8 ms·

Your superficial impressions are very persuasive. Many of the best con artists are sincere. So if they do not recognize their own ignorance, why should you?

Your superficial impressions are very persuasive. Many of the best con artists are sincere. So if they do not recognize their own ignorance, why should you? If there was an important gap in their knowledge they were aware of, would they be confessing that to you, a non-doctor? As for my evidence, our HMO is run by doctors. My wife's clearly reasoned decision to not get a mammogram before 50, based on her own reading of the medical literature, has proven unpersuasive to her gynecologist or the people who set the policies that "provide" the harassing phone calls.

lutusp 13y ago
> Many of the best con artists are sincere. No. Many of the best con artists can convincingly simulate sincerity. If they were sincere, by definition, they wouldn't be con artists. A con is by definition a transaction in which one person knows something that the other person doesn't, something that's being deliberately hidden from view for the benefit of the con artist.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
  One can never be too literal.
- gehar 13y ago
  What do you call someone (like, say Jenny McCarthy), who honestly deludes herself into a position where their lies are both harmful and profitable? Does it matter what they really think? We are who we pretend to be.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > What do you call someone (like, say Jenny McCarthy), who honestly deludes herself into a position where their lies are both harmful and profitable? For Jenny McCarthy to continue to believe what she claims to believe, she has to be either brain-damaged or lying. Oh -- or both. > Does it matter what they really think? Of course it does. An intelligent, mistaken person can be reasoned with, educated, presented with new evidence. An intelligent con man cannot. > We are who we pretend to be. Unrealistically cynical. The best way to derive mutual benefit from other people is to be exactly who you say you are.
    - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
      Making it about personality or intelligence is a trap that does not serve rationality. "She/he is a smart, honest, kind, well-meaning, salt of the earth person. This is just not the kind of person would would lie about ______" Ghosts. UFOs. Truthers. Vaccinations. I have heard a thousand times. Smart people can be wrong. Honest people can be wrong. Smart and honest people can be wrong. "She has to be either brain-damaged or lying" sets up a False Choice that will lead many people to believe the opposite to what you are (presumably) trying to argue. The spirit of what I was trying get at (perhaps, too "cleverly") with "many of the best con artists are sincere" is that one should not take off your Mr. Skeptical Sleuth hat, just because the person in front of you seems both intelligent and honest. Focus on the quality of the argument. Focus on the quality of the evidence supporting the argument.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > Smart people can be wrong. Honest people can be wrong. Smart and honest people can be wrong. All true, and why we have science. But the Jenny McCarthies of the world are so egregious that such charities can't extend to them -- they've been given too many opportunities to access sources of information apart from themselves. > Focus on the quality of the argument. Focus on the quality of the evidence supporting the argument. Yes, but after several years of the same pattern, it dawns on you that the problem is not the argument, but its source.
  - illuminate 13y ago
    A dangerous narcissist.
jacquesm 13y ago
Do you second guess your mechanic in an auto workshop? (I do, but then again, I've restored a couple of cars from the ground up). How about a contractor, an engineer or someone working on a high voltage line? Maybe the pilot of the airplane that you're taking to your holiday destination or the cook in the restaurant where you ate yesterday? Based on a reading of the literature you could easily become an armchair expert in just about anything. But that does not give you the years of practical experience that typically go with the territory and that should count for something. Doctors are emphatically not con artists. I applaud you wife's reasoned decision, clearly she is in control of her own destiny and her decision (if by unfortunate chance it is the wrong one) will mostly affect her and her immediate family. But if we spend a good sized fortune and several years educating someone I really wonder why we'd bother with that if all that it would take to counteract all that effort and knowledge would be a lay persons reading of the medical literature. Most of which is not exactly written for easy consumption by the general public. Whether you're in a risk group for certain cancers depends on a lot of factors and you'd need to know all of those to make a weighted decision. This is not always as easy as applying the general case to yourself calling it a day. Age and sex are obviously the big ones but there are many (not sure how many) contributing factors that may cause doctors to be more concerned about one individual than another. We call those people specialists because we recognize that the amount of knowledge required is typically larger than what one person can acquire in a lifetime. The time when I'm going to trust my own interpretation of a pile of google'd medical papers over a qualified specialist is still a while away. In the meantime I'm terribly happy I'm not a medical doctor, I'd hate to have to continuously defend each and every minor decision to a general public that I'd be trying to help in an already time-constrained practice. It's hard enough when non-technical (read: totally clueless) customers question evaluations of technical issues based on some popular text they've been reading, at least there are usually no lives on the line.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 13y ago
  You make a bunch of really good points. However, there is a need for patients to learn the right questions to ask of doctors. "How do you know this is the right treatment?" and "What happens if we do nothing?" are two good questions. Doctors are overwhelmingly not con artists or stupid, but they do make mistakes and they do have to keep up with changing science. This is especially important with doctors. They're science based, they're educated, the stuff they do has plausible mechanism of action. But this is exactly the time we need better science; double blinded studies etc. See, for example, knee arthroscopy which was found after controlled studies with sham operations to be no more effective than the sham for many people.

lutusp 13y ago

> Many of the best con artists are sincere. No. Many of the best con artists can convincingly simulate sincerity. If they were sincere, by definition, they wouldn't be con artists. A con is by definition a transaction in which one person knows something that the other person doesn't, something that's being deliberately hidden from view for the benefit of the con artist.

comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
One can never be too literal.
gehar 13y ago
What do you call someone (like, say Jenny McCarthy), who honestly deludes herself into a position where their lies are both harmful and profitable? Does it matter what they really think? We are who we pretend to be.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > What do you call someone (like, say Jenny McCarthy), who honestly deludes herself into a position where their lies are both harmful and profitable? For Jenny McCarthy to continue to believe what she claims to believe, she has to be either brain-damaged or lying. Oh -- or both. > Does it matter what they really think? Of course it does. An intelligent, mistaken person can be reasoned with, educated, presented with new evidence. An intelligent con man cannot. > We are who we pretend to be. Unrealistically cynical. The best way to derive mutual benefit from other people is to be exactly who you say you are.
  - comrade_ogilvy 13y ago
    Making it about personality or intelligence is a trap that does not serve rationality. "She/he is a smart, honest, kind, well-meaning, salt of the earth person. This is just not the kind of person would would lie about ______" Ghosts. UFOs. Truthers. Vaccinations. I have heard a thousand times. Smart people can be wrong. Honest people can be wrong. Smart and honest people can be wrong. "She has to be either brain-damaged or lying" sets up a False Choice that will lead many people to believe the opposite to what you are (presumably) trying to argue. The spirit of what I was trying get at (perhaps, too "cleverly") with "many of the best con artists are sincere" is that one should not take off your Mr. Skeptical Sleuth hat, just because the person in front of you seems both intelligent and honest. Focus on the quality of the argument. Focus on the quality of the evidence supporting the argument.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Smart people can be wrong. Honest people can be wrong. Smart and honest people can be wrong. All true, and why we have science. But the Jenny McCarthies of the world are so egregious that such charities can't extend to them -- they've been given too many opportunities to access sources of information apart from themselves. > Focus on the quality of the argument. Focus on the quality of the evidence supporting the argument. Yes, but after several years of the same pattern, it dawns on you that the problem is not the argument, but its source.
- illuminate 13y ago
  A dangerous narcissist.

jacquesm 13y ago

Do you second guess your mechanic in an auto workshop? (I do, but then again, I've restored a couple of cars from the ground up). How about a contractor, an engineer or someone working on a high voltage line? Maybe the pilot of the airplane that you're taking to your holiday destination or the cook in the restaurant where you ate yesterday? Based on a reading of the literature you could easily become an armchair expert in just about anything. But that does not give you the years of practical experience that typically go with the territory and that should count for something. Doctors are emphatically not con artists. I applaud you wife's reasoned decision, clearly she is in control of her own destiny and her decision (if by unfortunate chance it is the wrong one) will mostly affect her and her immediate family. But if we spend a good sized fortune and several years educating someone I really wonder why we'd bother with that if all that it would take to counteract all that effort and knowledge would be a lay persons reading of the medical literature. Most of which is not exactly written for easy consumption by the general public. Whether you're in a risk group for certain cancers depends on a lot of factors and you'd need to know all of those to make a weighted decision. This is not always as easy as applying the general case to yourself calling it a day. Age and sex are obviously the big ones but there are many (not sure how many) contributing factors that may cause doctors to be more concerned about one individual than another. We call those people specialists because we recognize that the amount of knowledge required is typically larger than what one person can acquire in a lifetime. The time when I'm going to trust my own interpretation of a pile of google'd medical papers over a qualified specialist is still a while away. In the meantime I'm terribly happy I'm not a medical doctor, I'd hate to have to continuously defend each and every minor decision to a general public that I'd be trying to help in an already time-constrained practice. It's hard enough when non-technical (read: totally clueless) customers question evaluations of technical issues based on some popular text they've been reading, at least there are usually no lives on the line.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 13y ago
You make a bunch of really good points. However, there is a need for patients to learn the right questions to ask of doctors. "How do you know this is the right treatment?" and "What happens if we do nothing?" are two good questions. Doctors are overwhelmingly not con artists or stupid, but they do make mistakes and they do have to keep up with changing science. This is especially important with doctors. They're science based, they're educated, the stuff they do has plausible mechanism of action. But this is exactly the time we need better science; double blinded studies etc. See, for example, knee arthroscopy which was found after controlled studies with sham operations to be no more effective than the sham for many people.