“What Good Is g-Factor If You’re Dumped in the Woods? A Field Report from a Camp Counselor”, 2024-01-12 ():
[Child psychopathy] I [a gifted-child summer camp counselor] had a surprising experience with a 10-year-old child “Carl” a few years back. He had all the stereotypical signals of a gifted kid…However, he just felt different to talk to—felt sharp.
[Animal abuse] …he saw other kids fishing, and decided he wanted to fish too…He noticed one with only one eye, approached it from the side with no vision, grabbed it, and proudly presented it to the counselor in charge of fishing…he harassed and kept catching the poor half-blind fish for the duration of the stay, likely because he got so much positive attention the first time he caught it.
[Machiavellianism] …His out-of the box problem solving rapidly shifted from winning camper-fish conflicts to winning camper-camper conflicts, and he became uncontrollable…This [ultimatum] bought two more days of control…Unfortunately, he seems to have interpreted this new system as “win untraceably”, and then was traced trying to poison another camper by exploiting their allergy.
He’s one of two campers out of several thousand I worked with that we had to send home early for behavior issues. In the end, he was much less happy than the other campers I’ve had.