Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpdoctor | Hacker News Reader

I think the author missed one of the motivations behind some of the behaviors: Pure unadulterated bullshitting.

Some folks figure out early in life to talk past their listeners, and some listeners will be intimidated. I found this out by simply playing stupid a number of times (it comes quite naturally for me) and making them explain it fully.

You will be surprised at the number of charlatans exposed by this tactic.

View on HN

I knew a VC who you could describe as Barney Fife, and be 100% accurate. I always talked to him on a level he could understand, because I too thought he was a little slow. I was polite and explained things so that he understood how we where doing.

Fortunate for me though, I never was on the opposite ends of his ambitions, because he fooled everyone who crossed his path.

One day, we where in the process of negotiating an exit with a huge player in our market and I enter the room with him and our CEO (a brilliant guy), conversations start and this guy turns into Mr. Negotiator. I mean here is a guy that I have known for 2 years and all the sudden he is the smartest, shrewdest guy in the room. He is tearing apart arguments, quoting technical information that I explained to him (winking at me, saying that he was listening). Explaining financial models to them and why they wont work for us. etc. etc.

I walked away from that table with a totally different perspective than I walked in with. The moral of the story was sometimes the bullshitter gets bullshited. They thought they had this guy, and when the time was right he, let go, blind sided them, took them off of their game, and walked out of the room holding the aces.

I learned that day, that the dumbest guy in the room, may very well be the smartest guy in the room. Never underestimate people and their capabilities it may come back to haunt you.

After that meeting I said to him, man I feel like I don't know you at all, in which he said something pretty profound, he said: I am the same friend you have had for two years, and that is a humble good listener. Those last 3 words have been what I have aspired to be since that day.

Sometimes I feel the little up arrow doesn't express enough. I really enjoyed your story. It's a good reminder for myself to keep my own ego in check.

Thanks, it's nice to know my contributions are appreciated.

Great, great story.

"Never underestimate people and their capabilities it may come back to haunt you." Well, the guy trying to look like the smartest guy in the room, probably isn't. To your point, if the "dumbest guy in the room" seems comfortable looking like the dumbest guy in the room -- _that_ is the one to keep an eye on.

I am always reminded of him when someone quotes the saying used in gambling if you look around the table and can't spot the sucker the sucker is you. Smart people (at least smart enough to bullshit) are used to deflecting questions from the dumb and they are shrewd enough to never get trapped in a room in which they are out of their league with people that can see through their ruse. What he did was lure them into a trap in which they felt comfortable not bringing their defenses (lawyers, and accounts) because it would scare the sucker. The did not play conservative in the face of a competent adversary. So thinking they had a sucker they adopted a riskier strategy of bullshit, and pacify, in an effort to keep the sucker at the table while they milked him. Where they entered the room thinking they would keep it small an "among friends".

There is a lot of back story on this deal and it is a long story, one day I may post it. But it did involve this player starting negotiations by suing us, so there was a lot of bad blood. He pal'ed around with their CEO for a month being their sucker all the while rejecting a purchase in favor of a partnership (which made absolutely no since to us or them), he would use all kinds of dumb excuses as to why we did not want to sell. I had no idea how well this guy had us covered, until I went into that room.

It was one of the most amazing things I have ever witnessed. If you have never seen a person that can plan out 20 to 30 steps ahead, all hinged off of other people, when you see it unraveled in front of you and connect the actions, it is nothing short of amazing. It was the single greatest display of brilliance I have ever seen. A single man took on a giant with his mind, and nothing more than timing. It was a valuable lesson in underestimation and the element of surprise.

> one day I may post it.

Just dropping a comment encouraging you to do so. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Yes, please.

Will do, I am working on getting funding for my next project right now, so I will sit down and start working on it, as soon as I am through that push.

The guy sounds like a genius, it's pretty straightforward Sun Tzu, or anyone of a number of tacticians who have discovered the same thing, when your hand is weak present it as strong, when your hand is strong present it as weak.

That sounds like a really easy-to-game strategy. If you know that someone follows this approach, then just invert your estimates of his strength.

Usually, though, you don't know. And most people don't follow it, so you kind of have to assume any random person doesn't until you have better information. Hopefully this is before he beats you.

Right in his case, he exposed it when he needed to, and that was on rare occasion. The funny part is that you would be surprised how much of superiority is engrained by behavior, people would underestimate him more than one time which really surprised me, it was like his actions where able to turn off instinctual safeguards, so even when someone logically knew he was sandbagging, they would still get all the cues that, they had the upper hand. He would trap people with habitual and natural interaction with him, you may go a year with him playing dumb (simple is a better word for it) and you get lulled into the routine off it, then when needed he became shrewd. With people that he was not in an adversarial relationship with, he just assumed the manner as his default manner. So it was not totally manipulative. As he said, he is a simple guy and likes to use the simple part of his brain, but can draw on the rest when needed. In a way, it was not fake, hence my not being able to detect it. I am usually very good at detecting people that are putting up fronts.

Anyone's strategy is easy to game if you already know what it is.

Accidentally upvoted. No, some strategies are strong even when uncovered.

I think his point was that, not knowing the strategy gives the strategist an advantage and the adversary a disadvantage. Once used the adversary is the wiser for the experience.

Unfortunately we on HN do not like generalization and the poster used anyone, in which he probably meant a good deal or a majority. I would note though, that anyone that is able to fundamentally change their character, to not exude intelligence, is probably not a one trick pony. He was the only experience with a person that cunning, but to me it seems like his character would be a prerequisite.

It was not that simple, this guy knew how to use behaviors and social norms against adversarial individuals. To the extent that he was able to use human nature and unspoken language of both his, theirs and others against the person. Coupled with, planning out steps far in advance and setting up multistage scenarios in which each piece was part of a grand plan that had to fall into place just right, made him formidable when negotiating.

Yes, but you still have to know he's following this approach. A good practitioner will hide that.

If you remember the show Colombo, the main character made an art of playing dumb.

Hah! I was just reading this on a political-ish blog yesterday:

"In my experience — and I'm old, so it's long — people who make a noticeable exhibition of their smartness are not the most intelligent people. They're not the dumbest people. But the smartest people are strategic about displaying intelligence. That's how they outsmart you. "

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/12/newt-obama-largest-poss...

I will try to skirt the politics as best I can, but one thing that I have come to realize with age, is generally those who complain loudly, are not smart enough to see the solutions. But others mistake their complaints as actions and intelligence. I will venture there, because both individuals in that article are guilt of the same, diversionary pandering. I see it in business all the time. It's an arch-type, the guy that comes into the meeting complaining about everything that is messed up, with no actionable recommendation on how to fix it. It's a form of bullshit based on facts and is intellectually lazy.

I love it, slow-playing intelligence is the best. I have a ton of respect for those with world-class intelligence and the ability to refrain from constantly showing it off.

I hate replying to my own post, but my old post is too old to add an edit to and there seems to be some interest on the subject. I found an old article about him, that was written after we sold our venture, when he was purchasing the Tampa Bay Lightning, it sums him up pretty well:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/12/Lightning/Jeff_Sherrin__De...

Agreed. It's not being stupid that makes you vulnerable to bullshit. It's not wanting to look stupid. Lots of people will silently nod as if they understand when they have no idea what's being said. I've even done it myself in some circumstances. Unfortunately, this allows the speaker to gloss over critical issues make nice-sounding ideas unworkable in practice.

I sometimes fall into the trap of not asking questions in order to avoid looking stupid. However, when bullshit rises to a certain level and I've heard practically no substance, I don't ask questions mainly because I don't care. Once the bullshit bit is flipped, it is hard to unflip.

I do that all the time, but not because I don't want to look stupid. Usually it's because they're talking about something I'm just not interested in, but I don't want to be rude about it.

I'm certainly guilty of this. In my case, I suspect I process verbal information a touch slower than I should (which is to say probably above average, but below average when dealing with the fast-talking-fast-acting business crowd).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com