CS Lewis said the greatest sinners have the makeup to be the greatest saints had things been slightly different. A large portion of this seems to be "willingness to expend a lot of effort and resources doing things not in your self-interest for pure love of the game", for different values of "the game".
One Islamic hadits says that greatest apostates, once converted, is the greatest saint. The prophet is once said to pray to God to convert one of the two strongest pagan at the time. He actually does, and becomes a vanguard of Islam and eventually, the second caliph.
There is a question as for why these long term scammers seems to love scamming
Maybe theres some inherent drive in everyone to be a bit rulebending or get one over people. In most people its a thing that make them more skilled att exploiting social opportunities, or helps them defend themself against scammers.
Maybe. Idk.
All i know is that i dont really feel that inclination at all. At modt i like being smart and moving rules around, but i dont like exploting peoplr
You wonder how all of this applies to the ethics of consensual sadomasochism. Is your average dom just a dark triad person with an intact ethical compass?
I also say, as a considerably less idealistic person than you, that many of the most rewarded professions are those like investment banking and consulting that involve hurting people who get laid off in mergers and downsizings. In our modern corporate and startup worlds, the most successful are those who can look nice and act mean, kiss up and kick down, or wipe out competing firms.
Furthermore, at least in the dating arena, women tend to find excessively nice men unattractive (likely for the reasons above), so you wind up having to cultivate at least a small degree of callousness or at least feigned lack of interest in the initial stages. And, of course, squirt-and-run is the optimal strategy from a Darwinian point of view even if it leads to socially terrible outcomes (lots of babies, no daddy). Conversely, an attractive woman has to be at least moderately unapproachable to avoid being swamped or even attacked, and divorce can produce a nice payday.
You can be *too* un-Machiavellian, un-narcissistic, and un-psychopathic, or dark triad genes wouldn't persist.
I mean, I do think the people who took an already existing business and did long-firm fraud with it planned to commit long-firm fraud! They didn't trip and fall into a long firm. The distinction is whether it was planned *before* the company was founded, i.e., pre-planned.
I think it depends on how you use the word "plan". There's an argument to be made that if you replace "planned" with "intended" in the first sentence, the need to use "pre" to distinguish between two types of "planning" goes away.
CS Lewis said the greatest sinners have the makeup to be the greatest saints had things been slightly different. A large portion of this seems to be "willingness to expend a lot of effort and resources doing things not in your self-interest for pure love of the game", for different values of "the game".
One Islamic hadits says that greatest apostates, once converted, is the greatest saint. The prophet is once said to pray to God to convert one of the two strongest pagan at the time. He actually does, and becomes a vanguard of Islam and eventually, the second caliph.
If you want more about the mechanics of long form fraud, there's _Lying for Money_ by Dan Davies.
Featured earlier on this blog: https://thingofthings.substack.com/p/interesting-facts-from-lying-for
Also, for those interested, a review by Justin Kuiper that made the finals of the ACX book review contest: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-lying-for-money
And a podcast interview of the author (with an annotated transcript) by Patrick McKenzie, which discusses the book: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/dan-davies-organizations-fraud/
Is there anything about what to do if you're being victimized by a long firm scammer?
The book is from the 1970s so I suspect the advice is out of date.
There is a question as for why these long term scammers seems to love scamming
Maybe theres some inherent drive in everyone to be a bit rulebending or get one over people. In most people its a thing that make them more skilled att exploiting social opportunities, or helps them defend themself against scammers.
Maybe. Idk.
All i know is that i dont really feel that inclination at all. At modt i like being smart and moving rules around, but i dont like exploting peoplr
You wonder how all of this applies to the ethics of consensual sadomasochism. Is your average dom just a dark triad person with an intact ethical compass?
I also say, as a considerably less idealistic person than you, that many of the most rewarded professions are those like investment banking and consulting that involve hurting people who get laid off in mergers and downsizings. In our modern corporate and startup worlds, the most successful are those who can look nice and act mean, kiss up and kick down, or wipe out competing firms.
Furthermore, at least in the dating arena, women tend to find excessively nice men unattractive (likely for the reasons above), so you wind up having to cultivate at least a small degree of callousness or at least feigned lack of interest in the initial stages. And, of course, squirt-and-run is the optimal strategy from a Darwinian point of view even if it leads to socially terrible outcomes (lots of babies, no daddy). Conversely, an attractive woman has to be at least moderately unapproachable to avoid being swamped or even attacked, and divorce can produce a nice payday.
You can be *too* un-Machiavellian, un-narcissistic, and un-psychopathic, or dark triad genes wouldn't persist.
pre-plan = plan
I mean, I do think the people who took an already existing business and did long-firm fraud with it planned to commit long-firm fraud! They didn't trip and fall into a long firm. The distinction is whether it was planned *before* the company was founded, i.e., pre-planned.
I think it depends on how you use the word "plan". There's an argument to be made that if you replace "planned" with "intended" in the first sentence, the need to use "pre" to distinguish between two types of "planning" goes away.