That’s fair. I was using a quick and simple soundbyte to push the idea that insulting people with mental illnesses is bad. When I take a nuanced and patient approach, people usually accuse me of defending abusers and go off on a wild tangent. I’ve found it’s important to cement people’s ideas of who I am and where my criticism is coming from within the first 10 seconds of the interaction. If it takes any longer than that, they assume since I dared to disagree with them that I must be the enemy, and they project everything they disagree with onto me.

Since you’re clearly appreciative of nuance, I’ll use the nuanced argument with you. While Elon Musk may have NPD, it would be medical malpractice for a registered psychiatrist to make that judgement without having had a session with him. There are regulations against that sort of behaviour for good reason. It’s called the Goldwater Rule. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater_rule

The danger of diagnosing public figures without the proper rigour is that people’s idea of what a pwNPD is are informed by stereotypes, and those stereotypes inform future armchair diagnoses. It becomes an ouroboros with no actual grounding in science. That’s why everyone thinks psychopaths are killers, narcissists are abusers, and obsessive-compulsives are neat freaks. These stereotypes can encourage abuse by the public of people with mental disorders.

No, that’s a harmful stereotype based in no kind of scientific inquiry.

Consider the fact that NPD and BPD are caused by child abuse. Isn’t it common knowledge that abused people are more likely to be abused in the future? Abusing a child doesn’t turn them into a superior, less vulnerable ubermensch. It turns them into someone who falls apart and cries because they tried to learn the violin and weren’t immediately great at it. After all, psychologists are doctors, and a doctor’s job is to help people who are suffering. Doctors don’t deal in morality, and they don’t label people for hurting others. What you’re thinking of is philosophers and priests, not doctors. Doctors are interested in helping the patient suffer less, not in imposing morality. This idea that a mental disorder is when you hurt other people is really bizarre. That’s not how medicine works at all.

Also treating someone as a threat their whole life is oppression. As any black man who’s been stopped in traffic by the police can tell you. Here you go treating people as a threat because of a mental disorder, the outcome is obvious.

I hate this ride and I want people I know to get some fucking help instead of narcisizing all over my life.

He wanted to brag about his skull size. I wish I was joking.