Sociopaths look for ways to systematically claim paternity for successes, and orphan failures.
Hanlon Dodge
The basic mechanism by which Sociopaths transfer blame to the Clueless, while reducing the overall severity of the penalty, is an application of Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Because Hanlon’s Razor is often true, it is a believable dodge even when it is not. Coupled with another uniquely human trait, the tendency to link penalties to intentions rather than consequences (eg. first-degree murder vs. vehicular manslaughter), Hanlon’s razor can be used to manufacture predictable risk free outcomes out of fundamentally unpredictable situations. How? By shifting blame from a locus where it would be attributed to malice, to one where it can plausibly be attributed to incompetence, the severity of penalties incurred is lowered. Hanlon’s Razor is double-edged, and Sociopaths use it to feign incompetence themselves or to charge others with incompetence, as necessary.
When ends are defensible, but means are not, Sociopaths feign incompetence, and you get the first kind of Hanlon Dodge. When means are defensible, but ends are not, Sociopaths engineer execution failures via indirection and abstraction in the requests they make, thereby achieving their ends via “lucky accidents.” This is the second kind of Hanlon Dodge.
In summary, seasoned Sociopaths maintain a permanent facade of strategic incompetence and ignorance in key areas, rather than just making up situational incompetence arguments. This is coupled with indirection and abstraction in requests given to reports.
Divide and Conquer
Losers are far too smart to fall for Hanlon Dodge maneuvers as individuals. You need to work them in groups to get them behaving in sufficiently stupid ways.
Loser group dynamics offer a natural exploit: almost anyone can be made to ally with, or turn against, anybody else, with no need to manufacture reasons. Almost any sub-group can be played off against any other sub-group, since there are no absolute loyalties. The presence of myriad fault-lines within a Loser group presents a canvas for divide-and-conquer artistry.
Gilded Cage (Bureaucracy)
The predictability allows Sociopaths to automate much of the risk-management they need. Instead of having to expend effort executing Hanlon Dodge maneuvers, putting on justification theaters or engineering divide-and-conquer situations, they program the organization to act in those ways by installing bureaucracy-ware. Bureaucracies are structures designed to do certain things very efficiently and competently: those that are by default in the best interests of the Sociopaths. They are also designed to do certain things incompetently: those expensive things that the organization is expected to do, but would cut into Sociopath profits if actually done right. And finally, they are designed to obstruct, delay and generally kill things that might hurt the interests of the Sociopaths.
There are only three ways to get a bureaucracy to do anything it wasn’t designed to do: by stealth, with secret and deniable support from allies in the staff hierarchy; by getting air-cover from a sufficiently high-up Sociopath who can play poker with whichever oversubscribed Sociopath is in charge of exception-handling for the specific process (i.e. jumping the appeals queue and calling in favors to ensure the required ruling); and through corruption and bribery.
Putting the whole picture together, you have a story of systematic risk elimination of the rewards and penalties earned. Blame is partitioned among the individual Clueless (via Hanlon Dodges), Loser groups (via divide-and-conquer) and the designed-to-fail bureaucracy.
The Clueless and Losers debate whether or not ends justify the means. Sociopaths use whatever is justifiable to cover up whatever they want to get done. The result is a theater of justification.
Gervais Principle
Chapter 5
Sociopaths look for ways to systematically claim paternity for successes, and orphan failures.
Hanlon Dodge
The basic mechanism by which Sociopaths transfer blame to the Clueless, while reducing the overall severity of the penalty, is an application of Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Because Hanlon’s Razor is often true, it is a believable dodge even when it is not. Coupled with another uniquely human trait, the tendency to link penalties to intentions rather than consequences (eg. first-degree murder vs. vehicular manslaughter), Hanlon’s razor can be used to manufacture predictable risk free outcomes out of fundamentally unpredictable situations. How? By shifting blame from a locus where it would be attributed to malice, to one where it can plausibly be attributed to incompetence, the severity of penalties incurred is lowered. Hanlon’s Razor is double-edged, and Sociopaths use it to feign incompetence themselves or to charge others with incompetence, as necessary.
When ends are defensible, but means are not, Sociopaths feign incompetence, and you get the first kind of Hanlon Dodge. When means are defensible, but ends are not, Sociopaths engineer execution failures via indirection and abstraction in the requests they make, thereby achieving their ends via “lucky accidents.” This is the second kind of Hanlon Dodge.
In summary, seasoned Sociopaths maintain a permanent facade of strategic incompetence and ignorance in key areas, rather than just making up situational incompetence arguments. This is coupled with indirection and abstraction in requests given to reports.
Divide and Conquer
Losers are far too smart to fall for Hanlon Dodge maneuvers as individuals. You need to work them in groups to get them behaving in sufficiently stupid ways.
Loser group dynamics offer a natural exploit: almost anyone can be made to ally with, or turn against, anybody else, with no need to manufacture reasons. Almost any sub-group can be played off against any other sub-group, since there are no absolute loyalties. The presence of myriad fault-lines within a Loser group presents a canvas for divide-and-conquer artistry.
Gilded Cage (Bureaucracy)
The predictability allows Sociopaths to automate much of the risk-management they need. Instead of having to expend effort executing Hanlon Dodge maneuvers, putting on justification theaters or engineering divide-and-conquer situations, they program the organization to act in those ways by installing bureaucracy-ware. Bureaucracies are structures designed to do certain things very efficiently and competently: those that are by default in the best interests of the Sociopaths. They are also designed to do certain things incompetently: those expensive things that the organization is expected to do, but would cut into Sociopath profits if actually done right. And finally, they are designed to obstruct, delay and generally kill things that might hurt the interests of the Sociopaths.
There are only three ways to get a bureaucracy to do anything it wasn’t designed to do: by stealth, with secret and deniable support from allies in the staff hierarchy; by getting air-cover from a sufficiently high-up Sociopath who can play poker with whichever oversubscribed Sociopath is in charge of exception-handling for the specific process (i.e. jumping the appeals queue and calling in favors to ensure the required ruling); and through corruption and bribery.
Putting the whole picture together, you have a story of systematic risk elimination of the rewards and penalties earned. Blame is partitioned among the individual Clueless (via Hanlon Dodges), Loser groups (via divide-and-conquer) and the designed-to-fail bureaucracy.
The Clueless and Losers debate whether or not ends justify the means. Sociopaths use whatever is justifiable to cover up whatever they want to get done. The result is a theater of justification.