For what that’s worth, when I reflect on my past blunders, the worst ones I can think of were due to misunderstandings of the unwritten and unspoken de facto rules according to which various institutions and human interactions work in practice. In these situations, I would either act according to the official rules and the respectable pious principles in situations where you’re expected to break them, or I would break them in ways that seemed inconsequential to me but were in fact serious. (Sometimes I’d even feel bad for breaking them when there seemed to be no alternative, when in fact such breaking was tacitly considered business as usual.)
To me it seems evident that the ability to figure out the de facto rules quickly, instinctively, and accurately is mostly independent of general intelligence. It is certainly one of the key abilities that differentiate high achievers (and, conversely, big-time losers) from the rest. Its relation with other aspects of human social behavior and social skills is a complex and fascinating open question. For example, the talent for rule navigation seems to be largely independent of charisma, even though both can be a solid basis for high achievement. (Some historical events provide fascinating examples of clashes between super-charismatic and ingenious rule-navigating types—think Trotsky vs. Stalin.)
This, incidentally, is a topic where I have found the insight from OB/LW about status and signaling significantly helpful in clearing up some confusions. Still, there are issues where I can’t get my head around the de facto rules. For example, when it comes to certain beliefs that are nowadays considered disreputable, I observe people who were severely penalized just for suggesting that they might harbor them, but at the same time other people who have expressed them pretty openly without getting into any problems. Clearly there must be some significant differences involved, but I have nothing except vague hypotheses.
Great first two paragraphs. As to the third paragraph, I have two questions. Do you know any specific examples where people were penalized for merely suggesting they might harbor disreputable ideas? And how do you know that differences in whether people get away with these things aren’t just due to random chance?
I wouldn’t like to get into specific examples, not just because the issues are extremely contentious, but also because I don’t want to write things like “X has expressed belief Y” in an easily googlable form and on a high-ranking website.
But to answer your questions, yes, I have seen several occasions where people publicly wrote or said something that suggested disreputable views only remotely and indirectly, and as a result were exposed to public shaming campaigns of the sort that may tar one’s reputation with serious consequences, especially now that this stuff will forever come up when someone googles their names. In at least one of these cases, I am certain that the words were entirely innocent of the imputed meaning. (Feel free to PM me if you’re curious about the details.)
Even when it comes to open and explicit expressions of dangerous views, I still observe vast differences. I’m sure that sometimes this is due to random chance, for example if a journalist randomly decides to make a big deal out of something that would have otherwise passed unnoticed. However, this can’t possibly be the whole story, since I have seen people repeatedly say and write in prominent public venues practically the same things that got others in trouble, without any apparent bad consequences. There are possible explanations that occur to me in each particular case, but I’m not sure if any of them are correct.
I’d say chance is already a factor (is someone digging for dirt against that person? Is the topic currently “hot”?), and in general “does it make a good soundbite?”. Disreputable opinions don’t get repeated as much when they are phrased in academic jargon, or indirectly implied in a way that can only be understood with a lot of context. There’s also the question of incentives, i.e. people are more likely to dig up dirt on the president of a law school than on an average Joe.
I observe people who were severely penalized just for suggesting that they might harbor them, but at the same time other people who have expressed them pretty openly without getting into any problems.
Would you mind clarifying this a little? While I’d certainly believe such situations exist, I can’t think of any unmuddled examples offhand, and it seems like an interesting test case for social analysis.
I’d be interested in reading more about the unwritten and unspoken de facto rules, and about what can be ignored and what can’t. That’s the kind of thing I tend to be bad at, so I’d like to get the experience of others.
Well, any really interesting examples are likely to be controversial, since they necessarily involve repudiating some official rules, accepted norms, or respectable principles. Also, this sort of knowledge can be extremely valuable and not given away easily, or even admitted to, by those who have it. This is assuming they even have the ability to articulate it explicitly rather than just playing by instinct—the latter is of course superior in practice, since it enables perfect duplicity between pious words and effective actions. Of course, at the same time, lots of people will talk nonsense about these topics as a status-gaining ploy.
Some examples would still be nice, even if controversial.
Some that I can think of:
A lot of what Pick-Up Artists talk about, i.e. the way a boy is “supposed” to behave to get a girl isn’t always the way that actually works (I remember reading something about how the “traditional” wooing behavior made more sense in a context where you were mainly going after the approval of the girl’s parents, but I haven’t researched the subject in depth).
Much milder, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”, i.e. bypassing “official” hierarchy to get crap done
That some churches don’t care that much about the actual professed belief
For many students, networking and contacts is more useful for the future than the degree you get or what you learn in classes (that’s not a very big secret is it?)
When it’s OK to ask for certain fees to be waived, to ask for a discount, to haggle
When it’s OK to bribe someone (probably much more relevant in less-industrialized countries)
A lot of stuff is probably specific to a culture, or even to an organization.
Yes, these are all good examples. Some other ones that come to mind are:
Traffic rules: the ones that other drivers expect you to follow and cops actually enforce are significantly different from the formal ones. (For example, speed limits.)
Dealing with bureaucracies, both governmental and private ones. Their real operational rules are usually different from the formal ones, and you can use this not only to save time and effort, but also to exploit all kinds of opportunities that theoretically shouldn’t exist at all.
Excusing your offenses and failures by presenting them as something that, while clearly not good, is still within the bounds of what happens to reasonable, respectable, high-status people. If you pull this off successfully, people will be much more forgiving, and the punishments and reputational consequences far milder—and you can be much bolder in your endeavors, knowing that you have this safety exit if you’re unlucky. This basically means exploiting people’s unwritten practical rules for judgment, which may treat very differently things that are theoretically supposed to be equally bad.
The exact bounds to which you can push self-promotion without risking being exposed as a liar and cheater. This is essential since if you’re not an extraordinary achiever whose deeds speak for themselves, you’re stuck in a nasty arms race in which everyone is putting spin and embellishing the truth. However, it’s far from clear which rules determine in practice where exactly this stops being business as usual and enters dangerous territory.
Excusing your offenses and failures by presenting them as something that, while clearly not good, is still within the bounds of what happens to reasonable, respectable, high-status people. If you pull this off successfully, people will be much more forgiving, and the punishments and reputational consequences far milder—and you can be much bolder in your endeavors, knowing that you have this safety exit if you’re unlucky.
By the way, my thoughts on this matter were at one point stimulated by this shrewd quote by Lord Keynes:
A ‘sound’ banker, alas! is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.
For what that’s worth, when I reflect on my past blunders, the worst ones I can think of were due to misunderstandings of the unwritten and unspoken de facto rules according to which various institutions and human interactions work in practice. In these situations, I would either act according to the official rules and the respectable pious principles in situations where you’re expected to break them, or I would break them in ways that seemed inconsequential to me but were in fact serious. (Sometimes I’d even feel bad for breaking them when there seemed to be no alternative, when in fact such breaking was tacitly considered business as usual.)
To me it seems evident that the ability to figure out the de facto rules quickly, instinctively, and accurately is mostly independent of general intelligence. It is certainly one of the key abilities that differentiate high achievers (and, conversely, big-time losers) from the rest. Its relation with other aspects of human social behavior and social skills is a complex and fascinating open question. For example, the talent for rule navigation seems to be largely independent of charisma, even though both can be a solid basis for high achievement. (Some historical events provide fascinating examples of clashes between super-charismatic and ingenious rule-navigating types—think Trotsky vs. Stalin.)
This, incidentally, is a topic where I have found the insight from OB/LW about status and signaling significantly helpful in clearing up some confusions. Still, there are issues where I can’t get my head around the de facto rules. For example, when it comes to certain beliefs that are nowadays considered disreputable, I observe people who were severely penalized just for suggesting that they might harbor them, but at the same time other people who have expressed them pretty openly without getting into any problems. Clearly there must be some significant differences involved, but I have nothing except vague hypotheses.
Great first two paragraphs. As to the third paragraph, I have two questions. Do you know any specific examples where people were penalized for merely suggesting they might harbor disreputable ideas? And how do you know that differences in whether people get away with these things aren’t just due to random chance?
I wouldn’t like to get into specific examples, not just because the issues are extremely contentious, but also because I don’t want to write things like “X has expressed belief Y” in an easily googlable form and on a high-ranking website.
But to answer your questions, yes, I have seen several occasions where people publicly wrote or said something that suggested disreputable views only remotely and indirectly, and as a result were exposed to public shaming campaigns of the sort that may tar one’s reputation with serious consequences, especially now that this stuff will forever come up when someone googles their names. In at least one of these cases, I am certain that the words were entirely innocent of the imputed meaning. (Feel free to PM me if you’re curious about the details.)
Even when it comes to open and explicit expressions of dangerous views, I still observe vast differences. I’m sure that sometimes this is due to random chance, for example if a journalist randomly decides to make a big deal out of something that would have otherwise passed unnoticed. However, this can’t possibly be the whole story, since I have seen people repeatedly say and write in prominent public venues practically the same things that got others in trouble, without any apparent bad consequences. There are possible explanations that occur to me in each particular case, but I’m not sure if any of them are correct.
I’d say chance is already a factor (is someone digging for dirt against that person? Is the topic currently “hot”?), and in general “does it make a good soundbite?”. Disreputable opinions don’t get repeated as much when they are phrased in academic jargon, or indirectly implied in a way that can only be understood with a lot of context. There’s also the question of incentives, i.e. people are more likely to dig up dirt on the president of a law school than on an average Joe.
I agree that all these considerations can be significant, but I don’t think they are sufficient to explain everything I’ve seen.
Would you mind clarifying this a little? While I’d certainly believe such situations exist, I can’t think of any unmuddled examples offhand, and it seems like an interesting test case for social analysis.
I’d be interested in reading more about the unwritten and unspoken de facto rules, and about what can be ignored and what can’t. That’s the kind of thing I tend to be bad at, so I’d like to get the experience of others.
Well, any really interesting examples are likely to be controversial, since they necessarily involve repudiating some official rules, accepted norms, or respectable principles. Also, this sort of knowledge can be extremely valuable and not given away easily, or even admitted to, by those who have it. This is assuming they even have the ability to articulate it explicitly rather than just playing by instinct—the latter is of course superior in practice, since it enables perfect duplicity between pious words and effective actions. Of course, at the same time, lots of people will talk nonsense about these topics as a status-gaining ploy.
Some examples would still be nice, even if controversial.
Some that I can think of:
A lot of what Pick-Up Artists talk about, i.e. the way a boy is “supposed” to behave to get a girl isn’t always the way that actually works (I remember reading something about how the “traditional” wooing behavior made more sense in a context where you were mainly going after the approval of the girl’s parents, but I haven’t researched the subject in depth).
Much milder, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission”, i.e. bypassing “official” hierarchy to get crap done
That some churches don’t care that much about the actual professed belief
For many students, networking and contacts is more useful for the future than the degree you get or what you learn in classes (that’s not a very big secret is it?)
When it’s OK to ask for certain fees to be waived, to ask for a discount, to haggle
When it’s OK to bribe someone (probably much more relevant in less-industrialized countries)
A lot of stuff is probably specific to a culture, or even to an organization.
Yes, these are all good examples. Some other ones that come to mind are:
Traffic rules: the ones that other drivers expect you to follow and cops actually enforce are significantly different from the formal ones. (For example, speed limits.)
Dealing with bureaucracies, both governmental and private ones. Their real operational rules are usually different from the formal ones, and you can use this not only to save time and effort, but also to exploit all kinds of opportunities that theoretically shouldn’t exist at all.
Excusing your offenses and failures by presenting them as something that, while clearly not good, is still within the bounds of what happens to reasonable, respectable, high-status people. If you pull this off successfully, people will be much more forgiving, and the punishments and reputational consequences far milder—and you can be much bolder in your endeavors, knowing that you have this safety exit if you’re unlucky. This basically means exploiting people’s unwritten practical rules for judgment, which may treat very differently things that are theoretically supposed to be equally bad.
The exact bounds to which you can push self-promotion without risking being exposed as a liar and cheater. This is essential since if you’re not an extraordinary achiever whose deeds speak for themselves, you’re stuck in a nasty arms race in which everyone is putting spin and embellishing the truth. However, it’s far from clear which rules determine in practice where exactly this stops being business as usual and enters dangerous territory.
By the way, my thoughts on this matter were at one point stimulated by this shrewd quote by Lord Keynes: