Robert Cialdini’s Wikipedia page says “He is best known for his book Influence“. Since its publication, he seems to have spent his time directing an institute to spread awareness of techniques for success and persuasion. At the risk of being a little too cynical – a guy knows the secrets of success, so he uses them to…write a book about the secrets of success? If I knew the secrets of success, you could bet I’d be doing much more interesting things with them. All the best people recommend Cialdini, and his research credentials are impeccable, but I can’t help wondering: if he’s so smart, why isn’t he God-Emperor?
Maybe he doesn’t want to? His book about the secrets of success appears to have been wildly successful, maybe he really likes studying that and spreading those ideas and living whatever private life he has.
I often get the impression from rationalists (most obviously Eliezer but Scott is up there too) that not only would they, personally, want to rule the world if only they could, but that anyone would do the same in the right position. As someone who, if appointed god emperor, would abdicate and get back to living his own life, I can’t help but wonder if this is more of a result of them being in somewhat of a social bubble or more of a typical mind fallacy type thing. I also have some concerns about the morality of wanting to be in charge of everyone, and with the political stances and approaches many of the same rationalists take, but I’m mostly just confused as to how someone could be this confused about people’s motivations.
(this is all setting aside the other obvious issue, which is that persuasion is not literal mind control and it’s dubious that the most persuasive person in the world, by virtue of that fact alone, would be guaranteed success of the kind Scott seems to be thinking of here).
That last paragraph x100. I’ve read Influence, it’s a good book, but Cialdini is up-front about the fact that nothing he describes is magic.
I often get the impression from rationalists (most obviously Eliezer but Scott is up there too) that not only would they, personally, want to rule the world if only they could, but that anyone would do the same in the right position.
True. I always get so baffled when someone has power and influence and only buys a yacht and a mansion and at most has wild and expensive sex parties. I literally can’t understand how a person who can get into such a position would only use that position in so boringly savanna ways, other than the system actually being mostly luck-based and rewarding fundamentally incompetent and/or only shallowly ambitious people who endlessly pursue lost causes simply to increase some arbitary high score.
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