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Authorities are often more knowledgeable of the facts and issues in their area of expertise, but even then, it is important to go back to first principles and evaluate their arguments on merit.
Similarly, a lack of a certain credential shouldn’t be the sole basis for refuting a person’s argument either. We firmly believe that any intelligent person could learn about any topic with the right research and enough time.
In conflicts, you may similarly get the outcome you want by winning people over to your point of view.
social norms versus market norms and draws on the concept of reciprocity from the previous section.
But once the fine was imposed, the day care center had inadvertently replaced the social norms with market norms. Now that the parents were paying for their tardiness, they interpreted the situation in terms of market norms.
You must be careful not to inadvertently replace social norms with market norms, because you may end up eliminating benefits that are hard to bring back (see irreversible decisions in Chapter 2).
Economists use a game called the ultimatum game to study how the perception of fairness affects actions.
It is important that you keep this strong desire for fairness in mind when you make decisions that impact people important to you, such as those in your family (chore distribution, wills, etc.) or your organization (compensation, promotions, etc.).
framing can have a substantial effect on the perception of fairness in various situations.
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
In fact, many arguments try to sway you from rational decision making by pulling at your emotions, including fear, hope, guilt, pride, anger, sadness, and disgust.
Influence by manipulation of emotions, whether created by perceived injustice, violation of social norms, or otherwise, is called appeal to emotion.
FUD, which stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD is commonly used in marketing (“Our competitor’s product is dangerous”), political speeches (“We could suffer dire consequences if this law is passed”), religion (eternal damnation), etc.
straw man, where instead of addressing your argument directly, an opponent misrepresents (frames) your argument by associating it with something else (the straw man)
He has tried to move the topic of conversation from doing homework to your general approach to parenting.
In these settings it helps to get on the same page and clarify exactly what is under debate
Shifting the focus to how the players were protesting drew attention away from the underlying issue of why they were protesting.
ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”),
“Who are you to make this point? You’re not an expert on this topic. Yo...
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Instead of relying on authority to gain influence, here another’s authority is being attacked so that they will lack influence.
When you are in a conflict, you should consider how its framing is shaping the perception of it by you and others.
Take the prisoner’s dilemma. The prosecutors have chosen to frame the situation competitively because, for them, the Nash equilibrium with both criminals getting five years is actually the preferred outcome.
also be dark patterns when they are used to manipulate you for someone else’s benefit
mythical tale of the Trojan horse,
A Trojan horse can refer to anything that persuades you to lower your defenses by seeming harmless or even attractive, like a gift.
bait and switch, such as a malicious computer program that poses as an innocuous and enticing download (the bait), but instead does something nefarious, like spying on you (the switch).
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Potemkin village, which is something specifically built to convince people that a situation is better than it actually is.
These were used by all sides in World War II and in many other armed conflicts to trick foreign intelligence services.
In any conflict situation, you should be on the lookout for dark patterns.
For example, are the common nonprofit uses of reciprocity techniques (free address labels) or social proof (celebrity endorsements) also dark patterns?
Should you focus on truth and clarity in your promotional materials? Or should you look to influence models to find language that is more persuasive, perhaps due to its emotional appeal?
There’s no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be “acceptable losses.”
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
to mutually assured destruction (MAD). As a result, neither side has any incentive to use its weapons offensively or to disarm completely, leading to a stable, albeit tense, peace.
If diplomacy by itself doesn’t work, though, there is another set of models to turn to, starting with deterrence, or using a threat to prevent (deter) an action by an adversary.
The deterrence model can be appropriate when you want to try to prevent another person or organization from taking an action that would be harmful to you or society at large.
Businesses also take actions to deter new entrants, for example, by using their scale to price goods so low that new firms cannot profitably compete (e.g., Walmart) or lobbying for regulations that benefit them at the expense of competition (e.g., anti–net neutrality laws).
When you want to put a deterrent in place, you must evaluate whether it is truly effective and whether there are any unintended consequences.
there is evidence to suggest that not only does prison time not reduce repeat offenses, but there is actually a chance that it increases the probability of committing a crime again. The real solution to deterring crime is likely related to the root cause of why people commit specific types of crimes rather than to any particular punishment.
carrot-and-stick model, which uses a promise of a reward (the carrot) and at the same time a threat of punishment (the stick) to deter behavior.
What you don’t want is for the carrot-stick combination to be too weak such that the rational decision is just to ignore the carrot and deal with the stick.
A sister mental model to deterrence is containment.
containment is an attempt to contain the enemy, to prevent its further expansion, be it expanding
You should apply a containment strategy in situations where you want to stop something bad from spreading, such as a negative rumor or a harmful business practice.
stop the bleeding, by a quick and dirty method if necessary.
Once the situation has stabilized, you can take a step back, find the root cause (see Chapter 1), and then try to find a more reliable long-term solution.
containment tactic is quarantine, the restriction of the movement of people or goods in order to prevent the spread of disease.
flypaper theory, which calls for you to deliberately attract enemies to one location where they are more vulnerable, like attracting flies to flypaper, usually also directing them far away from your valuable assets.
In a computing context, this is known as a honeypot, which is used to attract and trap malicious actors for study, in the same way honey lures bears.
