5 ms·

> How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by defau

by SkyeCA 1y ago

> How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. They really are out to get you(r money).

at-fates-hands 1y ago
>> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity. I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my phone sparingly. But with this new crop of AI tools, you're right, it makes it a lot easier to separate you from your money and the criminals are becoming way more sophisticated and persistent in their attacks.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  Communities used to be smaller, even in big cities, so the number of scammers you encountered was fewer. Now that long distance calls are free, the Internet connects you to everyone else on it, and paperwork is digitalized across entire populations, the reach - and therefore statistical likelihood of encountering- scammers is much higher.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    Scammers have more incentive to reach widely than anyone else (well, except advertisers, but that's something of a fine line). So the ratio of scams to non-scams went way up.
stinos 1y ago
> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. Rather off-topic, but it's funny how this principle applies in the exact same way when it comes to traffic for instance. It is unfortunate it has to be like that, but not trusting any other traffic and assuming they can at any point do the thing you'd least expect them to do is just safer. Especially when e.g. cycling this saved my from injuries or worse more than just a couple of times. And that's even in a country with relatively high numbers of cyclists.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  There's nothing unfortunate about it, because you don't have perfect information. There's plenty of ways for traffic to behave unexpectedly for reasons that are out of their control (deer running into road, tire blows out, etc). This is why driving schools teach defensive driving. You can't control anyone else but yourself.
- jameshart 1y ago
  On the other hand you can at least expect that if someone causes an accident they will suffer consequences. Courts and insurance exist as mechanisms to transfer liability including for medical bills, and the criminal system (in many countries) can and does punish people for reckless driving. Sure, you still need to look after yourself in the moment - but there are incentives in place to discourage drivers from misbehaving and those incentives do help reduce the likelihood that you will be a victim of an accident. They’re not great! Bad drivers get away with a lot, and cyclists are not adequately considered in many mechanisms, but they are better than nothing. Yet ‘nothing’ is what we have with respect to online fraud, where the situation is more akin to one where driving laws don’t exist or aren’t enforced, nobody drives cars with license plates, you can’t get insurance, and if you are run off the road the police’s reaction is to tell you that roads are inherently dangerous places. Bad drivers will never be caught, and if they drive over you they get to steal your bike and sell it. Entire businesses are set up around forcing cyclists into streets where they can be mowed down with steamrollers, and the police claim to be powerless to stop them. There are numerous mechanisms that exist that make it possible for us to share roads without inherent trust. And even those are inadequate. Fraudulent behavior online has none of the societal mechanisms that we have created to constrain driving.
  - nradov 1y ago
    There are plenty of countries where driving laws aren't enforced. Using the Internet anywhere is sort of like driving in a corrupt developing country. This creates a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in people who have spent their whole lives in functional developed countries where obeying the law is the default behavior.
jnovek 1y ago
I wouldn’t describe it as the correct response, more like “the best one we can think of right now.” Living this way is that it’s really exhausting, saps quite a lot of joy out of life and makes people more lonely. It’s far from optimal and a more sustainable option would be to work our way back to the community trust we used to enjoy just ~30 years ago.
- mothballed 1y ago
  You can gain a little bit of it back by living in a low population density area. I live in a small enough town that if I screw somebody, my name will be hosed until the day of my funeral. End result is I've left $10s of K of easily pawnable construction materials out for years (sorry any thieves reading, it is gone now) and no one touched it. There are several houses around me that have been abandoned for years, no one has ever touched them, except as a free service to help maintain their road. If I go into 'town' it's a good bet almost everywhere I go, my wife or I will see someone we know. If you do not hold a door for someone, they will remember. If you cut them off in traffic, they will remember. If we lie to others, it will be known by everyone in short order, and we will never have any halfway decent job here again, unless the money can somehow be made in a trustless service.
  - pancakemouse 1y ago
    Not at all snarky because I have no idea what the real answer is here, but although this sounds pretty good, it strikes me how in conflict this would be with most peoples' ideals if we tried any sort of system to scale this to larger populations (like a city). Perhaps we want privacy-but-not-anonymity. Or perhaps society doesn't scale easily.
    - throwaway48476 1y ago
      The real answer is to rebuild the high trust society by relentlessly removing the low trust elements, the same way the high trust society was created to begin with.
ffsm8 1y ago
My grandpa always liked to say "They only want your best... Your money"
BobaFloutist 1y ago
That's no way to live. The optimal amount to get scammed is >0, because to 100% avoid it you have to cheapen and weaken your life to an unreasonable extent. It's like how the only 100% secure system is offline, off, unplugged, wiped, and slagged. Or how the only way to be 100% safe from communicable disease is to be the last living human. And that's what makes our tolerance for grift and scams so obnoxious. It's one thing when dishonest people lie and cheat and steal, it's another entirely when our institutions and leaders forgive, excuse, enable, and even embrace it.

by SkyeCA 1y ago

at-fates-hands 1y ago

>> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. This has slowly eaten away at the idea that we used to live in a high trust society that has now completely transformed into a society where you cannot trust anything, ever, in any capacity. I felt like I had kind gained back some control from not clicking on any links in emails and using my phone sparingly. But with this new crop of AI tools, you're right, it makes it a lot easier to separate you from your money and the criminals are becoming way more sophisticated and persistent in their attacks.

zdragnar 1y ago
Communities used to be smaller, even in big cities, so the number of scammers you encountered was fewer. Now that long distance calls are free, the Internet connects you to everyone else on it, and paperwork is digitalized across entire populations, the reach - and therefore statistical likelihood of encountering- scammers is much higher.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Scammers have more incentive to reach widely than anyone else (well, except advertisers, but that's something of a fine line). So the ratio of scams to non-scams went way up.

stinos 1y ago

> You can't and the correct response is a total lack of trust by default because that's the easiest way to protect yourself. Rather off-topic, but it's funny how this principle applies in the exact same way when it comes to traffic for instance. It is unfortunate it has to be like that, but not trusting any other traffic and assuming they can at any point do the thing you'd least expect them to do is just safer. Especially when e.g. cycling this saved my from injuries or worse more than just a couple of times. And that's even in a country with relatively high numbers of cyclists.

zdragnar 1y ago
There's nothing unfortunate about it, because you don't have perfect information. There's plenty of ways for traffic to behave unexpectedly for reasons that are out of their control (deer running into road, tire blows out, etc). This is why driving schools teach defensive driving. You can't control anyone else but yourself.
jameshart 1y ago
On the other hand you can at least expect that if someone causes an accident they will suffer consequences. Courts and insurance exist as mechanisms to transfer liability including for medical bills, and the criminal system (in many countries) can and does punish people for reckless driving. Sure, you still need to look after yourself in the moment - but there are incentives in place to discourage drivers from misbehaving and those incentives do help reduce the likelihood that you will be a victim of an accident. They’re not great! Bad drivers get away with a lot, and cyclists are not adequately considered in many mechanisms, but they are better than nothing. Yet ‘nothing’ is what we have with respect to online fraud, where the situation is more akin to one where driving laws don’t exist or aren’t enforced, nobody drives cars with license plates, you can’t get insurance, and if you are run off the road the police’s reaction is to tell you that roads are inherently dangerous places. Bad drivers will never be caught, and if they drive over you they get to steal your bike and sell it. Entire businesses are set up around forcing cyclists into streets where they can be mowed down with steamrollers, and the police claim to be powerless to stop them. There are numerous mechanisms that exist that make it possible for us to share roads without inherent trust. And even those are inadequate. Fraudulent behavior online has none of the societal mechanisms that we have created to constrain driving.
- nradov 1y ago
  There are plenty of countries where driving laws aren't enforced. Using the Internet anywhere is sort of like driving in a corrupt developing country. This creates a certain amount of cognitive dissonance in people who have spent their whole lives in functional developed countries where obeying the law is the default behavior.

jnovek 1y ago

I wouldn’t describe it as the correct response, more like “the best one we can think of right now.” Living this way is that it’s really exhausting, saps quite a lot of joy out of life and makes people more lonely. It’s far from optimal and a more sustainable option would be to work our way back to the community trust we used to enjoy just ~30 years ago.

mothballed 1y ago
You can gain a little bit of it back by living in a low population density area. I live in a small enough town that if I screw somebody, my name will be hosed until the day of my funeral. End result is I've left $10s of K of easily pawnable construction materials out for years (sorry any thieves reading, it is gone now) and no one touched it. There are several houses around me that have been abandoned for years, no one has ever touched them, except as a free service to help maintain their road. If I go into 'town' it's a good bet almost everywhere I go, my wife or I will see someone we know. If you do not hold a door for someone, they will remember. If you cut them off in traffic, they will remember. If we lie to others, it will be known by everyone in short order, and we will never have any halfway decent job here again, unless the money can somehow be made in a trustless service.
- pancakemouse 1y ago
  Not at all snarky because I have no idea what the real answer is here, but although this sounds pretty good, it strikes me how in conflict this would be with most peoples' ideals if we tried any sort of system to scale this to larger populations (like a city). Perhaps we want privacy-but-not-anonymity. Or perhaps society doesn't scale easily.
  - throwaway48476 1y ago
    The real answer is to rebuild the high trust society by relentlessly removing the low trust elements, the same way the high trust society was created to begin with.

ffsm8 1y ago

My grandpa always liked to say "They only want your best... Your money"

BobaFloutist 1y ago

That's no way to live. The optimal amount to get scammed is >0, because to 100% avoid it you have to cheapen and weaken your life to an unreasonable extent. It's like how the only 100% secure system is offline, off, unplugged, wiped, and slagged. Or how the only way to be 100% safe from communicable disease is to be the last living human. And that's what makes our tolerance for grift and scams so obnoxious. It's one thing when dishonest people lie and cheat and steal, it's another entirely when our institutions and leaders forgive, excuse, enable, and even embrace it.