doesn’t seem like it would be very attractive to someone with BPD since it doesn’t offer a steady stream of validation. For example, it’s common on this board for other posters, even those who agree with you on a lot of stuff, to challenge, question, or downvote your posts. For someone with BPD, that would be pretty difficult to handle.
The main mental issue I sense on this board (possibly disproportionate to the general population) is Asperger’s. There also seems to be a good deal of narcissism, though perhaps not to the point where it would qualify as a mental disorder.
So if a person with BPD would discover LW and decide they like the ideas, what would they most likely do?
My model says they would write a lot of comments on LW just to prove how much they love rationality, expecting a lot of love and admiration in return. At first they would express a lot of admiration towards people important in the rationalist community; they would try to make friends by open flattery (by giving what they want to get most). Later they would start suggesting how to do rationality even better (either writing a new sequence, or writing hundreds of comments repeating the same few key ideas), trying to make themselves another important person, possibly the most important one. But they would obviously keep missing the point. After the first negative reactions they would backpedal and claim to be misunderstood. Later they would accuse some people of persecuting them. After seeing that the community does not reward this strategy, they would accuse the whole LW of persecution, and try to split apart their own rationalist subcommunity centered around them.
I hate to point this out, but it is already easy enough to ridicule the proper spelling; its spelled Asperger.
Edit: Sorry tried to delete this comment, but that doesn’t seem to possible for some reason.
Fixed. FWIW thanks.