Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths (Ribbonfarm Roughs 1) by Venkatesh Rao

Author:Venkatesh Rao [Rao, Venkatesh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ribbonfarm, Inc.
Published: 2013-09-14T18:30:00+00:00

When you bargain for a cheap watch at a street market, you know that Being Willing To Walk Away (BWTWA) is your single most powerful weapon. BWTWA is the simplest example of a BATNA. More complex negotiations have other BATNAs, but all are forms of “walking away.” In the best case this simply means a lost opportunity (for a mutually-beneficial trade agreement for instance). In the worst case, it can mean armed conflict and real, as opposed to psychological losses. You can’t walk away from a mugger. Your BATNA for the “wallet for your life” deal offered by the mugger is to either run (and hope to get away) or fight (and hope to win).For a salary negotiation, your BATNA is to quit (possibly with the added cost of lost recommendations). For an entrepreneur who doesn’t like the terms offered by a VC, the BATNA may be to just shut down the company. BATNA is very hard for most people because the BATNA is always about a willingness to lose something, sometimes your life.

There are BATNAs for every situation, but there are also life BATNAs: your baseline commitments to yourself that allow you to cheerfully walk away from anything. Here it pays to keep in mind that your ultimate BATNA to the whole “deal of life” is actually fixed and unchangeable: you are going to die (because your negotiating opponent, nature, is infinitely more powerful than you). If you are going to die anyway, it makes it much easier to accept “death” as a BATNA for specific situations. And since nearly all other BATNAs are preferable to death, that attitude makes you a very strong negotiator.

The one BATNA that is worse than death is of course, torture, as illustrated by the booga-booga joke. Two men are shipwrecked on an island. The sadistic native chief offers each a deal: “Booga booga or death?” The first guy picks booga-booga, and is immediately subjected to hideous tortures, and finally let go, nearly dead. The second man decides he prefers death.“Fine,” says the chief. “Booga-booga him to death!” (A nice use of sadistic OR-XOR bluffing by the chief here!)

Without a defined BATNA, negotiations are toothless. BATNAs are what make all negotiating at least “slightly evil.” You can add deceit, bad faith and bluffing to make the game as evil as you like, but even the baseline best-faith type of informed negotiation is “slightly evil” because your BATNA is a unilateral option that has consequences for others that they will be forced to live with. Anybody can accept consequences for themselves. It takes a slightly evil attitude to be willing to force potentially unpleasant consequences on others, regardless of what they want.

Information, creativity, trust and BATNAs. That’s all there is to the basics.

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