The “invented persona” behind the GISAID viral sequence database

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Re: The “invented persona” behind the GISAID viral sequence database

#51

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

SapporoChris wrote: post #22

JohnFen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody, without exception, can be conned. Smart people are no more resistant to it than anyone else.

"Smart people are no more resistant to it than anyone else" Absolute statements are very rarely correct.

There is a huge amount of data, going back at least a hundred years, that backs my statement up. But just to be very clear, I'm speaking statistically. You might be the exception to this (but I wouldn't bet on it).

The reason smart people are no more resistant to being conned than anybody else is because conning people is an emotional approach, not an intellectual one.

Any given specific con may not be one that will sucker everybody (in fact, it certainly won't), but con artists tailor their cons to their target. The one a smart person will fall for is different than the one a dumb person will fall for.

As Brian Brushwood says in his excellent podcast "The World's Greatest Con"... "We don't get conned because we're stupid. We get conned because we're human."

Re: The “invented persona” behind the GISAID viral sequence database

#52

Post by JohnFen » Mon, Apr 24, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

glofish wrote: post #26

JohnFen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody, without exception, can be conned. Smart people are no more resistant to it than anyone else.

Of course that everyone can be conned, but smart people are more resistant - for the mere fact that they probably know more and are better versed in the goings of life - I am surprised that anyone would think otherwise.

I think otherwise simply because that's what the data says.

I was talking to a con artist once who took the point even further. He said smart people are actually easier to con for a few reasons.

The smarter a person is, the better they are at working out a chain of reasoning that can "prove" the con isn't a con. Since a con is appealing to human emotion, not logic, you can make a smart person want to believe the con so much that they'll work out the "proof" that it's legit all by themselves.

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