Seeing is not believing
Basketactortale
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I was thinking about charlatans and I read someone talking about an encounter with a fraudster.
In the encounter a journalist met someone who was making wild claims within their sphere. The journalist thought it sounded odd because they had not heard of this person and the events sounded unlikely but in that moment they put it down to ignorance. The journalist doubted themselves and reasoned that there must have been something that they did not know about the thing they had written and studied extensively.
Much later it turned out that the stories were complete fabrications and the guy was publicly exposed as a fraud.
I can think of a few occasions when I have seen things that "felt wrong". For example I recently saw something that looked quite attractive to a person like me with time on my hands. Investigating further it turned out to be something run by a cultish organisation.
I am curious to hear stories about where you have been in these sorts of situations and were or were not taken in.
In the encounter a journalist met someone who was making wild claims within their sphere. The journalist thought it sounded odd because they had not heard of this person and the events sounded unlikely but in that moment they put it down to ignorance. The journalist doubted themselves and reasoned that there must have been something that they did not know about the thing they had written and studied extensively.
Much later it turned out that the stories were complete fabrications and the guy was publicly exposed as a fraud.
I can think of a few occasions when I have seen things that "felt wrong". For example I recently saw something that looked quite attractive to a person like me with time on my hands. Investigating further it turned out to be something run by a cultish organisation.
I am curious to hear stories about where you have been in these sorts of situations and were or were not taken in.
Comments
Another scam that has been going around. You receive a text from your "pastor" saying he would like to give $50 gift cards to staff members, but he does not have the time to get the cards. He wonders if you can get them. All you have to do is send the numbers on the cards back to him. He will reimburse you later. We have had several people report seeing this scam. It comes through about once a year.
The inference is that seeing may not be believing. Of course the series are fiction but both suggest that visual evidence may be fabricated, and plausibly so.
I do believe this is now possible but I do not know enough of the technology to know whether such fabrication can be detected. At any rate, it suggests that honest use of video evidence may need some process of independent verification.
I appreciate this may not be the purpose of the OP but it strikes me as an intriguing offshoot.
It's already happening on social media. Generally fairly badly and obviously but it's advancing terrifyingly quickly. I'm rather worried about it.
I think the thing that particularly interests me is when a fraudster is able to persuade someone with actual expertise in something to doubt themselves.
But there is also another whole layer of complexity when the senses themselves are so easily fooled.
Do you think believers are more or less susceptible to fraud in your experience?
Putting my cards on the table, I think my main bedrock assumption is that a lot of believers are being exploited by fraudsters.
Some of it looks so ridiculous that it seems obvious that it is a con, but maybe there is something about being a believer that makes these things more attractive.
Unbelievers are obviously not immune to fraudsters, but maybe it is something about the language of religion that makes that kind of con attractive to believers?
In this context I’m more than a little concerned by the impact of AI on visual imagery. The misinformers know they have various audiences they can manipulate and deceive.
Deception is a very subtle temptation and I guess we’re all going to need to be increasingly aware of the means by which we can be deceived.
Fascinating and very topical topic!
Another thing to disbelieve are the text messages about undelivered parcels or impending penalties if you don't do X.
It's bred in me such suspicion that when a young chugger in the street asked my name, intending to initiate a friendly chat, I snapped back 'I don't give out personal information'.
But I can see that, crude as they are, they are probing for vulnerabilities - fear, confusion, gullibility, desire to believe.
Would you be able to explain what you mean, please? Do you mean that the "historical critical approach" makes one more (or less) susceptible to fraud?
I think it helps to combat credulity. The criticism that it may induce scepticism has its point, but my gut feel is that in an increasingly deceptive era, where the tools of deception are becoming ever more sophisticated, we need the tools of a necessary scepticism to avoid that deception. The thinking goes wider than biblical analysis.
Hope this helps. It’s a big topic.
The key factor is openness. Essentially it also opens the mind to the value of analysis in testing assertions.
When I did microscopy we were shown that you should not believe some of the things you saw as they were artifacts of microscopy.
It took the invention of telescopes to learn that the planets are different sizes, and initially there was debate over whether the size differences were artifacts produced by the telescope.
X-ray images do not convey information until the brain is trained to read them.
Magicians can fool scientists, but other magicians can see how the tricks are being performed.
I am sure that scammers would be more expert in seeing scams.
I therefore assume this is generated by AI and is unreliable.
I am happy to have a conversation about a Wikipedia page and what it says but I cannot engage with garbled nonsense.
I was once in a university lecture a long time ago when we still used Overhead Projectors. If I recall a student was explaining a graph on a slide.
A particularly picky professor asked about a data point on the screen which did not seem to be explained. Which, to be clear, is nonsense anyway as outliers are by definition, lying outside the explicable data.
The flustered student took the slide off the OHP and the mark remained. It was a fly on the projector plate.
Meanwhile I’ll try to get you something online. I didn’t want to divert the thread of course. My second post about the value of critical methodologies in an increasingly deceptive age is worth following up anyway, particularly with reference to the value of the scientific method (which is akin to historical criticism).
I’m not sure how you feel in general about Wikipedia links but this one is verifiable by reference to sources.
Personally I don’t mind using Wikipedia but I don’t treat it as gospel. I read the entries with my critical hat on!
At least I thought that’s what I was saying. Apologies if I’ve misled into believing that I was inferring the opposite.
Mind you, a careless scepticism is just another kind of gullibility!
The Parable of the Scholar's Lantern
A scholar once crafted a beautiful lantern, convinced its glow could reveal every hidden thing. Proud of his creation, he carried it everywhere, shining it on other people’s ideas and pointing out their flaws.
One night, walking home, he stumbled into a ditch. “Impossible,” he muttered. “My lantern exposes all dangers.”
A passerby offered a hand. “Your lantern is bright,” she said, “but it only shows what you point it at. It can’t show what you refuse to see.”
Only then did the scholar notice: the lantern had never once been turned toward his own feet.