I saw this interesting post, “Intelligence Is Not Magic, But Your Threshold For “Magic” Is Pretty Low.”
None of these examples are that impressive. I would say someone who can learn advanced math is more impressive than being able to draw a skyline from memory. In the case of El Chapo running his drug business from his prison cell, this was in Mexico, where corruption is quotidian.
For some reason, people equate accuracy at pointless or non-remunerative tasks (e.g. geolocating a photo, memorizing chess moves, or drawing a picture from memory), as being more impressive than synthesizing information for a useful application. The public tends to be more impressed by savants, who perform repetitive tasks with high precision, than by those who excel at achieving broader, more complex goals. In reality, many of these savants likely have a lot of free time due to high rates of mental illness and being unemployable, not that they are smarter or otherwise special.
An example that stands out is Chris Voss, a retired FBI negotiator whose purported persuasion skills have garnered considerable media coverage and a public speaking and consulting career.
Example 5: Chris Voss, an FBI negotiator. This is a much less well-known example, I learned it from o3, actually. Chris Voss has convinced two armed bank robbers to surrender (this isn’t the only example in his career, of course) while only using a phone, no face-to-face interactions, so no opportunities to read facial expressions. Imagine that you have to convince two dudes with guns who are about to get homicidal to just…chill. Using only a phone. And you succeed.
But I have long argued that the claimed efficacy social engineering and persuasion techniques are examples of survivorship bias hyped-up by the media and pop culture. If thousands of hackers use social engineering, then it’s statistically likely at least some may succeed, but this does not make it more effective compared to other methods. It also overlooks the enormous cost in terms of human labor to perform social engineering at scale, as it’s harder to automate compared to other methods of hacking.
Social engineering, related to spear phishing, requires having to create custom scripts for the recipient, and having to do considerable research on the target, without any assurance of success.
In the case of the hostage negotiations or negotiating with bank robbers, it helps significantly that the agent is at an enormous power advantage compared to the robber, whose only options are to die in a shootout or to comply. So it’s not so much that his negotiation techniques are super-effective, but that having the backing of a well-armed police force or agency carries much more weight than just words.
Or for foreign policy, when Trump told Iran to back down, this was with the backing of the of the US military, and his show of force meant his threat was credible. Iran folded the next day. By comparison, the Russia-Ukraine situation has been a stalemate forever, because America’s strong words against Russia are not backed by an actual credible threat of action.
I have also observed that negotiation or persuasion techniques are useless, not only if there’s a power imbalance as described above, but also negotiating with someone who is smarter or who sticks to a script. I recall many times trying to negotiate lower prices or free trials and can count the number of success on a single hand and still have five fingers remaining.
This is because the free trial is useless to ascertain the functionality of the product, so a longer trial would be useful, so you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place of a useless trial, or having to commit to a purchase for a product that may not work as hoped.
People have jobs and rules to follow, and tend to not deviate from that. If the price is $xx.xx, then that is how much you will pay. Someone who is easily swayed by a smooth talker likely won’t remain employed for long. Over time, this kind of selection pressure leads to a workforce that is less impressionable. Like advice, it’s just bullshit in the end.