Everyone loves a big cheater, cheater, cheater. We want to ask: how can one read for this? It's the compelling premise behind many popular podcasts, best-selling books and documentaries. Whether it's Bernie Madoff or a Nigerian prince, we're drawn to this cat-and-mouse drama of people trying to get over other people. As author Daniel Simmons points out, it's "great storytelling." It's an experience almost anyone can relate to: a heartbreaking story about a stranger who isn't interested enough, an email that appears to be from your credit card company.
Simons and co-author Christopher Chabris write in Nobody's Fool: Why we get in and what we can do about it, we are designed to be relatively mindless creatures. And it's usually good for us that our pharmacist is giving us our real medicine and that the voice on the other end of the line really is our best friend. How, then, can we reconcile our social imperatives with the degree of integrity implied by civic skepticism's defensive claims against gift-giving Greeks?
Simons and Chabris, who first rose to fame as creators of the classic invisible gorilla experiment, know a thing or two about how our perceptions can deceive us. And in their fascinating new book, they combine academic work with carefully researched ideas to weave examples of unusual industry scams into why we fall for these scammers, how and why we don't take it personally when someone tries to make us feel like scapegoats. . We are cheating. "They don't always get you ," says Chabris. " They're trying to catch someone."
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
When I found out this book was available, I couldn't wait to read it. Why are we so fascinated by deception? What do we care about scams and scams that we want to learn more about by reading this story?
"Scandal basically has a great narrative structure."
Daniel Simmons: Fraud mostly has a good narrative structure. There is an evil genius trying to manipulate people. There are victims who are more understanding. The ignorant do not know what will happen. It was an unfortunate sign. Besides, most of these kinds of stories have an end. Everyone has teamed up to catch the criminal.
It has a classic movie story. It goes deeper, further from reality, and then suddenly collapses. It's a classic tale of hubris, the joy of bragging before you fall, then fall, and then get caught. It combines all the elements that tell a great story, so it's very interesting to tell and very exciting to watch.
CHRISTOPHER CHABRIS: Let me add one more point to that, cheating, cheating, cheating is a joke. You think that something is true and the opposite is true, or that something completely different is happening. A bit like magic. A story reveals that something else is happening behind the scenes, or that what we assume or understand isn't happening.
Reading this book and thinking about this point in our culture, one gets the impression that we are more suspicious and paranoid, but also more gullible and prone to misinformation. Is that a paradox you observe?
Chabris: We have noticed that there is more skepticism towards research in our field. On the other hand, the incidence of fraud is also high. We believe fraud is on the rise. Of course, there is a certain paradox and fraud only increases because it can be detected. It will not expose other scammers that we are unaware of.
Part of what happens is that people can be very skeptical of one thing and think of themselves as critical thinkers, skeptics and haters, but fall in love with something else entirely. People you might be familiar with in terms of health claims can dump all their money into a fake cryptocurrency company at the same time. Maybe they're skeptical of fiat money and the Federal Reserve, so they're getting into cryptocurrencies, where they could run into problems. So not everyone is more skeptic and not everyone is a good critical thinker.
“The old man of the three-card pile had to wait for people to walk. Now you can find a three-card Monte Enthusiast and have it delivered to you."
I think scammers are getting better at creating scams that find followers and victims. People have to wait to walk New York's old Three-Tier Mont. Now you can find three Card Monte enthusiasts and have them deliver you, not the other way around.
Simons: Conspiracy theorists tend to find themselves very skeptical and critical. Because they started with different assumptions and are working to revise those assumptions. In healthcare, maybe Big Pharma is bad. Once you commit and assume it will always happen, you can reconcile it all by accepting other beliefs that aren't true. You believe you are skeptical and critical of Big Pharma and you don't realize you are not skeptical of criticism of Big Pharma. Anyone who speaks out against Big Pharma is speaking the truth.
It is easy to fall into this circular reasoning. Once you take something as a foundation and stick to it, you can find yourself completely inconsistent and reach strange and strange conclusions.
We are all prone to this. We all have sources of faith, weaknesses. Tell me what makes us vulnerable to deception.
Simons: The first thing to remember is that we have these cognitive habits and tendencies that work very well. Confidence comes in handy in dating. The people you know and trust will be useful to you in the future if you trust them. It allows you to connect with the world more efficiently. If you always get direct information from someone, you'll probably be fine with it, and overall it works pretty well.
But the habits we have — trusting familiarity, paying attention to the information in front of us, or trusting that something completely consistent will be reliable — are things that try to trick us into using them. THE. Bernie Madoff gets most of his money from investors who already know him. The strategy of using leads, taking advantage, and noticing the kind of habits we have is at the heart of many scams.
"Once you take something as a premise and stick to it, you can become completely incoherent within yourself and come to increasingly strange conclusions."
Chabris: We all have a variety of habits, trends and associations that affect different people in different ways. We all like the familiar, but each of us is different from all the others. We all value precision over vagueness and concreteness over abstraction in a statement.
Each of us will focus or be interested in different things. Some people may hear inappropriate health claims because they are not at a stage in their lives where they are particularly concerned about their health. But there will be something else that will completely tempt them to use the same kind of hook. And everyone has different assumptions and commitments.
Presenting the unbiased truth is important to all of us. The requirement for scammers and scammers to act is that we are at least willing to assume that what they are saying might be true. There seems to be something in the architecture of our minds that biases us so that we don't immediately react and say "that's not right."
We react immediately, perhaps by identifying something as true and temporarily remembering it. If something else confuses us or we don't have time to explore further, some sort of truth label can be attached so that when we meet again, we can slowly begin to descend deeper into the mountain. We accept enough to act accordingly. To travel the world you must bend to the truth. You can't even have a conversation unless you think people are actually trying to tell you the truth.
"Often they're not trying to get you , they're trying to get someone. "
It's so common that we don't even realize we're doing it. On the one hand, it's pretty obvious. On the other hand, it is very important that you know that it is necessary for everything to work. There are some scams that make you wonder, "How did they fall for this?" If they ignore the first word or phrase, they get nowhere.
Many people don't trust scammers or charlatans at first. But another universal principle is that they're not always looking for you , they're always looking for someone. So he needed a few people to respond to get the ball rolling. This is the classic principle of Nigerian fraud. They sent a million sentiments and tried to send money to many people repeatedly which was a stressful process for them. They don't care that 99% of people just delete the email or never see it.
But whether it's donating $5 to an unknown charity or buying a fake masterpiece, getting scammed is a personal feeling. I didn't know there were so many scams in the industry.
Simons: These are mainly deregulated markets. Industrial fraud is a market with high sales potential. The rules are minimal and can often be used to launder money. They have lost this very precious thing. There are many other similar markets. Crypto exhibits some of these elements. Whenever large amounts of money go around without much supervision, there is a risk of fraud.
By the time you sent this book to press, things had probably changed so much that I wanted to ask you a question about artificial intelligence and the proliferation of deep fraud. At this point, anyone can fake anything. What does this mean in terms of truth and reality?
Simons: I don't think it radically changes reality. The problem is that it's getting harder and harder to figure out what's real and what's not. We must be prepared and aware. ChatGPT is now rolling out to colleges and high schools. For us, this means we need to completely revamp the way we assess students. We can no longer rely on liberal home tests for disease and other things. If we really want to measure performance, we can't do that anymore, because chatbots and AI are good enough to answer most questions correctly. We have to be more creative when it comes to scoring goals.
When it comes to fraud and scams, I think it's very important to find ways to prevent them. This is always the best way. Finding ways to prevent fraud in general is better than reacting when you are short on time and someone is using all of these techniques effectively to detect it. You. A way to submit tests in advance is ideal.
A common scam that we do not cover in this book is the kidnapping scam. It's quite common these days. Or is it a fake. Someone calls their parents or grandparents, they've done enough research to know who that person's child is. And it's devastating. I think this is one of the darkest forms of cheating. Just exploit people's fears, anxieties, and worries. The question is: how to prevent it? Things get worse with AI because if there is enough online social content and online audio content, people can synthesize sounds. Imagine how powerful it would be if it came from a child.
Sometimes they notice it first. They know the local official's name, they know your name, they know enough about you, and they sound mean. There is a strategy to prevent such accidents from happening in the first place. One of them is my family password. আমরা জানি তারা অনেক চাপের মধ্যে থাকবে যদি আমর া কখনো এই ধরনের ফোন পাই। এবং প্রথম প্রশ্ন হল: পাসওয়ার্ড কি? যদি তারা না জানে, hang up.
বইটিতে, তারা খোলামেলা থাকার এবং গ্রহণ করার মা ধ্যমে এই কিছু ত্রুটিগুলি এড়ানোর উপায় সম্পর্ কে কথা বলেছেন। আমি আমার প্রবৃত্তি বিশ্বাস করতে চাই, কিন্তু ত ারা প্রায়ই ভুল হয়.
চ্যাব্রিস: এই সমস্যার কোন নিখুঁত সমাধান নেই। দুর্ভাগ্যবশত, চারদিকে উদ্ভাবনের জন্য একটি নি রলস অস্ত্রের প্রতিযোগিতা চলছে, লোকেরা আমাদের প ্রতারণা করার জন্য ক্রমাগত নতুন উপায় উদ্ভাবন করছে এবং আমরা অনেক ফাঁদে পড়েছি। আমি এটিকে আরও উদ্দেশ্যমূলক হওয়ার চেষ্টা করা র একটি জীবনব্যাপী প্রক্রিয়া হিসাবে দেখি। আমি এটা কম আবেগী বলতে চাই না। আমি মনে করি না যে আবেগপ্রবণ হওয়া ভালো, শুধু পূ র্ব-বিদ্যমান বিশ্বাস এবং পরিচয়ের প্রতি কম আঁ কড়ে থাকা। আপনার আবেগ থাকার অনেক কারণ রয়েছে এবং এটি একট ি ভাল জিনিস।
কিন্তু সমস্যা হল যে আমরা আমাদের ব্যক্তিত্বের এমন দিকগুলিকে অনুমতি দিই যেগুলি প্রায়শই অত্য ন্ত দৃঢ় অনুমান করার প্রতিশ্রুতিতে পরিণত হয়— আমাদের রাজনৈতিক দল থেকে যা আসে তা সত্য, আমরা যা প ছন্দ করি তা সত্য—আমরা কীভাবে তথ্য ব্যাখ্যা করি তা নিয়ন্ত্রণ করি। পাওয়া আমি মনে করি না এটা থেকে সরে আসা সহজ। আমি মনে করি এটি কিছু সময় নেবে এবং আশা করি আমাদ ের বই পড়া সাহায্য করবে। তবে এটি রাতারাতি সমাধান নয়। এটি একটি খুব দীর্ঘ প্রক্রিয়া। আমি মনে করি যে লোকেরা সম্পূর্ণ উদ্দেশ্যমূলক ব লে দাবি করে তারা সম্ভবত নিজেদেরকে কিছুটা বোকা বানাচ্ছে। যুক্তিবাদী হওয়ার একটি নির্দিষ্ট স্টাইল আছে এবং এটি একটি ভাল দিকনির্দেশনা। কিন্তু আমি মনে করি যে লোকেরা যারা বস্তুনিষ্ঠ এবং যুক্তিবাদী বলে দাবি করে তাদের মাঝে মাঝে তাদ ের নিজস্ব দায়িত্ব থাকে যা আরও ঘনিষ্ঠভাবে পরী ক্ষা করা দরকার। কোন কিছুই ঠিক নাই.
সাইমনস: আমরা আমাদের আবেগ বন্ধ করতে পারি না। আমরা স্পক বা ডেটা হব না। ঐটা আসল কথা না. এর একটি মূল উপাদান হল স্বীকৃতি দেওয়া যখন আপন ার আবেগ আপনাকে জিজ্ঞাসা করতে বাধা দিচ্ছে। তাই যখন আপনি এমন কিছু শুনতে পান যা আপনি সত্যিই পছন্দ করেন এবং যা আপনার বিশ্বাসের সাথে সারিবদ ্ধ হয়, তখন আপনার সম্ভবত আরও সমালোচনা করা উচিত। আমি শুধু বুঝতে পারি যে আপনি হয়তো বলছেন, "কিন্ত ু এটা কি সত্যি?" উপলব্ধি করুন যে আপনি যখন খুব আকর্ষণীয় এবং স্ পর্শকাতর কিছু খুঁজে পান, সম্ভবত সেই মুহুর্তগুল ি যখন আপনার বলা উচিত, "আমাকে এটি সম্পর্কে ভাবতে দ িন।" আবার এই সম্পর্কে।"
চ্যাব্রিস: ড্যান একটি ভাল পয়েন্ট তোলে, কিন্ত ু আমি মনে করি এটি সত্যিই উভয় উপায়ে যায়। আপনি যদি সত্যিই কিছু ঘৃণা করেন, আপনি জিজ্ঞাসা করা উচিত. কোনো কিছু সম্পর্কে আমরা যত বেশি আবেগ অনুভব কর ি, তত বেশি আমাদের এটি অন্বেষণ করতে হবে। শক্তিশালী ইতিবাচক আবেগ আত্ম-পরীক্ষার জন্য এক টি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ সময়। যদি আমরা সত্যিই কিছু সম্পর্কে, সত্যিই নেতিবাচ ক বোধ করি, তাহলে আমাদের এক ধাপ পিছিয়ে যেতে হবে ।
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ঘাটতি, মিথ্যা প্রতিবেদন এবং প্রতারকদের সম্পর ্কে