The above link is an interesting and potentially useful story.
One thing about social engineering (about most any human-behavior-related topic, really) is that, though boiling things down into simple little memes seems useful, it rarely is. The lessons we learn from situations and actions are generally not as important as those situations and actions themselves (the medium is the message, get it?).
I’m saying that guidelines are too rarely applicable. If a one line piece of advice is to be useful, it must be acted upon. To be acted upon, it must be incorporated into one’s behavior set, or used as a stimulus for new ideas which will turn into actions. How often do you put lessons to work in that way?
Handing someone a quote should be like handing them a gun: “Here, you can use this to blow someone away, transform your life, change the world,” that kind of thing. Handing someone 50 quotes is seldom useful.
Each meme can work for you or not. It depends on who you are and how you use it. Being able to recognize and discard what doesn’t work is important, but being able to really succeed with something requires a lot of investment and effort.
So here’s some advice: using information = brainstorm > generate ideas > act upon them. Now, are you going to take it all the way or leave it here? Have you already decided?
We can’t let our idea economy turn us into into ReadOnly sloths. Information not acted upon is detritus.
For more awesome examples of social engineering, have you heard of the Center for Tactical Magic?
One of my absolute favorites: How to Subvert Institutional Authority through Graffiti and Other Tactics in 13 Simple Steps.
