Let’s imagine a situaiton.
Two twins, same skills and same personality.
If they compete against one another in a zero-sum skill based game, who wins in the end?
Of course, neither would over a long enough timescale.
So, what would be the easiest way for either of them to increase his chances exponentially?
Improve his skills? Nah, that’s not fast nor easy, and it’s something that the other can do just as well as soon as he notices his counterpart’s improvement.
The best way is to cheat, without your opponent ever thinking there’s a chance that you are.
If your live in a world where cheating is so bad and immoral, you’d think that the average person would never cheat, because the assumption would be that they share the same moral systems and obligations/apprehensions as you.
So, you go around life happy about most things, and whenever things don’t go your own way, you re-frame it in a stupidly positive way, even if you end up in the gutter as a result, and coincidentally, someone benefits immensely from it.
A winner’s agenda for staying a winner or becoming one would be to convince others that the world is a nice and fair place, while he cheats as much as he can without exposing himself.
This is where autists and people with inherently weak social skills fall victims, because they can’t picture that someone would try to convince you that the world is such a good place, only to take advantage of your optimistic world view whenever and for as long as possible.
The most well known form of cheating in life that humans employ is using large networks of social acquaintances. In such webs, the people share a tacit acknowledgement that continuous communication isn’t necessary, and that the relationship is built on doing favors for one another.
And as long as the person had useful favors to share, he could get into such social relationships. Give and take is the principle.
However, for a favor to be useful enough for such dealings, it has to be specialized, unique, or highly gated. So, those people end up using their jobs, official positions, and access to certain information networks and bureaucracy funnels to shift certain events.
This is where nepotism and ‘official reccomendations’ come into play. They make life easier, you bypass a lot of paper, and even unlock whole new possibilities.
In short, these favors fast track you through life.
Want to put your child in a highly acclaimed college, but their natural abilities aren’t good enough? The best way to win this situation isn’t to tell your child that his hardwork will pay off, because in the end, there’s still a lot of luck involved, especially because of his inherently worse talents.
Your best bet would be to call a guy who knows a guys who knows the headmaster of that university.
You get approval for your child’s college application quickly, and the price would only be a simple favor. Something like recommending some subpar guy to your company, because you happen to be close friends with the head of HR.
Another form of cheating is open sexual markets. The people who have unlimited access tell others that everyone is inherently pure, or that body count doesn’t matter, or that there’s surely someone destined to be that person’s soul mate!
Instead of telling the perplexed person the harsh reality of their shortcomings, and what they can do to improve their life in that aspect, they instead tell them to be nice and talk to people, as if anyone would love to date an overweight illiterate bum who can’t even come out of the house willingly, if he took initiative and said Hi.
Similarly, women use various tactics of reputation nukes whenever another girl threatens to take their boyfriend or what not.
Same for jobs. People get told some bullshit about how they should do their best for the company, and do unpaid overtime just because their boss told them to, only to get shunned and laughed at, and to see the other coworkers who don’t work as much get raises and promotions.
The savvy person wouldn’t need to hear this from me, and upon reading these words, their first instinct would be to deny that cheating ever exists, although the tendency would be to scoff and try to cover things up whenever a real proof of such dealings is brought to attention.
They cheat instinctively, and their subconscious’ mission is to sugarcoat things and beautify them to keep their self image and their faculties intact.
They’re unconsciously aware that if they see their cheating in real time, it would be more difficult to hide it from others than before. Trick yourself to trick the world is how it goes.
The naive people, however, would react even stronger to whispers about cheating being the most common practice out there. It would destroy them to realize that they spent their whole lives trying to live up to societal expectations, while their best interests would’ve lied in cheating their way discreetly instead.
But, it’s better to realize sooner than later, right?
Accept cheating, and understand that if a rule exists, there are people who are there to cheat at it. And as long as they have similar capabilities to you or better, they’ll have better outcomes than you barring any stroke of luck.
Rec Reading: The Art of Strategy
Blurb:
This is a real time example of how I’ll employ imperceptible cheating to improve my chances in a disadvantageous position. In my country, spaced repetition software is a guarded secret in medical schools. People who get the best results use it, but whenever they get asked, they just say ‘we reread lectures a lot’, thus I’ll do the same and use Anki like a motherfucker.
In addition, we have some compulsory classes, which I found out that the professor doesn’t really look at attendance, so I’ll skip them to my heart’s content; an hour and half spent listening to an old guy/woman rambling or reading the lecture isn’t that useful. Also, people always claim that it’s better to just work a little and enjoy life, have friends and what not.
However, most of my current friends wouldn’t be supportive if they knew I started working hard on my studies, so I won’t tell them a thing.
At this point, I’m not above cheating and lying through my teeth about it, and if I can do it successfully, then you’ll that’s what I’ll do.
fin
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