It's important to understand the intended context of these rules. They're mostly about how to rise within established hierarchies. At one time that would have meant the nobility of a country. In modern developed nations, that means a large corporation, or a governmental bureaucracy. Anyone who has spent time playing inside that kind of game will recognize most of these rules and understand what they're about.
The rules can't be gotten round, because anybody who comes in and plays by them will beat out anybody who doesn't. It's just game theory. It can't be circumvented, because in an environment like a large corporation, there are always real limits on how many people each person can know well enough to trust. Absent intimacy and trust, the dynamics revert to each person playing a hand that only they can see.
In such a hierarchy, the question of whether this behavior is optimal, or "good" or "evil" is, in practice, moot. If you don't figure out and follow the rules, you'll be trampled, and pushed either down or out. If you discover a different set of rules that work better, then you can write a book about it. And yes, it is zero-sum. It has to be zero-sum, because there is much less space in the top of a pyramid than there is in the pyramid. There's no outcome where everybody gets to be a boss.
Unfortunately, I don't think you're likely to get much informed insight on this topic on LW, given our apparent demographics. College students taking math and physics just won't have the experience. Internships aren't enough. I've only scratched the surface myself, just from studied observation during my 5 years at Microsoft. You need to talk to some 30-50 year old general managers / executives that have risen through the ranks of an organization like IBM, Lockheed, Microsoft, Citigroup, etc.
It's important to understand the intended context of these rules. They're mostly about how to rise within established hierarchies.
Upvoted. This actually reveals how dysfunctional established power hierarchies often are, and how often they encourage pointy-haired boss types. Ironically, these supposedly hard-nosed, Slytherin types are easily mesmerized by sales folks peddling the latest technology "innovation" or management fads, because they do not understand their job very well, and are often more focused on stroking their own ego than actu...
This is not a thesis post, it's an open-question, discussion-provoking post. That's why I'm posting it as Discussion, since this is what appears to serve the function of forum on this site. I am not looking for ratings, but for answers. With everyone's collaboration, they should present themselves, at least in outline. Please don't hesitate to point it out if you think i have completely misunderstood the purpose of the Discussion section and if I should refrain from this sort of posting in the future.
So, here is a summary of the rules the book proposes. Here is a little more expanded text.
To be honest, my first reaction to reading this was visceral rejection ("Preposterous! Try to act by those rules and you'll be labeled a psychopath, people will know not to trust you or deal with you."). The second was consternated acceptance ("But people do seem to behave in the way this book suggests... wouldn't it be better to adapt to a reality we have no power to change?"). This is the result of the third approximation: confused questioning.
The question I'd like to ask is this: are they rational? As in, would everyone's lives improve or worsen from following this? Unlike riches and actual achievements, competition for power does seem to be a Zero Sum Game, at least in a society that isn't expanding (demographically or by conquest or otherwise). Not only that, it appears to be a resource-intensive game, one that even gets in the way of doing actual work.
What is remarkable is that, when I think of my experiences in hindsight, Real Life does appear to work this way, and these would explain many behaviors people demonstrate that are out of synch with what they profess. This is especially egregious if you compare it with fiction, in which such behavior isn't used except by the most magnificent bastards, and even then it is portrayed as extremely questionable, and common moral philosophy, that seems to preach the opposite.
However, everything seems to indicate that this is definitely not the optimum way for things to work, in a utilitarian sense. If everyone followed the rules of this book, would we ever get anything done?
So should these social, anti-productive tendencies, be fought with education, or should they be embraced? Is there a way to harness them into a motivation for productive work, the way Capitalism advocates harnessing human greed?¹
1.Remarkably enough, lust for power can and does get in the way of greed for riches and even welfare. As does pride in scrupulous, principled, but materialistically impoverishing behavior.