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0 pointsergothus8y ago0 comments

I don't disagree with your assessment in general, the problem is that when you take the set of "criminals", and then further drill in to "criminals that actually get accused", you rapidly change the ratio of "clever" to "think-they-are-clever".

I'm not saying all criminals are stupid [Edit: stupid, careless, ignorant, poor at prediction, poor at risk calculation, take your pick] ...just that many are. And the really clever ones are often able to do it without even getting accused. So you're left with a group that has a LOT of facepalm-inducing members.

And sad to say, even filtering the list for people in high ranking positions doesn't help that much. Apparently "actually be a clever criminal" and "be a successful business person" don't overlap a lot. (I imagine "ABLE to be a clever criminal" has more overlap...but most decide not to.)

Side story: When I was a young kid (8?) my mom sternly told me "I don't EVER want to hear of you...committing a crime you can't retire on". Oddly enough, that was far more valuable than just saying "don't commit a crime". It had a logic my young brain could understand more easily than base morals or even evaluating the odds of getting caught. It inured me to a fair amount of peer pressure until I was old enough to decide for myself (and kids have few opportunities to commit huge crimes). Each kid is different, of course, but I recommend this to all parents of young children.

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IshKebab8y ago

This isn't about criminals exactly. It's about an engineer thinking "My future job is going to be a huge pain without access to the shared drive that has all our notes and matlab scripts and research papers. Maybe I'll just make a copy and keep it for occasional reference in case I need to look something up.".

matt40778y ago

"Also I'll set up a company through a straw man and convince my employer to buy it for a few hundred million, in case I ever need a few hundred million.

Then, I'll abscond with those documents and few select google employees and start my own thing. With matlab and LIDARS! Which reminds me: I should really take a long walk with this Travis guy. Maybe he has a need for 'occasional reference'".

Animats8y ago

When you take the set of "criminals", and then further drill in to "criminals that actually get accused", you rapidly change the ratio of "clever" to "think-they-are-clever".

There's a DOJ investigator for white-collar crimes who has a sign in his office/interrogation room: "If you're here, you're not as smart as you thought you were."

caf8y ago

I've got a feeling that if you plot intelligence along the x-axis and "self-assessed probability that I can get away with it" on the y-axis, you'd see a classic bathtub curve.

oh_sigh8y ago

I don't disagree, but my point is this: Finding these files on Uber servers certainly is, if not proof of guilt, at least very damning. However, lack of files on Uber servers isn't proof of innocence.

munificent8y ago

> I'm not saying all criminals are stupid [Edit: stupid, careless, ignorant, poor at prediction, poor at risk calculation, take your pick] ...just that many are. And the really clever ones are often able to do it without even getting accused. So you're left with a group that has a LOT of facepalm-inducing members.

Right, it's a classic example of survivorship bias.

kmonsen8y ago

I think you should change stupid with careless, or calculated risk or something like that.

__jal8y ago

I think we need less auditing of other people's word choice, to be honest.

/meta

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