Cute Beats Smart is an excellent curative to this horror.
Recent Bluessky Posts- Problem is there's a point at which money has power means marginal utility goes up again. And there's another point further along where people do anticipatory acts for you in hopes of a reward, so you don't even have to spend as long as you have a big pile. Utility isn't just stuff and services. May 30, 2026 Michael Froomkin
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Not for those of us who are smart but not cute it doesn’t. I’d want, at least, buzzsaws and laser beams on my robot.
Oh please, professor. It’s obvious that the little, innocent-looking robot is using its cuteness to manipulate others into doing the work for it – and then, of course, it gets the credit at the end, not the 20-30 faceless people it duped into doing its navigation for it. It fooled everyone and came out on top.
Shoot, it probably WROTE the 48 laws!
Ha great comments all. I vote for at least one buzzsaw, just on principle. But buzzsaws tend to work against the cuteness factor…
Niccolo Machiavelli had better and more useful advice in the Prince than can be found in the 48 laws.
I got bored reading them (and I’m an avid reader with a pretty good attention-span); it seems like a lot of mental effort to be a scheming, lying, manipulating parasite. And there’s no guarantee that other people will be as dumb as you need them to be in order for the 48 laws to work for you.
Axelrod’s Evolution of Co-operation has a simpler strategy: Co-operate with others as your default strategy, retaliate against those who take advantage of your co-operation.
My own (derivative) theory is that there are two primary types of interaction possible, and two derivative types: The primary two are co-operating and competing, and the derivative two are competing-under the guise of co-operating and co-operating under the guise of competing. both derivative types of interactions can also be referred to as cheating. Cheating is almost impossible to avoid when trying to satisfy the needs of multiple parties, but the best strategy for happiness is to minimize the cheating.