Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We're in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can't be real.
Interpretation
Fraud flourishes during significant societal changes, especially in times of technological innovation, as people's perceptions of reality shift.
Maria Konnikova highlights how periods of major social and technological change can create fertile ground for fraud and deception. As society undergoes transformation, individuals often struggle to discern what is genuine or legitimate, allowing con artists to exploit this confusion and capitalize on the uncertainty that accompanies progress.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the rise of online scams during the digital age.
Poker isn't the roulette wheel of pure chance, nor is it the chess of mathematical elegance and perfect information. Apart from the underlying mathematics, poker depends on the nuanced reading of human intention, interactions, and deceptions.
If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won't know how resilient you are. It's only when you're faced with obstacles, stress, and other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it, emerges: Do you succumb or do you surmount?
Not only is the past of a person with no memory inaccessible; his ability to think about the future is imperilled. Time travel, then, is ultimately - and paradoxically - an exercise in remembering. And without that capacity it simply cannot exist.
Many adult bullies hide behind the idea that bullying happens only among children. They conceive of themselves as adults who know better and are offering their hard-earned wisdom to others. The Internet makes that sort of certainty easier to attain: looking at their screens, adult bullies rarely see the impact of their words and actions.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.
Our values are that we do think that people have a right to privacy. And that our customers are not our products.
We all know the feeling of surrendering to the embedded biases of our devices. We let our cell phones ping us every time there's an incoming message and check our e-mail even when we'd best pay attention to what's going on around us in the real world. We text while driving.
The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.
Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics.
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