In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody.
It's totally frowned upon by psychiatrists and psychologists, who are experts in the field, because it's actually impossible and can do a lot of damage.
This has nothing to do with Levandowski not being a full blown greedy asshole and now a criminal too. But the problem is really that doing that can potentially hurt people with mental issues.
This seems like good advice. Amateur diagnosis of mental syndromes seems to happen a lot these days.
It raises an interesting question though. Every time narcissism / NPD comes up, the general advice seems to be that you should stay they hell away from these people. There seems to be plenty of evidence that they can wreak havoc on the lives of people around them, particularly anyone in an intimate relationship with them.
So it's arguably a good idea to learn how to "diagnose" these people, at least for self-preservation.
> In all seriousness: You shouldn't remote diagnose mental illnesses for anybody.
As a counterargument: I am extremely annoyed by the people who publicly criticize the personal traits of others without even considering that they might be affected by a mental disorder.
Those two things aren't necessarily in opposition.
For example we can choose to have sympathy and empathy for Kanye West during his public struggles. (Or not. I'm not telling anybody what to do. I don't have strong feelings about the guy myself.)
We can recognize that yes, clearly, the man is struggling with something. We can also simultaneously refrain from hamfistedly trying to figure out what, specifically, he's struggling with.
In your view, are those merely different degrees of the same thing? I mean, yeah, I guess. I suppose "that guy is struggling" is something of a diagnosis in and of itself.
For me, the clear differentiator is that "that guy is struggling" is a "diagnosis" I think just about anybody would be qualified to make. We have all struggled. And people generally don't go on Twitter posting sprees of alternating jumbled, grandiose, and vaguely worrisome thoughts when they're doing well. Nor do they make tearful public appearances, etc. And his wife confirms he's struggling. So assuming he's not putting on an elaborate ruse - I think your average layperson is qualified to say he's struggling.
Being more specific than that would require a level of training and direct contact with him that, obviously, a layperson doesn't have. And mental diagnoses are rather uh, fuzzy even when handed out by qualified professionals under ideal circumstances.
It's like the difference between me saying, "my car won't start" (a thing I'm qualified to say!) and "the fuel injector controller is faulty; Honda screwed up the design and Nissan's version of the same thing is much more robust." (a thing I just made up, and am not remotely qualified to say)
It's totally frowned upon by psychiatrists and psychologists, who are experts in the field, because it's actually impossible and can do a lot of damage.
This has nothing to do with Levandowski not being a full blown greedy asshole and now a criminal too. But the problem is really that doing that can potentially hurt people with mental issues.