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.
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: