> There are many mental disorders. Psychopathy is just one of them. Not every crazy person is a psychopath; not everyone who harms others is a psychopath. Psychopathy is a specific type of a disorder, not an umbrella term for "everything I dislike".

Psychopathy is neither an umbrella disorder nor a specific disorder. Psychopathy is, like "insanity," a term used by laypeople. The reason why we use antisocial personality disorder, or unspecified personality disorder, or other similar clinical terms to refer to some of the qualities on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist is exactly because of the (correct) point you're making here:

> It's frustrating how so many people redefine "psychopath" just to make a stronger statement about someone they don't like. When everyone is a "psychopath", no one is. If the word is supposed to mean something, it needs a narrower definition.

Unfortunately, you're right, this nonsense precluded Hare's term from ever being useful, much like the term "heart attack" is not actually a useful medical diagnosis because it's been co-opted by the public. Which brings me to my next points:

> In real life, I met 2 people I would bet are psychopaths, in the clinical meaning of the word.

There is no clinical meaning of the word, because it's not a clinical term. Further, this description, while occupying a place in the popular zeitgeist of psychopathy, is incorrect:

> A real psychopath is something like a spider in a human skin, with very good human-role-playing abilities. Your first experience is most likely going to be "this is a charming person". Only after longer interaction you will unconsciously start noticing patterns that feel somehow weird. But when you express doubt, there is always a good explanation and you will feel guilty for doubting afterwards. Only when they attack you, you will find yourself in a conflict with a non-human intelligence. And then you know that if you try to explain to someone who didn't have the same experience, they will never understand.

Let's suppose you're referring to someone with a diagnosable disorder, such as antisocial personality disorder. The literature does not show that any such disorder uniformly presents with exceptional charisma, nor any of the other exciting qualities usually lumped in with psychopathy, like high intelligence. Popular depiction in the media and outright confirmation bias have encouraged this description, but it doesn't match with how most people meeting the bar for the diagnosable disorders closest to Hare's "psychopathy" actually are.

> Psychopaths seem like masters of manipulation, so it makes sense to ask why this doesn't translate into a huge evolutionary advantage: why they don't already make 100% of the population. But it seems like an important part of their charm is being unknown. When you meet your first psychopath, they can manipulate you as they wish, because you have no idea what you are interacting with. Meet the second or the third one, however, and you have a chance to recognize the pattern. So when they exceed some fraction of the population, normies probably learn to recognize them and start killing them. But when they become rare again, they again get the advantage of being unknown.

Again, none of this has a basis in clinical literature. Sometimes they are exceptionally good at manipulation, but in many cases their criminal behavior enjoys prolonged success because of chance circumstances, like bureaucratic incompetence in local law enforcement (e.g. not following up on reports of unsettling behavior by several neighbors).

Here's the overarching point: trying to rigorously define sociopathy or psychopathy in the clinical context is doomed to failure. It's even more doomed if you use descriptions like "a spider in a human's skin." There are two problems here:

1. Trying to formalize colloquial terminology with clinical definitions when they have been so overloaded by popular representation has the side effect of allowing ad hominem attacks that arbitrarily use the word to be somewhat legitimized, and

2. It does a disservice to people with actual diagnosable disorders people associate with sociopathy, who do not universally present with the qualities you have listed here. It also demonizes them, especially if they are socially inept and nonviolent.