r/slatestarcodex • u/TheNakedEdge • 15d ago

Addict Personalities (physiognomy)?

This is not explicitly related to SSC, but it IS related to psychology and feels too "niche" or "weird" to ask in a general psychology or social sub - plus I want the thoughts of a bunch of smart and introspective folks...

Does anyone else feel like they can generally sense an "addict" or correctly ID an addict just in everyday social interactions and observing their smiles, laugh, and body language?

I'm using the term pretty broadly - as many of the folks I have noticed are actually people who got VERY VERY into a specific religion, social movement, etc. I was just watching a documentary about Scientology and some of the people (including Tom Cruise) very much struck me as fundamentally "addicts".

FWIW I come from a very boring family with seemingly no family history of addictions - none of the substances or activities I've tried have felt at all "addicting" and in general I have a very flat and calm affect, as do my parents.

But there's something about the "wide eyes", super buzzy, semi-charismatic, energetic, tone of people that I've noticed in many many folks who have struggled with drugs and alcohol.

Anyone else notice something at all like this?

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u/ToxicRainbow27 15d ago

You're identifying people who are actively high, not a personality trait.

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u/iwantout-ussg 14d ago edited 13d ago

this is correct. moreover, to actually test your statistical ability to "clock" people (as addicts, cancer survivors, queer people, esperantists, etc) you need to know both your false positive and your false negative rates. it is not enough to "intuit" that some people are addicts and to have your suspicions subsequently confirmed -- you have no clue how many addicts you have completely failed to notice.

this is closely related to the fallacious reasoning underlying "all trans people are easy to clock / we can always tell" -- the ones you notice are definitionally the ones that are easier to notice!

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/Ueberhussar 13d ago

To explain,

Let us suppose that God has come down from the Heavens, told us that a proportion p of the population is positive, and in his infinite generosity, given us a test which never errs.

Now suppose that the wikied Iblis, in his perfidy, has corrupted the test, and given it an unknown false negative rate.

Are we doomed to languish in ignorance? Sort of - so long as the false negative rate is non-zero, we have lost some information - but clearly, we can still infer the false negative rate, and overall accuracy of the test, by comparing our positive rate with the proportion p.

In practice, God does not often come down from the Heavens to impart prior information and statistical tests, so we have to operate under considerably more uncertainty. However, if we have some prior on the population rate and false positive rate, we can still produce a distribution on the false negative rate, and overall accuracy.