Narcissists Aren’t Necessarily Who You Think They Are

June 20, 2025

Here are 8 common misconceptions about narcissists that can lead to misidentifying them or being hurt by them: —Myth #1: Narcissists don't know they are narcissistic. Surprisingly, quite a number do. Since narcissists are rarely able to see their own flaws clearly, there are 2 positions they usually take: i) I'm narcissistic, but that's good, actually or ii) I'm not narcissistic In fact, enough highly narcissistic people know they are narcissists that on anonymous surveys, the...

People often ask – why do girls like bad boys? But do women like bad guys, or do they actually prefer “powerful good guys”?

October 25, 2023

People often talk about how women are attracted to "bad guys" and don't actually like the "nice guys," or they ask, "Why do girls like bad boys?" or "Why do girls like mean guys?" In my opinion, these views are based on misunderstandings of what is attractive. It's definitely true that some women are attracted to traits like narcissism, callousness, and manipulativeness (and some unusual women even go so far as to write letters to serial killers to get to know them). In my experience, though...

How to make companies into engines of good: make harm unprofitable

July 20, 2017

One oversimplified but potentially useful way to think about corporate regulation is to prevent it from being profitable to cause harm. Of course, this can be very challenging to achieve, and one can debate what "harm" means, how broadly it should be construed, and what to do in cases where there is substantial uncertainty about how to make harm unprofitable. But insofar as it's unprofitable to cause harm, and companies behave as profit maximizers, companies are basically forces for good. ...

Distinguishing Evil and Insanity: The Role of Intentions in Ethics

July 29, 2009

(Note: this is an essay I wrote many years ago that I still mostly agree with. It probably was what led to me eventually coming up with the idea of Philosophical Disorders.) After a little reflection, it is clear that the morality of a person who carries out an action doesn't just depend on the action itself but rather depends on the state of mind of the person who performs it. This holds for pretty much every commonly used definition of morality. Suppose, for example, that I was tricke...