He brought people into his confidence by deceiving them and then profited from it. It’s a fairly standard definition of a con artist. It could be that he was so good at it, that you don’t recognize him as being a con artist.
1 Like
It’s not my argument, but I’ll go along if you like. Personally I don’t believe that’s where we live.
.[quote=“HMSGoose, post:14, topic:72188”]
That a society where checking evidence was pervasive, we ourselves wouldn’t need to do just-in-time evidence checking. But the “trust” we have is in the hospital administration and HR department that they vetted the doctors,
[/quote]
I think that’s precisely @popobawa4u’s point. We shouldn’t have that trust because it’s quite clear that the HA/HR do not do their due diligence in the world we are actually in. Hence the easy success of the con artist. (I wonder if in an evidence based culture you’d have to be a con-scientist?)
3 Likes
Reasonable people can disagree about who qualifies as a con artist. For me, you’re only a con man if, after you’ve ripped me off, some explains what REALLY happened in a brief montage with voiceover and ragtime piano music.
3 Likes
2 Likes
yeah, no i agree. I don’t think the system works, i was just responding to the idea that we don’t already try, or that it isn’t the illusion we all already operate under. to varying degrees the acceptance of evidence involves trusting the source. this of course takes constant refining, but requiring evidemce to more and more stringent degrees has a cost. perhaps the occasional sociopath preying upon a softer system is also an acceptable cost.
1 Like
I think it goes much deeper than culture. We humans are social animals, and our ancestors were living in societies even before they became Homo sapiens. Influence and persuasion are two of the ways people relate to each other, have been relating to each other for a million years, and I see no way to “design” them out of us short of genetic engineering on a mass scale.
Basing decisions on evidence is the reasonable way to go about it, but you’ll always be swimming against the current, so to speak.
1 Like
You can see Fred Demara being interviewed by Groucho by googling his name and “You Bet Your Life,” Groucho’s show. He is a charming fellow, and this and chicanery had gotten him far. Scary.
Your premise is rather flawed. In addition, I’ve found most folks making inclusive statements (we all do this, everyone knows, etc.) rarely possess any cogent argument or reproducible chain of logic.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
