domain:apollomindset.substack.com
HereAndGone
23m ago
How much economic development can you have when all the trusting investors hand over money to scam artists who don't produce the goods/services/returns on investment they promised but instead decamp to the Bahamas to live the high life?
I get the point about trust being necessary, but if everyone is so trusting they can be plucked like pigeons, then eventually there won't be any trust. Montreal or other Scam Capitals are going to become notorious, investors won't invest even in legitimate proposals because the risk this is a plausible scammer is too high, and economic development will slow down anyway.
The optimum is to have as little fraud as possible. No fraud at all may be impossible to achieve, given human nature, but surely trying for "as close to zero as possible" is the better option than "eh, shit happens, let the fools who fall for scams be weeded out by natural selection, it's nature's way".
HereAndGone
28m ago
I think the book presents a convincing case that, impossible utopias excepted, a world with no fraud would be worse than a world with some amount of fraud.
Not having read the book, explain this to me? A world with no fraud would have to be a high-trust society, would it not? People are honest, keep their word, and don't exploit loopholes or take unfair advantage of the vulnerable and uninformed. Aren't low-trust societies the ones riddled with fraud and corruption? I'm taking from how you put this that a world without fraud would be a low-trust society, or one so heavily monitored by Big Brother that other freedoms would all be lost.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
35m ago
I don't understand how you can call immersion pre-critical, pre-reflective, or pre-self-consciousness then (I would drop immaturity from the conversation entirely if you want to avoid getting people's hackles up). While it can be that, you personally have to willingly suspend your disbelief to cry during a VN (which VN btw?) - your immersion isn't pre-critical, you deliberately gave that up to engage with the story.
And you are right that the connection between art and emotion isn't clear. But it is definitely strong. And of course Adorno is right about kitsch (imo), but I was looking at it from the other direction - an artist shouldn't try to manipulate the viewer, what they should do is try to express themselves, express their vision. Because if they can get their vision out, the person who connects with it - who can't not connect with it - will be moved to tears. It feels like you are trying to intellectualise that away by referring to 'emotions', but that would just be diminishing yourself.
That's why we hold up auteurs, even as movies rack up thousands of staff members - we respect the auteur because it's his vision, and he has demonstrated the ability to connect with us emotionally. Sometimes that's not because of the auteur, but he or she is usually our best guide. Sure Marvel can put out a dozen capeshit flicks and manipulate the audience with clinical precision - I would call that kitsch. But someone with an actual vision, who puts it on the page or film or score sheet, they might use camera techniques or bass heavy music to manipulate the audience, but it isn't kitsch when it's done in the service of connecting the audience to the inside of the auteur's head. The challenge in my view, is finding auteurs and other authentic artists. Sure we are all trapped in the same post-modern hellscape constantly trying to push us towards slop - even the auteurs are, blurring the lines - but true vision can still cut through.
HereAndGone
36m ago
I can't speak to the legal issues, but at this stage I have no problems with someone banning TikTok because of the actual real-world harm it is doing.
Seemingly some idiot "influencers" on the app got people to drink borax as a health cure.
Need I say this is not a good idea at all?
Now, the fools may be confusing borax and boron, not helped by the fact that a salt of borax, sodium borate, is sometimes touted as "it contains boron, your body needs boron, this is fine!"
It is not fine.
Now, your opinion may differ on whether it it a public duty to protect fools from their folly, but I think that we should have some discipline over a platform encouraging the public to poison themselves, and if it takes banning TikTok to make them kick the "influencers" off the platform, well gosh we'll just have to suffer on without a stupid social media platform (until a competitor leaps in to fill the gap).
As a Southerner who lives in Dixie Alley it was hard not to be brought back to 4/27/11 by the news coverage.
It's different when it's your family and your town where they're spray-painting X's on houses. I was in Tuscaloosa that evening, a student delivering pizza, and the level of destruction in the impacted areas (20% of the city, but more like 50% of my store's delivery area) and suffering inflicted upon victims was beyond description. Funny enough I'd spent much of the day worried about my family in north Alabama because they'd been hit earlier.
As you say, life is fragile, fate is capricious, and weather awareness only goes so far. To their credit the meteorologists got it right that day and managed to convey "This is going to be bad." in a way that penetrated typical Southern skepticism about storm warnings. Still, when you're talking about EF-4s and EF-5s there comes a point that not much short of a bunker is going to save you.
TheRealMcCoy
58m ago
Can't we assume that if he divorced her then perhaps she was a bad wife and a mother who deserved even less than she got
FtttG
59m ago
This hasn't been my experience coming from a low-trust society, where everyone quickly learns to keep their hand on their wallet, and grow extra eyes all around their head.
And in this society, if a stranger approached you, introduced themselves as an entrepreneur, and offered to let you in on the ground floor of their operation for a small loan of million dollars, would you consider taking them up on the offer? Of course not - you'd assume they were a scam artist trying to rip you off. The only place someone would take them up on the offer is in an environment in which most people are assumed to be trustworthy, which in turn means the only place a scam artist would attempt it is in an environment in which most people are assumed to be trustworthy: in other words, fraud is impossible in a low-trust society.
Did this happen, by any chance, because there was very little fraud in Montreal in years prior, and people were much less cautious with their money because their priors about trustworthiness were outdated? Did they start being more cautious about fraud specifically after it turned out that the expected cost of preempting fraud is lower than the expected cost of falling victim to it?
Of course, and the book catalogues many examples of boom-bust cycles of the type you're describing. A high-trust society (or subculture, or community) is founded -> scam artists get wind of this and exploit it for all the alpha it's worth -> after a few successful frauds, people start getting a lot more cautious and risk-averse -> realising that it's no longer a high-trust society, the scam artists depart for greener pastures. None of this even seems counterintuitive to me, it just seems like basic economics.
philosoraptor
1hr ago
It doesn't sound a thing like him.
TIRM
1hr ago
"I drew myself as the cool smirking Chad and you as the chinless soyjack."
I have no reason to think these people are unusually shitty looking or generally dysgenic, as though their wicked thoughts degraded their bodies. They might have that dumb Richard Spencer haircut.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Fraud is only possible in a society in which most people are assumed to be trustworthy
This hasn't been my experience coming from a low-trust society, where everyone quickly learns to keep their hand on their wallet, and grow extra eyes all around their head.
Montreal was for years known as the scam capital of the world, specifically because the number of trusting investors eager to invest in promising new startups made it catnip for scam artists.
Did this happen, by any chance, because there was very little fraud in Montreal in years prior, and people were much less cautious with their money because their priors about trustworthiness were outdated? Did they start being more cautious about fraud specifically after it turned out that the expected cost of preempting fraud is lower than the expected cost of falling victim to it?
The book is not counter-intuitive. It's wrong. At best it's doing the old gimmick of phrasing something true in a deliberately counter-intuitive way, to make it's reader feel smart, but the way you're describing it, it sounds just plain wrong.
TIRM
1hr ago
Orwoll structured the community as a Private Membership Association (PMA), which limits land sales exclusively to pre-approved members
Like the original now-outlawed racial covenants.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3607
Nor shall anything in this subchapter prohibit a private club not in fact open to the public, which as an incident to its primary purpose or purposes provides lodgings which it owns or operates for other than a commercial purpose, from limiting the rental or occupancy of such lodgings to its members or from giving preference to its members.
This housing is incidental to the purpose of this private group or is it the primary point? I'm not a lawyer but I suspect a judge may see through their clever ruse. This sounds suspiciously like a racial covenant by a different name.
No, and the book quite lucidly explains why this counterintuitive assertion is actually true. Fraud is only possible in a society in which most people are assumed to be trustworthy. Montreal was for years known as the scam capital of the world, specifically because the number of trusting investors eager to invest in promising new startups made it catnip for scam artists. By contrast, in a society where nobody trusts anyone else, people are famously unwilling to lend me out their money, which results in low rates of fraud but also sluggish economic development.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
Immersing yourself in the media is not switching your brain off though. I would like to think my post history proves that critical analysis of media is one of my primary passions, I am not trying to shit on it - by prioritise I didn't mean to imply they were exclusive.
What I took @wingdingspringking to mean by truly enjoy media, particularly with their comments about struggling with it as they age, is immerse yourself so fully that you forget you exist outside of the media. That is a transcendent experience when it happens, and maybe this is just wingding and me (or maybe just me?) but once you have done it, critical analysis just doesn't compare.
Usually when I find media like that I obsess over it, and then I analyse it endlessly.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I disagree. I think the book presents a convincing case that, impossible utopias excepted, a world with no fraud would be worse than a world with some amount of fraud. Some amount of fraud is the price you pay for living in a high-trust society (and all the economic and social benefits that entails); a few iatrogenic deaths is the price you pay for a national healthcare system; a few murders is the price you pay for living in a free society etc.
I think this is backwards. No one pays with fraud or murder to create a higj-trust / free society. A high-trust / free society comes about when the amount of fraud and deaths is so low, they're not worth bothering with to preempt.
crushedoranges
1hr ago
The flooding happened quite late at night, when everyone was asleep: probably the first notice that anything was amiss was water intruding through the entrance and flooding the floor.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NpG9cJTPf7I&ab_channel=KSAT12
This man survived by swimming out and standing on an electric meter box on a telephone pole - that's how high the water got. If I had to guess, the majority of these casualties happened because the girls panicked without an adult around: and in the dark and lacking the strength to swim, drowned. My intuition is that you're much better off climbing up to the roof with something that can float: remaining in the dwelling you are in for as long as possible rather than searching for higher ground on foot. (Unless it is immediately obvious, of course.) If your dwelling is knocked over by the floodwater you probably didn't have a high chance of finding high ground in time, in any case.
FtttG
1hr ago
Well, the reason for why "not zero" is due to inescapable facts about the human condition, so describing this situation as "optimal" seems entirely apt to me.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
I thought bartender or stand-up was being interpreted as 'poor'. Like how sometimes people say self-employed when they mean unemployed. Or how women are plus-size, curvy, big-boned rather than fat.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2hr ago
For better or worse, Turkey is no longer "cheap" but equivalent to Paris. When the last wave of inflation was mid course (early 2022), you could rent a well-located flat in Istanbul for 200 usd. A favorite restaurant of mine went from 17 to 53 lira by May 2022. Later, leaving Ankara in 2024, coffees were approaching 200 lira, while the exchange rate had only gone from 30 to 38 lira : usd.
Various monuments and attractions went from free to charging 50 euro entrance fees (like the Hagia Sophia).
I did get a comprehensive medical scan for about 30 usd, even running on a treadmill with things taped to me and testing blood. I think they're less scams and more so trivial/brass tax if you're going to do a (serious) cosmetic surgery. Beyond that, I have no idea about medical tourism costs at different points; my partner did that in Iran. A friend was considering some sort of knee operation for about 2000 euro, though.
TIRM
2hr ago
Back in college some engineering students thought that would be better. Shave a year off of college and skip the mandatory liberal arts classes. I'm not sure how enriched I really was taking intro courses in anthropology and gender studies. I might have been better off taking more technical classes or graduating sooner. But that's admitting college is a training program for professional tech workers. Some people really don't like that thought.
SkoomaDentist
3hr ago
For me effective suspension of disbelief comes down to whether or not the there's internal consistency. It's not about how outlandish or even stupid-on-its-face the impossible element is, it's whether or not the story acts as though it believes in that impossible element. As soon as the story stops believing its own impossibility, then how am I supposed to believe in it?
I keep being amazed by how few authors grasp this. A story should be internally consistent and stick to how things work in the real world except where explicitly noted in the text, as clearly (and largely unambiguously) established in the genre conventions or where the differences are gradually hinted at and revealed.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
3hr ago
Ask nicely or bribe a friend who has a decent phone or camera. Unless you want to pay for a professional photographer.
(Girls have it so easy. Women be taking photos of each other.)
TheDemonRazgriz
3hr ago
Maybe it’s a relatively small issue, but I have been immensely disappointed in the Trump II admin’s handling of the TikTok ban (which is to say, stonewalling it seemingly at all costs).
For one, the bill has remarkably plain text which they are openly violating. I’m open to hearing examples if people here think I’m wrong about this, but I think this is qualitatively different from most of the “Imperial Presidency” actions taken by Bush and Obama (and Trump I, and Biden). To my knowledge those situations generally relied on Congress abdicating its authority to the President or to the executive branch. For example all of the 21st century’s military escapades and undeclared wars, often described as being in defiance of Congressional authority, are actually operating with explicit approval in the form of the post-9/11 AUMF. Congress could repeal it at any time and reclaim its war-making authority, it simply chooses not to. Much the same for all the myriad powers now granted to federal agencies. In this case the executive is quite nakedly saying “this law has been passed, but we don’t like it, so we won’t enforce it.” This is not a power the branch is supposed to have.
Second is the way in which this came about. Trump had campaigned as a China hawk and, iirc, publicly supported the bill until an 11th-hour turnaround which was conveniently timed after an influx of campaign funds tied to Chinese business interests. This is, at best, not a good look.
And finally I just disagree with the substance. TikTok should be banned in the US, or at least sold to US owners. All the innate problems with algorithmic social media feeds, which are frankly bad enough on their own, are massively amplified when the company which owns and operates the algorithm is beholden to an explicitly hostile foreign power. There’s already pretty incontrovertible evidence that TikTok is tuned to mildly promote divisive content and to mildly suppress content critical of China (e.g. higher rates of Palestinian-related content but lower rates of Uyghur-related content versus similar social media apps, among others). The algorithm could trivially be tuned further in the event that Chinese-US relations deteriorate further, or just if the company’s state handlers want to. I don’t see a reason why we should need to accept that risk.
self_made_human
C'est la vie
3hr ago
I would presume the Masgrave option would be able to activate LTSC without issue. Look it up, since I can't share a link here.
Looks like you linked to it! I've used them before, worked out fine.
sockpuppet2
3hr ago
If your logic is based solely on income, including race is very confusing.
If a total stranger walked up to me and offered me this amazing chance to get in on the ground floor, but I have to take it up now or the opportunity will be gone, of course I'd assume they were a scammer and I don't live in a country that is particularly corrupt.
Or greedy. This is how con artists work, after all: appealing to the greed and cupidity and stupidity of the mark, who thinks they are too smart to be easily fooled and who is just venal enough that they won't look a gift horse in the mouth when the prospect of easy riches is dangled before them.
Yeah, that's common sense. But (at least by this example) the book seems to be trying to sell itself by dressing up common-sense observations in 'counter-intuitive' ways in order to seem edgy and new and worth buying for its insights.
Old boring way of putting this: A fool and his money are soon parted Fancy new pop-business book way of putting this: Did you know the best amount of fraud is "some"? Bet ya didn't!
EDIT: Reading the reviews on the Amazon site, it seems to be less that this author has a deep economic theory and more that he's concluding "since fraud of some sort always happens, and has always happened throughout human history, then it must have some sort of purpose":
There may be some point there about evolutionary history and why we are wired to take advantage of others, but it is less to do with economics and more to do with "this is how humans are". You could make the same point about "it is highly unlikely the optimal level of murder/rape/beating children to death is zero". Some small fraction of people throughout history have always beaten children to death! This is just the price of living in a high-trust society!
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