Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Leadership: the induced magic

In the current series of posts I claim that the key to success is asocial behavior with peers. Someone with this approach will be successful in any fields where he has the basic minimum requirements. Two things challenge this approach: at first, many successful organizations are social. Most of the mankind are social without doubt and the mankind is progressing. Also, we can't say that the socials are just useless welfare leech. Most socials are contributing to the progression of mankind.

Secondly people show very different success in different fields. The typical example is the non-graduating no-lifer in the basement. If someone is capable of extended background reading to know his class, the proper talent choices, what stats he needs to the point of "pure SP gem vs SP/haste", and also capable of disciplined farming and wiping, how can the same person fail to do the same things about his real life job or studies.

As a side-note I'd like to mention the "sugar-coated asocials" who are common among highly competitive or technical groups, like a geeky workplace or a hard mode guild. At first they are often outright lying about the frequency and depth of their social encounters, exactly to avoid the "no life loser" image. Secondly while they do have social relationships and they do joke and chat between tries, these are secondary to the goal. I mean while they consider their fellow groupmember a friend, they wouldn't hesitate a second to kick this "friend" if he wouldn't bring the expected results. This post is mostly about ordinary groups and not the most competitive ones, so spare me with "I'm in a 11/12 HM guild and this is bullshit" comments. You are a 0.5% exception, not the rule.

Before the solution for successful sociality, I'd remind you to the obvious mistakes in the social subroutines like people demand welfare to drunkards and ignore starving Africans or outraged when someone is murdered but cheer for wars where millions die. The e-peen thing is also undoubtedly wrong and my tricks can only work if there are loopholes in the system. I doubt if anyone disagree when I say "the social subroutines can be manipulated".

Here comes a special kind of manipulator, the one with the most valued skill in the modern world: the leader. The socials want to be liked, respected and fit to the norms. Being social does not say anything what makes someone liked, respected and what the norms are. Social subroutines are subroutines, program codes. They can run on very different inputs. The kids want to do "something cool" everywhere equally, still in the US they listen to trendy music while in a radical Islamic country they gather to burn US flags. It is the leader who provide the inputs for the socials, he defines what are the norms, what is cool and what is lame, what deserve liking and what deserve hate.

The members of a successful organization can be real socials as long as they are lead by a talented leader. He creates a "proper culture", meaning he makes sure that serving the organization is "cool" in the eyes of his minions. For example the guild leader of fairly successful social raiding guild make the members believe that reading EJ, running spreadsheets and farming the gear "make them l33t" and separate them from the "scrubs". So his minions go and read EJ, run the spreadsheet and farm the gear.

The leadership also explains the "HM 11/12 living in a basement" anomaly. The guy has a talented raid leader who motivates him to do what must be done to be successful. He is made believe that if he gem his gear properly, he'll be respected. His college teacher or boss in the McDonalds is not so talented. He just tells what to do, maybe offer real reward (like salary, diploma) but since the activity is not linked to social rewards, the social can't care less, and spends all time in WoW where he can get the reward he really wants: respect of his leader and peers. If his boss/teacher would be such good leader, the social wouldn't play WoW but spend all his time theorycrafting how to save 0.2 secs "cast time" on placing mustard to the burger or grind pages of textbook instead of heroics.

Please note that if you have any alternative theory for the "success skill" or any combination of skills (intelligence, discipline, self-control or whatever you commented before), you must explain how can the same guy suck terribly in his real life job/study and excel in WoW. I mean if he is intelligent in WoW, he must be intelligent in real life and he is not!

Alternatively, you can claim that WoW needs no "skill" just time. This case you have to explain why does the same guy keep sucking in college instead of finding a "grinding" blue-collar job. You can earn (not stellar but) nice salary being a good grinder. I have an answer: grinding heroics for badges has no social stigma while grinding burgers for dollars does, so a social finds the latter "no fun" while the previous "fun". I'd like to remind you of Farmville where you must click mindlessly a lot and people pay to have this terrible job, since bigger farm has social value among playing peers.


Let's talk about the other social goal: liking, the "group of friends" feeling. The existence of the leader solves that problem too. The members can be helpful and accepting group of friends since it's the leader who makes the "hard decisions", who sits out, who must improve, who must leave. One member does not give more criticism to another in a successful organization than in a complete failure. The leader (and sub-leaders) gives more! Also there is a reason why the word "like" means both "love" and "similar". Since all minions follow the same directions, one is like the other, so one will like the other.

The few who are capable of leadership are very much valued. They earn much-much more than professionals and they deserve every penny. Without them, the team would wither and die. For a short period of time the norms the leader established carry the people, but they slowly deteriorate and replaced by random social behavior. Without the father-figure to gain respect from, the people want to get respect from random peers by being cool, pulling stupid stunts. Without a source of "proper" behavior, they will act differently, they won't be like each other, therefore would stop like each other.

So when you see a "successful social", all you see is a puppet on the hand of a great guy, a peon of a benign dictator. Everything good in him is just borrowed from someone who is really great (and usually a badass, elitist, heartless psychopath).

There are two ways from here:
  • Accept that 99% of the population have born to be minions of natural born leaders. If you are an "ordinary guy", all you can do is find such leader. That's exactly what people do when they apply to a more progressed guild: seek a better leader to serve. I openly admit that I have no idea what makes one a good leader. The good news is that you can be successful and social: as a minion!
  • Try to figure out how can one be successful on his own, without a leader. For that I have a recipe. I don't know what a good leader does, but I know how he does it: by manipulating the social space to make the goal of the organization socially desired by the members. The manipulation always happens in an emotional-social space, along with the harmful manipulation of peers. If someone is asocial, he can no longer be manipulated. If he has a brain he can use it to find success on his own.
One more thing: why many great leaders are terrible anti-socials? Because asociality is about independence. I can't be arsed to become a leader, to herd cats. I'm fine with my professional salary, I won't give up my independence for even 10x more! A leader always have to be around as without his constant supervision, his minions would return to the default state: unproductive losers doing ape-grooming and status fights. If I leave a bottle of chemicals in the fridge and go away for a week, I'll find the bottle where I left it. If a guild leader leaves his well organized team for a week, he might find the bank looted and half raid left. This constant "being prepared" state causes serious problems to the managers health. The only exceptions are the blatant anti-socials who find it fun to be the boss. They love herding their cats as it fills them with the feeling of power. They play wicked games with their minions and can't care less if the organization finally fails (financial crisis anyone?).

36 comments:

Andru said...

You forgot the third way:

Become a leader.

Sometimes, if you want something done right, you have to lead it yourself.

In WoW, I'd place about 80% of a PuG success on good raid leadership.

The downside is that it takes a lot of work, for it to be done right.

May I suggest on the next project to try and see what makes a good leader.

Andru said...

Oh, I forgot.

Good leaders in WoW are often better than leaders in RL.

While in RL the minions can be constrained by rules, laws, social comformity, payment or even arms, terror and fear, in WoW, a leader has only sucess and social respect to go on.

Sean said...

Wow, Gevlon has hit the mark spot-on in this post. Actually, from this post, I disagree that your definition of the "magical skill" to be "asocial to peers". I believe this magical skill is "ability to manipulate the social sphere to make people believe in you".

"Asocial to peers" is something that could make a person fairly successful in life, but it won't put the person in the top 1% of the population.

Gevlon said...

@Azzur: you miss something here, the "fairly successful" of the asocial is achievable to everyone, while the top salary of the leadership assumes the existence of minions.

Also, you are in constant PvP with other prospective (or just wannabe) leaders who want your minions.

On the top of that, as asocial you are immune to leaders and I can tell from experience, it annoys them to no end.

Andrux51 said...

I'm a guild leader and make hard decisions... I make unpopular rules and yet people stick with them because they know I can bring them successful raids... I run an unpopular raid format (10-man) because that is what I wanted and found people who are willing to put up with the bullshit that goes along with being in a 10-man guild (the m&s still ask "but don't you want 25-man loot?")...

Where's my 10x salary?

I think you're leaving Charisma out as part of the bigger picture of being a leader. Especially when you speak of true leadership (aka charisma, it is actually very common) instead of just "being in a position of power over someone" (i.e. a mid-level supervisor)

The things you speak of for a true leader forge respect and admiration. I think of college professors, those that were great "leaders" or teachers, I wished their class would last even longer. The others, I wished I could leave right after I sat down.

Unfortunately, this doesn't really correlate to success in the real world. Any leader must have followers to be successful, and there can only be so many leader positions in real life (in WoW as well but the curve is much different).

Anonymous said...

So, to boil this down ...

Truly successful people are those who relentlessly engage in rational selfishness, which frees them in all aspects of life to make decisions unfettered by the mysticism of amity.

Successful people participate in society to meet specific goals, and the only relationships they count on are dyadic contracts.

And when someone more social than that seems successful, they are probably just tools of a leader pursuing enlightened self interest, i.e. an apparently social form of altruism but in fact simply a means for the leader to advance his own ends.

I think you've basically re-stated Ayn Rand's position but, remarkably, without her subtlety.

You might try a popular book on behavioral economics like _The Upside of Irrationality_ or on leadership like _Certain Trumpets_ to add more shades of gray to your theory.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

Nice post. If you wish to understand more about how leadership works I would recommend the very small but outstanding book; "The Leadership Secrets of Atilla the Hun."

Gevlon said...

@Thenoisyrogue: I don't. I never want to be a leader, there is no money in the world what could make me herd socials. I can't stand them, you know.

Eric-Wubbo said...

Hi Gevlon!

Good post.

On intelligence: I'd like to point out that people perhaps have a 'base IQ', but that their intelligence in doing a certain practiced skill is mostly dependent on dedication, experience and training; for example, for 'horse handicapping' (predicting which horse will win the race) IQ, and even numerical IQ, has been shown not to matter, just the complexity of one's mental model (which does not seem to depend on IQ, so someone with an IQ of 90 can best someone with an IQ of 120).

Secondly, sometimes one NEEDS some skills to be successful, or even a leader won't bother with you. Example would be 190 IQ Chris Langlan (interesting story in 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell) who couldn't stay in college because he couldn't handle the relationship with his professors. Leaders often choose their followers, and if prospective followers don't seem worth bothering with...
2b) WoW may be a better 'training ground'/easier to master than most RL occupations, simply because tasks are smaller, feedback comes much faster and much more clearly than in most real world environments.

Third, even 'socials' are not just handpuppets of some charismatic leader; actually, the life experiences and the values of one's parents etcetera also play a role in what one will choose to do and how one will perform. Even the greatest leaders can only influence some people, and not others, and even then cannot fully control the behaviour of their subordinates. Really, the 'handpuppets' have some 'filling' of their own, which will make all leadership imperfect except possibly in certain sects.

Squishalot said...

Gevlon: "I never want to be a leader, there is no money in the world what could make me herd socials."

That's one advantage of being a leader - the freedom to pick and choose who you're leading.

Gevlon said...

@Squishalot: that's an illusion, since only asocials and anti-socials have characteristics. The socials are like clones, they all act the same.

@Eric-Wubbo Lameijer: only in sects one needs total control. Everwhere else you can just push the personalities out of the place. I mean, one wants thrill, so he will go base-jump AFTER he grinded his job, while the other watches Oprah. The leader has only to dominate them for a short period of time.

nonameform said...

Reminds me of my own guild. We have several officers, but only one of them actually organizes people during the raid. Back in ToGC when he wasn't around, we were wiping to Northrend Beasts several times in a row and disbanding so not to waste the attempts. Once that officer was back, we were one-shotting the encounter with almost the same people in raid. I wish that was just a coincidence, but I've seen things follow the same scenario in both Ulduar and ICC, so I guess unless there is a person calling you by name and telling you that you should sort your shit, some people can't perform above certain level.

Anonymous said...

Hoo boy.

Well, as far as why people would succeed in WoW but fail in the real world, you may find this article interesting despite it being from a comedy site.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

One of the last lines in the article I find the most poignant, which is providing a clear link between effort and reward. It seems blatantly obvious, but between this blog post and the convoluted ideas you get into about "the social casuals", I don't get the impression you ever really grasped it except indirectly.

Being social in a goal oriented environment, as either a leader or underling, is in large part tied to this rather than some mindless approval seeking process. While simply chatting with people you're also getting a sense of their motivations and competencies, which in turn influences how much you trust them to accomplish certain tasks or learn over time. Not so coincidentally, this is why you found yourself begging your asocial guild to give some of the newer members time rather than dismissing them as hopeless "M&S". Due to the lack of prior contact, they have no particular reason to believe the person will learn from mistakes given enough wipes. This is also one of several reasons standard pugs fall apart at the first sign of difficulty.

Two very broad aspects of being a leader are motivation and delegation. The former is providing the sense that the effort will be useful to the group's goals, not even necessarily that it will be directly rewarded. You see this a lot in old world war propaganda. The latter, delegation, is the core of what a leader does. They can't accomplish the task effectively themselves, but it needs to be done for the group's success. Assign a critical task to the wrong person and it fails, which ties even more into the self deterministic motivating factors. A leader that doesn't know the group they're leading well enough to delegate properly is extremely demotivating because it dooms the project to failure regardless to any positive or negative incentives present.

This post is a particularly bizarre read since you repeatedly assert that you have no idea what a good leader does, but you attribute the entirety of the group's success to them. That seems rather... self-contradictory. You may as well assert that an elaborate rain dance during the Spring season is what causes water to fall from the sky.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: motivation is nothing but social lies. The person does something unrewarded for the leader. He gets social rewards (nothing in reality), he is made believe that he get "respect" and "liking", non-measurable quantities.

Also, not knowing what a leader does but attributing him the outcome is not at all strange. I have no idea what a brain surgeon does but I attribute the outcome of the brain surgery to him.

Ulsaki said...

"Please note that if you have any alternative theory for the "success skill" or any combination of skills (intelligence, discipline, self-control or whatever you commented before), you must explain how can the same guy suck terribly in his real life job/study and excel in WoW. I mean if he is intelligent in WoW, he must be intelligent in real life and he is not!"

Firstly, I agree with you that situations where people use WoW / Forums / Internet sites to gain respect they can't get in RL. During my time on the internet I've seen several stories where this ended up in suicide, or a suicide attempt when they lost the respect of the people they wanted acceptance from.

There is an alternative explanation why some intelligent, skilled, and hard-working players can be good at WoW but fail at RL though, and it's simply a lack of motivation for RL stuff.

People are generally not equally motivated about everything in life. Sometimes this can be caused by psychological conditions such as depression. I wouldn't be surprised if a large amount of WoW players used the game for escapism due to such conditions.

This is why people can be intelligent, skilled, and hard-working in WoW whilst not applying these to RL, even when they themselves can see how counter-productive it is. It's not that they lack the intelligence to see it as you claim Gevlon, it's they lack the motivation to fix it.

Another example is a workaholic. This is more productive than WoW because it will usually have real life rewards (payment, salary) and allows that person to function in society (pay bills, rent/own a property etc.) But they might neglect their private life because work is the only thing that motivates them. As a result they might become even more addicted to work as an outlet for depression, even if they can see their private life is the cause of the problems.

Alrenous said...

The actual figure for minions is 90%. I read an account of a moderate earthquake that pinned the number.

There were fifty people in the room, and forty-five of them looked to the first person to stand forward and lead. The forty-sixth and seventh were leaders, or at least people who could figure out how to react by themselves.

The forty-eight, ninth, and fiftieth literally fell over and had a panic attack.

So, roughly, it's a 5-90-5 split. In a crisis, five percent are utterly useless, ninety are followers, and the last five are leaders. There's no reason to believe they stop being themselves outside of a crisis.

So basically five percent correspond to Gevlon's morons, some of the 90 are slackers, the rest are socials, and finally the five percent who will actually think, and thus, among other things, can treat peers politely but without friendship. Some of this five percent have leadership skills and can lead, while others disdain the practice...but are immune to same. (I call them leaders because at minimum they lead themselves.)

Anonymous said...

Alternative theory: Misplaced ambition.

EVERYONE has ambition. It's an innate human condition. The problem is also everyone has a work/fun balance, and when ambition is placed and satisfied in one, it is to the detriment of the other.

Wether it be games, sports or cars; if hard work in a fun game gives social rewards, the ambition is *spent* on the fun game. Therefore, when the person gets to the work part of his life, he has no need for his ambition. It, like a sex drive, has been satisfied.

Grinding at work and 'climbing the ladder' no longer has any appeal: the person is flacid. Instead, once work is over, his eyes light up and he plays the game: no because it's fun, but because his ambition and willingness to grind has been shifted to that direction.

Other people grind and are rewarded with ascension at work, while also have a *mindless* fun passtime that requires little work and ambition. Because WoW is a social game that derides those who do not invest their hard time, critical thinking and ambition to ascend to hard Modes (a circle), the fun game suddenly requires though, critical thinking, research, investment, and gearned gratification from such... satisfying this innate need in the person, leaving none left for the other parts of their life.

WoW is the mistriss, and the Real Life Career is the wife, wondering why the husband is no longer arroused by, quite frankly, a very attractive woman that also promises a happy future. It's simple: He's SPENT.

Kring said...

> how can the same person fail to do the same things about his
> real life job or studies

There is a huge difference. In WoW everything is possible if you try "hard enough". That's not true for real life. Failure is part of real life and often there is no way of reaching your goal. The key to success is reassessing your goal and maybe change your goal or switch your field.

- Everyone can kill Arthas but not everyone can get a model girlfriend or become a doctor or rule the world.
- You'll encounter way more setback when you're looking for a RL job then when you're applying for a guild.

And much more. People aren't sucked into WoW because WoW is so great. They are sucked into WoW because it's much easier to be successful.

Dangphat said...

1. Intelligent in WoW, Intelligent in Life,

Researchers have shown that an IQ of 132 is all that is required to get a "good" job, ie a highly paid professional job with the potential to provide pwer and influence (rather than any vocation or real achievement). Beyond this IQ is irrelevant, so you are assuming that if someone is good in raid then they have this kind of IQ or higher. Well lets look at intelligence in its basic form: numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning and spatial awareness. The best world of warcraft players would hopefully have spatial awareness in bucket loads. But numerical reasoning would be the original theory crafters, the ones capable of working the original armor pen mechanics or those willing to write complicated excel spreadsheets. The people who just use them are giving no evidence of numerical reasonign just an acceptance of someone else's. And verbal reasoning is only found within the world of RP or good raid leading. So I would say in conclusion that there is no argument for proportionality between WoW skill and intelligence, however there is deffinitely no negative proportionality.

2.Good raid leading, maketh the man or tauren or orc

I agree entirely that better performance is achieved through better leadership, as Andru said a PuG can sink or swim based on the leader.

Good point well made GG.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon,

For the most part I believe what you preach. I determined a long time ago that as a leader you have to demand a lot from people and not coddle them.

I've always believed in the 20/80 rule: 20& of the people do 80% of the work. I'm an engineer. Our company recently had a crisis that forced the company to pull engineers and technical people from all of their departments to staff the technical teams working on this project. In effect, they picked from the top 20% of people in their various projects. It's been quite refreshing being able to ask for help or to pass along some request and know that I'm going to get a competent, efficient, and positive response. So much gets done it's positively mind boggling. I'm not saying that our typical teams are worthless, but the level that the response teams work on is truly the best I've ever seen.

I suppose in the WOW world it's similar to a guild like Ensidia. Not just well-lead, but the members are all INTERNALLY motivated and competent. They still need leadership, but only to direct their actions, not to motivate. In a top-tier guild if the raid leader leaves for a week I bet someone else will step up and lead the raids. For sure the bank will still be fine.

I think that your experiment with The Pug is perhaps an experiment with the 20/80 rule. In effect you are telling people, "Be one of the 20% and you don't NEED the fake social trappings that typical societies need to be successful." You can do that by being demanding, yet fair. Smart, competent people will respond when shown an alternative to the socially acceptable crap they've been peddled their whole lfie.

Anonymous said...

If people long to be social then how can they play single-player games?
I think that they believe that wow is fun/they do something because it has three or more of the following-
*Little to no work
*!big rewards
*!friendship (social)
*!gives them something to do
!keeps them alive (IE get a job for food)
!gives them a chance at another oppurtunity for 'fun'
*has little or no chance of failure

As you can see, WoW has five of the seven qualities (starred)
Work CAN only have five of the seven qualities (!'ed)
Most workplaces do not have all five qualities. Take, for example Mcdonalds. No big reward, no friendship. But it gives them something to do, keeps them alive, and gives them a chance of a huge oppurtunity (read- owner of store). So it only has three of the five qualities, so no wonder almost no one chooses it.
I don't think that work can be reduced to a simple equation. You believe so, because you are antisocial, somewhat pessemistic (not an optimist, certainly) and most likely hardworking (you have a lengthly post a day) so you only see
-keeps me alive and
-gives me something to do
But what you don't realize is that there are a horde of other reasons giving people reason to do a job, you just cannot see them because you do not believe/you think you know that they are a dream. Of course the cashier won't be promoted. But he believes that he will, and that makes the difference

-darkgold

Anonymous said...

Everyone can beat Arthas, in the same sense that everyone can get a BS in essentially any field. Both can be achieved by essentially mindless grinding, a high QI or good relationships/social exploitation. However, not everyone will get those for a multitude of reasons, such as ineptitude, being dragged down by M&S (social), or lack of interest in doing so (I'd rather PvP/work with a simple college degree).

And then, not everyone can get a world-first (or realm-first) kill, just as not everyone can be first in class. Also, HM LK can't be attained by everyone, just as graduation from Harvard or other Top institutions is a pipe-dream for most, since those require a lot more dedication and skill than most people possess.

Wilson said...

I don't think that I have ever seen so many bogus statistics in one place as I do in this post and the comments. "0.5%". "99%". "90%". "IQ of 132". All made up to support the fallacy that leadership is a binary trait that you are either born with or you aren't. Corporations do not consist merely of CEOs and cube-dwellers, and armies are not made purely of generals and privates. Reality is a lot more complicated, and one trait of a good leader is the ability to recognize this.

Duskstorm said...

One thing to note is the difference between "only the strong survive" and "only those who are fit to reproduce survive."

Many people make the mistake of thinking that only the best geared, best gemmed/chanted, best theorycrafted, etc. players succeed. This is not true.

You can be poorly gemmed and still clear almost any piece of content. Especially DPS. You just need to be part of a group that is "good enough." A team with high individual playing skill and group coordination can and will outperform a team with the best gear selection and inferior individual skill and group coordination.

As a Moonkin, I know I could take off all the gems and enchants on my gear and still push out enough DPS to clear content. But I could never, ever stand in defile and hope to kill the Lich King, unless every other player works around my skill limitation.

This is why the raid leadership is so important. A good raid leader sets the standards for how much DPS everyone needs to achieve in order to kill the boss. He'll address players that fail. He'll figure out why people died and have them correct it.

The best groups are comprised of 10 or 25 raid leaders. They all know how to analyze wipes, correct issues, and they all know what is expected of them to clear content.

Bristal said...

The magical quality: have unique opinions and don't worry about what others think of you.

1. Avoid mindless trendiness
2. Culture some individuality
3. Appreciate solitude
4. Have clear boundaries
5. Communicate clearly (be blunt)
6. Avoid leading lemmings

I like it. I don't know if it's a recipe for financial success, but Gevlon and I may have much more in common than I would have thought.

chewy said...

I don't disagree with you Bristal but I think there's a danger in creating such a brief synopsis.

I've enjoyed these posts and I think Gevlon has wisely unfolded the ideas gradually - it leads to a full discussion and more comprehensive understanding.

"have unique opinions and don't worry about what others think of you."

Would describe most criminal psychopaths which is probably not what you had in mind (I hope).

Anonymous said...

anyone who is enjoying these series should read 'the dilbert principle' from scott adams

Jeanie said...

Are you contradicting yourself? At first you said "People that have the skills are likely to be successful, while those that don't, can be successful, but unlikely" (way back in the post with all the graphs with the sheeps and mules example). Now you're saying that most people can be successful even without the skill (by being a social minion).
Further more, as you said in this post, the majority of the VERY successful people are in fact, anti-social, not asocial (which, again, contradicting the said post above). Am I missing something here?

Gevlon said...

@Jeanie: the "success" of the social depends on his leader. If he's fired, he is lost. I wouldn't call that success.

The anti-socials are more successful than asocial independents, that's also sure. However the anti-social positions are limited and are in competition. There are unlimited positions for asocials.

If you are a social, your moderate success vs total failure depends on luck.
If you are an anti-social your moderate success or high success depend on luck and lot of skill and effort in manipulation.
If you are an asocial, your moderate success is guaranteed and you work on a field you like.

Squishalot said...

Gevlon: "@Squishalot: that's an illusion, since only asocials and anti-socials have characteristics. The socials are like clones, they all act the same."

That's the point. It's your choice to pick the asocials and ignore the socials.

Jeanie said...

Good explanation, but then you may have to fix few of your previous posts: you're describing a skill that does NOT needed to be success (as there are other ways to be so), is accounted for a very minority of success among all the successful people(in your previous posts you stated that this is owned my a majority of the successful people, which is not neccessarily true)

chewy said...

"Good explanation, but then you may have to fix few of your previous posts: you're describing a skill that does NOT needed to be success"

Jeanie, your comment presupposes that this whole philosophy was complete ahead of time and only needed writing down. Whereas I suspect that it has evolved and grown from an original idea (which I think is very positive by the way).

Would you care to comment on my speculation Gevlon ?

Anonymous said...

why succedding in online is easier than rl:

you can't be handicapped by your body, people witch are handicapped by looks, disfunctional legs etc. have equal ground in online games.

the carrot is tastier, i think you know of studies about attention span and how after the visual impact of tv its hard for kids to focus on the less visually stimulating teacher,
same for videogames vs work

Unknown said...

So, if I understand it correctly, you are saying that a good leader produces a psychological environment for people that motivates (and possibly educates) them to perform well?

Pierre Goldbloom said...

99% of the population are born to be followers?

You need to be asocial in order to remain professional and maintain good guild standings?

Have you been reading my blog, GG? ;)

Taemojitsu said...

From Truppenführung

Leaders must live with their troops and share in their dangers and deprivations, their joys and sorrows. Only thus can they acquire a first-hand knowledge of the combat capabilities and needs of their soldiers. The individual is a part of the whole and is not only responsible for himself alone but also for his comrades. He who is capable of more than the others, who can achieve more, must guide and lead the inexperienced and the weak.

If the goal is not valued, only then is potential leadership unable to conform to this standard.

Funny how the US military had sensitive classification on the translation of another military's 70-year old book but releases its own manuals to the public for free..?