Book: 20201005 to 20201124, "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene

To pursue power is like playing card games. We try to 

 

1. Figure out what cards the rivals have

2. Get better cards

3. Confuse the opponents

4. Understand their personalities

5. Get allies

6. Utilize some rivals to fight other rivals

Etc.

In the end, it's about improving the possibilities to win, and minimizing the risk and the loss of each game.

Nothing can guarantee winning. But if we study hard and work hard, we will have pretty good cards, and normally can get pretty good results.

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20201005 - Preface

These laws are part of natural evolution. Competition is competition, there is no moral or evil, just effectiveness. It's good to learn all of them, so we will have more options to choose, and easier to defense ourselves.

But these laws may also cause critical damage. Zedong Mao is the master of these laws, but when he used them with ignorance of other scientific knowledge, he brought disaster to hundreds of millions of people.

 

The single most point I learned from this chapter is about Reflection. I definitely need reflection everyday: what I did wrong and how to improve it? There is always something we can improve, and this habit will eventually force ourselves to observe other things more carefully (or else we cannot recall the details and then do the reflection).

Things need to be done indirectly. I think this is related to quantum effects: when it is noticed, then it will lead to different/unexpected result.

 

And we need to be patience. Compound effect is necessary, and we need time to be at our side.

This book is all about team work management, not the First Principle.

20201007 - Law 1: Never Outshine The Master

Same rule to everyone: don't drive a car better than your boss's; don't wear cloth better than your boss's; don't live in a place better than your boss's; or at least hid these things.

It's mainly about jealousy. If someone envy you and he/she happen to have the power to hurt you, he/she might not be able of controlling himself/herself to harm you. This is controlled by our genes.

To avoid jealousy, we have to hide our achievements in some way. That's why we should always insist the success belongs to the whole team. This is a general rule, but if we need to pay attention to this rule from time to time, then it's better to leave from this team/boss.

20201007 - Law 2: Never put too Much Trust in Friends

Relationship is not as reliable as law. So it's better to trust mutual benefit than gratitude.

Same to enemies. Mutual benefit can turn enemy into workmate.

Short term memory has much bigger impact on people than long term memory, this is why that time heals everything, no matter good or bad. How to avoid this problem? Try to utilize compound effect, I think. Don't rely on relationship, and always focus on facts.

20201008 - Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions

These laws are all about "winning", and they are not likely to create real value directly. But, in modern society, most of people don't have much chance to face big fight. Is it worth to conceal intentions? Or, better pay more attention in cooking the cake itself?

In (office) politics/military/business/negotiation, we need these laws to win. But after winning the fight, can we lead the country/company to a brighter future? The latter is much more important than the former.

Concealing intentions has another (critical) drawback: it doesn't help with communication. If your team members realize that you are not frank/honest from time to time, will they trust you? If they don't trust you, the company/country definitely has better chance to fall.

Nevertheless, sometimes, it's worth to conceal our intentions.

20201008 - Law 4: Always Say Less than Necessary

I guess this chapter is something especially useful to me.When should we say less? Modern life is quite different from before. Most of the CEOs don't want to say much about their company and their work. They follow this law exactly. But someone like Elon Musk does exactly the opposite. Anyone else similar to Elon Musk? Thomas Edison, I guess. They want to influence other people. They want to change the world.

I don't know how to balance the risk and benefit of words, so the principle that I should follow is to speak necessary words only. This can reduce mistakes, at least.

Even for celebrities, normally they choose writing books to tell the world their opinions, to minimize the risk.

20201009 - Law 5: So Much Depends on Reputation

The difference between reputation and impression? Impression is the first step, the foundation of reputation. In modern society, reputation normally tell other people the real you. But we can give people who are not familiar with you some different impression.

For example, we can put on a "mask" to talk to other strangers. Once we get used to this "mask", we actually learned some new skill. This is what "The Game" tells us. It is powerful, but, because it's not the real me, it cannot last for long time. So, it's better to show strangers the real best self. Eventually, we will build our reputation.

It's not enough to be just real me, we need to be the real best me, and then keep improving ourselves.

20201010 - Law 6: Court Attention at all Cost

With the help of internet and virtual economy, gaining attention is much easier and much more important now.

 

Tesla just dismissed their PR department, and Elon Musk uses his Twitter account, press conferences and interview sessions instead. This is totally against what other companies are doing.

No advertisements, therefore don't need PR department.

Public attention is for crowds. So this chapter is tightly integrated with the book "The Crowds". The attention can bring us huge power and fortune, but it also can kill us easily. The water that bears the boat is the same that swallows it.

20201010 - Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You

With the help of patent law and efficient message exchange system(Internet), it's not practical to establish success based on other people's hard work. However, to improve productivity, it's always better to let other people to do most of the work.

But, we need to know the right direction. Or else, the whole team would get lost, and everyone's time would be wasted.

To see the right direction, we need to understand the rules through "the first principle".

To some extent, reading is the best way to grab wisdom from other people. Other people might spend thousands of years to summarize their knowledge and experience, and we can just learn it in short time, then use it when needed.

20201011 - Law 8: Make Other People Come To You Use Bait

Let time, location and other people to help you. Play the game at the place you want, the time you favor, and the opponent you choose.

 

Always focus on the ultimate goal. Ignore the minor events.

In many cases, we don't need to action to get closer to the goal. For example, holding share for long time could bring in big win.

Napoleon Bonaparte has a natural gift to lead other people. However, he didn't know how to manage economy.

20201013 - Law 9: Win Through Your Actions - Not Argument

This is different from "seeing is believing". It's to show the result instead of persuasion, it's better to display the result directly.

However, most of the actions take long time. What if there is no time to let other people to see the result? First, we need to avoid any confrontation. Make sure it's explanation instead of argument. Then, arose their imagination. The details could be too complex, and normally there is no way to explain it clearly. Only imagination can pass the idea to other people quickly. However, imagination is fragile. One imagination could be replaced by another imagination easily. To build a sturdy imagination, we need to combine actions to enforce the imagination, just like what religions did to their disciples.

If I were the engineer in Mucianus army, how can I convince Mucianus that the smaller mast is the better choice? I may just pass the message to him: I have a better idea to crash the town's walls, and I can show him how to do it.

Michelangelo obviously lied to Soderini, and Sir Christopher Wren lied to the mayor of Westminster. Is it a good choice to lie? I think so. Or else, what could they do? In the end, it's still the actions (by initial temporary vocal lies) convinced other people.

Actions are better than argument in convincing people, but to find a way to let other people thinking, is better than actions to convince people. It's one step closer to the First Principle rule.

Don't make unnecessary argument.

20201014 - Law 10: Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

One takes the behavior of one's company.

 

It's extremely hard to change someone's personalities and habit. Put it another way: you can only change the one who's prepared to change himself/herself. Most of people are not likely to change. That's why we say "Nature passes nurture, you cannot make a crab walk straight." and "A leopard can't change its spots".

We can only change ourselves. Reading and good habit make miracles.

The worst inferior one is always discontented with the things around.

The nature is ruthless. Most of people are destined to fall. They are not going to thrive, so don't join them.

20201014 - Law 11: Learn To Keep People Dependent on You

When the fish is caught, the net is laid.

 

In modern society, normally we use contract(law) to protect ourselves. But that's not enough. In many cases, there is no written agreements. We need to make ourselves indispensable to the team, which means, make ourselves valuable to the team.

Quite often, we prefer to leave the organization voluntarily to pursue higher goal. That's way better than keeping people dependent on us to keep our job.

Balance among different power is the key to grab the most benefit.

Companies are doing the same thing: let customers dependent on them. People may hate these companies, but there is nothing they can do.

20201015 - Law 12: Use Selective Honesty to Disarm Your Victim

The most important part of this law, is to fully understand your opponents, but this is almost impossible.

 

But we don't have to cheat or steal. We can give other people excellent first impression by showing selective honesty or giving little gifts. That helps a lot with communication in business.

Showing selective honesty could also be a good distraction to hide something, possibly our mistakes.

20201017 - Law 13: Asking for Help Appeal to People's Self Interest

Mutual interest is the key when asking for help. But understanding is the foundation. For better understanding, we need better observing and listening. When your rival is your enemy, you should first of all get to understand him.

Then how about friends? If we can understand our friends, we will be happier when stay together.

20201017 - Law 14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

It's about how to hide our intention, and get the information from the rivals. In summary, it means we need to listen carefully, and speak less.

 

It's hard to figure out what other people want. When we figure that out, we can resolve the problem.

20201017 - Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally

This law is mainly for "Unlimited War". In most of the cases, the conflicts will not reach that level. People understand it's a fair game, and law guarantees everyone get fair treatments.

For terrorists, maybe this is the quickest and easiest solution. But, is violence really a good solution? Empress Wu ruled the country for 40 years successfully, but she didn't really change anything.

Replace one tyranny by another, will not solve the problem. I think the better solution is to avoid making enemies.

20201018 - Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

The key is not "absence", but to arose the imagination of other people through absence.

 

The key is "imagination". If other don't keep thinking/imagining you, then this absence is useless and people will forget you soon.

 

Life is boring from time to time. People like playing games in their mind/subconscious.

20201019 - Law 17: Cultivate an air of Unpredictability

If use unpredictability wisely, that represents creativity. Creativity means making decision based on the current situation, and utilize all possible sorts.

This type of rivals are hard to beat. Not because of their unpredictability, but because they are very creative and smart.

How to beat Mongols 600 hundred years ago? Longer range weapon (than bow and arrow), faster transportation (than horse), or slow down the enemy.

20201019 - Law 18: Isolation is Dangerous

This law seems against Law 16, but it's quite different. Law 16 means "I know you, but you don't know me". Law 18 means "I don't know you and you don't know me".

We need other people's opinion to observe ourselves and the environment, we need to work with other people to get big job done, we need help to verify our perception.

Isolation is also connected with happiness. We have to live in communities to be happy.

20201020 - Law 19: Do Not Offend the Wrong Person

Respect other people, no matter who they are.

 

The more we understand about other people, the less risk we take, and the better chance to succeed.

20201021 - Law 20: Do Not Commit to Anyone

First thing is first: we need to show our value, and let other people understand that we have spikes(although we are relatively weak).

 

Help each other, but don't rely on anyone. Inner independence is critical.

20201021 - Law 21: Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker

People tend to stay with people with less intelligence. They feels safe and powerful in those people. But this is of course illusion. The wise man prefer to stay with people who are smarter. Smart people make us pay more attention to the current moment, and they force us to keep thinking. We may feel tired and frustrated, but in long term, we grow much faster in such environment.

 

The First Principle can beat this law easily. It's not about what seems right, but about what is right. Verification should be based on solid evidence, not based on other people's words.

But greed and arrogant often make us blind. For long term, "do the right thing" brings us more reward, and prevent us from falling into traps.

This is like investing SP500 index fund, instead of some stock seems good.

From other point of view, when our investment grows to some level, we need to be more conservative, and diversify our invest.

20201023 - Law 22: Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

When should we surrender? We need to judge and weigh the benefit and loss. In many cases, it's just looks like "surrender", but actually not.

What we are going to lose if we choose surrender? When manager assign extra tasks to us, should we accept it? It could be wise to surrender in many situations.

20201024 - Law 23: Concentrate Your Forces

The Rothschild example is bullshit. Their success was not based on concentration. There are so many rich families concentrated their strength, and corrupted in two or three generations.

 

Concentration of course works, but we need to fully understand our goal, and be fully aware of our strength and weakness. After that, if we stick with our goal, we have better chance to win.

Concentration doesn't against diversity. To set up a correct goal, we need to understand the diversity of the world, and the diversity of our capabilities. If we can set up a correct goal, our probability of success would increase 50% immediately.

What is important? How to do it? The first principle.

20201025 - Law 24: Play the Perfect Courtier

For normal people in modern society, it's better to leave enabled leader. They are not going to bring much benefit to the team.

Excellent leaders are also human. They also have all kinds of drawbacks, but more bearable to the team members. In such team, individual success mainly depends on their own capability.

Some rules are always gold rules, such as No Ostentation. This is really useful to most of people.

20201025 - Law 25: Recreate Yourself

Life is a game. We need to treat different people and different situation with different mask. It's not lying, but more like choosing different tool to solve different problems.

The more masks we have, then more options we have, the more freedom we have, and we are more powerful.

20201027 - Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean

This chapter is about doing things indirectly. In modern society, more often this means work with other people in a team, and every team member takes different tasks.

 

Some tasks are boring, time consuming and trivial; some are challenging, and we can learn a lot from it. Some teams are much better than other teams. This is the real part we need to pay attention.

 

Working in a team is easy. To figure out what we should do is hard.

20201029 - Law 27: Create a Cult: Play on People’s Need to Believe

To use this law wisely, we can lead a great team. It's not about cheating, but more about how to set a goal so everyone in the team would try their best to achieve this goal.

More or less, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk used this law.

The problem is, again, what goal should it be? If we set up the wrong goal, all the work will fail miserably, just like what Elizabeth Holmes did with Theranos.

To set up the correct goal, we need precise perception of this world.

20201031 - Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness

In doing the right thing, we need boldness. However, the world is like mist. It's full of traps. We need to minimize risk in taking actions. Be cautious in exploring the world, be bold in striking.

The hard part is how to figure out what the right thing is.

20201101 - Law 29: Plan all the way to the End

Keep in mind our ultimate goal.

 

There are a lot of distractions and noises. If we forget our ultimate goal, or change it from time to time, we will not reach it.

Distance = Time * Speed

Ultimate needs long time effort. We need to go in the same direction for long time to achieve it.

20201101 - Law 30: Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Arouse other people's imagination about your capability. That can prevent them from trying to beat you.

Always try to do the right thing. Don't do meaningless boasting, don't leak unnecessary information to other people. Think before action. Pay attention to the current moment.

20201102 - Law 31: Get others to Play with the Cards you Deal

Keep this in mind: there is always other options, besides the obvious options. Quite possible, other options are better.

We can trick other people through limited options offer, but normally, in the end, good relationship is more important than the benefit from single transaction. No one can trick other people for long time.

20201103 - Law 32: Play to People’s Fantasies

It's not wise to cheat on other people. Combined with Law 27, it's better to find the shinning side of some action. There is always someone benefit and someone lose from certain action. We need to figure out what will benefit us (and if possible, most of people)

We can tell ourselves that we are good people, we do good thing and get the prize. It could be fantasy, and also do good to us.

20201105 - Law 33: Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew

Everyone has their personalities. That includes some weakness they cannot control. If we can understand them and prevent them from understanding ourselves, of course we get better chance to win.

It's risky and not easy. But we don't need to understand them completely. If we pay enough attention on their body language and their tone, we can understand them a bit more. This "bit" is critical.

Nothing can guarantee winning. Some smart move give us better chance to win.

20201105 - Law 34: Be Royal in Your Own Fashion – Act Like a King.

This law is not right. It's not about acting like a king, but about setting up great goal. Most of people focus on minor goals, such as getting a good job, or building a family. But we have many years in our life, so we should set up a grand target, and then keep walking towards it.

Eventually, people will notice the difference. With the help of this grand target, we will not waste our time and attention to minor issues, or getting distracted by less important goals.

20201106 - Law 35: Master the Art of Timing

If we focus on long term goal, we can be patient easily. We will not be distracted by temptations from time to time.

In modern society, for most of the normal people, they don't need to beat any opponent, and there is normally no critical "ending time". They may need to spend 16 years in school, but after that, they have plenty of time to try their luck, based on their capabilities. So, they have many "ending time". If they are competent enough, sooner or later, they will success.

20201107 - Law 36: Disdain things you cannot have

It's correct in 99% of cases. I wasted too much attention on disdain activities.

 

The problem is, how do we know which one should be ignored? There should be some priority list. We do the match quickly to get the conclusion.

How to get this priority list? Again, it's about our ultimate goals. Anything not related to the ultimate goals is not important.

20201107 - Law 37: Create Compelling Spectacles

This law is actually hypnosis by image and symbol. Most of people rely on fast thinking. They don't use their brain to analyze the world. So, image and symbol can be used to hypnotize them.

For example, "CEO". CEO is a job title. CEO normally has a lot of power in managing a company, but that doesn't necessarily means they are smart, or rich, or crude.

Another one: beautiful girl. Beautiful girl and ugly girl are same, except they have different appearances. But people more likely to think that beautiful girls are kind, friendly, with decent income. But no, of course not.

The only way to prevent ourselves from being hypnotized is keeping First Principle in mind. Just ask ourselves: is that true? How can we verify it?

20201109 - Law 38: Think as you like, but behave like others

People can only see what they want to see, can only hear what they want to hear. It's not that hard to join a community.

Why do we need to join a team? Cooperation means higher productivity. We need the help and support from other people. It's all right to do a bit silly things to stay with others.

However, sometimes, crowds are stupid. We need to keep clear mind, and avoid sinking with the boat.

20201110 - Law 39: Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish

Stirring up water means use mud to disable the opponents' perception and rationality.

 

Don't get disturbed by emotion or illusion.

 

Treat the challenge as playing chess. There is nothing personal.

 

Verify it before accepting the perception.

20201112 - Law 40: Despise the Free Lunch

Free lunch is actually an illusion. Again, we need to verify it before action.

As free lunch is so rare, it's not even worth trying to verify it.

From the other side, this illusion sometimes can encourage other people to move forward along the correct direction, despite all kinds of obstacles.

20201113 - Law 41: Avoid Stepping into a Great Man’s Shoes

It's not about differentiation, it's about adapt new strategy based on different context.

 

It's easy to be different, but hard to do the right move.

Be careful about the next step from existing achievements. May fall from the peak of life. Need to find something meaningful to do. Success may ruin your life from now on.

20201114 - Law 42: Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep Will Scatter

This law is related to law 16 and 18.

 

In general, isolation is dangerous, no matter it's done in passive way or active way. Absence sometimes helps seduction, but only if it's only physical absence: you are in other people's mind all the time. That means, you are not really isolated.

Again, the hard part is to find the key part of the problem/people. If we can find it, then we have solved half of the problem.

20201115 - Law 43: Work on the Heart and Mind of Others

All adults are like children, ruled by their emotions.

 

"Introducing NLP" says that there is only 7% of communication is based on words, the other parts are based on body language and voice tune. Emotion is much more important than intellectual.

It doesn't matter what the fact is, what matters is how people feel about it.

20201119 - Law 44: Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect

Mirror Effect means we need to figure out the opponent's status. That normally needs a lot of effect.

 

If the other side is our friend, and realize how much attention/time we put on them, they would subconsciously be moved.

If the other side is our enemy, it's much easier to beat them as we know so much about them.

These two situations are not really "Mirror Effect".

The real Mirror Effect is the illusion we created for other people. What we see are all illusions, and we prefer to believe the illusion we want to see. This is why verification is so important. It's critical even for scientific experiments and engineering projects.

20201121 - Law 45: Preach Change But Never Reform Quickly.

It's hard to change existing common imagination. It's much harder to establish new common imagination, unless through actions(Law 9).

Big change take time, or else it makes people feel uncomfortable, even for individuals. From the other side, whoever can adapt to quick changes will be a few steps ahead of other people.

How do we know some imagination is a trend of an illusion? Verification.

20201122 - Law 46: Never Appear Too Perfect

Envy. We only need to pay attention to the envious who can hurt us. And the best way to avoid that is to hide your achievements.

To friends, it's good to emphasize your drawbacks to make them feel better. Envy is also based on imagination. If we can build a story to let them believe that your achievement is not that special, then they don't feel the pain of envy.

 

Or, use your wealth/skill to help others. Charity can transform enemies to supporters.

Better person convert their envy to motivation to drive them forward through hard study/work, but most of people will try to slow you down.

20201123 - Law 47: In Victory Learn When To Stop

Victory is illusion. It represents the past, and is unrelated to the future.

 

To decide next move, first throw emotion (glory or shamefulness) out of mind.

We are all mortal. It's meaningless to accumulate more and more money, or to "conquer" other people.

20201124 - Law 48: Assume Formlessness

To reach formlessness, we need:

 

1. Perception of the real world

2. Absolute rationality

3. Infinite creativity

How to get these three prerequisites?

1. Read

2. Be sensitive to the world (Meditation may help)

3. Verify ideas (First Principle)

4. Practice

5. Keep in mind the ultimate goal