Growing up in the late nineties I had very little experience with computers or the internet before my family purchased one. When that happened, it was like the flood gates were opened: all the music I wanted for free, all the games I could play for free, countless hours of entertainment and infinite information came with the greatest convenience I could ask for.
I think we’ve all had an experience like that: something that was previously scarce or difficult to access becomes abundant and really easy to get a hold of. It’s one of the best feelings in life. No wonder people chase after easy ways to get rich, be happy, get more chicks, or just generally solve the hard problems in life and turn what is now scarce into what is now abundant. They want a way to open the flood gates for that particular problem. They’re after a flood key.
Do flood keys actually exist, or are all these people chasing a mirage in a desert?
What self help type books teach can be divided into three basic categories:
1. Obvious truths. Robert Greene tells us to “Pay attention to detail” and even devotes a whole chapter to it, even though it’s a pretty obvious principle. On the other side of the coin, we often need to be reminded of the obvious principles. Natural selection seems like a big “Well… Duh!” moment for some; but I have heard people ask why human beings like sex, and it seems to me like they need to be reminded of the obvious principle of natural selection. Obvious truths are of mixed helpfulness.
2. Overly optimistic baloney. Beliefs like “I can do anything” probably harm more than they help, as it is wise to know and understand your limitations. “Never Give Up” sounds like good advice, until you ask the guy who will die in prison because he didn’t give up, or the businessman who lost a fortune because he wouldn’t recognize a bad investment.
3. Genuinely good advice. I have two criteria that need to be met here: 1) The advice can’t be really obvious, and 2) The advice must actually work. Exercise and meditation could both be considered flood keys. But, notably, those are the only real flood keys I know of, both of them only go as far as improving your mood, health and cognition. They provide well needed boosts to mood and cognition, but are certainly not deliverers of pie in the sky fantasy.
Why is it that self-help books have such a mixed track record? I think part of it has to do with the fact that human psychology and human relationships are exquisitely complicated. Moreover, we don’t get to run anything like a control experiment with life situations, and that makes our knowledge about what is going on very limited.
Flood Key salesmen the world over neglect “arms races.” An arms race is competition between two or more opposing parties. One party makes an adjustment to gain an edge in the race, the opposing party responds by making its own adjustment to keep from losing, and the process repeats over and over. Kind of like the Cold War. Arms races aren’t just seen in the military, though, they’re everywhere. The Hare Krishnahs figured out that they could get more donations if they gave people a flower before they put their hands out (tapping into the rule of reciprocity). As people began to become familiar with Hare Krishnahs and their coy manipulative tactics, many people began avoiding them, or taking the flower but turning down the donation. I suspect similar things have happened in the great search for flood keys: someone writes a book on how to make great money in real estate, but while their methods may have once worked, arms races have changed everything by the time you read the book (other people long ago took up the same strategy, told their other real-estate buddies, and eventually the law of supply and demand sucked away the value from what they were doing as it became common or as the market itself evolved in various ways such that the strategy could no longer work).
More of the same has probably happened in the dating world. Buying a girl a drink tapped into the rule of reciprocity just like giving someone a flower does. It must have worked up until a point (how else did that move get so popular?) but then women realized what was going on and they now accept drinks with no special feelings towards the guy buying them (I’ve talked to enough women on this subject to know). “Hey girl, what’s your sign?” is cheesy now, but at some point it must have worked (again, why is it so widespread?) and there is psychological research supporting the view that people feel bonded to others after divulging quirky details. But, the zodiak pick-up line no longer works because it has been overused.
