[flagged]
>cryptobros are one person
[flagged]
The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
31–40 of 152 posts
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#32Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#33In the foreword for Animal Farm (in the del Rey edition, I think), Orwell writes that he was asked by tankie friends to keep quiet about the USSR's crimes because they were the best chance for Communism. Bullshit from scientists is normal. They're just people after all. But people who join the Culture War on one side must necessarily choose Science as a side despite it being just a technique for knowledge, not a team…
> he was asked by tankie friends to keep quiet about the USSR's crimes because they were the best chance for Communism.
I have a lot of empathy for the tankies of that era. It was clear that people like Stalin were truly evil, but it was also clear from centuries of evidence that capitalism was exploitative and needed upheaval.
On PAPER, Communism sounds great. I do think people genuinely believed there were simply growing pains and once through them something what today's generation thinks of as the "Star Trek The Next Generation Utopia" could be achievable.
There are still people that think it might have succeeded if given a genuine chance, and not undermined by the rich in the west.
In retrospect we now know they were wrong, and probably Russia was the worst place for communism to succeed. A society like China is probably the one in which it has the best chance, and even there we see that successful communism requires some free market economics and some pretty heinous repression.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was listening to Joe Rogan interview David Blaine and he said there are plenty of card players where it’s literally undetectable the tricks they use, even with cameras everywhere. Makes me have no interest in playing card games with anyone but a few friends.
Oh, there's so many card manipulation tricks it's hilarious. I can false shuffle a deck, I can seed a deck through shuffles. I can false cut. Tricks with my hands to 'do nothing's with a deck even though it looks like I'm shuffling or cutting the deck. When we get to truly skilled magicians, they can perfect shuffle (IIRC, 8x rifle shuffles in a row with perfect precision returns the deck to it's original state). The…
I think that it is thought (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riffle_shuffle_permutation) that seven riffle shuffles randomize a deck. So you may be misremembering that eight returns it to the original state.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#35> What really annoys me in these situations is how the institutions show loyalty to the people who did research misconduct. "Loyalty" means different things to different people, and not necessarily "doing what that party wants". So, if you don't call this "loyalty", it might be easier to imagine more of the possible/likely reasons for doing something that coincides with what that party wants, in an instance.
I'm wondering if the loyalty really is with the cheater, or if they are instead trying to protect weaker parties like the students and post-docs that can be largely or event entirely innocent. The latter option is possible and hard to discern from the outside.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#36This isn't really surprising. Cons are literally "confidence tricks", i.e. betrayals of social trust, which can be disorienting and distressing, even traumatizing. We know that rape victims, to use an extreme example, often try to normalize what happened to them - especially when the attacker was a close friend or intimate partner. A common story is a victim being sexually abused by a partner in the evening and making their abuser breakfast the next morning because then it can't have been abuse and must have been consensual because why would a victim make breakfast for their abuser - that'd be absurd.
Nobody wants to be a victim. Some people like to play the victim, sure, and some victims (usually after quite a bit of therapy) try to own their victim status to come to terms with what they've experienced but victims are at least as likely if not more to pretend nothing happened (even when they're traumatized and their denial is perpetuating that trauma) as they are to speak up.
With cons that are scams there's of course also the chance to play hot potato: you may have been the mark but that only makes you a victim if you are the end of the chain. If you can still con someone else to make your money back, you didn't get fooled, you just got inconvenienced at worst and you're not really at fault for conning the next person because after all you wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been conned to begin with. Crypto, one might argue, might be one such example.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#37Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, there's so many card manipulation tricks it's hilarious. I can false shuffle a deck, I can seed a deck through shuffles. I can false cut. Tricks with my hands to 'do nothing's with a deck even though it looks like I'm shuffling or cutting the deck. When we get to truly skilled magicians, they can perfect shuffle (IIRC, 8x rifle shuffles in a row with perfect precision returns the deck to it's original state). The…
I think that it is thought ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riffle_shuffle_permutation ) that seven riffle shuffles randomize a deck. So you may be misremembering that eight returns it to the original state.
Riffle shuffles have randomness because it's assumed no human can:
1. Pick up exactly 26 cards.
2. Shuffle exactly alternating left-right-left-right across all 26 cards.
But both of these feats are possible with practice. Repeat this perfect riffle shuffle enough times and the deck returns to it's exact original state. It's just simple math at that point, but it does mean you need perfection on every action.
----------
When a normie riffle shuffles, of course it's random. The issue is that magicians are ridiculously skilled in secret ways that are incredibly difficult to detect.
That is: a magician can look like they're shuffling, but in reality they're actually seeding and returning the deck to a state they want it to be in for their tricks.
Or a cheater at poker for that matter.
-------
That's okay though. If you can 'only' pickup exactly 26 cards consistently, you are skilled enough to perfect cut, which is still enough for a lot of tricks.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#39Shame and pride are such strong motivators. My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less…
From one of my family members: if the bank transaction doesn't go through, and you call the bank and they tell you it's probably a scam, don't overrule them.
Re: The immediate victims of a con would rather act as if the con never happened
#40Shame and pride are such strong motivators. My wife was taken by a very elaborate and well-crafted scam in November. In retrospect, it all sounds ridiculous... but in the moment, with kids in tow, it was very convincing. It was so traumatizing that when it was over and she finally realized it was a scam, she was relieved! They had convinced her she was going to jail and that was terrifying. Losing the money was less…
Is there anywhere we can read up on this scam?