One of the greatest luxuries an abundant society offers is that you can afford to let people get away with stuff up to a point. The fear that you’d be encouraging them is misguided. Every vendor who overcharges you by $1 will not turn into a Trump if left unpunished.
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The astounding thing about modern civilization is that small-to-medium mistakes and cheats generally don’t kill you or even significantly worsen your life. The only thing that’s easy to damage is your sense of dignity. The main cost of most cheating is the outraged overreaction.
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Dignity protection instincts are flip side of over-developed cheater detection cognition. When your entire existence can be put at risk by a small cheat in a scarcity-shaped environment, of course you’ll be primed to kill over small threats to dignity. Reputation is everything.
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It’s weird to find myself arguing this, since most of my own reputation is built on making fun of cluelessness and peddling theories of sociopathy, deception, and false consciousness. I’m effectively saying here — *it’s clueless to be over-invested in not being clueless.*
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Ie it’s fine to be clueless when there’s little at stake. Does it matter if you, as a dollar-rich American, go to a third-world country and get taken for say $5 due to cluelessness about something, when $5 is a cheap lunch for you and a week of food for the “sociopath cheater”?
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The trick is not never being clueless. It is knowing WHEN to activate and use all your cheater instincts to the best of your ability, and to keep those instincts practiced enough to use when needed. Occasional embarrassment from being “taken in” is fine.
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“Everything burned down, but at least nobody ever fooled ME” That’s what things feel like now. And the vibe is strongest among those who believe utterly crackpot things of course. They’re the most certain they’ve beaten the evil demonic cheaters.
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Heuristic for non-scarcity societies Fool me once, maybe it was an honest mistake Fool me twice, I’ll let you get away with it Fool me thrice, shame on you Fool me 4 times, I stop dealing with you Fool me 5 times, I finally react and it will be effective but not vindictive
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Related to cheater detection is pre-emptive rejection of social policies based on overblown fears of extent of cheating. If 1% of people cheat on a welfare scheme, people will believe it is 30%, and during proposal deliberations, will argue like it’s going to be 99%.
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End of conversation
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