A surprisingly useful and subtle question to ask yourself, I’ve found–at least to ask myself, since I can’t talk for you!–is this: does letting others know how to best manipulate you to do what they want–is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Let’s start with the the case against revealing your secrets of how others convince you to do what they want. Indeed, the wording itself I’ve used in this previous sentence and the one before it hints at the argument itself: why would I ever want to show someone else how they can take advantage of me? Everyone else has their own incentives and desires and ambitions, often at odds with mine, and if I tell others how to they can convince me of anything, of how they can get me to work in the way they want and do what they want–that will, almost tautologically, serve their interest first and foremost, not necessarily my interest.
Indeed, we can go a step further: not only do most people not have my interest in mind, there are even certain people who are, well, not the nicest people to have ever existed on this realm of earth we live in, and they might even be able to use this to get me to do bad things. Everyone has an Achilles’ Heel; and a good enough guide will show you the person’s Achilles’ Heel. Do I really want the world to know that I have a total weakness for [cough cough, sneeze sneeze]? OpSec must always come before everything else in any sort of serious operation!
But let’s look at the other side of the coin, and let’s start doing so with a metaphor. A younger version of myself, involved in some legal disputes (with some of the aforementioned not-nice people who didn’t have my interest in mind!), I had one in particular where the other side didn’t have any legal counsel, defending himself. He seemed to get all his legal knowledge from wikipedia, although if this were 20 years later, it would have been AI he would have been using. I remember having the instinct as to how great that was for us: clearly my lawyer, who I was paying per hour what some people I knew in India made per month, would be 1000x better and have more subtle and sophisticated strategies than the best of Wikipedia could tell him.
But my lawyer told me many things in this case that I’ve remembered in the decades since, most irrelevant to this particular question I’m analyzing today, but one point of his was very relevant: he would have far preferred had my opponent had a lawyer representing him; it’s always better for a lawyer to have another lawyer on the other side. I was shocked at this. What was my superstar lawyer’s reasoning? We can say it a few ways. One way is: the other lawyer will *know how it goes*, and knowing how it goes, knowing how it will play out, knowing what’s realistic and not, it’s much, much easier for them to just go, have a (possibly off the record) conversation, and figure out the win-win. Put another way, a non-professional would much much more likely–overwhelmingly likely–be irrational and, well, crazy.
I think this lawyer’s point to me has ramifications well beyond the obvious question of, whether it’s good for your opponent to have counsel or not, because it implies a bigger point: when both sides know the “rules of engagement” combined with the expectations of engagement, combined with the likely results of different actions in the engagement — the results are going to be very smooth, very fast, very clear. But when someone’s operating outside those bounds, that’s when we enter high-risk territory.
Now let’s apply this point to other people having an operating manual to how to best work with you. Let’s say the other person knows that this about you: if they always ask your opinion to get your “buy in” to do something–rather than ordering you blindly to do something–that you’re more likely to be engaged in doing it. Let’s say they know that big secret about you. Don’t you actually want them to do that? If they just order you blindly, you’re going to be frustrated and terrible and feel like a peasant soldier. Is it really that bad for them to know how to operate you in a positive way? Don’t you want your enemy to follow the rules of engagement you’ve defined for yourself?
And this applies to effectively every example we can think of. If someone knows that you will be unhappy if you’re not complimented enough, is it that bad that this person then finds a true compliment about you and gives it to you? If someone knows you’ll be motivated by spending time together, is it that bad if that person then decides to figure out how to spend time together that’s a win-win?
But I’ll take it a step further: all these secret tricks in your operating manual… they’re not nearly as secret as you think. Everyone actually knows that they need to give you context so you can get buy-in. It’s a bigger question of whether secrets exist at all in the universe, and it might even be the case that they don’t: not only are the secrets about you not so secret, but the secret mysteries of the universe might be staring you in the face waiting for you to see what’s in front of your nose.
And this brings us back to the original objection: yes, there are not nice people in this world, Virginia, and they might use this against you. But there are four responses to that:
First, if we believe the number of good-or-neutral (or just plain unsophisticated enough to be relevant here) people far, far outnumber the bad people, then perhaps the pluses outweigh the minuses?
Secondly, even if the bad people knew these strategies, is it really that bad? If someone who is on the team against you knows the big secret that you like compliments, is it really that terrible that he gives you compliments? You still have to use your brain no matter what to process what’s happening and make your own decisions–you’re all grown up now, a big boy, no longer the little kid climbing trees!–and if you’re so simple that trivial tricks can get you to do bad things, you have bigger problems. Or, when I was younger and enjoyed going out and meeting girls, I used to tell girls I was talking to, “You know, I’m inviting you to do X and Y only because I think you will then be more likely to go on a second date with me” — and my revealing my strategies to them never changed the outcome. I would still get the second date, even when they knew that I did X and Y merely to achieve that goal.
Third, since there are no secrets–see my last point–the bad people already have figured out all this about you. Those who want to figure out your Achilles’ Heel already will–and probably, already have.
And fourth and finally–and the perfect note to end this on–you’re not that important. You’re probably not nearly as important as you think you are. While bad people do exist, they are probably focusing on the bigger fish to fry than you. So maybe the issue is more about your ego than anything else. And that, I can’t help you with.
