Comment by Tangurena | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tangurena | Hacker News Reader

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> I have come to believe that for people that act like this, it is a game, and the game is not won if they cannot get every penny. It probably bothered them that I walked away from the table with less than 100k, because some how they did not play the game hard enough to get that from me.

So very true. The thoughts this remark triggers spawn off into 2 separate forks:

0. Robert Ringer wrote a series of books about winning even though the other guys are trying to intimidate the heck out of you. He categorized all business people into 3 types.

http://www.word-gems.com/leadership.ringer.intro.html

http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422735/Winning%20Th...

http://www.word-gems.com/leadership.ringer.one.html

http://www.word-gems.com/leadership.ringer.two.html

http://www.word-gems.com/leadership.ringer.three.html

1. And the other fork is the series of books by Suzette Haden Elgin that have "gentler art of verbal self defense" in the title. In one of her earlier books, she was trying to articulate the difference in communication between men and women; for most women, "sports/game" was a separate category in parallel with other categories. To translate her argument about male communication patterns into a programming one we're familiar with, she said basically that for men, "sports/game" was the base class for all categories. I'm slightly trivializing her argument, but that she was trying to make the point that competitiveness is something you overlook at your peril.

Interesting links. I'd never heard of Mr. Ringer, or his theory before this.

My simplistic understanding of his 3 types theory is this: "In summation, I realized that no matter how a guy came on, he would, in the final analysis, attempt to grab all of my chips (again with the one exception that I pointed out)." (The exception being the classic "win-win", where the other party benefits from my success, thus aligning incentives.)

My reaction to reading that was to think about myself. If the theory is correct, then regardless of my own intentions, I'm going to try to "grab all [his] chips". That actually makes his "Type Number One" guy the most honest and ethical.

I don't think I can quite reconcile my own ethics with that analysis, but I'm willing to consider it. It paints a somewhat bleak picture of business ethics.

How do you read his theory, if you put yourself in the shoes of the other party in the transaction, rather than his first person?

My take on what he wrote was that people (in sales) will do for themselves first, their friends second (if anything is left over or what they can't personally grab), and everyone else last.

Thinking this way helps me keep my confidence when another party tries to sell me on a plan to "help" me when I can't understand how they will personally profit by their plan. So I can refuse their "help" with confidence knowing I can't possibly be missing out on anything.

That is a very succinct summary, thank you for that.

I was actually asking about this from the opposite person's perspective. I didn't catch the "in sales" part -- did I just miss that, or am I missing a larger context of his theory? Having missed that piece of info, I was wondering what this theory says about my own motivations (I would categorize myself in the 3rd category, where I try to help my friends. But shouldn't I question my own motivations, given this outlook?)

I suppose it's reasonable to question one's own motivations pretty regularly, anyhow.

Thanks. I just assumed if value is being transferred, as money/assets rather than experience or knowledge or something else intangible, then the transfer involves "selling". That is just my default assumption in business.

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