   The power of persuasion is too powerful?
  Lets say we have two people John and Henry. John is very skilled with words and very good at controlling his emotions as well as the emotions of others. John has below normal intelligence and no skills or talents. He also has a below normal appearance. Henry on the other hand has below normal communication skills and has trouble expressing his thoughts and feelings. However, he is very intelligent and talented in computer science and math. He is also abnormally well built and has an attractive appearance.John and Henry are both in high school. Through John's superior people skills he becomes popular and everyone likes him. He tends to barely pass every class he is in and spends all of his free time hanging out with friends. Now he likes the most beautiful girl in the school and always says the right things to make her feel good. Eventually they start dating. Henry on the other hand was not very popular and only had a few close friends. Though he always scored the best out of everyone in all of his classes. He had a few brief relationship through out high school but they always ended badly.John and Henry both graduate high school though John barely passes and Henry has the highest GPA in the school. John's rich friend's father likes John and offers him a job. Over a couple years John is able to work his way up in the company and eventually works his way into a manager position. Even though he tends to make mistakes everybody likes him and wants to see him succeed. He also marries his high school sweet heart. Henry on the other hand scored  2,400 on the SAT and went straight to Harvard for Computer Science. Henry graduates with a bachelors degree and finds a nice job even though his interviews never went too well his credentials spoke for them selfs.Henry and John are making about the same pay even though Henry spent 4 years working on his degree while John was already working. 5 years go by and their positions stay about the same. Henry and John both decide to take a chance and start a company. John speaks to a few investors and using his superior powers of persuasion he is able to get funding. Now he reaches out to his talented friends and co-workers who admire him and he persuades a few of them to join his company. Over the next few years John is able to make a profit despite making many blunders he was always able to find the necessary funding to cover them.Henry tries to find interested investors but he is not able to effectively communicate his idea and his network is too small. However, he is able to take out a loan given his good credit record but it's just enough and every penny will have to be stretched. Henry calculates everything and makes all of the right moves. However his rate of employee retention is very bad and he is not able to sell his product to the clients nearly as well as John. On top of this he has a large mountain of debt. Henry eventually is out done by the competition and has to file for bankruptcy. Henry ends up working for John and has very poor credit.John on the other hand has never been better and just finished paying off his new house and was able to retire at the age of 35 with a beautiful wife and a mountain of cash. Henry lives in an apartment and ended up with a smart but below average wife. Henry eventually retired at 65 and lived a fairly average life while John and his wife went on curses at least twice a year and live a great life. Henry was the best at every thing he did and worked hard for everything he has while John was below average and had others working for him.Basically this is an example of the power of persuasion and I have come to the realization that success is entirely not related to how smart you are but rather how skilled you are at manipulating others to get what you want. It's also about luck but that is a factor that can happen to smart or social people. I think the chances of being truly successful yet lacking social skills are little to none. This makes me feel slightly hopeless about my future. Any opinions on the correlation between social skills and success?   
  Life is not fair and shit does float to the top.Work on your people skills.Henry tries to find interested investors but he is not able to effectively communicate his idea and his network is too small ... his rate of employee retention is very bad and he is not able to sell his product to the clients ... he has a large mountain of debt. Henry eventually is out done by the competition and has to file for bankruptcy ... and has very poor credit.Henry was the best at every thing he did[/quote]Doesn't sound like it going off results.;  EDIT: Hmm, interesting. I opened the thread with the intention of disagreeing with the title (due to having misinterpreted what you meant by it, though I 'm not sure how I managed that anymore), but actually having read your scenario I think you make a good point.EDIT: However there are a couple of points I think you neglected and which I think are important.The fact that Henry is so naturally talented and yet is still socially inept, strongly suggests he has some type of disorder like for example mild aspergers. This is enough to account for his surprising lack of success.Also, I think you are heavily underestimating the intelligence of John. He seems to be a social genius.So I agree that persuasion is a remarkably powerful tool, however I postulate that Henry could have been just as succesful if he hadn't suffered from a disorder like Aspergers.EDIT: On a personal note, lately I have been dwelling a lot on how lacking I am in the persuasion department myself and I sympathise with Henry (though in my case I strongly suspect I have mild ADD). Though I have rarely lacked a few decent friends and have done OK on the romantic side I have always felt very hindered by my social ineptness. Like Henry I feel I could have done and could do much better with even average social skills. I am trying to work on my social skills but it seems very difficult to overcome social ineptness when it comes so naturally. For example I heartily congratulate myself when I'm able to talk with someone I am not familiar with without putting my foot in my mouth, looking like an idiot/freak, or coming across as painfully awkward. :/  As a result I am and have always been almost painfully shy and introverted though I am trying to change that.   ;  Are people skills and manipulation not a form of intelligence? Charisma and what not is very important in many aspects, we're a social species after all (Some of us not so much as others). We all have different strengths and weaknesses, if John and Henry had worked together they would have both done far better than they would have alone.As far as fairness goes, who says all our goals are to be wonderfully wealthy and so on? As far as the story goes then sure, both set up a company they want to suceed but one fails. If I had a weight lifting competition with the worlds strongest man I'd probably lose but there are plenty of things I could beat him at I'm sure. I strongly value my intelligence, there are lots of things I'm good at that I don't really care about.   ;  [font="Georgia, serif"][font="Georgia, serif"]This thread makes me think of this good old Spolsky-gold:[/font][font="Georgia, serif"][/font]"The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything"[/font][font="Georgia, serif"][url="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html"]- Joel Spolsky[/url][/font][font="Georgia, serif"] [/font][font="Georgia, serif"]Still I get the point you're making, but real life is not that bad. If you're brilliant at university the people there with social skills are gonna know about it and contact you. That's my experience anyway, as someone who is more like Henry and less like John. I've also met a couple of people who were obviosly brilliant but wouldn't really function in a workplace. Usually they couldn't get their ideas across or explain them properly. [/font][font="Georgia, serif"] [/font][font="Georgia, serif"]If you're smart but lacking socially then maybe starting your own company is a bad idea. How about becoming the right hand man of someone more [/font][font="Georgia, serif"]entrepreneurial? As this video and to some degree the 11th law of power points out, this is an underrated position. [/font][font="Georgia, serif"] [/font][font="Georgia, serif"]Lastly, while there is overlap between friendly and manipulative, they're not the same thing. [/font]   ;  Henry still has an advantage because charisma is learnable, if he'll just get off his ass and do something about it instead of hiding behind his intelligence as an excuse to not learn how to deal with and manage people.   ;charisma is learnableTips please! :>EDIT: hmm, google searching provided some surprisingly helpful results actually.   ;  Congratulations on turning 18, Henry!   ;  Read this book: How to win friends and influence people. Also, check out its wikipedia page for a brief summary specifically the Major sections and points section lists most of the details in summarized point form.   ;[quote name='capn_midnight' timestamp='1305378532' post='4810656']charisma is learnableTips please! :>[/quote]Talk to people, by far the easiest and most effecitve way. Go to conferences, seminars, lectures by interesting speakers. Talk to people while waiting in line, ask for directions rather than use google maps, ask the cashier about a good game or movie, don't look it up on the internet, etc. all works great. The more people you speak to the better at it you become.   