Speaker 1: It's not too often that any one of us is
Speaker 1: going to fall victim to a scam. It's a risk,
Speaker 1: but it's not such a huge risk that we should
Speaker 1: be worried about it every moment of every day. We
Speaker 1: should be worried about it when it matters, And there's
Speaker 1: some things that you can kind of learn up the
Speaker 1: top that you just know, at least for the scams
Speaker 1: that are available right now are always going to be scams.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: Daniel Simmons and Christopher Chabri to the show. Daniel Simmons
Speaker 2: is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois,
Speaker 2: where he heads the Visual Cognition Laboratory. His research explores
Speaker 2: the limits of awareness and memory, the reasons why we
Speaker 2: often are unaware of those limits, and the implications for
Speaker 2: our personal and professional lives. Christiop ver Shabri is professor
Speaker 2: and co director of the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program
Speaker 2: at Geisinger Health System. He is also a faculty co
Speaker 2: director of Geisinger's Behavioral Insights Team. From twenty fourteen to
Speaker 2: two thous yet and seventeen, he wrote a monthly column
Speaker 2: called Game on for the Wall Street Journal. His essays
Speaker 2: have been published in several media outlets. Daniel and Christopher
Speaker 2: met at Harvard University in nineteen ninety seven, where they
Speaker 2: began to collaborate on research. In two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: they shared the Ignobel Prize in Psychology Award for the
Speaker 2: Invisible Guerrilla Experiment. Together, they co authored the New York
Speaker 2: Times bestselling book of the same name. Their latest book
Speaker 2: is called Nobody's Full While We Get Taken In and
Speaker 2: What We Can Do About It. In this episode, I
Speaker 2: talked to Daniel and Christopher about scams and how not
Speaker 2: to get scammed. With enough information and persuasion, anyone can
Speaker 2: fall for a scheme. According to Daniel and Christopher, certain
Speaker 2: cognitive biases can make us vulnerable to deception. So to
Speaker 2: help us outsmart con people, they elaborate the different types
Speaker 2: of scams and how they work, all the while giving
Speaker 2: us tools to navigate shady situations. I really like Daniel
Speaker 2: and Christopher. I've known Christopher for a while. He was
Speaker 2: really encouraging me when I was working by a dissertation
Speaker 2: way back in the day, and I always found him
Speaker 2: such a brilliant, brilliant human Daniel. I came across when
Speaker 2: I was doing the National geographic show Brain Games, and
Speaker 2: I saw him on that show, and I thought he
Speaker 2: did a great job on that show, and I've been
Speaker 2: a really great admirer of his really sound, calm thinking
Speaker 2: about cognitive science and the biases that we have. So
Speaker 2: it was great to connect with both of them, and
Speaker 2: I found this a really rich conversation, really relevant to
Speaker 2: all the scams and cons that are going on in
Speaker 2: the world today, and I'm sure you'll find it informative
Speaker 2: as well. So, without further ado, I bring you Daniel
Speaker 2: Simmons and Christopher Chabri. Chris and Dan is so nice
Speaker 2: to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: It's great to be here. Good finding me.
Speaker 3: Excited to be back.
Speaker 2: Yes, welcome back, Chris. Dan Is the first time I've
Speaker 2: met you, which is yeah, we're talking earlier is before
Speaker 2: we recorded that. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like we should have known each other
Speaker 1: a decade ago.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've known you about fifteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And Chris, I have known you for quite some time.
Speaker 2: You look the same. Look at you.
Speaker 3: Well, there are certain hairstyles you can adopt that are timeless.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right, that's exactly right. But it's no.
Speaker 2: It's really good to see you again. I feel like
Speaker 2: we've been out of touch for a while for no
Speaker 2: good reason, so good to see you again. Same here
Speaker 2: this topic, Well, first of all, name the title of
Speaker 2: the book, Nobody's Full, Why we get taken in and
Speaker 2: what we can do about it? Well, Wow, what a
Speaker 2: timely topic this is. I don't think it's ever been
Speaker 2: a point in human history. It hasn't been a timely topic,
Speaker 2: but it just seems, you know, it seems like a
Speaker 2: great timely topic right now, and as illustrated by the
Speaker 2: fact you have the falling types of scams that you cover.
Speaker 2: And yes, I'm gonna run through the list. Ponzi schemes,
Speaker 2: phishing emails, fake political candidates, business email compromise, romance scams.
Speaker 2: I want to get to that one later. Forgeries and fakes, hoaxes, bullshitting, doping, plagiarism,
Speaker 2: same name scam, affinity fraud, structuring, cherry picking, call center scams,
Speaker 2: president scam, kidnapping, injury scam. I'm curious why you put
Speaker 2: those two together. Identity theft, scientific paper mills, illusory truth
Speaker 2: in the big lie, and gaming the metrics. Wow, that's
Speaker 2: a pretty exhaustive list, and I think that people can
Speaker 2: probably think of examples of most of these, if not
Speaker 2: all of these. So I was wondering, do you guys
Speaker 2: have a favorite con or scam? Maybe each of you
Speaker 2: have your own favorite that you came across as you're
Speaker 2: working through the book, And what can it teach us?
Speaker 3: I could take a stab, I could take a stab
Speaker 3: of that. One of the ones that I really liked
Speaker 3: that I discovered sort of while doing research for the
Speaker 3: book that I really liked was the president scam, sometimes
Speaker 3: called the CEO scam, that goes by different names. We
Speaker 3: mentioned it in the very first chapter of the book,
Speaker 3: I think, and it works like this. You work for
Speaker 3: a large organization and a large company or some kind
Speaker 3: of middle management type person, and you've got a phone
Speaker 3: call and the person on the other end of the
Speaker 3: line says that they're the CEO of your company, and
Speaker 3: they say that, you know, they need you to help
Speaker 3: them execute some kind of project, and they're going directly
Speaker 3: to you because there's urgency, or they don't want to
Speaker 3: involve certain other departments, or they need to keep this confidential.
Speaker 3: So this doesn't spread around too much, and it results
Speaker 3: in you getting talked into sending a large amount of
Speaker 3: corporate funds to some kind of you know, bank account,
Speaker 3: wire transfer, or even in some cases you know, taking
Speaker 3: out cash and bringing it someplace and like handing it
Speaker 3: through a doorway to someone who you don't even see.
Speaker 3: Amazingly enough, it works in some cases. It's kind of
Speaker 3: audacious in the way that you know, the con artist
Speaker 3: just like calls someone up and pretends to be the
Speaker 3: CEO of their company, and it works. And there's a
Speaker 3: few reasons I think why it can work. It seems
Speaker 3: outlandish that anyone would fall for it, but it's worked
Speaker 3: over and over again. I don't know that one just
Speaker 3: came to mind right now as being like something that
Speaker 3: I didn't know existed before working on this book, and
Speaker 3: yet I think we were sort of able to sort
Speaker 3: of fit it in, like all the other ones, into
Speaker 3: the framework that we talk about in the book.
Speaker 2: Definitely, Dan, do you have a favorite.
Speaker 1: I like the audacious ones as well, but I actually
Speaker 1: think it's more informative to think about the ones that
Speaker 1: aren't so audacious, the ones that are kind of, you know, mundane,
Speaker 1: but that work really well on ordinary people, right, So,
Speaker 1: category you know that that's an interesting question, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that always counts as a con. That's more
Speaker 1: of a question of just not being clearly true or false.
Speaker 1: I think the one that you mentioned, why do we
Speaker 1: group these two together? The injury kidnapping one is actually
Speaker 1: a really common one now and there are very many
Speaker 1: variants of it. Right, So, this is one where it's
Speaker 1: a somewhat targeted scam, but not hugely. They will call
Speaker 1: up a parent or a grandparent and say, your kid's
Speaker 1: been in an injury. We need you to send money
Speaker 1: right away so we can get them whatever they needed
Speaker 1: an emergency, or your kid's been kidnapped, and they produce
Speaker 1: sounds sounding like your kid to send money right away, right,
Speaker 1: And that's one I think is it's not I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call it a favorite. It's I think one of the
Speaker 1: most egregious and horrible ones because it's preying on people's
Speaker 1: fear as opposed to praying on their greed. Right. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when somebody falls for a scam that promises
Speaker 1: them huge amounts of money really quickly, it's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: they took something that was too good to be true
Speaker 1: and believed it. In this case, they're taking something that
Speaker 1: is terrifying to them. They're under huge time pressure and
Speaker 1: they're taking advantage of that to take money from people
Speaker 1: who might be really desperate. So and that one's really
Speaker 1: prevalent right now. There are lots of variants of it
Speaker 1: that are out there, and some of them target just enough.
Speaker 1: They find out who your kids are based on social
Speaker 1: media stuff, and then they target one person at a time.
Speaker 2: That is so horrifying. It makes me think of a
Speaker 2: question I wanted to ask you later on, but I'll
Speaker 2: ask it right now. And that's you know, when AI
Speaker 2: gets a little bit better, are there a lot of
Speaker 2: more potentials for scammers to do all sorts of creative things.
Speaker 1: I think that scam in particular is going to be
Speaker 1: a disaster when we're not quite there yet. But when
Speaker 1: you can do AI voice synthesis without having to have
Speaker 1: people record, say fifteen minutes of audio with really prescribed
Speaker 1: statements so that they can really characterize your whole voice range.
Speaker 1: When they're able to do that sort of learning of
Speaker 1: your voice from much more minimal audio content, then imagine
Speaker 1: how that scam works when they put your kid on
Speaker 1: the line and it's actually their voice that's just given
Speaker 1: to be that much more powerful. So it's one of
Speaker 1: those scams where I think it would be really in
Speaker 1: people's interests to try and anticipate it and prevent it
Speaker 1: in advance by, for example, having a family passcode so
Speaker 1: that if you get a call and you're being put
Speaker 1: under time pressure and somebody's in danger, they should always
Speaker 1: be able to give you that passcode if that's really them,
Speaker 1: And if they can't, you know, it's probably a scam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know that they are able to do music
Speaker 2: now in an artist's voice. You can compose new music
Speaker 2: and then use the voice to sing it. So maybe
Speaker 2: there'll be scams where it'd be like, hey, this is
Speaker 2: Drake Colin and yeah, I really like you and just
Speaker 2: give me money and I'll give you money song. I
Speaker 2: don't know, they probably carry out.
Speaker 3: Drake really must be on hard times if he needs
Speaker 3: to start calling random people for money. Isn't that the
Speaker 3: most like the most top ten hits ever or something?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I would think that for sure, but
Speaker 2: but it does raise an interesting question. There are some
Speaker 2: scams where you think, like, come on, who's going to
Speaker 2: fall for that. But but from an evolutionary point of view,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't exist, or at least the evolutionary process metaphor
Speaker 2: so to speak, it wouldn't exist if people didn't fall
Speaker 2: for it. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean there's scams that will hit anybody, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's you might not fall for the most obvious ones, right,
Speaker 1: and Chris might not fall for the Drake fake song
Speaker 1: asking me for money, you know one, but right, can
Speaker 1: get any of us.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, somebody might. I don't want to bring
Speaker 2: up the whole Trump thing, but he raised like, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to he raised how much money in the
Speaker 2: last five days to help him because of his he's
Speaker 2: a vict He's a victim of the wall. That's incredible,
Speaker 2: millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean I think there's a lot of
Speaker 3: dynamics going on there in politics and polarization and you know,
Speaker 3: rhetoric and so on. Certainly political communication is definitely an
Speaker 3: area we talk about a little bit in the book,
Speaker 3: and some more sort of subtle aspects of politics too,
Speaker 3: like not not just sort of like what messages politicians
Speaker 3: say and and and so on, but even tactics like
Speaker 3: you know, running fake candidates or real candidates, I should say,
Speaker 3: but who are only run for the purpose of diluting
Speaker 3: the vote of other candidates, you know, by having so
Speaker 3: smiller names or more recognizable names, or more American sounding names,
Speaker 3: let's say, than competing candidates. And some elections these days,
Speaker 3: you know, are close enough that you know, if you
Speaker 3: can change a few hundred votes here, a few thousand
Speaker 3: votes there, you know, the whole you know, the whole
Speaker 3: legislature might you know, might flip to the other party
Speaker 3: or something like that, and those kinds of techniques directly,
Speaker 3: you know, try to exploit some of the tendencies that
Speaker 3: we talk about in the book, that the framework that
Speaker 3: we describe of the habits we follow when we're making
Speaker 3: decisions and the kinds of information that hook us even
Speaker 3: but by the way, even the two that you when
Speaker 3: you asked us our favorites, right, the president scam I mentioned,
Speaker 3: and Dan talked about kidnapping injury scams, they really both
Speaker 3: start from, you know, the very same thing, which is
Speaker 3: truth bias, which we talk about in the book. And
Speaker 3: you mentioned evolution, right, So like you know, I think
Speaker 3: you know, it's safe to say that there's something about
Speaker 3: the way the mind has evolved where we tend to
Speaker 3: believe what people tell us, right, And that's that's the
Speaker 3: beginning of both of those scams, right, Like, if you
Speaker 3: don't believe your CEO would call you up and they're
Speaker 3: on the phone, or you don't believe that your kid
Speaker 3: might you know, get injured and you know, and someone
Speaker 3: would call you about it. You know, that's you know,
Speaker 3: there you go, that starts the process.
Speaker 2: Will you do if that happens and your kids sitting
Speaker 2: right next to you, Like you're like, Jimmy, are you okay?
Speaker 1: Keep the scammers on the phone as long as you
Speaker 1: can because you know it's a scam, so you're wasting
Speaker 1: their time and keeping them from bothering somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean. Polarization is an interesting case, right
Speaker 1: because one of the intensive polarization is to ramp up
Speaker 1: the commitment of the people who already agree with you, right,
Speaker 1: to make their commitment more and more extreme. And when
Speaker 1: you're really committed to a position or a statement or
Speaker 1: a belief, it's really hard to challenge it, right, So
Speaker 1: you're willing to take on more and more stuff that
Speaker 1: might be way outside the mainstream norms just because you're
Speaker 1: already kind of committed and you assume that this person
Speaker 1: is telling you the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's all kinds of mistakes you can make if
Speaker 3: you have a fixed belief, which we call a commitment,
Speaker 3: and then you must arrange all your sort of downstream
Speaker 3: inferences and beliefs to be consistent with that one you
Speaker 3: started with. So, for example, if you believe that Trump
Speaker 3: always tells the truth, which some people do, you can
Speaker 3: then convince yourself of all kinds of other things, because
Speaker 3: if they are inconsistent with Trump telling the truth, then
Speaker 3: they can't be true, right or maybe less politically, we
Speaker 3: talk about this phenomenon called the Mendela effect, which you
Speaker 3: probably know about, where people think that some people sort
Speaker 3: of convince themselves that they had a strong memory of
Speaker 3: Nelson Mandela having died, you know, in prison, you know,
Speaker 3: decades before he was released and became President of South Africa.
Speaker 3: And so if in light of the fact that everybody
Speaker 3: else seems to think that Nelson Mandela did not die
Speaker 3: in prison and did become president of South Africa, they
Speaker 3: can convince themselves that the timeline must have been forked.
Speaker 3: Or some sinister forces are like rewriting, you know, all
Speaker 3: the record books and libraries and everything like that. And
Speaker 3: it's all because they believe my memory must be true. Right.
Speaker 3: If they didn't have that fixed commitment of their memory
Speaker 3: being correct, they wouldn't arrive at all these absurd conclusions.
Speaker 2: What is this phenomenon? So Trump went to a restaurant
Speaker 2: for ten minutes after his indictment. He said food for everyone,
Speaker 2: and then he left after ten minutes and didn't pay
Speaker 2: anyone anything. Now, his his defenders are saying, no, all
Speaker 2: he said was food for everyone. You know, he's just
Speaker 2: noting that everyone's going to be eating at some point.
Speaker 2: He didn't say the fact. Yeah, yeah, Now what is
Speaker 2: that distortion? Cognitive distortion? What is that.
Speaker 3: You can request something for other people without necessarily meaning
Speaker 3: you're going to pay for it yourself.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, yeah, but I'm saying yeah, but you understand
Speaker 2: my question. So what are you saying? You're one of
Speaker 2: Trump's defenders, is that you're like, yeah, I see what
Speaker 2: they're saying. I see it. Chris is like, no, that's
Speaker 2: a very logical point that the Trumps are making.
Speaker 3: Well, remember that in the previous campaign and very first
Speaker 3: Trump campaign, right, there was this distinction between taking him
Speaker 3: literally and taking him seriously. I suppose, like here, you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't if you take him literally, what exactly
Speaker 3: does that mean.
Speaker 2: This is one of these instances because Chris is a
Speaker 2: very literal person. He could be taken in. He could
Speaker 2: be taken in by something like that. Like, technicallychically he's
Speaker 2: not wrong.
Speaker 3: Why do people, you know, why do people come up
Speaker 3: with those sort of silly explanations of what mood for
Speaker 3: everyone didn't mean he was paying for everyone's food. Yes,
Speaker 3: I mean hard to say, and in the case of
Speaker 3: anybody's particular belief, but I think, you know, I think commitment.
Speaker 3: You know that the concept of commitment that we that
Speaker 3: we talked about is definitely is definitely part of it.
Speaker 3: You know, if you have some inherent belief that someone's
Speaker 3: a good person and that they you know, wouldn't lie
Speaker 3: or wouldn't cheat or something like that, you will sort
Speaker 3: of figure out why what they said was not an
Speaker 3: instance of doing that, you know, or of bullshitting or whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: Right, and somebody looking at it from the outside who
Speaker 1: has no commitments looks at it and says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of obvious that he was saying he was
Speaker 1: going to pay and then didn't, and then you can
Speaker 1: get into his motivations why would he do that? But
Speaker 1: that's actually one thing we don't really want to do
Speaker 1: all that much in this book. So there are lots
Speaker 1: of stories about, you know, what motivates this con artist?
Speaker 1: Why are they trying to do what they're doing? And
Speaker 1: that's less of interest to us. Then why do people
Speaker 1: believe things that con arts tell them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Well you offer tools which is really valuable.
Speaker 2: One is called the possibility grid, which can help us
Speaker 2: notice when we're being misled by the information we aren't considering.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about what the heck
Speaker 2: the possibility grid is, Chris?
Speaker 1: Do you want to start with that one?
Speaker 3: I'll try. Okay, it's pretty simple, And I think maybe
Speaker 3: a good way to start is with an example. And
Speaker 3: this is an example that we actually have in the book.
Speaker 3: Imagine you see an advertisement on you know, a website
Speaker 3: or something like that, and it says it's got a
Speaker 3: picture of a guy and it says this guy picked Amazon,
Speaker 3: you know, in nineteen ninety seven and Tesla and twenty ten,
Speaker 3: and he's about to introduce his next stock pick. Like
Speaker 3: that is almost word for word in actual advertisement that
Speaker 3: followed me around on the internet for you know, for years,
Speaker 3: you know, like that one weird old tip ad that
Speaker 3: used to follow people around every website. They went to
Speaker 3: this one. This one followed me, and you know, it's
Speaker 3: very encouraging, like we should click this guy he picked
Speaker 3: you know, two of the biggest growing stocks ever, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know, let's see what he's got to say next.
Speaker 3: But what the advertiser is doing is really focusing our
Speaker 3: attention on just one out of four boxes in what
Speaker 3: we call the possibility grid. So in this case, imagine
Speaker 3: like a two x two grid of boxes, and the
Speaker 3: top row of boxes is stocks this guy picked, and
Speaker 3: then the left column is ones we wish we had bought, right,
Speaker 3: So stocks he picked, and we wish we had bought
Speaker 3: Amazon and Tesla, And that's what they're really focusing on,
Speaker 3: right We wish we had bought Amazon when this guy
Speaker 3: picked it. We wish we had bought Tesla when this
Speaker 3: guy picked it. We'd be millionaires or more by now.
Speaker 3: But notice that that top row this guy picked, you know,
Speaker 3: also might include things we don't wish we had bought,
Speaker 3: And they're not telling us about any of his other picks,
Speaker 3: Like what if he picked pets dot com right before
Speaker 3: it like went bankrupt or something like that in the
Speaker 3: Internet age, Or what if he picked any one of
Speaker 3: a number of other Internet stocks that like, you know,
Speaker 3: you could have lost all your money on. And then
Speaker 3: of course there's other stocks we wish we had bought.
Speaker 3: That's that left column, remember, but the bottom row is
Speaker 3: like ones he didn't pick. So how come he didn't
Speaker 3: pick Apple? How come he didn't pick Microsoft? How come
Speaker 3: he didn't? Right, we don't know about all the stocks
Speaker 3: he didn't pick that we wish we had, you know, bought.
Speaker 3: And then of course there's the bottom right corner, which
Speaker 3: are the ones he didn't pick and and we didn't
Speaker 3: wish we had bought. But if you just think about
Speaker 3: those other three boxes besides the one that the ad
Speaker 3: is trying to focus us on, those two winning stock picks,
Speaker 3: those are the other possibilities, right, So we call it
Speaker 3: the possibility grid because there are other possibilities for what
Speaker 3: could have happened or what might be happening that our
Speaker 3: attention is not being drawn to. So you know, you
Speaker 3: don't need to know how many stocks are in those
Speaker 3: other boxes. You just need to realize that there's a
Speaker 3: lot more than two. And in fact, those two things
Speaker 3: are like very unrepresentative of you know, what's likely to happen.
Speaker 3: You know, if you take this guy's next pick, he
Speaker 3: must have picked other stocks, because like you can't make
Speaker 3: a living picking one stock every thirteen years or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: But of course he's not telling you about all of
Speaker 3: his failed picks and all of the pixie wishes he
Speaker 3: had made but didn't and so on. So just thinking
Speaker 3: about the possibilities really helps us avoid being misled by
Speaker 3: this kind of information stream of anecdotal experiences that people
Speaker 3: want us to make decisions on.
Speaker 2: How would that have protected us against someone like Bernie
Speaker 2: Madoff who had fake stocks anyway? You know, like he's
Speaker 2: just like it's all positive and trust me, trust me.
Speaker 1: It's that one might not have, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: that what that possibility grid really helps with our cases
Speaker 1: where people are guiding us to focus on just what's
Speaker 1: right in front of us at that moment and giving
Speaker 1: you a selection of the information, so not everything. So
Speaker 1: every business book you've every ever read that talks about
Speaker 1: all the great strategies of CEO adopted that led to
Speaker 1: their success, right, right, that's all in that one corner
Speaker 1: of the possibility grid. We don't talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: all of the things that they did that failed, or
Speaker 1: we don't talk about all of the other people who
Speaker 1: did exactly the same thing they did and crashed and burned, right,
Speaker 1: and all the other things that led to success. So
Speaker 1: it's essentially focusing you in on anecdotes and testimonials, and
Speaker 1: when you do that, you don't think about all of
Speaker 1: the other kinds of information that might actually tell you
Speaker 1: whether or not something is even associated with success.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean this just d harp parkins back.
Speaker 2: I'll get you know, exciting, Chris. This goes way back
Speaker 2: to a pet peeve Chris and I had, like over
Speaker 2: a decade ago about all the research about greatness, like
Speaker 2: you know, even like the ten hour roll. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like like he's starting with the experts, and he's like,
Speaker 2: this is what the experts have. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: feel like I don't feel like he did the possibility grid.
Speaker 3: It's even I mean, yeah, it's it's even worse. It
Speaker 3: could be that the causality as backwards.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So there's a whole genre of business writing nowadays which says,
Speaker 3: you know, Amazon runs its meetings this way, or Google
Speaker 3: gives its employe is free food for lunch and dinner
Speaker 3: and free dry cleaning and everything like that. And the
Speaker 3: unspoken implication of all of these is that Google does it,
Speaker 3: therefore you should do it too. Because Google is an
Speaker 3: incredibly successful company. And of course they're incredibly successful, and
Speaker 3: they probably have some good ideas for how to run things,
Speaker 3: but not necessarily every way they do things contribute to
Speaker 3: their success. It could be that they can afford to
Speaker 3: do those things because they're so successful. Right, Once you're
Speaker 3: making that much profit, you can start giving away more
Speaker 3: stuff to your employees. You can adopt maybe hiring practices
Speaker 3: that wouldn't actually work for other firms, that that other
Speaker 3: firms can't afford, or that wouldn't work. And I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to single like Google, but like there's there's ones
Speaker 3: you know about. Many of these, like Facebook used to
Speaker 3: be you know, talked about in the same way, and
Speaker 3: you know, and and so on, and there's always like this,
Speaker 3: this must be a secret to their success. It's probably
Speaker 3: in most cases reverse causality.
Speaker 1: There are no causality at all, just necessiary.
Speaker 3: Just a quirky thing about Jeff Bezos, you know, and
Speaker 3: that has nothing to do with whether a company is
Speaker 3: well run or something like that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, Yeah. Does Facebook still exist, by the way,
Speaker 2: I haven't been on there in like ten years. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know about that. Scott'sta meta platforms. I
Speaker 3: guess if we want to get if we want to
Speaker 3: get mat.
Speaker 2: It's not as big. It's not as big as it
Speaker 2: used to be, right, I mean most people I should say,
Speaker 2: I should say because I know Chris Lake's technique, you know,
Speaker 2: being precise, I'm not as active on Facebook these days
Speaker 2: as I used to be by an exponential margin. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know. One thing about social media,
Speaker 3: whether it's Facebook or others. Is that related to what
Speaker 3: you said at the very beginning about the book being timely?
Speaker 3: I think social media is one of the aspects of
Speaker 3: the Internet and modern technologies that actually makes scamming, you know,
Speaker 3: easier to carry out in high volume. I mean maybe
Speaker 3: AI will sort of further, you know, accelerate this process.
Speaker 3: But before the Internet, before social media and so on,
Speaker 3: the infamous Nigerian email scams were sent out by letter
Speaker 3: you know, and then by facts you know and so on.
Speaker 3: So the technology actually sort of seems to be often
Speaker 3: making it easier, you know, for scammers to to operate,
Speaker 3: whether it's you know, Facebook or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Especially for those scams that aren't targeting an individual, but
Speaker 1: are targeting sending out something to millions of people and
Speaker 1: hoping that a tiny subset of them respond and give
Speaker 1: them their money, like the Nigerian email scam. That's not
Speaker 1: going to fool the vast majority of people because we've
Speaker 1: all seen it before, but there's still enough people out
Speaker 1: there who haven't that if you blast out millions of emails,
Speaker 1: you'll get enough to make it profitable. And you know
Speaker 1: that's that's going to be. You know, that doesn't change.
Speaker 1: That just makes it easier and easier to not target,
Speaker 1: to just reach out and let people self select into
Speaker 1: a scam.
Speaker 2: I feel like your magician's telling me the secrets. So
Speaker 2: what is the Nigeria you like? Just go down the
Speaker 2: list of the most famous magician acts of all time
Speaker 2: and let me tell you how it really works. How
Speaker 2: does the Nigerian email scam really work? Because you talk
Speaker 2: about that in your Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think one of the ways to think about this is,
Speaker 1: you know, when you get that email, and if you
Speaker 1: look in your spam folder, there probably are still I
Speaker 1: find them every day, still in different variants. What they
Speaker 1: have in common is they typically have a bizarre greeting.
Speaker 1: They typically have broken English serves or you know, dear
Speaker 1: valued person or something. There's nonsensical greeting and sign offs.
Speaker 1: They almost all have this character of we just need
Speaker 1: a little bit of your help in order to recover
Speaker 1: this vast fortune, and then we'll reward you. Right. So
Speaker 1: it's what's known as an advanced fee scam. They get
Speaker 1: you to pay something, and then they get you to
Speaker 1: pay a little more, and then pay a little more
Speaker 1: with the promise in advance that you're going to get
Speaker 1: something back. When you don't actually get something back, but
Speaker 1: you know that, you might think, okay, well maybe they
Speaker 1: should use chat GPT to make their emails more coherent. Right,
Speaker 1: they could do that, but then what you'd have is
Speaker 1: people who are at least somewhat skeptical responding to the emails.
Speaker 1: And if you have people who are somewhat optical responding,
Speaker 1: then you have to deal with them and interact with them.
Speaker 1: But those are not the people who are likely to
Speaker 1: send in money in the end, because they're probably not
Speaker 1: gullible enough. They're skeptical about this, they just want to check,
Speaker 1: and it's much harder to persuade somebody who going in
Speaker 1: is a little bit skeptical than somebody who thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a great opportunity. So you need to reach
Speaker 1: that tiny percentage of people for whom this email still
Speaker 1: looks good enough to be possible, as opposed to too good
Speaker 1: to be true. So by blasting it out to millions
Speaker 1: of people and making it ridiculous sounding, they filter out
Speaker 1: the skeptics and leave just the people who are most
Speaker 1: likely to send in their money in the end, because
Speaker 1: it takes them a lot of time to interact with
Speaker 1: those people.
Speaker 3: It's also the same reason why a lot of phishing emails,
Speaker 3: you know, they might have like the Apple logo in them,
Speaker 3: but they never look exactly like a real official Apple email.
Speaker 3: And I think that's on purpose, because it would really
Speaker 3: be easy to copy and paste like the HTML code
Speaker 3: from a real Apple email and then just modify it.
Speaker 3: I think they don't want people who are attentive to detail.
Speaker 3: They want people who will just be taken in by
Speaker 3: seeing an Apple logo and some you know a little
Speaker 3: fine print at the bottom and not realize something's not
Speaker 3: quite right about this. Right. They don't want those people
Speaker 3: who pay that much attention, right, They wanted all those
Speaker 3: people to just opt out of the scam by pressing delete,
Speaker 3: you know, and they never want to hear about her
Speaker 3: or think about those people again.
Speaker 1: And you know, the same principle works for a lot
Speaker 1: of the sort of robo calls you get. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you get those calls for extending your car's warranty, right,
Speaker 1: they almost always leave a voicemail and a callback number,
Speaker 1: And if you call back, you've self selected into the
Speaker 1: scam because most people just ignore it and they know to.
Speaker 1: But anybody who calls back is already already sort of
Speaker 1: self selected as somebody interested enough that they might be
Speaker 1: able to hook them.
Speaker 2: My mom called back the other day and started yelling
Speaker 2: at them like, hey, how dare you try to scam me?
Speaker 2: That's great, fuckers, Yeah is if you.
Speaker 3: Think about it, Your mom is quite Your mom is
Speaker 3: quite salty with the language on the on the phone.
Speaker 3: She is, well, yeah, so if she would pursue this longer,
Speaker 3: she'd be what's called a scam baiter, and it's ambat
Speaker 3: is someone who deliberately engages with scammers, having complete understanding
Speaker 3: that they're trying to scam them and having no intention
Speaker 3: of ever sending any money, but tries to waste their
Speaker 3: time so that they can't you know, they can't scam
Speaker 3: anybody else. So the more with this, even more she'd
Speaker 3: be doing a service.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the more people who do that, the less profitable
Speaker 1: the scam becomes, because they're having to waste time with,
Speaker 1: you know, with no profits.
Speaker 2: Do you know who coffee Zilla is?
Speaker 3: I've heard, I've heard the name. Who's Who's coffee Zilla?
Speaker 2: Remind you guys would love him like he's he's millions
Speaker 2: and millions of viewers on his YouTube channel. His whole
Speaker 2: career is trying to reveal scammers by pretending to go
Speaker 2: along with it and then recording everything.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, that's right. There's some there's some other guys
Speaker 3: who do. There's like there's one guy who like uncovers
Speaker 3: these Indian call center scams and then like shows like
Speaker 3: you know, broadcasts them on YouTube and he even gets
Speaker 3: like code into their computers. So he could, like, you know,
Speaker 3: hacking to reverse hack into their data and so on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're magicians who do that for people who claim
Speaker 1: to be havingta psychic powers. Right, that's a long tradition
Speaker 1: of debunking fraudulent you know, psychics and mentalists.
Speaker 2: So interesting. I really enjoy coffee's illa stuff, so I
Speaker 2: think you guys would as well. It's just right up
Speaker 2: your alley. It's right up your alley. Okay. I also
Speaker 2: want to know about I mentioned Bernie made Off a
Speaker 2: little bit, but you take a second look at the
Speaker 2: whole scam that Bernie did, and I'd love you to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about your kind of analysis of
Speaker 2: the situation.
Speaker 3: I could take a stab at that. I think one
Speaker 3: important thing to think about when you hear when you
Speaker 3: think of large and complicated scams like Bernie Madeoff as one,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Holmes and Pharaos is another, even the President scam.
Speaker 3: Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of these ones really
Speaker 3: involved sort of hacking into a lot of our cognitive habits.
Speaker 3: But I think one of the crucial ones in the
Speaker 3: Madeoff case was the way that he created, in a sense,
Speaker 3: a new kind of scam that wasn't It's often referred
Speaker 3: to as a Ponzi scheme, but it was really a
Speaker 3: modernization of the Ponzi scheme that made it appealing to
Speaker 3: a more sophisticated and wealthier client tele in some ways.
Speaker 3: So in the traditional Ponzi scheme, you are offered some
Speaker 3: ridiculous return on your money, like you'll get fifty percent
Speaker 3: return on investment in six months. I think that might
Speaker 3: have actually been Ponzi's original proposition. It was fifty percent
Speaker 3: in six months. And of course what happens is money
Speaker 3: gets paid in by people, and then, you know, after
Speaker 3: six months, you pay out to the people who paid
Speaker 3: in six months ago, and you just keep on doing
Speaker 3: that until, of course eventually you run out of money
Speaker 3: because you're not taking it enough money to pay out,
Speaker 3: you know, to pay out the former people. So made off.
Speaker 3: Was a Ponzi scheme in that respect, but he didn't
Speaker 3: offer people fifty percent in six months. He basically just
Speaker 3: said I will manage your money. I'll invest it in
Speaker 3: high quality stocks. And you know my reputation, I'm a
Speaker 3: famous guy on Wall Street. You know there are people
Speaker 3: I've been managing money for for years and so on,
Speaker 3: many people, and you'll get about eight to ten percent
Speaker 3: on your money every year. But it'll be solid, it'll
Speaker 3: you know, it'll be it'll be you know, consistent returns.
Speaker 3: And so the key element here was the consistency. If
Speaker 3: you look at like a graph of people's accounts with Madoff,
Speaker 3: it's just a smooth line going straight up, like it
Speaker 3: never even ticks down for a month, like very even
Speaker 3: rarely goes down for a month, never went down for
Speaker 3: a year. Whereas any kind of investment which is correlated
Speaker 3: with the actual stock market is going to have some
Speaker 3: good years in some bad years, and typically the good
Speaker 3: years are just better than the bad years. So in
Speaker 3: the long run, you know, in the long run, you
Speaker 3: do go up, but you go up, you know, chopping
Speaker 3: up and down like that, as opposed to a smooth
Speaker 3: increasing line. And it was that consistency of the increase
Speaker 3: that that was the special thing about Madoff's proposition that
Speaker 3: made it a different kind of scheme and really, you know,
Speaker 3: suck people in who would have recognized the obvious scam,
Speaker 3: you know, but this was this was harder.
Speaker 1: Just put it in perspective, how important that consistency was.
Speaker 1: His fund underperformed the S and P over the course
Speaker 1: of his fraud, right, So he wasn't actually giving people
Speaker 1: bigger overall average returns. He was just smoothing out all
Speaker 1: the noise that there was no downside risk. So it
Speaker 1: was basically like a treasury, but with eight to ten
Speaker 1: percent returns, right, Which.
Speaker 2: So the thing that Bog was my mind about these
Speaker 2: camera I mean, some of them take a lot of work.
Speaker 2: Like it sounds exhausting to me. It sounds like you
Speaker 2: could put that money in work at McDonald's and make
Speaker 2: the same I mean the same amount. But I'm saying like,
Speaker 2: if you extrapolate the amount of hours he put in
Speaker 2: towards that to almost any other job of an honest
Speaker 2: person's I mean, he put in a lot of work,
Speaker 2: it's like he's lazy. But the thing is, it's not
Speaker 2: like he's lazy, do you know what I'm saying. It's
Speaker 2: like that's what Bog was my mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's so unlazy that he was running a legitimate,
Speaker 3: yeah you know, stock market business at the same time,
Speaker 3: which according to according to one of the sources we read,
Speaker 3: he could have sold his legitimate business for two or
Speaker 3: three billion dollars amazing to Goldman Sacks or something like that,
Speaker 3: and that would have been more money than he made,
Speaker 3: you know, in the history of the Ponzi scheme. But
Speaker 3: he couldn't sell it because it was because it was
Speaker 3: connected to the Ponzi scheme, and the Ponzi scheme would
Speaker 3: have been on covered if he had actually gone through
Speaker 3: the entire process of trying to sell the operation. So
Speaker 3: he sort of trapped himself, right, And I think part
Speaker 3: of what happened in his case. We again we don't
Speaker 3: really try to like get into the minds of the
Speaker 3: scammers very much, but I think part of what happens
Speaker 3: in some of these cases is that you're doing it
Speaker 3: and you have to keep on doing it to maintain
Speaker 3: you know, to maintain it even if you even if
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily want.
Speaker 1: To trapped yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he had. And also he had to pay
Speaker 3: the people who ran the scam more and more over
Speaker 3: time because he couldn't risk them revealing it to anyone
Speaker 3: and so on, So we had to sort of you know,
Speaker 3: keep them, you know well, while taking care of and
Speaker 3: so on. It's quite an enterprise. Like you says, it's
Speaker 3: almost why was it worth it?
Speaker 1: But I think that's a good insight Scott though, because
Speaker 1: you know a lot of these scams, things like the
Speaker 1: Nigerian email scam, you know, there's not a huge amount
Speaker 1: of work to sending those emails. There is a huge
Speaker 1: amount of work to really in the fish, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but some of the scams, you know, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things we talk about in this is when
Speaker 1: you're at risk is to think about how much a
Speaker 1: scammer get out of this. Right, So, if somebody is
Speaker 1: trying to pass off fake art, high end art Jackson
Speaker 1: Pollocks or something, it's worth it to them to go
Speaker 1: to a huge amount of effort to fake the history
Speaker 1: of the painting, to demonstrate that it's been exhibited in places,
Speaker 1: to get experts to kind of certify it. Because if
Speaker 1: they can do those things, the payout is gigantic. So
Speaker 1: they might spend years setting up one fraud and a
Speaker 1: huge amount of work, but if it works, their payout
Speaker 1: is gigantic. So those are cases where you may be
Speaker 1: looking at something that has all of the signs of
Speaker 1: being fine and you have to think to yourself, Okay,
Speaker 1: if they were trying to fool me, you know, how
Speaker 1: much money is on the line. How much of my
Speaker 1: risk is there really and if it's big enough, think
Speaker 1: about how much they could actually do. I mean, magicians
Speaker 1: often will spend huge amounts of effort setting up an
Speaker 1: effect and practice for ages getting it just right, so
Speaker 1: that you don't see what their method is right for
Speaker 1: the effect right. They hide it by practicing extensively and
Speaker 1: working out details extensively that you don't ever think about,
Speaker 1: you don't ever see. You just see them performing on
Speaker 1: stage and it looks just kind of fluid and natural
Speaker 1: and effortless. But there is a huge amount of effort
Speaker 1: that goes into any stage magic performance to make sure
Speaker 1: it's exactly right, because they have an incentive to try
Speaker 1: and fool a lot of people.
Speaker 2: You're right, You're right. There seems to be a big
Speaker 2: difference between, you know, the kind of magicians you see
Speaker 2: in Vegas and you all kind of it's not like
Speaker 2: they're saying just so you know this is real, you know,
Speaker 2: but and mediums. It feels like mediums are scammers. Am
Speaker 2: I wrong?
Speaker 1: The people who pass, yeah, not at all.
Speaker 2: The people who passes the difference, but they're magicians, they're magicians,
Speaker 2: but really there's a difference between them and like they're.
Speaker 1: Using magical methods. But the difference between an ethical magician
Speaker 1: and somebody who's pressing themselves off as a psychic is
Speaker 1: that an ethical magician like say Penn, when he's doing
Speaker 1: a mentalism act, will say, this is all magic. There
Speaker 1: is no true mentalism here. I'm not I'm not psychic, right,
Speaker 1: And they'll make it very clear, of course, they'll design
Speaker 1: it so that you can't come up with any explanation
Speaker 1: other than them being psychic. But they're not pretending to
Speaker 1: be something that they aren't. A lot of mentalists probably
Speaker 1: don't even realize they're using magical methods, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people who do the sort
Speaker 1: of mind reading, mentalism, cold reading stuff, they think they
Speaker 1: genuinely have psychic abilities, and when somebody comes along and
Speaker 1: debunks them, it's jarring for them because they didn't realize it.
Speaker 1: Then they're the people who are, you know, knowingly doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. You know, the obvious frauds out there
Speaker 1: who are passing themselves off the psychics know full well
Speaker 1: that they're not. Those are the grief vultures and the
Speaker 1: grief vampires, the people who are like taking advantage of
Speaker 1: other people. Those are the ones who you know, really
Speaker 1: get give sort of the magic end of things a
Speaker 1: bad name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this is a really important question. Then
Speaker 2: why do people sometimes ignore those red flags? Even if
Speaker 2: it's so obvious and they do see it at some level,
Speaker 2: they should know it's too good to be true, why
Speaker 2: do they still go ahead with it?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean often people, if they see that it's
Speaker 1: too good to be true, they probably won't right. If
Speaker 1: it's just good enough, then you know, they could be
Speaker 1: a little bit skeptical, but they have to find it
Speaker 1: appealing enough to know that, well, maybe it's true, and
Speaker 1: then then there's a chance. But a lot of scams
Speaker 1: are you know, I think it comes back to whether
Speaker 1: the scam, whether you're the target of the scam. Right,
Speaker 1: when you're the target of the scam, it's going to
Speaker 1: sound plausible or at least somewhat plausible to you, Whereas
Speaker 1: if you're not the target of the scam, like for
Speaker 1: the Nigerian email scam, it doesn't sound plausible at all.
Speaker 1: You never fall from that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are some decision making concepts also
Speaker 3: that can help with that, like, for example, sunk costs
Speaker 3: and escalation of commitment. So like once you go down
Speaker 3: a path for a certain amount of time. You've invested
Speaker 3: your time, your energy, and you also have sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, in a way, made a commitment, you know,
Speaker 3: to a certain outcome. This is often used to explain
Speaker 3: like military decision making and so on, right, but even
Speaker 3: just you know, bad business decision making, right like we
Speaker 3: we started planning this thing, and we started you know,
Speaker 3: building this thing, and so on. Now we have to
Speaker 3: finish even if it's going to cost us five times
Speaker 3: as much, you know, and we write. So I think
Speaker 3: that sometimes is involved in this kind of individual decision making,
Speaker 3: like the idea of ultimately getting these riches or owning
Speaker 3: a real Jackson Pollock for you know, or whatever sort
Speaker 3: of you know, can exert influence in that way because
Speaker 3: you've invested you know, your time and you know energy
Speaker 3: and resources and and belief in it. Right.
Speaker 1: And of course some of the con artists know this
Speaker 1: at least implicitly and take advantage of it, right, so
Speaker 1: they use standard persuasion techniques, get your foot in the door,
Speaker 1: get you started, and then keep you hooked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the Nigerian Nigerian thing is exactly like that, right,
Speaker 3: Like they always keep on asking for more money. Nobody
Speaker 3: ever gets any money back from this thing, right, It's
Speaker 3: always just more and more and more than you send
Speaker 3: until eventually they disappear.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yes, well I think of this in some cases.
Speaker 2: You know, I was watching this Netflix documentary about this,
Speaker 2: the Tinder Swindler, you know, and like there was a
Speaker 2: particular type of women who was particularly susceptible, particularly looking
Speaker 2: for a very rich man who will take care of them, right,
Speaker 2: and you know he's kind of promising them the world
Speaker 2: and everything. It's it can't be, you know that true,
Speaker 2: but but they want to believe it's so so much.
Speaker 1: Well, they're the they're the target, right in the same
Speaker 1: way that somebody who is somebody responds to a Nigerian email,
Speaker 1: right scam. They have this fantasy of coming into wealth, right,
Speaker 1: coming into ridges and solve all their problems. Or you know,
Speaker 1: people who end up on boards of companies that tend
Speaker 1: to be frauds, they are looking for somebody to kind
Speaker 1: of bolster their reputation, to show, you know, show that
Speaker 1: they're in on something new. Different frauds with the target
Speaker 1: people with different desires, right, and you know you or
Speaker 1: I might not fall for a tender swindler scam, you know,
Speaker 1: but we're not We're not the target for that one, right,
Speaker 1: But there are scams out there that will target, you know,
Speaker 1: people like you or me.
Speaker 3: I think the romance scams are in a way especially
Speaker 3: fascinating because they're appealing to sort of people's like you,
Speaker 3: sort of your deepest like you know most you know,
Speaker 3: your your most fundamental like critical needs and desires, right
Speaker 3: for for you know, partnership, marriage, you know, family, children,
Speaker 3: all the most important things like in the lifetime right
Speaker 3: of of a human being. In a way, are sort
Speaker 3: of like in there, aside from maybe money, which is
Speaker 3: most of the other scams, although there's money involved in
Speaker 3: romance scams too, But on the other hand, it's also
Speaker 3: the area where you'd think people ought to be the
Speaker 3: most discerning, right, and often they are, right, Like there's
Speaker 3: a lot of like a lot of pickiness and you know,
Speaker 3: and like choosing a maid and so on. So in
Speaker 3: a way they're sort of fascinating. It's fascinating that they work,
Speaker 3: but on the other hand, not so surprising that they
Speaker 3: have such appeal. And I think they work along a
Speaker 3: lot of the same principles that we talk about in
Speaker 3: the book for other kinds of scams, you know, there's
Speaker 3: often a selection process going on here, Like you know,
Speaker 3: the Tinder swindler probably message a lot of women, you know,
Speaker 3: and only a few of them like got back to him,
Speaker 3: you know, and it were able to form like a relationship.
Speaker 3: Amazingly enough, he was able to carry on apparently multiple
Speaker 3: of these relationships that you know at once. Some of
Speaker 3: these people have like three families, you know, and so on.
Speaker 3: They also rely on sort of like people not asking
Speaker 3: the question of what's missing, Like what am I not
Speaker 3: being told? What should be here that you know is
Speaker 3: not apparent. You know. People will say like, oh, I've
Speaker 3: got to be away on business for two weeks, like oh, okay,
Speaker 3: no problem, you know, and then like you have no
Speaker 3: you know, you don't think about what's going on during
Speaker 3: these other two weeks, you know, and like what is
Speaker 3: why is there? They're sort of weird signs and we
Speaker 3: don't ask, like what is behind those. It's a lot
Speaker 3: of the same, you know, it's a lot of the
Speaker 3: same concepts that work for all the other kinds of scam.
Speaker 1: I hear you, guys, Let me broad one more thing
Speaker 1: about romance scams. A lot of romance scams are not
Speaker 1: like the Tinder swindler. Right, A lot of romance scams
Speaker 1: target older, lonely people, widowers, people who have lost somebody recently.
Speaker 2: That breaks my heart. See that breaks my heart, That
Speaker 2: breaks my heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why they're so egregious. And those are those
Speaker 1: are often the ones, like many of these scams that
Speaker 1: target the elderly for a variety of reasons. That's that's
Speaker 1: probably the most common type of romance scam. It's not
Speaker 1: the you know, young people who are looking for kind
Speaker 1: of the perfect relationship. It's people who are lonely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really are much more sympathetic.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that actually leads into my next question, which
Speaker 2: is is it true that only global people get conned?
Speaker 2: Why or why not? Well?
Speaker 3: Almost by definition a global people, a global person maybe
Speaker 3: as someone who is has been conned they fell for something, right,
Speaker 3: But I think it's not true that there are like
Speaker 3: a class of people that we could identify beforehand who
Speaker 3: are the ones who are you going to be victimized?
Speaker 3: And everybody who's not in that class are safe and
Speaker 3: free to go about their business without worrying. Right, So
Speaker 3: there's always like some kind of con that could be
Speaker 3: constructed for any one of us. It's just that the
Speaker 3: constructor has to maybe know something about us or figure out,
Speaker 3: like what our tendencies are, what our expectations are. That's
Speaker 3: an important aspect of it, sort of like what we
Speaker 3: you know, Giving us what we predict is going to
Speaker 3: happen is a great way of sort of gaining our
Speaker 3: confidence and then being able to you know, to swindle us.
Speaker 3: But for each person that might be different. Right, So
Speaker 3: there's no just like one class of guloble people and
Speaker 3: everyone else is safe. We're all unfortunately, we're all potential victism.
Speaker 1: And there's certainly a range, right, And there certainly some
Speaker 1: people who are more likely who go through life being
Speaker 1: a lot less skeptical than others, right, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they're more likely to fall for something than somebody
Speaker 1: who's much much more skeptical all the time. But we
Speaker 1: none of us can kind of be constant skeptics, right,
Speaker 1: We can't double check everything in our lives. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all subject to being deceived under the right conditions.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the themes that comes
Speaker 1: through over and over again in these cons that we
Speaker 1: run across in the book is that highly successful people
Speaker 1: get scammed. Highly successful people with a great track record
Speaker 1: of you know, decision making and expertise and education get fooled.
Speaker 2: I remember this story I read. It was a crazy,
Speaker 2: crazy ass story. Wow about a professor at Harvard. Some
Speaker 2: people say, genius who was scammed by these two women
Speaker 2: who you know, pretended that they fell in love with him,
Speaker 2: and they exploited him, took all his money.
Speaker 1: So here's a scam that's hitting academics right now. So
Speaker 1: this is a group that's you know, generally pretty well
Speaker 1: educated and generally good critical thinkers. It's a conference scam.
Speaker 1: So you've been invited some conference the scammers all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is this isn't This isn't just the fake conference.
Speaker 1: This is a genuine conference. You're invited to a conference.
Speaker 1: You're giving a speech at this conference or talk at
Speaker 1: this conference. The scammers look up the attendees and speakers
Speaker 1: at the conference. They call them up and say, we're
Speaker 1: the organizers of this conference. We're booking the hotel rooms
Speaker 1: for people. We're coordinating that. So provide us your card
Speaker 1: information and we'll get your travel arrange and we'll get
Speaker 1: your hotel arrange. They have nothing to do with the conference.
Speaker 1: They're just stealing your card information. And a lot of
Speaker 1: academics have fallen for this, right, because we're busy. We
Speaker 1: know that sometimes there are conference organizers sometimes they do
Speaker 1: want your card information, right, So this is this is
Speaker 1: a scam that's targeted at people who are specifically not
Speaker 1: necessarily gullible, but who are busy, right, and who do
Speaker 1: these sorts of things enough that they often have other
Speaker 1: people organizing things for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, I mean it's incredible. Yeah, that I need,
Speaker 2: I need to look out for that one. Also, it
Speaker 2: entered my head. How come I never thought of that one.
Speaker 2: That's a good scam. That's actually pretty freaking brilliant. That's
Speaker 2: pretty brilliant.
Speaker 1: That's the idea often inserting the scammers will insert themselves
Speaker 1: into a process that's kind of standard. Right, So you
Speaker 1: know how many how many emails do we all get
Speaker 1: all the time from you know, our organization about things
Speaker 1: that are happening on campus, things we have to do,
Speaker 1: and we don't read those closely. If they send us
Speaker 1: a link you have to do this training this week,
Speaker 1: And they send you a link, well do you click
Speaker 1: the link? If you're not reading very carefully, you.
Speaker 2: Might, you know, why do I constantly get emails like
Speaker 2: we would due to your high academic record, We would
Speaker 2: love for you to send in an article or the
Speaker 2: Journal of Theoretical Physics, you know today today today. You know,
Speaker 2: there's some you know, there's some catch you know in
Speaker 2: the name. It's like it's like physics to tomorrow, you know,
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, but why why does why do
Speaker 2: I get so like that's so obviously I'm not a physicist?
Speaker 2: Do they not? Even I haven't.
Speaker 3: I haven't answered those either. I get similar ones and
Speaker 3: they follow up with these very polite things, you know,
Speaker 3: you've missed our email yesterday, you know. But I maybe
Speaker 3: maybe Dan is onto something. Maybe at the end of
Speaker 3: it all, there's going to be some kind of page
Speaker 3: charge for the open access fees, you know, to publish
Speaker 3: your article on their journal, and they will just use
Speaker 3: your credit card information for an entity theft or other
Speaker 3: you know, other processes. Maybe that's part of what they're
Speaker 3: after in the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't quiteunderstand how a lot of those work.
Speaker 1: But people have gone to these fake conferences because they're
Speaker 1: they're desperate to kind of meet the academic incentive of
Speaker 1: getting stuff onto their resume of invited talks, and you know,
Speaker 1: so there's incentives there.
Speaker 2: This stuff is so fascinating. I think that it's important
Speaker 2: at this point to talk about how we can strike
Speaker 2: a balance between going through life perpetually skeptical and trusting
Speaker 2: and cynical and being you know, also having a love
Speaker 2: for humanity. You know, I remember Chris, I remember before
Speaker 2: Chris's answers, I remember on his office door is a
Speaker 2: thing that Chris said, is something along the lines like
Speaker 2: my love humans individually or something like that, or collectively
Speaker 2: collectively I like humans, but individually I don't care for
Speaker 2: them too much. Chris, something like that my office door.
Speaker 3: Where I don't know where. I don't know where I
Speaker 3: got that or why I put it there, but it's
Speaker 3: certainly the case that it's I think it's not easy
Speaker 3: to have the right balance there. And like, going back
Speaker 3: to truth buiers we mentioned very early on, right, like,
Speaker 3: one reason we have truth bias is that you couldn't have,
Speaker 3: you know, a falsehood bias, because then you'd sort of
Speaker 3: be questioning everything. You wouldn't believe anything you saw, you
Speaker 3: wouldn't be able to even have a conversation and make
Speaker 3: a lunch plan with anyone, because you'd be always wondering, like,
Speaker 3: well they actually show up, does that restaurant exist? You know,
Speaker 3: like it's all on right, So you need to have
Speaker 3: a truth bias. It's too costly to check everything. That's
Speaker 3: why we have the truth bias. As Dan alluded to earlier,
Speaker 3: one of the critical ways to differentiate when you need
Speaker 3: to check more is the stakes of the decision. So
Speaker 3: if it's like a single decision with high stakes, right,
Speaker 3: that's a good time to check more. Like before you
Speaker 3: pick a financial advisor who gets all your money, you know,
Speaker 3: you really need to do some investigating, right, because that's
Speaker 3: all your money, and it's probably a decision you're going
Speaker 3: to stick with for years, you know, if not, if
Speaker 3: not longer. But you know, before you decide where to
Speaker 3: eat lunch, you know, not necessarily like exactly that that
Speaker 3: same you know that that same thing, So looking at
Speaker 3: the cost and benefits, you know, is definitely the I
Speaker 3: would say the first principle, the first way to strike
Speaker 3: the balance. But you know, Dan probably has some other
Speaker 3: some other suggestions on that topic too, well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's the biggie. We all get
Speaker 1: deceived on tiny scale probably all the time, and most
Speaker 1: of the time that's just irrelevant. It just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You know, if a grocery store slightly, it doesn't give
Speaker 1: you the price on that was marked on the shelf,
Speaker 1: and they charge you an extra dollar if you can
Speaker 1: afford that extra dollar. It's not something you probably want
Speaker 1: to spend your time on because you don't want to
Speaker 1: have to go through every item on the shelves and
Speaker 1: make sure that it's labeled appropriately. And then you don't
Speaker 1: want to check if a product claims that it's organic,
Speaker 1: do you want to actually go out to the farm
Speaker 1: that produced it and make sure that they were only
Speaker 1: using non or non chemical processes. I mean, at some
Speaker 1: level you can't do it, so and we wouldn't want to.
Speaker 1: It's because you know, the madeoff scam, big time scams
Speaker 1: like that are probably rare, right, I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: too often that any one of us is going to
Speaker 1: fall victim to a scam. It's a risk, but it's
Speaker 1: not such a huge risk that we should be worried
Speaker 1: about it every moment of every day. We should be worried
Speaker 1: about it when it matters and there's some things that
Speaker 1: you can kind of learn up the top that you
Speaker 1: just know, at least for the scams that are available
Speaker 1: right now are always going to be scams. If anybody
Speaker 1: ever asks you to go out and buy a prepaid
Speaker 1: cash card and read the number to them, it is
Speaker 1: a scam that just doesn't happen in any sort of
Speaker 1: normal business trending gain. Anytime somebody calls you and demands,
Speaker 1: under huge amounts of pressure, that you go out and
Speaker 1: get a prepaid cash card or a get Apple gift
Speaker 1: card or whatever, and this goes around. I mean, my
Speaker 1: mother was potentially a victim of that scam today, but
Speaker 1: fortunately didn't go out and buy an Apple gift card.
Speaker 1: But it's a really common scam. Call up and tell
Speaker 1: people that they are at risk, they have to send
Speaker 1: cash right away, get them on the line, get them hooked,
Speaker 1: and then ask them to buy gift cards cash cards.
Speaker 1: Anytime somebody asks you to buy a cash card or
Speaker 1: a gift card for them on their behalf, it's almost
Speaker 1: always going to be a scam, and you should hang
Speaker 1: up right There's nothing they can do to you.
Speaker 3: No, no, no government agency in the in the US
Speaker 3: or probably the world collects significant fines and fees by
Speaker 3: asking people to buy gift cards and read them the
Speaker 3: numbers over the phone like that. That is just not
Speaker 3: a thing, you know, but it's a surprisingly common element
Speaker 3: of scam. So you know, if there were going to
Speaker 3: be like three facts you could arm yourself with right
Speaker 3: right now today to not get scam, that's probably why
Speaker 3: you didn't know it. But but more broadly, right, more broadly,
Speaker 3: like there's no sort of there's no like set of
Speaker 3: things that you could know that will sort of solve
Speaker 3: this whole problem entirely. I think the other the other
Speaker 3: point we've tried to the other. The other thing we
Speaker 3: tried to achieve in writing the book was not only
Speaker 3: sort of show this framework of like what the cognitive
Speaker 3: habits and the informational hooks that are involved in all
Speaker 3: of these scams, but also show so many different examples
Speaker 3: right of how all of these same things can apply
Speaker 3: to many different areas. Like you know, romance scams you
Speaker 3: don't talk about much in the book, but it's definitely
Speaker 3: true financial scams. If you read all of this, you
Speaker 3: will start to recognize the patterns, right, You'll start to
Speaker 3: be able, You'll start to notice just like sort of
Speaker 3: like a you know, a chess grand master, you know,
Speaker 3: notices like you know, when the position is dangerous on
Speaker 3: the board and when it's not, and so on. You'll
Speaker 3: start to notice more of these elements in everyday life,
Speaker 3: and it'll be much easier for you to sort of
Speaker 3: figure out, oh, this looks this looks like something I
Speaker 3: should avoid, whereas this looks like maybe I, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe it's okay. You'll develop better pattern recognition, you know,
Speaker 3: for scams and and so on, and that will I
Speaker 3: think helping a you know, reduce the need for constant skepticism.
Speaker 3: It'll be sort of built in a little bit into
Speaker 3: your you know, into your automatic you know, sorts of processing.
Speaker 1: Helps trigger those times when you should just ask is
Speaker 1: this really true? Yeah, which is a simple thing to
Speaker 1: ask yourself what evidence would I need to know if
Speaker 1: this was really true? And another general principle is there's
Speaker 1: almost never urgent time pressure to do anything, where there's
Speaker 1: almost always time to ask a couple more questions, So
Speaker 1: you know, most of the most of these scammers won't
Speaker 1: put you under huge amounts of time pressure say this
Speaker 1: is urgent, you have to do this now or else
Speaker 1: With whenever you get that sort of time pressure, especially
Speaker 1: if somebody is saying that they're a government organization. Governments
Speaker 1: moved slowly, companies, there's nothing.
Speaker 3: The one thing they do is the one thing they
Speaker 3: do is they don't send the cops to your door,
Speaker 3: but then call you on the phone while the cops
Speaker 3: are in transit to give you one more chance to
Speaker 3: pay the fine. You know, Like it just doesn't work
Speaker 3: that way. But that's like half of these call center
Speaker 3: things are like, you know, the police are coming, but
Speaker 3: if you start paying us money right now, like we'll
Speaker 3: call them off. Like again, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 3: It's a time pressure thing, like is you know, is
Speaker 3: fear and time pressure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when if you pay them, you actually probably increase
Speaker 2: with the chances the police will come after you.
Speaker 3: They'll you and they'll ask you for more money.
Speaker 2: You'll be a part of it. You'll be part of it.
Speaker 3: No, that's that's exactly true, Scott. Like some people who
Speaker 3: have fallen into the Nigerian scam have been prosecuted in
Speaker 3: the US because they basically wind up doing fraudulent things
Speaker 3: themselves in order to get money. For these guys, you know,
Speaker 3: they wind up like kiting checks or forging documents or
Speaker 3: getting other people involved, right because they think they're doing
Speaker 3: the right thing to get their own money.
Speaker 2: I think the tender swindler, the girl who fell for
Speaker 2: the tender cylinder, I think she ended up doing some
Speaker 2: legal things to get the money for him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a person I think it was Louisiana
Speaker 1: who was charged as part of the Nigerian email scam,
Speaker 1: and he was roped in initially through a romance scam.
Speaker 1: But once he was in then he was kind of
Speaker 1: in this position of having to help them out as
Speaker 1: their sort of American contact, so ended up ended up
Speaker 1: basically wandering money.
Speaker 2: That's incredible, incredible. You're really opening up people's eyes massively
Speaker 2: to this kind of stuff. You're doing a great service.
Speaker 2: You have this motto. We kind of into it. You
Speaker 2: have this motto accept less check more. That's your mom
Speaker 2: that's your tagline in a way. You know, what are
Speaker 2: some examples of deceptive answers to questions that that should
Speaker 2: cause you to accept the less check more? You know? Oh?
Speaker 3: I know one? Okay, well how about this, we're following
Speaker 3: best practices. Oh no, I'm not sure. We haven't mentioned
Speaker 3: that one in the book, but like that's that's in
Speaker 3: a way, my biggest regret is that we didn't mention
Speaker 3: that in the book, because we do have a section
Speaker 3: where we talk about sort of like sort of evasive
Speaker 3: non answers that people will give you when you do
Speaker 3: try to check more and you know, oh, this is
Speaker 3: a best practice is one of those, because that's sort
Speaker 3: of an empty response, you know, like who said it
Speaker 3: was the best practice, what's the evidence that it's best?
Speaker 3: How do you know that it's best? Like it just
Speaker 3: opens up so many more questions, but it tends to
Speaker 3: sort of be designed to shut down our questioning, when
Speaker 3: in fact, it should lead us to wonder really more,
Speaker 3: what's going on you know behind that claim I did that?
Speaker 3: One's on my mind right now.
Speaker 1: And what's your favorite Well, it's like we did our
Speaker 1: due diligence, Like well, you know, this is one of
Speaker 1: those classic cases, you know, the writer's adage show don't
Speaker 1: tell yees. Saying we did our due diligence is a
Speaker 1: tell what was your due diligence? Just tell me, show me,
Speaker 1: show me what you did right, And you say, okay,
Speaker 1: you know you did your due diligence. What did you
Speaker 1: do exactly, and then often you find out they did
Speaker 1: nothing right. They looked at Google or something right, or
Speaker 1: you know, it's been validated is another fun one. I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: this process, it's been validated.
Speaker 2: I can't by who or what. Oh I know, oh,
Speaker 2: I know. I saw this article the other day. It's
Speaker 2: like Eastern philosophy that there's no self has been confirmed
Speaker 2: by science.
Speaker 1: It has been confirmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, my head, my head, you know, exploded,
Speaker 2: And I wrote a whole tweet about this. I'm like,
Speaker 2: first of all, who is science? I thought to have
Speaker 2: a word with her, like like, you know, like I
Speaker 2: didn't think that I see this all the time. Science confirms,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's like or even more, do you
Speaker 2: see this sometimes where they're like Harvard found x y Z.
Speaker 2: You mean one motherfucker from Harvard found. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's like you're not saying like that Harvard found, you know,
Speaker 2: like they they add this shit just to sound legitimate,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: But another another one that I really like is the
Speaker 1: you know, we're transparent, Like anybody who ever has to
Speaker 1: say that they are is not being transparent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or if you're a date, if you're in a
Speaker 2: date with someone they're like, just you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a serial coach. Run in the opposite right, that's like,
Speaker 2: why do you think about that? Why do you why
Speaker 2: do you think about that? You can't. Yeah, just don't worry,
Speaker 2: don't worry. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: You can't be a serial killer. There are two serial
Speaker 1: killers right here.
Speaker 2: I saw that. I saw that TikTok video the other day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's too bad. I was always looking to
Speaker 3: find another person just like me, you know. No, That's
Speaker 3: like one of the pieces of advice we do give
Speaker 3: in the book is like, ask more questions and like
Speaker 3: you say, except except less, check more. Sometimes just one
Speaker 3: more question is useful, but often we have the tendency
Speaker 3: to sort of be be bullshitted by like one of
Speaker 3: these non response, you know, responses. So it's important before
Speaker 3: you ask a question to sort of have some discernment
Speaker 3: about what might actually count as an answer versus versus
Speaker 3: what doesn't, because otherwise it can be sort of you know,
Speaker 3: box checking exercise, like oh, we asked them and they
Speaker 3: said they did their due diligence or everything must be.
Speaker 1: Fine, you know, And I mean there are ways to quit.
Speaker 1: It's awkward to ask questions sometimes, right, so, you know,
Speaker 1: pressing somebody for an answer. The social norms are against
Speaker 1: that in many contexts, but there are kind of ways
Speaker 1: of asking questions without seeming to be confronting somebody. So
Speaker 1: you know, what more can you tell me? And just
Speaker 1: kind of keep asking that. It's like the the equivalent
Speaker 1: of a three year old saying why over and over
Speaker 1: again until you run out of answers.
Speaker 2: Right, just you tell me, Well, you guys will be
Speaker 2: good interrogators. You guys will be good police interrogators. You
Speaker 2: could probably apply a lot of these principles to that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff. I've reached the end of my questions
Speaker 2: that I want to ask you guys today. I want
Speaker 2: to just thank you so much for putting this book
Speaker 2: out in the world. I really did enjoy it, and
Speaker 2: it's good to see another collabo between you two. I
Speaker 2: hope you don't wait as long next time to have
Speaker 2: another book, because the world needs you to. So thank
Speaker 2: you so much for being on my show.
Speaker 3: We'll see you in twenty twenty six, right now, sorry,
Speaker 3: twenty thirty six, my math. Yeah, yeah, well we'll see
Speaker 3: you hopefully, yeah, hopefully, well, we'll hopefully we'll do yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: It really been great. It's really been great talking talking
Speaker 3: to you again, Scott.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I've all you know, the last time I
Speaker 2: had any thought of Dan is when we were both
Speaker 2: on Brain Games together. Yeah. A long time ago, yes,
Speaker 2: season two. Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, so it's great great
Speaker 2: to catch up again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
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