Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

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LuckyR
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by LuckyR »

BobS wrote: February 20th, 2021, 12:12 am
LuckyR wrote: February 15th, 2021, 8:58 am Most (like myself) however, don't bring up our weaknesses at job interviews.
Hard to claim that your should always be honest during a job interview in light of the following. (Stop me if you're heard this one!)

This was the tail end of a recent job interview:

Interviewer: Now tell me, what's your biggest weakness?

Job applicant: Oh, that's easy. I'm too honest.

Interviewer: I don't think that's really a weakness.

Applicant: I don't give a **** what you think.

QED
Good one!

The other side of the coin is every interviewer knows folks exaggerate on interviews so this set of half truths and untruths are compensated for, thus there is no harm to the audience of this inaccurate information. Talk about a victimless "crime".
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baker
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by baker »

LuckyR wrote: February 21st, 2021, 4:41 pmCongrats, you're almost there, one step to go. It is the "duress" you correctly identify that makes what at first glance seems to be a violation of "one's moral sense", and puts that responsibility on the system and relieves you of it.

As we all know, everyone can't be self employed, so that remedy is the exception not a rule to live by.
Congrats??

By your reasoning, there is no moral problem and no moral fault for, say, a person living in Nazi Germany to earn a living working for a Nazi company doing Nazi things. Because everyone can't be self-employed, right.

Congrats, you've just excused away people doing morally repugnant things in the name of earning a living.

Don't try to invoke Godwin's law. Elaborate on/specify your above statement, so that it won't be applicable for justifying people tacitly or overtly cooperating with morally corrupt systems of governance.
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LuckyR
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by LuckyR »

baker wrote: February 25th, 2021, 7:18 pm
LuckyR wrote: February 21st, 2021, 4:41 pmCongrats, you're almost there, one step to go. It is the "duress" you correctly identify that makes what at first glance seems to be a violation of "one's moral sense", and puts that responsibility on the system and relieves you of it.

As we all know, everyone can't be self employed, so that remedy is the exception not a rule to live by.
Congrats??

By your reasoning, there is no moral problem and no moral fault for, say, a person living in Nazi Germany to earn a living working for a Nazi company doing Nazi things. Because everyone can't be self-employed, right.

Congrats, you've just excused away people doing morally repugnant things in the name of earning a living.

Don't try to invoke Godwin's law. Elaborate on/specify your above statement, so that it won't be applicable for justifying people tacitly or overtly cooperating with morally corrupt systems of governance.
Several things:

I was congratulating you (not Nazis) for your obvious grasp of an issue that eludes many if not most folks right now.

As a separate issue that I was not addressing directly at all, it is too common in the modern era to retrospectively criticize inhabitants of previous eras. This practice implies that folks nowadays would not own slaves, not oppose the Nazi party etc if they would have been raised in antiquity. Unfortunately for this erroneous assessment people through time are almost identical, statistically. That is back in 30's Germany some were wholeheartedly Nazis, more went along with the flow with internal reservations, a small number covertly sabotaged where they could and a tiny fraction overtly opposed the Nazis.

It helps us sleep better at night to feel that we would be in one of the last two groups, whereas the statistical reality is that, on average we wouldn't be.

It is a mistake to assume we are islands operating separately from our environment.
"As usual... it depends."
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Inquinsitive_mind
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by Inquinsitive_mind »

I’m confused on how this relates to Machiavellianism. As I understand it, it’s characterized by manipulation to achieve a goal. It seems to be a stretch to claim that one is Machiavellian simply by abiding to social norms to achieve a positive social interaction, as opposed to a negative one. Typically when I have heard this term used, it is in reference to a personality trait that is often associated with psychopathy and narcissism. Therefore, describing common ways that people deceive others for the sake of politeness as Machiavellian, would be to say those who indulge in this type of interaction are manipulative and caullous in nature. Is this the argument that you are attempting to make?
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

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Inquinsitive_mind wrote: February 27th, 2021, 4:56 am I’m confused on how this relates to Machiavellianism. As I understand it, it’s characterized by manipulation to achieve a goal. It seems to be a stretch to claim that one is Machiavellian simply by abiding to social norms to achieve a positive social interaction, as opposed to a negative one. Typically when I have heard this term used, it is in reference to a personality trait that is often associated with psychopathy and narcissism. Therefore, describing common ways that people deceive others for the sake of politeness as Machiavellian, would be to say those who indulge in this type of interaction are manipulative and caullous in nature. Is this the argument that you are attempting to make?
I wholehearted agree. This train of thought started when I posted in response to the concept that all truth, all the time is a laudable goal. I respectfully disagreed, since it doesn't jibe with common social experience.

In other words there are numerous situations where absent or inaccurate information is either an acceptable or the optimal response. True, as you mentioned many if not most are conversations of minimal importance.
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Inquinsitive_mind
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by Inquinsitive_mind »

Overall, it’s an interesting post that identifies a key aspect of the way that we interact with others. I just feel like the title does not correlate with the body. Perhaps a more fitting title would have been “Prosocial lies: a necessary evil”.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by Papus79 »

Inquinsitive_mind wrote: February 27th, 2021, 2:16 pm Overall, it’s an interesting post that identifies a key aspect of the way that we interact with others. I just feel like the title does not correlate with the body. Perhaps a more fitting title would have been “Prosocial lies: a necessary evil”.
Yeah, I think Machiavelli was more about rules of social and economic self-defense as well as violence where absolutely necessary. He was sort of like the west's mercantile version of Sun Tzu albeit the contents he's famous for are layer-specific rather than as profoundly all-encapsulating as Sun Tzu was.

Machiavellianism, at least in its current usage, seems to get at our tendency to go on the offensive to win social and economic one-up/one-down games with the implied understanding that if we don't take first strike someone else does, catches us by surprise, and defeats us. It's less 'peace through superior fire power' and hedges toward dominating anything of unknown capacity that might be able to usurp one's position (this is part of where it has so much alignment with narcissistic personality disorder and others on the cluster B spectrum).
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by baker »

LuckyR wrote: February 25th, 2021, 10:12 pmIt is a mistake to assume we are islands operating separately from our environment.
So you're saying that whatever brings success in any particular environment, is moral?
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by LuckyR »

baker wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 8:19 pm
LuckyR wrote: February 25th, 2021, 10:12 pmIt is a mistake to assume we are islands operating separately from our environment.
So you're saying that whatever brings success in any particular environment, is moral?
Is that what you got out of what you quoted? What I am actually pointing out is that morality, by definition is subjective. And IMO folks should be judged on this subjective scale by the standards of their era. That is, in relation to their peers, not in relation to folks raised in a different (better) milieu.

In answer to the question you pose, the simple answer is no, moral is not interchangeable with successful, though I don't believe either of us proposed that idea.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by baker »

LuckyR wrote: March 3rd, 2021, 4:21 am
baker wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 8:19 pm
LuckyR wrote: February 25th, 2021, 10:12 pmIt is a mistake to assume we are islands operating separately from our environment.
So you're saying that whatever brings success in any particular environment, is moral?
Is that what you got out of what you quoted?
No, this is the salient point on which I wish to get clarity.
What I am actually pointing out is that morality, by definition is subjective. And IMO folks should be judged on this subjective scale by the standards of their era. That is, in relation to their peers, not in relation to folks raised in a different (better) milieu.
Then you shouldn't wonder why people vote for Trump. Or take issue with it. Here's to the third term!!!!!!!!
What I am actually pointing out is that morality, by definition is subjective. And IMO folks should be judged on this subjective scale by the standards of their era. That is, in relation to their peers
You're conflating "subjective" and "situational/culturally specific".

Secondly, it's not like there is such a thing as "standards of an era". This is an abstraction. In any actual given period of time, people display a whole range of beliefs about what is moral and what isn't. "Majority opinion" is also difficult or impossible to estimate, given that for the greater part of human history, there exist no empirical studies of it, and even if they did, we'd still need to account for the possibility that people in such a study gave socially desirable answers, and not their true opinion.

Thirdly, there's always the problem of the difference between what people believe is right, and what they actually do. Which one is more relevant to the estimation of morality? People's professed beliefs? People's tacitly held beliefs? Their actions and the moral basis they can be assumed to have?
In answer to the question you pose, the simple answer is no, moral is not interchangeable with successful, though I don't believe either of us proposed that idea.
Indeed, nobody suggested that morality was "interchangeable with being successful". But your reasoning has been along the lines that morality should be subservient to success, or that such subservience is morally acceptable.

Such as here:
LuckyR wrote: February 16th, 2021, 2:30 pmBTW since the interviewer knows folks exaggerate (or worse) they take this into account and are not fooled by this reality, so if the interviewer isn't harmed by this skewed environment, who is harmed by it? Interviewees who don't play the game.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

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baker wrote: March 7th, 2021, 3:01 am
LuckyR wrote: March 3rd, 2021, 4:21 am
baker wrote: March 2nd, 2021, 8:19 pm
LuckyR wrote: February 25th, 2021, 10:12 pmIt is a mistake to assume we are islands operating separately from our environment.
So you're saying that whatever brings success in any particular environment, is moral?
Is that what you got out of what you quoted?
No, this is the salient point on which I wish to get clarity.
What I am actually pointing out is that morality, by definition is subjective. And IMO folks should be judged on this subjective scale by the standards of their era. That is, in relation to their peers, not in relation to folks raised in a different (better) milieu.
Then you shouldn't wonder why people vote for Trump. Or take issue with it. Here's to the third term!!!!!!!!
What I am actually pointing out is that morality, by definition is subjective. And IMO folks should be judged on this subjective scale by the standards of their era. That is, in relation to their peers
You're conflating "subjective" and "situational/culturally specific".

Secondly, it's not like there is such a thing as "standards of an era". This is an abstraction. In any actual given period of time, people display a whole range of beliefs about what is moral and what isn't. "Majority opinion" is also difficult or impossible to estimate, given that for the greater part of human history, there exist no empirical studies of it, and even if they did, we'd still need to account for the possibility that people in such a study gave socially desirable answers, and not their true opinion.

Thirdly, there's always the problem of the difference between what people believe is right, and what they actually do. Which one is more relevant to the estimation of morality? People's professed beliefs? People's tacitly held beliefs? Their actions and the moral basis they can be assumed to have?
In answer to the question you pose, the simple answer is no, moral is not interchangeable with successful, though I don't believe either of us proposed that idea.
Indeed, nobody suggested that morality was "interchangeable with being successful". But your reasoning has been along the lines that morality should be subservient to success, or that such subservience is morally acceptable.

Such as here:
LuckyR wrote: February 16th, 2021, 2:30 pmBTW since the interviewer knows folks exaggerate (or worse) they take this into account and are not fooled by this reality, so if the interviewer isn't harmed by this skewed environment, who is harmed by it? Interviewees who don't play the game.
Wow, where to start?

What part of what you quoted addressed why folks voted for Trump?

Majority opinion is quite commonly assessed by using majority behavior as a proxy. You may disagree with such assumptions, but surely you must be familiar with the practice.

I am glad you brought up the difference between personal standards and behavior, since now that I reflect on it, that difference may be part of the difference between us in this area. For example, when you declare all truth, all the time as your moral standard, that is a description of belief. When I point out situations where reasonable individuals commonly omit or exaggerate information that is a description of behavior. You just demonstrated an understanding of the difference between the two, so where's the problem?

Oh and BTW, my accurate description of the harm caused (and more importantly, not caused) by a pre-existing skewed situation (such as job interviews) is not my opinion nor an attempt to bolster my point of view, it just happens to be a fact.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by SneakySniper179 »

It's good to see that my conversation lives on. It believe it's not worth as much as some people have put into it. We all do it, not telling the truth or saying anything is just machiavellianism. As I said there is benign and malignant.

I will give you a great example, Your wife or girlfriend has a twin. You are both going out to dinner. Her twin comes and she's looking sexy as ****. her hair is done all nice, Her **** are out and looking great. She's dressed nice and smelling great.

Your thinking to yourself this bitch is sexy as ****. Then you look at your wife. She came right from work and didn't shower, She needs a haircut and her dress isn't the best. You are now in the car and you are driving home.

She turns to you and says, You think I am prettier than my sister, Right? Your response is going to be. You look beautiful and I'd never think that. You are lying and you are going to jerk off right when she gets home but did you say that. You didn't because you'd be **** stupid if you did.

You are being dishonest to not suffer the consequences, you are lying to keep the peace and to keep the cool in your house.

The opposite of this example would be sales or business. You are selling cars and this man walks in, Fresh out of high school and doesn't know ****. You see this guy and you see a perfect opportunity to sell. You say damn, Do you get a lot of girls with that ride or something in passing to **** on what he has. You then bring up this car that gets men so much pus it's crazy. It's a nice looking car but in reality it's trash.

Low gas milages, Fake but nice looking interior, Heated seats don't work well, The wiring **** up after a year, Drains battery right away and sometimes the airbag doesn't deploy but there is a high commission on selling this car and may be a raise in it for you. You take it for a test drive and you tell them to drive it fast to get their blood running. He's all pumped up and hype from the ride.

You sell the car and the kid buys a piece of **** that won't be running in two years, It's malicious but that's malignant machilivism. You served your purpose and he served his at the price of the buyer.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by SneakySniper179 »

Here's another benign form of this practice in sales. I worked at gnc and I sold only what gave me a commission. Doesn't mean the product was better or worse, it made me money. Someone would come and we'd start talking. He wanted a pre workout drink. I made nothing on that sale if her were to get it.

I would suggest something that's just a good and a little better, In reality I didn't know what the **** I was talking about. I would say this was a benefically drink. Then I would ask about vitamins and if he or she took them.

"Oh, you don't take fish oil. Well you really should. It's a lot cheaper than it was and it helps with joint function and among other things. As americans we don't get that much omega 3 from our diets. I think you should try this." At the end of the day it was beneficial but I didn't care. I was trying to make the 5 dollar commission on it. That person walked away heath and I got my money. We both won.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by LuckyR »

I agree with your assessment, obviously, though I gotta say that baker is going to have a heart attack with your examples and even I would justify them with better ones.
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Re: Machiavellianism: A necessary evil

Post by SneakySniper179 »

LuckyR wrote: March 10th, 2021, 2:02 pm I agree with your assessment, obviously, though I gotta say that baker is going to have a heart attack with your examples and even I would justify them with better ones.
Who were you responding to.
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