The quote from Teller pretty much sums up the situation: "You will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest" (from an interview with him, it's a fascinating read http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Teller-Reveals-Hi...).
Ah, but my favourite from that article: "You think you’ve made a choice, just as when you choose between two candidates preselected by entrenched political parties(No. 7—Choice is not freedom)."
> Scammers use the “time principle” to persuade us we need to act quickly before we can think rationally and exercise self-control. They also make use of the “deference to authority principle” and the “herd principle” – our tendency to act like our friends or those around us – to convince people that the scam is legitimate.
> ...making use of physically attractive accomplices, for instance. They can use our deepest desires to blind our reasoning ...
There is currently a bit of a debate in Canada as to whether we should be joining the US and its allies in fighting the Islamic State, and all three of these are being heavily deployed by those in favour:
1) we must act now!
2) experts agree!
3) every decent person agrees IS must be stopped!
There hasn't been any deployment of physically attractive accomplices, although I guess that's pretty much what the Liberal's use of Justin Trudeau in opposition amounts to.
The difficulty is that none of these are actual arguments in favour of the proposed strategy. I am generally opposed to military intervention--because it rarely works and it kills people and costs enormous amounts of money and rarely works--but can see there may be a case to be made here. Unfortunately, by using what are widely recognized as scammer's tactics, the government has alienated itself from any evidence-based support (this would not be a first, for this government nor any of its predecessors.)
It would be lovely to see the actual merits of the mission debated, but it is clear that both the opposition and the government are interested only in deploying scammer's tactics in support of their favoured side.
Same exact thing happened with the '08 bailouts in the US, which Americans were strongly against. There must be some general mechanism by which the most powerful influencers get their act together when they need to.
And now I'm sounding uncomfortably similar to conspiracy theorists ...
Indeed.
The rush to war again and again appears to be a very good example of scams in motion.
Rather than focusing on emotional issues (which of course is what we are supposed to be focusing on), view the economics of the situation, and decide who gains from certain actions on the part of the US military.
I'm not saying ISIS isn't bad. But they don't benefit from antagonizing the west into bombing the bejeus out of Iraq and Syria, then re-occupying the Mideast with troops. So who would benefit from that?
Most likely, there's your terrorists in my opinion. They probably wear suits and stay in very nice hotels.
Good analysis. The corralary to all this seems to be politically correctness: make the debate appear decided and inarguable before an actual conversation is held. This pre-emptive form of poisoning the well so to speak has proven highly effective when (1), (2), and (3) conclude the topic cannot be opposed by "any reasonable man of [faith/science/progressive values etc].
Because sales and marketing are mostly about scamming people, period. Sure, there are people who are honest about their products and services, but it seems to be an extreme minority. And why we as the society are willing to be lied in the face by advertisers and salesmen is beyond me.
"Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur." - Zig Ziglar sales trainer.
I have spent a lot of my life in sales. The lying manipulating salesman gets all the attention, the honest guy makes all the money. Why? Customers will figure out if they were lied to, and not buy from that person again. The honest salesperson gets repeat business, and he gets word-of-mouth, and the time to close gets much shorter with repeat customers.
Think of your own life. Do you return to the scammy guy? Probably not. Do you have favorite places to spend money? Those places are staffed with the honest people. You probably go back over and over, spending money for years. I have purchased a new car a dozen times. The last three from Joe at Precision Toyota because he treats me well and he gives me great pricing in 5 minutes with no haggling. So Joe has got about $$100,000 in sales out of me.
I understand the anger people have about manipulative salespeople. I get angry when I see it too, but mostly because I can see bad technique the way most of the readers on HN see bad code. There are plenty of honest salespeople. You just think of them as "My friend at the store, I always get it from him" and that's ok. Your friend at the store is using his honest nature to build a business.
It seems like you are also selling something. And the price, which you do not mention, is the curtailment of free speech, a steep price to pay for the privilege of having my delicate eyes protected from what those bad salesmen are selling.
The "time principle" isn't just used in scams designed to separate you from your money. It's also used in religious and political propaganda -- after presenting a dubious chain of evidence or argumentation, quickly jumping to a call to action and hyping up the need to decide now. Sometimes it's not even a call to action that creates time pressure; it's simply a second argument that tangentially relates to the first. If you're trying to listen to the new argument you're no longer thinking critically about the prior one.
Yeah, every door to door sales person is always a handsome guy or hot chick pushing limited time offers. Inevitably I catch on to the scam by just listening to what their numbers are.
"Most of your neighbours have already signed up," okay... and?
"It's a limited time offer, so we need to know by the end of the week at the latest."
To see how this relates to computer security, download the pdf linked in the article. After it exposes the methods of exploitation, it gives examples of internet computer scams.
I have the same issue with 2nd hand items on the web. Always trying to find unrealistic prices, then praying for it to not be a busted. Often ends in 'well I wanted to see' hindsight justification.
If you don't think you've been conned thousands of times in your life then you aren't paying attention. What do you think advertising is? And don't get me started on preachers and realtors.
I think in total, in my 35 years of life I've lost in total less than one month of my income at current rate. So not a problem. Just a source of interesting observations.
Side note - articles like these used to be completely blocked in the UK, but now seem to have become accessible, with the following caveat just below the banner ad:
"This website is made by BBC Worldwide. BBC Worldwide is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC.) No money from the licence fee was used to create this website. Instead this website is supported by advertising outside the UK. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes"
The whole article is an interesting read, and as another comment here already pointed out, it links to other good online content. I think that the article's point about online security is a healthy reminder for many Hacker News readers:
"The seven persuasion principles might be as old as the hills, but Stajano says they are often ignored by security experts, who are as likely to blame security breaches on the people using their systems as they are to blame the scammers. 'Too many security professionals think: users are such a pain – my system would be super-secure if only users behaved in the proper way,' he says. He is trying to persuade experts that they need to make security systems that work in harmony with – not despite - the way we behave."
We have to deal with human nature as it is, not as we wish it to be, if we are to make progress in computer and Internet security.
> We have to deal with human nature as it is, not as we wish it to be
Yes, exactly. Security professionals should be forced to write this out in longhand about 100 times every week, just so they don't forget.
I know many people who have used computers for 20 or 30 years, but who are still "clueless" in my "computer nerd" opinion. That's because normal users just want to use computers as a tool to solve problems they're interested in. Normal people are interested in the destination, computer nerds are interested in the journey.
> ...the authority principle, for example, is actually very helpful for surviving peacefully in human society
Is it really? But isn't unquestioning obedience to authority the key ingredient to war, corruption and genocide? Maybe trust in authority is necessary in children but adults need to accept the responsibility to think for themselves.
This reminded me of my most recent car purchase. I ran out of time (long weekend that I allocated to the search had ended) and couldn't call them out by saying, "I know I don't have to buy it at this price now."
Their customer service seemed genuinely surprised when I slammed the sales process in my post-sales feedback.
