Robert Baratheon

You're playing word games by parroting the cop-out "you answered your own question." Please don't do it again. I do not agree that the book recommends "manipulation" as most commonly understand the term. For example, dictionary.com defines manipulation as "to manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner." The book teaches social skills, including the skill of influencing others, but nothing in the book recommends behaving toward others unfairly or deviously. In fact, the book recommends seeking areas of mutual gain. I'm asking you to answer two very straightforward and specific questions about your claims, so please answer them or admit that you cannot because you're talking nonsense. Repeated now for the third time, the questions are: 1) What is your evidence for claiming the book is "for sales-reps"? 2) What is your evidence for claiming the book "promotes an American-Machiavellian approach? I dispute much in the rest of your post, but since you repeatedly seize upon every tangent and opportunity to evade my request, I'm not going to pursue any other lines of inquiry until you give something resembling a response.

The book was never intended to be a moral treatise, so knocking it for not living up to that standard is really silly. It's a practical guide to reducing conflict, seeking mutually beneficial outcomes, and being socially successful. That's it. It is also not meant to be a book about "speaking truth to power," although the book does make the point that there are ways to do so while maximizing one's chances for having a successful impact instead of only hardening positions. Most people, in fact, don't know how to productively resolve social conflicts, and they do blurt out what's on their minds too often for their own good. Worse, most people who have this problem don't realize they have it. This is why personality conflicts consistently rank as one of the top problems businesses have with their employees. I see people counterproductively complaining and criticizing each other nearly every day. Neither of my questions has been answered, so I repeat, what is your evidence for claiming the book is "for sales-reps" or that it "promotes an American-Machiavellian approach"? Please be specific.

What is the evidence behind your assertion that HTWFAIP is "for sales-reps"? I don't remember seeing that anywhere in the book or in Carnegie's other writings. On what do you base your assertion that it "promotes an American-Machiavellian approach"? What does that even mean? I guess if you consider not being a douche to people or taking an interest in them (Carnegie goes so far as to say "genuine interest") to be manipulation, as opposed to blurting out your true feelings to everyone in every situation, then yes, the book recommends "manipulation." I'd call it learning productive social behaviors.

An offer can be clear in its terms yet incomplete according to what the offeror had in mind. The offeree is not responsible for anything except the plain meaning of the offer. Having had no prior contact with this individual, and this being a first-to-arrive unilateral offer, I had no reason to invest my time making sure that there were no additional terms or preferences he wanted addressed. If I was going to help him craft and strengthen his offer, I would have charged a heck of a lot more than $100 for the legal services. But he didn't ask me to do so, nor did I have the obligation to inquire. I did, however, briefly explain why I felt Randi fit the criteria on his blog and then provided additional information in a follow up e-mail. If you're going to throw around serious accusations like "blackmail," you should understand what they mean first. Blackmail involves use of force or a threat to reveal damaging information. I in no way used force or threatened to do anything to this individual, much less reveal any hidden information as everything occurred out in the open for all to see. As I stated earlier, I think you are doing this individual a disservice by insulting his capacity to conduct his own affairs.

Most people are boring, but not everyone is, and that doesn't mean they aren't individualists. Learn how to communicate and befriend such people while seeking out those who can really challenge and inspire you intellectually. I recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People as a good primer.

I'm saying the opposite. The terms were clear enough to me where I felt I could meet them without requiring further clarification.

There is a world of difference between a formal customer-service-oriented business relationship between two parties and a unilateral offer specifying terms of performance to any takers in the market. I have no prior relationship with this man, nor did I want to invest my own valuable time and risk the opportunity by attempting to flesh out his own terms for him. I think people here are doing him a disservice by doubting his intellectual capacity for conducting his own affairs. My organization just paid a large sum of money to a contractor for work that didn't ultimately help us - that's the nature of business uncertainty and it doesn't negate the contractor's fulfillment of the terms of the contract. If you want to do extra work to satisfy your clients, that may make sense for you as someone who relies on such recommendations, but there is no moral or legal obligation to go above and beyond in that manner.

The words "cosmic injustice" are a link to an article about Thomas Sowell's book The Quest for Cosmic Justice, which explains what is meant by the term and why progressives mistakenly believe cosmic injustice can be eliminated through government.

Dream weaver - Perhaps true, but beyond the scope of the hypothetical. If we're going to speculate, the owner might not have realized he had a strong preference until seeing the color he disliked. JASKN - It's not my responsibility to tell Burgess what the information is worth to him. He is best positioned to decide that for himself.

If someone offered you $100 to paint the porch of his house without specifying a color, would you consider your performance of the task voided if upon reviewing the work he decided he didn't like the color you chose?

Yours, for ignoring Burgess's acknowledgement that it helped him refine and narrow his search. He also wrote an explanatory article using the links and information I sent him.

The Silicon Valley start-up scene illustrates how progressives (and even some capitalists) misunderstand the true purpose and value of market systems. Capitalism is beautiful because it converts micro-irrational behaviors into macro-rational outcomes for the benefit of all. Deserve's Got Nothing to Do with It: http://wp.me/p4yevN-6E

Integrity is the right word. The offer was for identifying an activist for reason, which Randi is. It was not for identifying a person he deems worthy of his scholarly attention.

Your "help, women are throwing thrmselves at me" narrative doesn't strike me as true. Maybe you are messing with us for laughs, or maybe you are deluding yourself about what the actual problem is, as others have hinted. Either way, I don't buy it and my B.S. meter is impeccable. I was calling the "Eva" troll out before pretty much anyone and he strung people along for months across multiple forums.

I'm more agnostic on the subject than you are. I don't think history is a good indication because there could be a point in technology beyond which low intelligence or ability becomes a bar to meaningful participation in the workforce. Maybe we are there now, or maybe it is 200 years from now. If robots are performing all the menial labor, those who can't perform skilled labor will be left out of the equation. Maybe they don't need to be on welfare - family or charity can take care of them (or they can convert sunlight to energy through their genetically modified skin or something) - but they won't be working if there is no unskilled work that needs doing.

LOL, at least you think you weren't awkward. But seriously, I think it's more about getting experiemce in the whole romantic relationship than just the act (although that's important too). I was very stupid in love with my first girlfriend and made terrible mistakes. A few relationships later and I was on much firmer footing to make important life decisions around them.

JASKN - What is your basis for the belief that there will always be productive labor available for anyone in the workforce? I can easily imagine a future in which technological advances and productivity gains have become so great that there is simply little use for unskilled labor anymore. What will happen when crops pick themselves...when roads no longer deteriorate...when manufacturing plants have no living human being on site (some like this already exist). Not everyone has the intelligence or the skill to participate in an economy like that. While I'm skeptical and detest the welfare state, I think it's very much an open question whether that trend has begun.

There is a parallel here with the issue Coase examined in his famous economics paper The Theory of The Firm, which is why firms exist instead of everyone simply acting as a free agent and contracting as necessary. His insight was that transaction costs are high, so firms address the problem by providing efficiency and stability. I think it's much the same as marriages in the way of pooled resources, legal protections, and credible commitment. It's prohibitively risky for many to buy a house, a car, and have kids together if either partner is free to run out the moment they feel like it. Of course the tool can be misused and become itself destructive if the parties don't do their due diligence and take the commitment seriously. This is just like how any legal instrument can become a noose if the terms are violated with reckless abandon.

JASKN - I respect you as a poster, but I feel like you're playing word games now. Divorce can be destructive, generally, while there can also be situations where the net outcome is better (exceptions). The context of the thread was certain people claiming divorce is a force of good and there should be more of it. This is plainly untrue.

It's an open question whether the jobs that were lost in the recession will ever come back or if large portions of the population simply aren't wanted or needed in the workforce anymore. Workforce participation is the lowest it's been in four decades and "disability" is skyrocketing, sweeping such individuals under the rug. We'll have to wait to see if the robots need swaths of unskilled labor to maintain and operate them as happened in the industrial revolution, or if we really are past the point where many can meaningfully participate in society.

JASKN - I'm not arguing in nearly such absolutist terms. Every situation will be different. What I am saying is divorce is extremely destructive to children emotionally and financially, so parents should try to stick it out if they can, even if it's very difficult to do so. Nicky - You win - divorce is wonderful. Marriage is for religious conservative dopes and serves no purpose. Everyone who gets married is stupid and you are smarter than all of them. Divorce has no negative impact on young kids. Everyone should get divorced. Satisfied?

If this poster is for real, which I highly doubt, stop over thinking life and start experiencing it. You're going to start out awkward and you're going to make mistakes, so make them as early as possible and learn from them so you'll be ready for the big leagues when it really counts.

That's me - Mr. Conservative just towing the party line. Besides, of course, my support of gay marriage... and sex education... and contraception... and abortion rights... and about a thousand other libertarian positions you're ignoring. Because I'm a libertarian. "No reason"? You mean besides the obvious fact that each parent will be seeing far less of the child, and the natural guilt the child will feel, and that most of the child's important milestones will become awkward and socially sensitive affairs? I see, so even if standard of living is cut in half and the child's academic opportunities are drastically curtailed (college was expensive last time I checked) as long as a child's basic material needs like food and clothing are met, it's all the same.

You're just being argumentative to the point of absurdity at this point. If you're going to seriously argue that divorced parents can on average emotionally and financially provide for children just as well as married parents, there is no point to continuing the conversation because all the data and common sense tells us you are wrong.

She and her mother had to move out of their house because resources were no longer being pooled to allow them to afford it (the biggest advantage of marriage). She also had to start going to public school because the family could no longer afford private. The mother had to work a second job, so she was alone at home a large portion of the time. Marriage is not fundamentally religious in nature. It is a legal instrument that pools lives and resources together to stabilize expectations and improve quality of life. The bad example set is giving up on long term commitments that affect other people, especially when it's children. Whatever the problems spouses have with each other, they should come second to financially and emotionally providing for the children they chose to have together. Work it out.