Post: #26

There's also the liberating feeling of doing things your way, and damn what's acceptable to the terrified peasant masses. It's excellent for the ego, and likely understood by many here to one degree or another.

Post: #27

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." Honore de Balzac

Post: #28

Fascinating blog. Thanks BH.

(10-21-2013 02:47 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 02:36 PM)Therapsid Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 02:30 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  Lately I've been reading up on creativity. One of the more interesting pieces was by a guy who's principle theory is:

Creativity = High IQ + High Psychoticism

He describes cultures which are smart, but uncreative (e.g. China today) and cultures that are smart and creative (Europe until mid-1800's in his opinion) and others that are sort of coasting (Europe today).

The theory is that pretty much by definition exceptional people will not fit into society (this does not mean that all people who don't fit in are exceptional...). If they had the psychology to fit in that very way of thinking would make them unexceptional.

Whose theory is this? It sounds like an interesting book.

Wasn't a book. Was a blog. Am looking for it in my history now.....

OK, here's the home page of the blog:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/

Bruce Charlton is the blogger. You'll have to search specifically for "creativity" posts, but he has lot's of blog posts discussing the Creativity = High IQ + High Psychoticism formula. E.g:
http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.com/...icism.html

Post: #29

I'm also a big fan of that American Greed show because I'm fascinated with how wealth is created, legally or illegally. I actually have more respect for the intelligence and business acumen of people that manage to build a drug empire, housing/mortgage scam, or some other illegal venture that manages to avoid being caught by the police over several years--until they get caught. Occasionally, I fantasize about being able to put something like that together minus the jail part.

A fuck buddy of mine has a brother that is a big time commodities trader that was recently charged with securities fraud/market manipulation for something like $50 million in trades. She obviously doesn't think he did it but what if he did? From what she tells me, he lives a very cushy lifestyle and has been in that game for about 15 years, but he obviously was very intelligent to be able to pick up on the game initially and eventually develop a strategy to win big outside the bounds of the law without detection for a long period of time.

Isn't this the American way? If you show an intelligent and ambitious guy a way to make $500k, he's going to want to turn it into $5 million, then $50 million. Ultimately, these guys are ego-maniacs, sociopaths, and greedy mofos but I would pay damn good money to have dinner with one of them and find out how their minds work.

Post: #30

some smart people just don't like to play by the rules. I grew up in a school for 'gifted children' everyone in he class was in there due to intelligence but it had the same social dynamics as any other classroom. After elementary and high school at least a few of the kids who were constantly in the principals office just dropped off the face of the planet. They were always running scams in school...selling fake hall passes, volunteering as the teachers assistant so they could steal from the coffee fund in the teachers lounge etc. They were smart criminals back then and these guys have not resurfaced as addicts or in jail as kids from the 'normal' classes have that were always in trouble.

Post: #31

(10-21-2013 06:06 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  some smart people just don't like to play by the rules. I grew up in a school for 'gifted children' everyone in he class was in there due to intelligence but it had the same social dynamics as any other classroom. After elementary and high school at least a few of the kids who were constantly in the principals office just dropped off the face of the planet. They were always running scams in school...selling fake hall passes, volunteering as the teachers assistant so they could steal from the coffee fund in the teachers lounge etc. They were smart criminals back then and these guys have not resurfaced as addicts or in jail as kids from the 'normal' classes have that were always in trouble.

If some of them offer you an an investment opportunity in their start-up on the ground floor I'd seriously consider it. Obviously you'd have to get a good business lawyer to protect your interests as much as possible in a deal, since they may well try to screw you over, but there'd be a lot of potential upside as well. Basically Smart + Sociopath seems to be were the money is...

Post: #32

Because they're talented and capable

Post: #33

(10-21-2013 02:14 PM)houston Wrote:  Its a rush commiting a crime. Make a cop run after you and see if youre scared to approach girls when you grt away.

That would be Houston's PUA School. In one hour he will make you overcome your fears. You may spend five years in prison and be ass raped but when you come out, you can talk to any chick. LOL.

Post: #34

their ego requires it.

A brilliant man knows the injustice of snuffing out his own talents on the ash heap of mediocrity and slavery.

He might also know that it is more important and valuable to build up an empire (even a temporary one) than it is to go "slow and steady" and never really make a mark.

He might understand that his life will be more satisfying taking one grand shot at glory than it would be winding down to old age with a decent 401k and a Camry and bran cereal.

I say, the ego requires it. Foolish pride? Maybe. Depends on the quality of his results. Maybe he doesn't care how anyone labels it, but only his own conclusions.

Post: #35

(10-21-2013 06:04 PM)Blackmagic Wrote:  I'm also a big fan of that American Greed show because I'm fascinated with how wealth is created, legally or illegally. I actually have more respect for the intelligence and business acumen of people that manage to build a drug empire, housing/mortgage scam, or some other illegal venture that manages to avoid being caught by the police over several years--until they get caught. Occasionally, I fantasize about being able to put something like that together minus the jail part.

A fuck buddy of mine has a brother that is a big time commodities trader that was recently charged with securities fraud/market manipulation for something like $50 million in trades. She obviously doesn't think he did it but what if he did? From what she tells me, he lives a very cushy lifestyle and has been in that game for about 15 years, but he obviously was very intelligent to be able to pick up on the game initially and eventually develop a strategy to win big outside the bounds of the law without detection for a long period of time.

Isn't this the American way? If you show an intelligent and ambitious guy a way to make $500k, he's going to want to turn it into $5 million, then $50 million. Ultimately, these guys are ego-maniacs, sociopaths, and greedy mofos but I would pay damn good money to have dinner with one of them and find out how their minds work.

Avarice and gluttany. Setting a goal is great, but it's never enough once you satisfy it. You'll always want more.

Got 100 lays? You'll want 200. It's whatever hunger you have.

I'll come clean to the forum, i have a raging inferiority complex that drives me. It's an itch and hunger i can't satisfy. I always want to be better and will take the slow steps neccessary to achieve greater goals. These guys know how to take risk and when to make a leap of faith. Calculated risk is excellent and fortune always favors the bold. If you can think silently about all of the variables that go wrong, mitigate them, and then jump you're light years ahead of everyone else.

From what i've seen, risk taking in business, life, sports, etc. is a trait that seems to be either a you've got it or not type of thing. Some people seem bent on never taking risk for whatever reason.

Post: #36

When Madoff got caught I remember one really rich guy talking about how stupid he was. Madoff and the Indian dude were like the *only* people prosecuted and convicted for financial crimes during the financial crisis. Obvious Ponzi schemes must be easier to prosecute.

Yet somehow 34.4 trillions of dollars were lost.

In August, the scapegoat @ Goldman Sachs, Fabrice Tourre went up on Civil Charges, not criminal ones. Goldman had to pay 550 million. They're setting aside 2.4 billion to pay their employees, and 1.4 billion as profit to the corporation. 550 million was not a crippling blow, and best believe they'll probably finance it.

Super talented and capable people commit all sorts of acts that would be considered crimes if we were to take our blinders off.

I'd say there's a machinery of crime in lots of industries where smart people are put to use. Either the activities have been white washed enough, qualified enough, that they aren't considered crimes. They're in an area where the crime is only something mandated by law (like a speed limit), not a natural crime ( like murder). Or they're so far ahead of the curve that what they're doing hasn't been discovered by the authorities.

WIA

Post: #37

(10-22-2013 10:46 AM)frenchie Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 06:04 PM)Blackmagic Wrote:  I'm also a big fan of that American Greed show because I'm fascinated with how wealth is created, legally or illegally. I actually have more respect for the intelligence and business acumen of people that manage to build a drug empire, housing/mortgage scam, or some other illegal venture that manages to avoid being caught by the police over several years--until they get caught. Occasionally, I fantasize about being able to put something like that together minus the jail part.

A fuck buddy of mine has a brother that is a big time commodities trader that was recently charged with securities fraud/market manipulation for something like $50 million in trades. She obviously doesn't think he did it but what if he did? From what she tells me, he lives a very cushy lifestyle and has been in that game for about 15 years, but he obviously was very intelligent to be able to pick up on the game initially and eventually develop a strategy to win big outside the bounds of the law without detection for a long period of time.

Isn't this the American way? If you show an intelligent and ambitious guy a way to make $500k, he's going to want to turn it into $5 million, then $50 million. Ultimately, these guys are ego-maniacs, sociopaths, and greedy mofos but I would pay damn good money to have dinner with one of them and find out how their minds work.

Avarice and gluttany. Setting a goal is great, but it's never enough once you satisfy it. You'll always want more.

Got 100 lays? You'll want 200. It's whatever hunger you have.

I'll come clean to the forum, i have a raging inferiority complex that drives me. It's an itch and hunger i can't satisfy. I always want to be better and will take the slow steps neccessary to achieve greater goals. These guys know how to take risk and when to make a leap of faith. Calculated risk is excellent and fortune always favors the bold. If you can think silently about all of the variables that go wrong, mitigate them, and then jump you're light years ahead of everyone else.

From what i've seen, risk taking in business, life, sports, etc. is a trait that seems to be either a you've got it or not type of thing. Some people seem bent on never taking risk for whatever reason.

I appreciate your honesty.

I am all about cost benefit all day long. But I try to do it without the ego. I gotta imagine calculated risk taking gets blurred a lot and that is when people get caught. Very hard to constantly assess things as objectively as possible.

Post: #38

(10-22-2013 10:56 AM)samsamsam Wrote:  I appreciate your honesty.

I am all about cost benefit all day long. But I try to do it without the ego. I gotta imagine calculated risk taking gets blurred a lot and that is when people get caught. Very hard to constantly assess things as objectively as possible.

When it comes to breaking laws and getting caught, the real reason they get caught are:

1. Not enough political clout to get people to look the other way
or
2. Personal vendetta
3. The person getting caught didn't realize that he needed to get smaller people to do it to get away with it.


Look at Bernie Madoff for example, he got interviewed by the SEC once and they didn't find anything strange.

It wasn't until his sons came forward that the ball started moving. That's what real clout looks like.

Post: #39

(10-22-2013 09:47 AM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 06:06 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  some smart people just don't like to play by the rules. I grew up in a school for 'gifted children' everyone in he class was in there due to intelligence but it had the same social dynamics as any other classroom. After elementary and high school at least a few of the kids who were constantly in the principals office just dropped off the face of the planet. They were always running scams in school...selling fake hall passes, volunteering as the teachers assistant so they could steal from the coffee fund in the teachers lounge etc. They were smart criminals back then and these guys have not resurfaced as addicts or in jail as kids from the 'normal' classes have that were always in trouble.

If some of them offer you an an investment opportunity in their start-up on the ground floor I'd seriously consider it. Obviously you'd have to get a good business lawyer to protect your interests as much as possible in a deal, since they may well try to screw you over, but there'd be a lot of potential upside as well. Basically Smart + Sociopath seems to be were the money is...

haha, I'm the guy with the startup. The more straight laced kids are doctors, dentists and lawyers. One girl partway through high school figured out that she didn't need to work due to her good looks, dropped all of her advanced studies and decided that she would just marry rich, and she has.

Post: #40

The more creative you are, the more likely you are to break rules in order to accomplish your goals. According to society, that makes you a criminal.

Post: #41

Many rules and laws exist to preserve the social order. They tend to prohibit behaviors that would be the best option for the rational individual actor, but would be detrimental to all in aggregate. Smart, ambitious people are more likely to question things that others just accept, like their place in the world, or why they should be the person who takes one for the team. Add to this the observation that people at the top of the layer cake tend to get away with breaking the rules while they're vigorously enforced against those at the bottom, and they come to the very logical conclusion its all a giant fucking con game.

It's like this:

You have people at the top who don't follow the rules, but need others to follow them so that they can stay at the top. They want you to think they do so you will as all, but they don't. Movies like "Eyes Wide Shut", "The Rules of Attraction", and "American Psycho" do a pretty good job depicting the moral degeneracy of this class. They are not the ones taking one for the team. The middle is where you find the true believers. Many buy into the bullshit that the people on top are selling them, but underlying that is the contentment with their position thus they want to maintain the social order. They're the ones willing to take one for the team. At the bottom shit is bad, so people try to move up by any means necessary. They're not interested in playing their position, hence the especially vigorous enforcement laws on the lower classes. They're the ones being forced to take one for the team.

Here's an analogy. There's a bank window. If everybody bum rushed it, it would be chaos, and on average people would get served more slowly. So everybody agree to form a line. You have a few people who are slick enough to start a conversation with someone at the front of the line, cut in and say, "I was actually here earlier and my friend was just holding my spot." You have people in the middle who still benefit by everyone forming a line, but are dumb enough to buy the line from the guy who just cut in front of them. And you have the people in the back who are trying to bum rush the window (on avg they'd all be served faster if there was no line), but the people in the front and the middle of the line are like, "Hell naw! Security!!!!"

Post: #42

Since first watching Breaking Bad I have had a burning desire to buy a motorhome....

Post: #43

The prime example of the sophisticated, intelligent criminal is Victor Lustig, the man who "sold" the Eiffel Tower and managed to swindle Al Capone:

• The smoothest con man that ever lived (2012)
  

The man had perfect game, and he used it to make money, not just to bed women.

Post: #44

(10-22-2013 05:18 PM)Hotwheels Wrote:  Since first watching Breaking Bad I have had a burning desire to buy a motorhome....

you need to do it in Wisconsin Style. Conservation Wardens said they've been busting people doing breaking bad operations in ice fishing huts.

Post: #45

(10-22-2013 06:38 PM)wiscanada Wrote:  

(10-22-2013 05:18 PM)Hotwheels Wrote:  Since first watching Breaking Bad I have had a burning desire to buy a motorhome....

you need to do it in Wisconsin Style. Conservation Wardens said they've been busting people doing breaking bad operations in ice fishing huts.

That's fucking hot.

And so Wisconsin...



Note the dish.

Post: #46

(10-21-2013 04:05 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(10-21-2013 03:47 PM)Giovonny Wrote:  It's almost always some combination of the above and/or the person is insane.

Insanity is too easy. I'd just say, because they can.

I'm not sure what you're getting at-- I dislike this phrase "because they can" because it's disingenuous-- it's like when people don't like something you say and say "Whatever". It's passive aggressive and an incomplete criticism.

What seems implicit is some criticism which is lazily unstated-- "Giant brokers like Morgan Stanley do front running and steal from small investors BECAUSE THEY CAN... do it while avoiding regulation from the technically challenged SEC."

Post: #47

(10-21-2013 01:54 PM)Grit Wrote:  If you consider government and its associated laws, rules, and regulations to be ordained by the most powerful, then why not challenge the most powerful.

On the other hand, if government is a petty bureaucracy of incompetents, why would you respect the authority of such a system?

Notice that both my points of view of the government are not from a good or bad perspective, simply an observation of who has power.

But thats my gripe with Conspiracy theories...You ae based on the premise that the government is capable of pulling them off.(all of a sudden bureaucracy disappears eh)

Post: #48

(10-22-2013 05:19 PM)Icarus Wrote:  The prime example of the sophisticated, intelligent criminal is Victor Lustig, the man who "sold" the Eiffel Tower and managed to swindle Al Capone:

• The smoothest con man that ever lived (2012)
  

The man had perfect game, and he used it to make money, not just to bed women.

Very interesting, and also interesting that he was caught because his girlfriend told the cops where he was after she found out he was sleeping with another woman. What a bitch.

Post: #49

Went chasing through the links, another article here:

http://www.academia.edu/627018/The_Insan...chometrics

Post: #50

I think for the same reason others become surgeons, or computer programmers, or whatever. When you were in junior high school, didn't you pretty much know what careers interested you? With these guys, it just happens to be that their fascination is with crime. It's their calling.

I also think that everyone, even people who are supposedly "empaths," has a selective ethical code. Everyone is apathetic toward certain kinds of suffering. Those whose ethical code deviates from the norm in a way that society frowns on are labelled as "psychopaths," but this has little to do with how much suffering they actually cause. A cop or a soldier may cause quite a lot of harm, but can always say, "It's fine as long as the government allows it. This is just part of the normal functioning of the system." As long as they don't break the law, no psychologist will ever label them a psychopath.

I knew a guy who worked as a loan officer and a credit repair guy, both of which seemed to bother his conscience. It troubled him that he helped wreck the economy through subprime lending, and that he helped game the system by finding loopholes that would let people escape the consequences of defaulting on their debts. But when he turned to crime, he didn't seem to have a problem with ripping off Wal-Marts, setting up ATM skimmers, creating fake IDs, scamming people through pyramid schemes, etc.

Perhaps the way he looked at it was that undermining an entire system on which society depends is wrong, but using his intellect to outwit people and rip them off in ways that they could've prevented if they had been smarter was fine.