Reihan: Selfish Altruism

While perusing Lifehacker (in life, some read Lifehacker, others read Gawker), I hit upon a link to an oddly titled post at lifehack.org, "Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick." Now, in my experience there are only two Rules: (1) Fear and (2) Shame, and subrules like, (1) Strike fear into their hearts until they succumb to a shame-spiral and (2) Shame them until they weep, and soon they will fear further shameful weeping. But according to the good people at lifehack.org, the rules are that

Rule One: People mostly care about themselves

Rule Two: People are motivated by selfish altruism

Rule Three: People don't think much

Rulfe Four: Conformity is the norm

This is pretty deep, man. And pretty plausible. I would add a few more rules.

Rule Five, or the Rule of the Jaguar Bone: He who wields the the femur bone of the mightiest Jaguar shall have unto him untold power.

Rule Six, or the Rule of the Magestone: She who unites the seven stones shall unite the elemental forces, and the circle shall be closed and the Earth will darken.

Wait, no, neither of those make any sense. Anyway, check out those rules, hu-mans. Soon they will be obsolete as robots seize control. Skynet Forever!

Comments

Check out these legal rules, which sound equally ridiculous but are in fact often used:

Rule Seven, or the First Canon of Equity: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands.

Rule Eight, or the Rule of Noscitur a Sociis: A word is known by the company it keeps.

Posted by Joe Magarac | October 5, 2007 1:33 PM

Rule 9: People are insecure, and worry that others will discover and reveal their flaws.

Rule 10: People are pretty much only focused on themselves, so while Person A is worried that Person B will discover and reveal his flaws, Person B is worrying the same thing about Person A.

Rule 11: The Rule of "The Wish Is Father to the Belief": People see in the world exactly what they expect to see in it.

Posted by SDM | October 5, 2007 1:38 PM