We want to see ourselves as curious and open-minded and smart and understanding things in terms of context and nuance, but when someone tries to do that in the midst of a shaming they're turned on.

Guy Savelli's role in the War on Terror began when half-a-dozen strangers, within days of one another, contacted him via e-mail and telephone in the winter of 2003. They asked him if he had the power to psychically kill goats. Guy was bewildered. He did not go around publicizing this. Who were these men? How did they know about the goats? He feigned a casual tone of voice and said, 'Sure I can.'Then he phoned Special Forces.

I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.

Sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

We're living in post-nuance online times.

On social media there's this thing where on many occasions, there's a single proscribed way of acting. Like if somebody dies, everyone has to say "R.I.P.! R.I.P.!" Basically they're saying, "Don't hurt me, I'm a good person."

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere.