Vishal: I used to be a fool. Maybe I still am. But at least now I have a chance of getting wiser.

Bill: What’s changed for you? 

Vishal: Here are seven things:

1. I think about what’s worth pursuing in life instead of just assuming that what I’m doing is worthwhile.

2. I don’t just dismiss things that are out of my current understanding or daily sphere of operation. I’m more inclined to learn something just for the sake of knowing it.

3. I’m able to discern when there’s something wrong with someone’s line of reasoning even if I’m not able to say exactly what it is. Before I wouldn’t even have a sense that anything was amiss.

4. I’m more inclined to pause a conversation to clarify definitions. For example, you and I might both say that we want to help our kids live well. But what do we mean by “well”? What does that mean to you and to me?

5. I’m better at extracting the kernel of truth in what other people say. Before I would try to find something in what they said simply so I could agree or disagree with them. But I wouldn’t put the effort into understanding what they were saying. 

6. Humility: I have a clearer sense of what I don’t know.

7. Patience: I realize that it takes time for me to internalize the lessons I’m learning and to allow those things to change different parts of my life.

Bill: What direction do you think your life might have taken if you hadn’t changed in these ways?

Vishal: I’ve always been pretty good at getting what I want, so there are many roads I could have taken. Back when we started working together, I wanted to become a New York Times bestselling author. I can see a version of my life where I might have done that—a version in which I would’ve been a fake intellectual peddling biased messages in some echo chamber: no substance in my thoughts or writing, no critical reflection, just confirmation bias re-echoing talking points on social media platforms, blogs, or books. 

Maybe I would’ve been using libertarian rhetoric to pump crypto currency like Pomp or Balaji. Maybe I would’ve been using liberal identity politics to pump false claims of social injustice. Maybe I would’ve been using conservative us-versus-them rhetoric to stoke false fears of government robbery. Maybe I would’ve found clever ways of packaging shallow thinking like Naval Ravikant or Tim Ferriss. Whatever it was, I would’ve worked my ass off to master the echo chamber’s talking points. But I never would’ve  stopped to examine those points. I never would’ve sought out smart people who disagreed with me and worked at understanding their reasons for disagreeing with me. I would’ve instead thought, felt, and acted according to the echo chamber’s script. Mine would’ve been a life straight out of Orwell’s 1984. 

Bill: When did things start changing for you?

Vishal: One of our first talks, you asked me a really uncomfortable question: “Why do you want to be a New York Times bestselling author?” I thought, “Why the fuck not?!” You listened patiently and observed that I sounded like I was just seeking other people’s admiration. I knew you were right. But it took me a while to change my mind. Looking back now, my patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting were aligned with someone like Tim Ferriss—trying to discover the best means of achieving an end without questioning whether the end is worthwhile.

Bill: And now?

Vishal: Now I reflect on the ends that I pursue in life. For example, when we first met, my goal was to be a rich and famous writer. After working with you, my goal is to be a competent writer. You had me reflect on what's worth doing and what's worth writing about. 

I recall feeling frustrated that we didn’t produce a blog post for almost a year. I went into my production mode and demanded that we produce 25 posts for the Think But How blog. Looking back, I see that my old paradigm had taken hold again: production, production, production. I didn’t care as much about learning the craft. I was still chasing shallow goals as a writer.

So the path you got me on was to reflect on things I wanted in life. I started asking myself, “What's worth pursuing?” 

I remember you said that if I wanted to be a better writer I needed to work on being a better thinker and get clear on what I was trying to say. I was like, “What the fuck is he talking about?” I was arrogant. I thought I already knew what to say. But as we started working together I was like, “Holy shit! He's right!” 

You helped me realize that my main goal was to be a family man—that my kids and my wife were the most important things in my life. Looking back, I see now that I’d been too focused on getting what I wanted instead of getting fulfillment in life.

Someone recently asked me, what is one thing that you admire about Bill? I said, “Bill models things that he teaches me.” That is something I had never found. Most people tell you things that they don’t do themselves. Heck, my dad didn’t follow his own advice. 

So anyhow, that's the journey I’ve been on. I certainly think I'm a better thinker and writer.  

Bill: What are some of the ways in which you see yourself being a better thinker?

Vishal: You’ve gotten me to internalize self-questioning. For example: “What is the definition?” “What is the claim (not who’s saying it)?” “What is the argument?” 

The other day I was talking to a friend. Something was off about the way he was approaching the topic, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. It took me some time to figure it out: he wasn’t actually interested in evaluating claims. He was instead interested in making judgments. He had an inventory of stereotypes—like conservative versus liberal, or rich versus poor—and would try to slot people into those stereotypes so he could judge them. Rather than listening to what people were saying and understanding their reasoning, he would instead fixate on something—like a word or phrase—that would give him license to stereotype the speaker. That way he could agree or disagree, accept or dismiss. His goal was judgment not understanding. His thinking was simplistic, almost like a teenager hearing one thing and thinking that he figured out the whole world. 

Another example that comes to mind is the progress my business partner and I have been making on our investment project. My partner is sharp. He's able to see all sorts of patterns in the market, but he’s not great at communicating his insights. I’ve been working to formulate our observations as principles that we can apply to specific cases. 

Bill: How would things have been different if you’d had conversations with your investment partner in the past?

Vishal: I would’ve tried just to find some way of agreeing or disagreeing with him. I wouldn’t have tried to understand what he was saying—the kinds of patterns he was seeing. As a result, I might never have gotten to share those insights, and I wouldn’t have had any way of systemizing them. I also wouldn’t have spent any time trying to describe problems. Instead I would’ve assumed that I already understood the problem, and tried to fast-forward to finding a solution. 

One more thing I’ve noticed: I’m able to make better use of expert advice. I’m better at asking the right questions and focusing on the right things. I also have the humility to accept my blind spots. 

Bill: What do you still struggle with?

Vishal: I’m still having a hard time seeking knowledge for its own sake. My current mindset is that I want to learn something so I can use it in some practical application. But I know that Aristotle talks about philosophical contemplation—understanding just for the sake of understanding—as the most satisfying activity humans can engage in. I think you’re a living example of that, but I still struggle with it. Perhaps I just need to be patient. I’ll get there.  

Vishal: There’s an expression: “Fake it till you make it.” Can someone really fake it till they make it? 

Bill: It depends on what “making it” amounts to. Suppose you’re in a domain in which success depends on having and using real abilities. In that case, faking it can’t make it. Think of sports. If you don’t have the relevant abilities, you don’t succeed. Even if you initially con people into believing you have those abilities, success doesn’t depend on what people believe. It depends on excelling in the athletic contest itself, and that requires having and using the relevant abilities. The same is true of any domain in which success depends on having ability instead of merely getting people to believe you have ability.

Vishal: Does the point about sports translate to life as a whole? In Ask Aristotle, you talk about the analogy between complex activities like sports and human life as a whole. Aristotle thinks that living is a complex activity, so you can apply some of the same reasoning both to sports and to life. Is that true when it comes to faking it?

Bill: It is. Faking it doesn’t make it in sports, and it doesn’t make it in life either. You’ve just touched on the reason why: life is a complex activity. Doing that activity well requires having and using certain abilities: the virtues. If you don’t have those abilities, then you aren’t going to live well, just as you aren’t going to play a sport well if you don’t have the relevant skills. 

Vishal: So what happens when you don’t have the abilities you need to play the game of life well?

Bill: If you don’t have those abilities, you won’t live well. The same thing happens if you try to play a sport without having the relevant skills: you don’t play well. The difference is that you can choose not to play a sport. When people are really bad at a sport, and don’t want to play, they can just quit. But you can’t just quit the game of life. You’re forced to play. So imagine what it would be like if you were forced to play a sport you didn’t have the skills to play well. You’d end up failing and failing and failing, but you couldn’t just quit. You’d have to go on playing really badly, never getting better, and deriving very little enjoyment from it. Something like that happens to people who don’t have the virtues. 

One of the really sad things about fakers is that they set themselves up for this kind of failure. They doom themselves to self-frustration. They want to be fulfilled in life just like everyone else, but they prevent themselves from achieving fulfillment. Being fulfilled in life requires a lot of humble, patient work. Yet fakers avoid that kind of work for reasons we talked about before (what’s real not fake). 

Vishal: So you’ve been talking about domains like sports in which success depends on having and using abilities. And life as a whole is like that too. But what about domains in which success doesn’t depend on that. I’m thinking of situations like the politician or the sales person who lies to get what they want. Can they fake it till they make it?

Bill: Politics and sales are confidence games. The goal is to convince people to believe something and to give you something because of that belief: your money, your vote—something. If that’s what success in that domain is—if that’s the kind of game you’re playing—then maybe you can fake your way to success because in that case, you just have to persuade people of something. There might be no reckoning beyond that goal the way there would be in, say, sports. 

Vishal: What do you mean by “reckoning”?

Bill: I mean some further measure of success beyond just people believing something. If I convince you that I’m a good basketball player, there’s a way of determining whether I really am a good player that has nothing to do with whether or not you believe it. It instead has everything to do with whether I have the relevant skills. But in games like politics or sales, there might not be any further measure of success. I just have to convince people to vote for me, or write me a check, or buy my product. It doesn't matter whether I deliver on something further after that. It doesn't matter whether I'm lying. It doesn't matter whether I have no intention of delivering something further. All I'm trying to do is get money or a vote from you over the short term. If that short-term goal is the only one that matters to me, then yeah, I can fake it in order to make it.  

Vishal: But if people follow-up with you… I mean, they might expect to see some further results in the longer term, and they're going to be disappointed if you don’t deliver. 

Bill: Right. The thing is many fakers don’t care about that. They think short term, just like many scammers do. The con man just goes for short-term successes, and then moves from one town to the next to avoid crossing paths with people who will hold him accountable. Fakers do something similar. Many politicians, for instance, fake it in order to get elected. Once they’re elected, they try to move on to another position. They don’t care about making good on any promises. They just care about advancing from one position to the next.

Vishal: But going back to what we were saying before: if you’re successful at these short-term confidence games, that doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful at life as a whole? I’m reminded of Aristotle’s quote, “One swallow does not make a spring.” Fulfillment in life is a long-term thing.

Bill: Yes, it’s a long-term thing that requires constant practice, like a sport. It’s just that the abilities you’re practicing aren’t skills but virtues. 

Vishal: We’ve been talking a lot about fakers and what’s fake. I’m now feeling unclear what’s real instead of fake. What is real?

Bill: What’s real is that we’re human beings. We’re biological, social, emotional, and rational beings who are striving to survive and to thrive. What it takes for us to survive and thrive isn’t up to us, any more than it’s up to a plant that it needs water, soil, and sunlight to survive and thrive. We have to understand the things it takes for us to thrive—what kinds of activities compose human flourishing—and dedicate ourselves to those activities. 

Vishal: What are those activities?

Bill: Any activities that use the virtues. They’re activities, for instance, that require us to be patient, or humble, or to manage hardship, or to exercise self-moderation. There are many activities like this: playing an instrument, playing sports, running a business, learning new things, writing—the list goes on. 

Vishal: Can you say more about how these activities can involve the virtues?

Bill: Suppose you decide you’re going to learn to play the violin. So you start taking lessons. It turns out you’re not very good. In fact, it turns out you’ll never be very good. Do you quit? A faker might. A faker doesn’t want to get better. A faker instead wants social status. Once the faker recognizes that he’s not going to gain status as a great violinist, the activity has nothing to offer him. So he quits.

But someone who’s being real isn’t concerned with social status. Someone who’s real is concerned with living well. Someone who’s real sees that learning how to play violin is worthwhile even if he’s never going to be good at it. He knows that if something is worth doing it’s worth doing badly.

Vishal: It sounds like the difference between someone who lip syncs something as opposed to someone who sings in their real voice.

Bill: That’s a nice analogy. 

Vishal: Do you have a concrete example of someone you’ve known who’s been real in learning something?

Bill: I remember when I was in college, there was a guy in one of my Latin classes who was in his mid-50s. He wasn’t going to class for a degree, he was going just because he wanted to learn Latin. He wasn't the best student. He struggled to master morphology. He was never going to be a star Latinist. It didn't matter to him. All that mattered was learning how to read Latin—or on a deeper level, all that mattered was growth. He wanted to extend himself and his abilities. Doing that meant humble, patient dedication to something he thought was worth doing even if it would never earn him social status. What it promised to earn him instead was a better life. 

Fakers think about gaining recognition or admiration or other indicators of social status. People who are real think about doing something worthwhile with their lives. They think, “Getting better at this activity is worth my time and effort. I’d rather invest my time and effort and be a mediocre chess player or a mediocre pianist, than be somebody who doesn’t play chess or piano. I’d rather work at writing, or singing, or math, or basketball, and be dedicated to growing in whatever ways I can grow than simply consuming other people’s output.”

Vishal: Can I ask you a personal question?

Bill: You can ask.

Vishal: Do you apply this to your life?

Bill: I try to find opportunities to push myself beyond my comfort zone to learn new things, sure.

Vishal: What’s an example?

Bill: A couple years ago, I thought I’d try a new martial art. My background was in Taekwondo—a hard, striking art—so I thought I’d try something really different: aikido. The experience was utterly humiliating. I thought, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” It took me a while to understand what I was doing wrong, and how to do better. But that kind of learning experience is good. It teaches the virtues of humility, patience, and hard work. A few months ago I had a similar itch to try something new. This time, instead of trying a new martial art, I decided to go off script and learn salsa dancing instead. Once again, the experience was utterly humiliating. But again, that kind of experience is healthy: it teaches humility, patience, and hard work. That's the kind of experience that enables you to grow. It builds and uses the virtues.

Vishal: I think it also teaches you empathy.

Bill: How so?

Vishal: When you practice new activities you practice humility, patience, and hard work yourself. So when you teach someone like me who doesn’t know as much about writing or thinking, you’re able to tap into some of the humility and patience you learned when you were in my shoes. You’re like, “Oh, I've been a beginner. I've been there.” So you end up having empathy for somebody who’s working hard at learning a new activity that's worthwhile. 

Bill: I get what you’re saying. Yes, I think that’s right. You’re able to be more patient with someone who’s struggling to learn new stuff because you’re keenly aware of what's involved in that struggle.

Vishal: Right. If I were to start teaching you Bhangra, the Punjabi dance, I would empathize with your situation: I’d know that you don't know the beat, or the basic moves, or the footwork. I’d know I’ve gotta teach you from the ground up, and can't expect you to just do it. That’s what I mean by “empathy.” Or like when you’re a parent, empathy or compassion for your child becomes apparent when you’re helping them learn simple things like addition and subtraction. You take those skills for granted in your adult life, but if you think of it, you’re like, “Holy shit, that actually took me years to learn. I forgot how much work it takes.” 

You were just saying that fakers value social status whereas people who are real, value competence and growth. What are some of the other values that distinguish fakers from people who are real?

Bill: Most of the behaviors that characterize fakers flow from that one desire for social status. 

Vishal: Is there a simple way of encapsulating the difference between faker behavior and the behavior of people who are being real?

Bill: Hmm. I’m not sure what I’m about to say will encapsulate every difference between the two, but one thing I’ve noticed is that fakers generally value things that are easy over things that are hard.

Vishal: What do you mean?

Bill: Fakers are fond of things like talking, imagining, speculating, naysaying, mocking, complaining, and criticizing. These things are much easier than the alternatives. For example, talking is easier than acting, or committing to action, or following through on that commitment. Acting, committing, and following through are much harder than simply moving your mouth. They require making changes in the real world.

Likewise, imagining and speculating are easy. Fakers can imagine and speculate all day. But evaluating claims for truth or falsity, solving real problems, understanding a domain—these are all much harder. 

So fakers will talk all day, imagine all day, bullshit all day. But they won't act, or commit, or follow through. Likewise, fakers won’t evaluate claims for truth or falsity, or won’t solve real problems. But they’ll complain a lot and criticize a lot. 

Vishal: I’m reminded again of sports pundits. 

Bill: Exactly right. They’re like the guy in the stands who’s constantly booing players and whining about his team. Easy for him to talk, complain, and criticize. He’s not the one out on the field.

Vishal: You said before I want to go back to: fakers imitate without understanding. 

Bill: Fakers do pretty much everything they do without understanding. 

Vishal: Can you say more? 

Bill: Understanding is hard work. Not only do you have to know something, you also have to know the reasons for it—the Why or the How that explains it. It’s one thing to know that the sky is blue; it’s another to know why it’s blue, or how the atmosphere scatters light of different wavelengths. Understanding requires real knowledge, but gaining real knowledge requires humility, patience, and hard work. Generally, fakers aren’t up for these things. They instead default to easy substitutes for real understanding. 

Vishal: Like what?

Bill: Naysaying and mockery are common ones. Naysaying something—rejecting it without understanding—is easy. You don’t have to know or understand anything to simply say, “No!” Similarly, there’s something about everyone that’s ridiculous, so mocking people is easy. But reflecting on your own shortcomings and other people’s talents—that’s hard. So fakers default to mockery instead of praise, and self-aggrandizement instead of humble self-acceptance. 

Vishal: So what I’m hearing is that fakers don’t want to do hard things like learning. They’re not up for the effort it takes. They just want to pretend they already have knowledge or skill. 

Bill: Correct: they want to look as though they have the knowledge or skills they never had the humility, patience, and work ethic to gain in reality. That’s why fakers are often poor learners. 

Learning requires humility. Humble people can admit there are things they don’t know or can’t do, or rules of conduct they can’t violate. They can acknowledge that there are standards of knowledge, or skill, or conduct independent of them, and they allow those standards to make demands on their time, effort, and attention. They make an earnest effort to meet those standards, and work harder to meet them if they initially fall short. Learning can’t happen without this kind of humility. It can’t happen without hard work and patience too, but it starts with humility. If you can’t admit that you don’t know something, you’re not going to take steps to learn it. The same is true if you admit you don’t know something, but reject the value of knowing it. Fakers often fail in both ways: they’ll both fail to admit they don’t know something and dismiss the value of the things they don’t know. 

As a result, fakers are often poor learners. It’s not that they lack the potential to learn. It’s that they don’t tap the well of potential they have. Fakers want to appear as if they’re supremely knowledgeable or competent. But maintaining that appearance is incompatible with admitting they don’t know or can’t do something. 

So fakers often avoid situations in which they’ll be required to learn new things. They're afraid of losing the status they cherish. They realize that entering a domain in which they’ll have to learn new things will likely bruise their ego. It’ll require them to occupy a lower rung on the social ladder: not an esteemed expert, but a novice. 

Vishal: How are fakers related to bullies? Fakers often have a posse of flunkies. I’ve noticed that often bullies do too.

Bill: Being a bully is different from being a faker, but the same person can be both. 

What defines a bully is the desire to harm or intimidate people who are vulnerable. Fakers don’t necessarily want to harm or intimidate people. Fakers just want to enhance their social status, and what defines them is that they misrepresent themselves to accomplish that. Bullies, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily trying to enhance their social status. They can be motivated by all sorts of things. 

Vishal: What are some examples? 

Bill: A bully might be motivated by, say, some deep-seated anger. The bully keeps that anger on a leash, but lets it loose when there’s no risk of retaliation—in an anonymous online forum, for instance, or in whispered gossip and back-stabbing in which there’s no opportunity to question or challenge the truth of what the bully says. A bully might also be motivated by sadism: the bully might enjoy watching other people suffer and enjoy the feeling of causing that suffering. These motivations are different from the one that defines fakers.

Vishal: But a faker can also be a bully?

Bill: Yes, a faker can also be a bully: harming or intimidating other people might be one way a faker tries to gain social status. The prototypical bullies depicted in popular movies tend to be fakers. Think of high school bullies like Biff in the movie Back to the Future. He tries to enhance his social status by convincing other people he’s tough. One way he tries to convince them is by picking on people who are too weak to retaliate. It’s his way of saying, “No one can stand up to me. There’s no one standing above me with the power to hold me accountable.” 

But picking on weaker people isn’t a real indicator of toughness. That’s why people challenge bullies with the line, “Pick on someone your own size!” Picking on someone smaller or weaker isn’t an accurate measure of how tough someone is. An accurate measure would be fighting someone who doesn’t have a size or strength advantage—that would be an apples-to-apples comparison. If you win in that kind of contest, then you can lay a legitimate claim to being tough. But that’s not what the bully does.

Vishal: In these movies, the bully is defeated when someone stands up to him. Is that  the way it actually works? 

Bill: Kind of. Recall that the faker-bully is essentially saying, “No one can stand up to me.” That message is proven false when two things happen: 

Individual Resistance: someone stands up to the bully, and 

Social Support: the group that the bully is trying to convince of his toughness supports the person who’s standing up to the bully. 

The combination of Individual Resistance and Social Support exposes the bully as a faker. It says to the bully, “You act as if no one can stand up to you, but this person is standing up to you. You’re not as tough as you make yourself out to be. You’re a fake!” When people realize the faker-bully is a fake, they’re no longer as fearful as they were. They realize that the faker-bully’s terrifying image was just that: an image that doesn’t accurately reflect how the faker-bully really is. Their increased confidence breaks the faker-bully’s hold over their minds. They see more clearly who the faker-bully really is, and that newfound clarity and confidence makes the faker-bully doubt whether he can succeed in fooling them anymore.

Vishal: Can you have Individual Resistance by itself? Can that be enough to stop the faker-bully?

Bill: Individual Resistance by itself doesn’t break the hold the faker-bully has on the social group. It just makes the faker-bully more cautious around the individual who’s resisted him. The faker-bully knows that one person isn’t fooled by the faker-bully’s false image, so the faker-bully doesn’t try misrepresenting himself to that person anymore. But the faker-bully will still try to fool the rest of the group, and seize opportunities to bully others. 

If you really want to defeat the faker-bully, the social group has to make it clear that they see the faker-bully’s false image for what it is. One way of doing that is to rally around the person who’s making a stand against the faker-bully. It’s a way of saying to the faker-bully, “This person says you’re a fake, and we agree!” That tells the faker-bully that the group won’t be fooled by his misrepresentations.

Vishal: What you’ve said about faker-bullies reminds me of something I’ve noticed with fakers in general.

Bill: What’s that?

Vishal: Suppose there’s some guy—call him ‘Alfred’—who calls out a faker. Like suppose he calls Tim Ferriss a faker, and he has good reasons for calling Ferriss a fake. But Tim Ferriss keeps on doing what he’s doing. He just ignores what people like Alfred say. It’s only when a group of people takes Alfred’s criticisms seriously that something changes. So it seems like the points about Individual Resistance and Social Support apply to fakers in general, not just faker-bullies.

Bill: Correct. The faker thrives on misrepresentation—just like the con man. To stop the faker, the social group has to make it clear that they can’t be fooled by the misrepresentation. That’s true whether the misrepresentation takes the form of bullying or something else.

To be continued...

Vishal: There’s something else I’ve noticed. I’m wondering whether it fits into the faker framework you’ve been describing.

Bill: What’s that?

Vishal: Sometimes fakers are surrounded by people who actually believe in them—like in the movie Mean Girls. The main mean girl has a posse of other girls who always follow her around and do what she wants. 

Bill: Yes, that behavior fits into the faker framework. Fakers often surround themselves with a posse of people who are willing to go along with whatever they think, or say, or do: yes-men, sycophants, or flunkies. Even if fakers fail to get the admiration and respect of other people, they can rely on getting admiration and respect from their flunkies (or at least a simulation of admiration and respect). 

Vishal: Why do you say “simulation”?

Bill: Sometimes faker flunkies are themselves fakers. They misrepresent their own thoughts and feelings. They want to be around the faker because they think the faker can get them something they want—some type of social status, for instance. So they pretend to admire and respect the faker, but in reality, they resent the faker in the same way the faker resents real masters. 

Vishal: Do flunkies do anything else for fakers?

Bill: Two things: 

First, they give fakers an inventory of people to blame when the faker fails or makes a mistake. 

Second, they give fakers an audience in front of whom the faker can mock or criticize people whose social status the faker wants to lower.

Vishal: Can you tell me more?

Bill: Sure. I mentioned before that fakers see blame as a threat to their social status. So they try to avoid blame by placing it somewhere else—often on other people. Their flunkies provide convenient targets.   

Vishal: What about the final flunky function you mentioned: giving fakers an audience?

Bill: Fakers want to occupy a high place in the social hierarchy. That can happen either by raising themselves up or by pulling other people down. As a result, fakers treat other people’s successes and failures in ways that are equal and opposite the ways they treat their own. If fakers exaggerate their own accomplishments, they diminish other people’s. If fakers minimize their own shortcomings and failures, they magnify other people’s. If they avoid blaming themselves, they assign blame to others. If they promote the value of the things they know about, they mock or denigrate the things other people do. The many ways that fakers try to pull other people down are included in categories (3) and (4) of the faker behavior matrix we described earlier:

Vishal: Sure, I remember that.

Bill: Some of the ways fakers pull other people down require an audience. They need someone to witness their mockery and denigration of others. They need someone to hear their gibes and criticisms. They need someone to go along with them so they can feel like they’re succeeding in pulling other people down. Faker flunkies provide fakers with the audience they need.

To be continued…

Vishal: You were saying that fakers misrepresent themselves to gain social status.

Bill: That’s right. Enhancing their social status is what fakers aim to do.

Vishal: How do fakers go about doing that?

Bill: Faker behaviors belong to four broad categories:

1. magnifying things that raise their social status,

2. minimizing things that might lower their social status,

3. magnifying things that lower other people’s social status, and

4. minimizing things that might raise other people’s social status.

Vishal: So when you talk about fakers trying to enhance their social status, you’re saying that they try either to raise themselves up or to pull other people down?

Bill: Correct. Fakers want to occupy a high position in the social hierarchy. That means a position above other people. The way fakers see it, they can occupy that position either by raising themselves above other people, or by pulling other people down below them. We can represent how they do these things in a 2x2 matrix:

Vishal: Tell me more about each of the four categories. What are some examples?

Bill: Let’s start with category (1). Behaviors in category (1) include seeking titles and dropping names. Fakers love conspicuous signals of status like titles: VP of this, or Director of that. And they often drop the names of famous people in ways that suggest they have close contact with them: “The other day I was talking to [Famous Name]…” They think that flashing a title or dropping a famous name will raise their social position—that people will hear the title or name and think, “Wow! This person is really special,” and treat them with the deference and respect they crave.

Vishal: I’m reminded of Tim Ferriss again. There are things he calls “credibility indicators”—like having ‘MD’ or ‘PhD’ after your name. He says, “The so-called expert with the most credibility indicators, whether acronyms or affiliations, is often the most successful in the marketplace, even if other candidates have more in-depth knowledge… How, then, do we go about acquiring credibility indicators in the least time possible?” (The 4-hour Workweek, page 184)

Bill: The indicators he’s talking about are conspicuous signals of social status. Magnifying those is a faker behavior in category (1).

Vishal: What else is in category (1)?

Bill: Fakers will often exaggerate or lie about their roles in bringing about good results. They'll take credit for other people's work, or suggest they themselves played a bigger role in contributing to some admired outcome than they played in fact. On the flip side, they’ll minimize the contributions of other people even if those people did the lion’s share of the work.

Vishal: This reminds me of what I’ve seen some managers do. I was once on a sales team. Whenever we had an unusually good sales day, our manager would take all the credit. He’d talk as if it was his decision-making that produced the excellent results—even if he wasn’t there. On the other hand, when our team didn’t do so well, he would never take responsibility. He would instead blame me.

Bill: That story represents a typical faker behavior in category (2). That category includes the many ways fakers try to avoid blame—and not just blame. Fakers also try to avoid accountability, to avoid admitting ignorance or inability, to avoid hard, humble work—to avoid anything fakers think might lower their social status. Fakers are generally more concerned with avoiding these things than with achieving the best results. For example, they’ll avoid admitting mistakes or giving apologies even if that’s the best way of solving a problem or moving things forward. Even when it’s clear they’re in the wrong, they stop short of admitting error. They’ll blame other people, or external circumstances, or bad luck—anything but themselves. When fakers do issue apologies, they’re often fake apologies that exonerate them of any real responsibility: “I’m sorry you felt that way.”

Vishal: That’s interesting. Hearing you describe fakers, I think I’ve encountered a lot of them in my life. The problem is, I’ve found that they’re hard to spot in real time.

Bill: That’s true. Fakers are often hard to spot. The reason is that they tend to avoid high-accountability situations in which there are clear standards of evaluation and clear ways of tracking who’s responsible for what. They sense (correctly) that these are situations in which they’ll be exposed as fakers—situations in which they can’t succeed in taking credit for someone else’s good work, or avoiding blame for their own bad work, or exaggerating their contributions, or minimizing someone else’s. Fakers instead prefer situations in which there aren’t clear standards for evaluating what’s poor or excellent, or in which other people can’t monitor their performance.

Vishal: I’m reminded here of sports pundits. They’ll make all these bold predictions, and they’re often wrong. But there’s no accountability. No one calls them out for being wrong. Instead, they’ll emphasize the few times they’ve gotten lucky and been right, and just move on to making more bold predictions.

Bill: That’s typical of fakers. Fakers generally avoid admitting they don’t know something or can’t do something. Sometimes they’ll pretend to know things they don’t. When they can’t pretend, they’ll mock, criticize, or otherwise disparage the things they don’t know about. It’s their way of saying, “It’s true that I don’t know about that, but that’s because it’s not worth knowing. Someone with my ability or expertise doesn’t need to know about worthless things like that.” On the flip side, fakers will promote the value and importance of the things they do know about, and they’ll fanatically defend the value of their knowledge against any kind of criticism or slight.

Vishal: What’s an example?

Bill: Suppose somebody is faking knowledge of investments. They think their social status depends on looking like they know about money. Then somebody comes along and says, “Hey, what do you think about structured notes?” The faker doesn’t know anything about structured notes. Someone who’s real would be transparent about not knowing: “I don’t know about structured notes. Tell me more.” But that’s not what fakers do. Rather than admitting there’s more to know about money than they know in fact, rather than trying to learn and understand more, they’ll say, “Structured notes are bullshit.” Now, it could turn out that structured notes are bullshit, but to judge accurately that they’re bullshit, you first have to know something about them. Yet the faker doesn’t know about them. The faker rejects them outright. They perceive ignorance as a threat to their social standing. They imagine falsely that experts in a domain have nothing else to learn—that, say, a money expert knows everything there is to know about money. If that false assumption were true, then not knowing something about money would signal lack of expertise. So to protect themselves from that implication, fakers disparage the thing they don’t know about. They act as if it has no value—that it’s not worth knowing. This point about disparaging things they don’t know about illustrates another point: fakers don’t understand how real masters operate.

Vishal: Tell me more.

Bill: Fakers imagine that experts know everything there is to know about a domain—that there’s nothing else for experts to learn. Real experts know that’s false. They know firsthand that the more you learn about a domain, the more you realize how many things you don’t know. The faker hasn’t had this experience. They’ve never done the hard, humble work it takes to gain expertise. So the faker’s image of an expert is exactly that: an image—something the faker has invented in their own mind. They don’t understand what it’s like to be a real expert.

The same point applies to leadership. Fakers don’t understand real leadership. They don’t understand that real leaders lead by example and work harder than anyone. They only notice the fringe benefits of leadership—the social recognition that comes with it. Think of the sales manager you mentioned. If he’d been a real leader, he would’ve worked harder than anyone on your team. But he didn’t. He was a faker.

Fakers generally avoid hard, humble work that builds character and competence over time. They think hard work is for low-status people. As a result, fakers often deflect work. If you ask for their help with a problem, they won’t work to solve it—even if that’s their job. They’ll instead tell you how you can work to solve it. Telling you what to do gives fakers a feeling they really enjoy: feeling like they’re the boss. They imitate the aspect of leadership behavior that they find attractive: telling people what to do. But they imitate without understanding. Their effort is a facade—like a stage set: a simulation of the original without the depth that makes the real thing real.

To be continued…

Vishal: There’s something that confuses me about Tim Ferriss. Have you read any of his stuff?

Bill: No.

Vishal: He’s all about trying to get a result fast. For example, suppose you want to become a recognized expert at something. He says you start by giving a talk at some small local college. Put that on your resume, and then contact a bigger college and ask to give a talk there. Emphasize that you’ve spoken at College X to enhance your credibility. Rinse, repeat, and you eventually start giving talks in bigger and bigger venues. The thing is, he doesn’t say anything about gaining knowledge, or becoming good at something, or even just gaining basic competence. He says there’s a difference between being an expert and being perceived as one, and he’s interested in showing people how to be perceived as experts. What would you say about that?

Bill: It sounds like he’s a faker—or someone teaching people to be fakers.

Vishal: Wait! A faker? What’s a faker?

Bill: Fakers are people who misrepresent themselves to gain social status. They look at people who are truly excellent at something—masters in a domain. They witness how other people admire and respect masters, and want that admiration and respect for themselves. They could earn it by working to become masters—by acknowledging their deficiencies and putting in the time and effort it takes to get better. But that’s not what fakers do. Fakers want social status on the cheap. They don’t want to invest in becoming excellent. They’re less interested in excellence than in the social trappings of excellence—less interested in being good than seeming good. So they misrepresent themselves, their abilities, their accomplishments, their experience—anything they think will enhance their social status. 

Vishal: So Tim Ferriss is giving lessons in misrepresentation? 

Bill: That’s what it sounds like, yes. He’s telling you how to become a recognized expert. But he’s focusing on the “recognized” part of “recognized expert,” not the “expert” part. He’s telling you how to get people to treat you as if you’re an expert even if you’re really not. 

Vishal: And that’s what you mean by “social status,” when you say fakers misrepresent themselves to gain social status? 

Bill: Exactly. How other people treat you is a social thing. His goal is to get other people to treat you like an expert—to gain the status or recognition that would normally belong to real experts—without being a real expert. He’s not telling you how to become an expert—how to gain the knowledge and skills it takes to be one. He’s instead telling you how to look like an expert even if you aren’t one. That’s misrepresentation: making something seem different from what it really is. And the goal of this misrepresentation is social. 

Vishal: And misrepresentation for social gain is what defines fakers?

Bill: Yes. Fakers misrepresent themselves, or their abilities, or accomplishments, or interests, or commitments, in order to move up a social hierarchy. That’s not the only reason people misrepresent themselves. Sometimes people misrepresent themselves to gain other things—money, for instance. A con man doesn’t necessarily want to be respected like an expert. He just wants your money, and misrepresents himself in order to get that.

Vishal: So the con man isn’t a faker, but something else?

Bill: Right. We can make up another term to refer to people like the con man who misrepresent themselves not for social gain but for financial gain. Let’s just call them ‘scammers’.

Vishal: So fakers want social status, and scammers want money. But they’re similar because both of them…

Bill: Both of them misrepresent themselves to get what they want. They try to enhance appearance, not reality. In reality, the faker isn’t an expert, and in reality the scammer isn’t trustworthy. But the faker tries to make it look as if he’s an expert, and the scammer tries to make it look as if he’s trustworthy.

Vishal: Is misrepresentation the same as deception?

Bill: Not exactly, no. There are many forms of misrepresentation that don’t aim at deception. Fine art, for instance, often misrepresents things to achieve an aesthetic effect. For example, the hands on Michelangelo’s Moses are disproportionately large. Michelangelo was trying to express something about Moses’ character. Really knowing about Moses’ character requires knowing about Moses’ story as a whole. But Michelangelo was limited to the medium of marble. He had to try to express something about Moses’ strength and commitment using that static medium. He did so by exaggerating the size of Moses’ hands—a misrepresentation of human proportions. But the goal wasn’t to deceive the viewer about Moses’ character. On the contrary, the goal was to express a truth about his character. (Incidentally, the Greeks had a word for this kind of misrepresentation. They called it mimesis. It’s what Picasso was trying to get at when he said, “Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”) 

Vishal: So not all misrepresentation aims at deception?

Bill: Correct. But it’s true that when people misrepresent things, they’re often trying to deceive someone, and that’s what fakers do: they try to deceive other people into thinking they’re something they’re not. 

Vishal: Has anybody written about fakers? I mean has anyone given a systematic account of them? 

Bill: I don’t know of any, but I’m happy to tell you what I know. 

Vishal: That would be great! It seems to me that there are a lot of fakers out there—that there’s a whole industry built on being fake. Tim Ferriss is just one example. I’m also thinking of Instagram and Facebook, and all the other online platforms that people use to present images of themselves that don’t match reality. I think people would find it useful to know what fakers are and to have some tools for spotting them. 

Bill: Okay. Let’s start by filling out the picture of what fakers are. I’ve already given you a definition. Let’s talk about some common faker behaviors. 

Vishal: Cool!

To be continued…

Vishal: Jake asks, “How useful do you think psychedelics are when it comes to contemplating what it means to live a good life?”

Bill: The thing about psychedelics is that you don’t walk out of the experience with anything you didn’t walk in with. Different psychoactive substances can either stimulate or sedate parts of the nervous system. As a result, you might end up feeling some things more intensely or less intensely, or you might be able to perform certain tasks more efficiently or less efficiently. 

It’s not just psychoactive substances that can have these effects. Other things can too, like how much sleep you’ve had, whether you’re in a familiar or unfamiliar environment, how much you’ve had to eat, or your general level of fitness or stress. 

Take one common example: many people say they come up with their best ideas while in the shower or right before falling asleep. They’re in warm, safe environments with no distractions. They don’t have to worry about crossing a busy street, catching a train, taking something out of the oven, or driving their kids to soccer practice. So all the neural components that would normally be pulsing with activity as they monitor and respond to their environment are now quiet. That quiet allows them to focus on other things. It enables them to reflect on things they’ve experienced or imagine things they hadn’t previously imagined.   

Psychoactive substances can have a similar effect. They can quiet down parts of your nervous system so you’re able to focus on things you normally can’t. What they can’t do is give you access to some type of secret knowledge. 

I think some people imagine that there are multiple universes or worlds that are related to each other like different units in a townhouse. They imagine that we could break through the walls that separate our universe from others in something analogous to the way we could use a sledgehammer to break through the walls of a townhouse and step into your neighbor’s living room. The difference, they suppose, is that we break into other universes not using a sledgehammer, but using psychedelic drugs. And they imagine that visiting these other universes will enable them to learn things that people in our universe don’t usually know—secret things that no one would ever know unless they traveled to another universe. 

People with this kind of image tend to have a romanticized, fantastical view of psychedelics. They see them as tools that open portals to other worlds. That entire idea is just another version of the gnostic desire for secret wisdom that we talk about in the Ask Aristotle book. In fact, psychedelics are just substances that alter the balance of molecules in different parts of the brain. That’s it.  

Can psychedelics help you realize things you didn’t realize before? Sure. Just as quiet time in bed or in the shower can. Altering the activity levels of different parts of your nervous system can enable you to reflect on things you’ve experienced or imagine things you hadn’t previously imagined. But the raw material for that reflection and imagination has been with you the whole time. You just hadn’t taken the time to quiet yourself enough to process it. That’s what I mean when I say you don’t walk out of psychedelic experiences with anything you didn’t walk in with. 

Moreover, you don’t need psychedelics to quiet yourself and reflect on things. You can get the same results—and probably more consistently—if you make a routine of setting aside quiet time to meditate and reflect.  

I’ve nevertheless talked to a lot of people who have a gnostic view of psychedelics. Vishal has too. They think that psychedelics are going to help them find secret knowledge. But that’s just hocus pocus—magical thinking. Psychedelics don’t give you access to a hidden domain with secret knowledge. In the best case, they help you achieve the kind of mental state that experienced meditators can. 

The book applies ancient wisdom to modern life. Aristotle is one of history’s most important thinkers. But most of his published works were lost to fires, floods, and wars. All that remain are rough drafts and lecture notes, which are notoriously hard to read. Ask Aristotle uses non-technical language to apply Aristotle’s ideas to life in the internet age. It’s a thought-provoking and fun introduction to the mind of a master.

The community is dedicated to making wise decisions about how to spend their time, effort, money, and life as a whole. They’re tired of reading self-help books in search of fulfillment, and they’re tired of fakers who pretend to know what’ll help them live well. 

The project aims at helping people on their quest to live better, to make better decisions, to be better parents, partners, and business people, and to grow in knowledge and understanding. It includes: 

• tools to clarify what you need to flourish in life; 

• tools to evaluate how you think, feel, and act, so you can get the things in life worth getting; 

• tools to make better decisions about how to spend your time, money, and effort; 

• tools to spot fakes and separate information from misinformation in books, in the news, in movies, on television, or online.