http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

That is the principle itself. It is best understood after reading all six parts of the entry - a fantastic, if long, read.

For context, I will quote some passages here.

Sociopaths

The Sociopaths enter and exit organizations at will, at any stage, and do whatever it takes to come out on top. The contribute creativity in early stages of a organization’s life, neurotic leadership in the middle stages, and cold-bloodedness in the later stages, where they drive decisions like mergers, acquisitions and layoffs that others are too scared or too compassionate to drive. They are also the ones capable of equally impersonally exploiting a young idea for growth in the beginning, killing one good idea to concentrate resources on another at maturity, and milking an end-of-life idea through harvest-and-exit market strategies.

Losers

MacLeod’s Loser layer had me puzzled for a long time, because I was interpreting it in cultural terms: the kind of person you call a “loser.” While some may be losers in that sense too, they are primarily losers in the economic sense: those who have, for various reasons, made (or been forced to make) a bad economic bargain. They’ve given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability. Traded freedom for a paycheck in short. They actually produce, but are not compensated in proportion to the value they create (since their compensation is set by Sociopaths operating under conditions of serious moral hazard). They mortgage their lives away, and hope to die before their money runs out. The good news is that Losers have two ways out, which we’ll get to later: turning Sociopath or turning into bare-minimum performers. The Losers destined for cluelessness do not have a choice.

The Losers like to feel good about their lives. They are the happiness seekers, rather than will-to-power players, and enter and exit reactively, in response to the meta-Darwinian trends in the economy. But they have no more loyalty to the firm than the Sociopaths. They do have a loyalty to individual people, and a commitment to finding fulfillment through work when they can, and coasting when they cannot.

Clueless

The Clueless are the ones who lack the competence to circulate freely through the economy (unlike Sociopaths and Losers), and build up a perverse sense of loyalty to the firm, even when events make it abundantly clear that the firm is not loyal to them. To sustain themselves, they must be capable of fashioning elaborate delusions based on idealized notions of the firm — the perfectly pathological entities we mentioned. Unless squeezed out by forces they cannot resist, they hang on as long as possible, long after both Sociopaths and Losers have left (in Douglas Adams’ vicious history of our planet, humanity was founded by a spaceship full of the Clueless, sent here by scheming Sociopaths). When cast adrift in the open ocean, they are the ones most likely to be utterly destroyed.

These categorizations seem to me to correspond in a conceptual way to alpha, beta, and omega in our discussion of sexual and social hierarchy. Those who 'get it', those who may or may not 'get it' but regardless don't do it, and those who simply cannot 'get it'.

On powertalk

At a Dunder-Mifflin management party, shortly after Michael and Jan disclose their affair to David Wallace, per HR requirements, Wallace casually invites Jim to blow off the party for a while and shoot hoops in the backyard. Once outside, Wallace nonchalantly asks, “So what’s up with Jan and Michael?” He is clearly fishing for information, having observed the bizarre couple dynamics at the party.

Jim replies, “I wouldn’t know…(pregnant pause)…where to begin.” (slight laugh)

David Wallace laughs in return. This is as eloquent as such a short fragment of Powertalk can get.

The bulk of Sociopath communication takes places out in the open, coded in Powertalk, right in the presence of non-Sociopaths (a decent 101 level example of this is in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, when Hermoine is the only one who realizes that Prof. Umbridge’s apparently bland and formulaic speech is a Powertalk speech challenging Dumbledore).

A good way to remember this is to think of Powertalk as decisions about what verbal tactics to use when, and with what. The answer to with what is usually a part of your table-stakes. The stuff you are revealing and risking. If you cannot answer with what? you are posturing. You are not speaking Powertalk. In the Jim-Wallace example, with what was Jim’s superior knowledge of the Michael-Jan story.

For me, this series of blog posts was a massive red pill (in the sense of the Matrix pills, not /r/theredpill). The description of powertalk opened my eyes and allowed me to finally understand things that I was formerly only able to 'feel'. The whole dynamic of plausible deniability and 'not saying what you actually mean' had frustrated me for years. Why would anyone not just say exactly what they meant? Why not just speak the truth? I was limited to straight talk and perhaps posture talk, and I could sense, at some level, this deficiency in understanding.

Several questions

  1. Does the Gervais Principle accurately reflect behavior in organizations? Outside organizations?

  2. Does 'powertalk' exist? Does it exist outside of organizations/the workplace/the office?

  3. Is it useful or important for people to be aware of this interpretation of social hierarchical dynamics?

  4. Are 'sociopaths' morally corrupt? Is someone who wants to be a 'sociopath' morally corrupt?

  5. Plausible deniability seems to me to be one of, if not the most, important concepts to learn in relation to game, flirting, and social dynamics. Agree/disagree? Further, those who do not understand plausible deniability, or who cannot apply it to their conversations, are doomed to either inceldom at worst or far between, random, patternless hookups at best. Agree/disagree?

  6. Is the Gervais Principle, powertalk, etc. a 'red pill' in the Matrix sense?

Finally, the inclusion of this on the sidebar is one of the things that helps maintain my optimistic belief that there is a significant part of /r/theredpill that genuinely wants to help men understand the world better and become more effective, successful, realistic people - exposure to in depth analysis of social dynamics that are not necessarily obvious or easy to see/understand.