it occurs to me that perhaps another useful message in addition to "turning yourself in is on expectation positive" would be "your fraud is in fact unusual in your social reference class." If I imagine the sort of fraudster who's a "normal person" "who made a bad mistake", this person probably doesn't think of themselves AS a fraudster. They presumably rationalize their behavior with "I made a mistake but I'm fixing it" and, crucially, "everybody does this (or something like it)". The latter leg of the rationalization seems like another productive point to attack—always supposing, of course, that the attack is true.
I will also add - I have been thinking about this exact problem a lot, because I have so many random social connections to people in crypto.
A recent rumor claims that someone I am acquainted with needs to declare bankruptcy due to the way they managed their crypto money, but the person is instead doing a lot of ketamine and visualizing godhood, and is not declaring bankruptcy even though that’s the only thing that could protect their housing at this point. So, there’s a failure mode you can add to the list alongside “hoping to resolve things by winning at cards.”
Most fraudsters do not read Thing of Things. The one who lives in a cave in the Bahamas and committed a really big fraud is an outlier should not have been counted.
it occurs to me that perhaps another useful message in addition to "turning yourself in is on expectation positive" would be "your fraud is in fact unusual in your social reference class." If I imagine the sort of fraudster who's a "normal person" "who made a bad mistake", this person probably doesn't think of themselves AS a fraudster. They presumably rationalize their behavior with "I made a mistake but I'm fixing it" and, crucially, "everybody does this (or something like it)". The latter leg of the rationalization seems like another productive point to attack—always supposing, of course, that the attack is true.
This is very funny and I hope helpful to someone
I will also add - I have been thinking about this exact problem a lot, because I have so many random social connections to people in crypto.
A recent rumor claims that someone I am acquainted with needs to declare bankruptcy due to the way they managed their crypto money, but the person is instead doing a lot of ketamine and visualizing godhood, and is not declaring bankruptcy even though that’s the only thing that could protect their housing at this point. So, there’s a failure mode you can add to the list alongside “hoping to resolve things by winning at cards.”
Re: footnote 1. Do you think your blog has a higher-than-average proportion of fraudsters reading it?
At least two readers of this blog have been arrested for crypto fraud. I don't know what the population percentage of fraudsters is.
Most fraudsters do not read Thing of Things. The one who lives in a cave in the Bahamas and committed a really big fraud is an outlier should not have been counted.
Yeah I was confused if this was a joke or not, and if serious, how you would know this. Is Ozy getting anonymous emailed confessions?