We live in the age of fraudulence

[jonatha]

If you direct the majority of the power of a battleship's engines to big fans you can fluidize enough sand that you could operate a battleship in it.

Are you seriously suggesting that battleships hover?

 

[DBT]

One of the greatest political frauds of the last century was the JFK image of the American rfamily7man.

Pictures of JFK playing with his kids inn the Oval Office. Jackie giving TV tou7rsof the WH as the devo0ted wife.

JFK and Jackie were estranged, he was a serial adulterer and in the WH. Everyone knew.

The Kennedy faioly6image was a fraud constructed by political cco9nsultants.

The edi8aa called the WH Caelo0t. People ate it up. Woken did their hair like Jackie.

Does anyone not know that JFK was a notorious poonhound? Bill Clinton was a distant second and he got blown in the Oval Office.

And we think of the Roman Emporers as being decadent. Human progress.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

One of the greatest political frauds of the last century was the JFK image of the American rfamily7man.

Pictures of JFK playing with his kids inn the Oval Office. Jackie giving TV tou7rsof the WH as the devo0ted wife.

JFK and Jackie were estranged, he was a serial adulterer and in the WH. Everyone knew.

The Kennedy faioly6image was a fraud constructed by political cco9nsultants.

The edi8aa called the WH Caelo0t. People ate it up. Woken did their hair like Jackie.

Does anyone not know that JFK was a notorious poonhound? Bill Clinton was a distant second and he got blown in the Oval Office.

And we think of the Roman Emporers as being decadent. Human progress.

First Ladies are somewhat akin to rockstar wives. They accept that it happens and just deal with it.

 

[bilby]

There's every reason to think that literally every rich and/or powerful man in history (and in prehistory, and probably back prior to the emergence of modern humans as a species) has been motivated by a desire to procure sex.

Even nominally celebate hierarchies such as the Roman Catholic Church have more sex for higher ranks, though these days it's considered poor form to flaunt it (or to mention it when others are caught doing it), and the prohibition on associating with women means that it often exhibits as sex with men (or, infamously, boys).

"President is sexually unfaithful" is a "Dog bites man" headline. Of course he is. The same applies to Prime Ministers, Popes, Imams, First Secretaries of the Party, Cult Leaders, CEOs, Chairmen, and every other man who has risen to a post where he wields control over others.

That control doesn't even have to be over the people he has sex with (though it obviously can be as simple as that) - the power and/or wealth is an aphrodisiac, and sexual relationships are often a desirable path to power or wealth, for the less powerful or less wealthy.

The handful of historical figures who have attained power in order to save the people from a catastrophe, or to improve their lives, rather than (or more often, as well as) in order to get laid, are celebrated as remarkable and heroic figures. They are vanishingly rare.

 

[Swammerdami]

After reading the New Yorker profile of Curtis Yarvin, it is more clear to me than ever that we live in the age of fraud. The ultimate crisis we are experiencing is one of epistomology: a majority of people are unable to distinguish bullshit and propaganda from established science and fact.

I certainly agree with Axulus here! Of course we defer to experts on matters of "Hard" science, but in the "soft" sciences when expert opinion is not unanimous the layman must guess. Guessing the truth is often very difficult but there are ways to make "educated" guesses. This topic would be worth a major thread at this message-board. Hoping someone will start such a thread I'll just present a few examples here.

Most of us have to depend on others to know what "the truth is". We have to depend on others because we do not have infinite time resources to know first hand for ourselves. And when we do depend on others there is always the opportunity to be scammed.

Actually finding the truth is extremely difficult to come by.

And I agree with RVonse! There is a skill set needed to infer truth from evidence. One needs good judgement, understanding who is expert and who isn't, common-sense, and other skills. One must AVOID one's own biases. One must estimate the likelihood of alternate solutions. And one must be willing to conclude that often the best answer is "I don't know."

Consider the alleged suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. BOTH solutions seem very plausible. Epstein's future was so bleak that suicide would appeal. At the same time, it is easy to believe that someone powerful enough to organize a "perfect murder" would have had good reason to silence Epstein. IIRC Epstein was on suicide watch and there were two jailers charged with monitoring him. Those jailers are to blame and probably know what happened. Were they bribed to look the other way? Or did they get engrossed in some porn site and neglect their duties? I do not know.

If finding the truth was so easy that any intelligent person would know, we would not need courts to find judgement for defendants accused of crime.

Criminal courts rely on 12 ordinary people listening to human witnesses and experts and forming an opinion about their credibility. If I could listen to the jailers' testimony I might have a stronger opinion on the Epstein matter.

But juries are not a panacea. I decided right away that circumstantial evidence and lack of an alternative made it about 99.9% that O.J. Simpson committed a double murder. Yet a jury acquitted, and it seemed that millions of Americans felt Simpson was innocent. Many people simply lack the skill set I discussed above.

I became an avid bridge player not long after a famous cheating scandal at a 1965 world championship in Buenos Aires. As with O.J. Simpson it seemed clear to me that Reese-Shapiro were cheating with probability about 99.9%. Yet despite books that discussed details in great detail, many thought Reese-Shapiro were innocent. (A main reason their guilt was certain was the implausibility of any alternative explanation for the evidence.)

The wide-spread belief in Reese's innocence was despite that bridge experts have analytic minds and good mathematical intuition. People believe what they WANT to believe.

So you think you know the absolute unimpeachable truth and everything possible because you are so smart and intelligent? Tell us all for certain what happened during the JFK assassination. Tell us all whether Epstine was killed or killed himself. Then tell us all (since you are the all knowing God) just exactly how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

RVonse should heed his own words! I feel that I have a better-than-average understanding of global finance, but I defer to someone like Larry Summers. Summers in turn, despite a stint as Chief Economist of the World Bank, frequently deferred to his mentor Robert Rubin. Krugman and Stiglitz are other economists I listen to. (I don't have a Nobel Prize! .) Have you told us where you get your economic views, RVonse? Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich and ...? Jimmy Dore? Have you ever applied common-sense to guess whether firing thousands of IRS auditors was a sincere attempt at saving government money?

I hope there IS a thread on this topic: I have more interesting examples to offer. Predicting the future is a related skill, though not one at which I excel. Recently the highly respected CEO of the largest non-Chinese bank confirmed that a financial criis is likely:

You’re going to see cracks in the bond market. I just don’t know whether that crisis is six months away or six years away. I’m telling you it will happen—and you will panic.

 

[Swammerdami]

There's every reason to think that literally every rich and/or powerful man in history (and in prehistory, and probably back prior to the emergence of modern humans as a species) has been motivated by a desire to procure sex.

"President is sexually unfaithful" is a "Dog bites man" headline. Of course he is....

It takes great lust for power and self-confidence to submit to the ordeal of becoming and being President. Anyone with such huge lust is likely to have other varietie(s) of lust as well.

Nevertheless I thik "literally every" may be an exaggeration. Were there serious infidelity charges against Harry Truman? Of course his path to the White House was more happenstance than deliberate lust. His friend T.J. Pendergast encouraged and financed his run for the Senate; and FDR chose him as V.P. because he was NOT ambitious.

Jimmy Carter is another President who's never been charged with adultery -- although he charged himself with sin by lusting after other women in his heart.

 

[Canard DuJour]

After reading the New Yorker profile of Curtis Yarvin, it is more clear to me than ever that we live in the age of fraud. The ultimate crisis we are experiencing is one of epistomology: a majority of people are unable to distinguish bullshit and propaganda from established science and fact.

When should someone be skepitcal about something, and when should someone accept it as likely or highly likely to he true. Not having a good foundation to distinguish between the two opens oneself up to delusion and being taken advantage of by conmen. This is an art that the conmen have perfected in recent years.

Trump, of course, is a prime example. Through sheer bluster, lies and confidence, and a victimhood mentality when someone calls him out on his bullshit, a huge swath of the population is drawn in. He is a low IQ conman but a very effective one. But we also have high IQ conmen that use a different set of con skills.

They don't quite have Trump's low IQ skillset but they excel at baffling people with sophisticated bullshit. Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin, Eric Weinstein, among others fall into this category. They have had success and do legimately have high IQ, but they put that all to work in a grand fraud to portray themselves not merely as smart but as one in a billion geniuses.

And to the masses, unable to tell the difference between geniune brilliance and sophisticated bullshit, they take in every word as truth. These high IQ bullshiters portray themselves as geniuses through sheer sophistry. Yet any analysis of what they claim can be easily demonstrated as full of lies, half truths, pseudoscience, conspiracies, victomhood, ad-homenim attacks, among other things.

And yet, this is exactly the kind of thing the Joe Rogans of the world fall for. They are the marks. And then they become useful idiots in legitimizing these fraudsters, and the audience is of the same mind.
We must at least begin by calling out the tactics the fraudsters use, call them out for every lie, every false promise, every crybaby victimhood statement. Be relentless. Do not give them an iota of respectability. Elon has made so many false promises and told so many lies, worse than Elizabeth Holmes.

That he is treated as some genius entrepreneur whose words are taken for divine wisdom is a spell that must be completely shattered. Him and everyone else of his ilk need to be called out, laughed at, and shamed at every opportunity.

For anyone interested, here is the Curtis Yarvin profile. Do not read this after you have eaten, as the contents of your meal are likely to be regurgitated.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile

There's no question that Trump is a serial scammer who's empowering fraud in general.

The likes of Musk, OTOH, have not defrauded their way into power by "baffling people with sophisticated bullshit". Yarvin et al's ideas are adolescent nerd fantasies with niche appeal. Musk has been allowed to BUY power thanks to decades of neoliberalism:

"The Underlying Problem​

​

(...)​

​

The underlying cause of our situation is inequality. We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions. The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience. The inequality, the decades of regulatory failures that led up to Elon Musk’s net worth, were the precondition for all of the insanity that is now playing out. It is easy to lose sight of this amid the daily headlines and the cartoonish corruption and the outrageous statements and the think pieces about the esoteric philosophy of Mencius Moldbug. It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all. ​

​

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war—the same class war that we have been talking about for decades. This is what happens when it is lost."​

​

 

[RVonse]

And I agree with RVonse! There is a skill set needed to infer truth from evidence. One needs good judgement, understanding who is expert and who isn't, common-sense, and other skills. One must AVOID one's own biases. One must estimate the likelihood of alternate solutions. And one must be willing to conclude that often the best answer is "I don't know."

Consider the alleged suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. BOTH solutions seem very plausible. Epstein's future was so bleak that suicide would appeal. At the same time, it is easy to believe that someone powerful enough to organize a "perfect murder" would have had good reason to silence Epstein. IIRC Epstein was on suicide watch and there were two jailers charged with monitoring him. Those jailers are to blame and probably know what happened. Were they bribed to look the other way? Or did they get engrossed in some porn site and neglect their duties? I do not know.

I don't know either. But what I do know is that there was a high probability of corruption and cover up going on by a LOT of important people including Bill Gates. And furthermore, Spacetime Inhabitant is 100% wrong we should not care about this matter since Epstein himself was an unimportant person. Many are saying the financial aspects of Epstein were even more important than the child trafficking was.

If you do not fully investigate and make public the record ALL obvious corruption you are inviting MORE corruption. The corruption of both parties is one of the biggest problems we face today. As a tax payer I feel I am entitled to know whether my government is corrupt.

Right now Musk is accusing Trump of being one of the many involved with Epstein. I for one think MAGA should twist his arm until ALL the records are released.

 

[Patooka]

I don't know either. But what I do know is that there was a high probability of corruption and cover up going on by a LOT of important people including Bill Gates. And furthermore, Spacetime Inhabitant is 100% wrong we should not care about this matter since Epstein himself was an unimportant person. Many are saying the financial aspects of Epstein were even more important than the child trafficking was.

If you do not fully investigate and make public the record ALL obvious corruption you are inviting MORE corruption. The corruption of both parties is one of the biggest problems we face today. As a tax payer I feel I am entitled to know whether my government is corrupt.

Right now Musk is accusing Trump of being one of the many involved with Epstein. I for one think MAGA should twist his arm until ALL the records are released.

Yeah, but going by your logic, we can't trust the findings of the investigators because they weren't there when it happened.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

And I agree with RVonse! There is a skill set needed to infer truth from evidence. One needs good judgement, understanding who is expert and who isn't, common-sense, and other skills. One must AVOID one's own biases. One must estimate the likelihood of alternate solutions. And one must be willing to conclude that often the best answer is "I don't know."

Consider the alleged suicide of Jeffrey Epstein. BOTH solutions seem very plausible. Epstein's future was so bleak that suicide would appeal. At the same time, it is easy to believe that someone powerful enough to organize a "perfect murder" would have had good reason to silence Epstein. IIRC Epstein was on suicide watch and there were two jailers charged with monitoring him. Those jailers are to blame and probably know what happened. Were they bribed to look the other way? Or did they get engrossed in some porn site and neglect their duties? I do not know.

I don't know either. But what I do know is that there was a high probability of corruption and cover up going on by a LOT of important people including Bill Gates. And furthermore, Spacetime Inhabitant is 100% wrong we should not care about this matter since Epstein himself was an unimportant person. Many are saying the financial aspects of Epstein were even more important than the child trafficking was.

If you do not fully investigate and make public the record ALL obvious corruption you are inviting MORE corruption. The corruption of both parties is one of the biggest problems we face today. As a tax payer I feel I am entitled to know whether my government is corrupt.

Right now Musk is accusing Trump of being one of the many involved with Epstein. I for one think MAGA should twist his arm until ALL the records are released.

RE: Bolded part - You are misrepresenting what I said. I didn't say the matter or Epstein was unimportant. I said that how Epstein died was was of relatively little importance.

 

[Swammerdami]

The likes of Musk, OTOH, have not defrauded their way into power by "baffling people with sophisticated bullshit". Yarvin et al's ideas are adolescent nerd fantasies with niche appeal. Musk has been allowed to BUY power thanks to decades of neoliberalism:

The underlying cause of our situation is inequality. We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions. The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience. The inequality, the decades of regulatory failures that led up to Elon Musk’s net worth, were the precondition for all of the insanity that is now playing out. It is easy to lose sight of this amid the daily headlines and the cartoonish corruption and the outrageous statements and the think pieces about the esoteric philosophy of Mencius Moldbug. It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all. ​

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war—the same class war that we have been talking about for decades. This is what happens when it is lost."​

This is a key point.

Many people treat life as a game in which a person with $100,000,000,000 is just as entitled to his wealth, as the handsome guy is entitled to the prettiest girl; or the best tennis player is entitled to the Wimbledon trophy. But a rational economic system should be designed to help society as a whole. People prattle about Adam Smith and his alleged support for "Laissez faire. Chien mange chien" but have obviously never read Smith since he emphasizes this same point.

Perhaps fascists (or "fascist enablers" to repeat a charged label) like the idea of ceding huge wealth and power to a deranged and bigoted narcissist. But those who shrug and "say "So the cookie crumbles; such are the rules" ignore tht Rules can be changed.

 

[laughing dog]

As a tax payer I feel I am entitled to know whether my government is corrupt.

Where were you in 2016?

 

[ZiprHead]

As a tax payer I feel I am entitled to know whether my government is corrupt.

Where were you in 2016?

In the voting booth voting for Trump, the most corrupt person to ever step foot into the Oval Office.

 

[Swammerdami]

Musk has been allowed to BUY power thanks to decades of neoliberalism:

The underlying cause of our situation is inequality. We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions. ...

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war—the same class war that we have been talking about for decades. This is what happens when it is lost."​

Many people treat life as a game in which a person with $100,000,000,000 is just as entitled to his wealth, as the handsome guy is entitled to the prettiest girl; or the best tennis player is entitled to the Wimbledon trophy. But a rational economic system should be designed to help society as a whole. People prattle about Adam Smith and his alleged support for "Laissez faire. Chien mange chien" but have obviously never read Smith since he emphasizes this same point.

Perhaps fascists (or "fascist enablers" to repeat a charged label) like the idea of ceding huge wealth and power to a deranged and bigoted narcissist. But those who shrug and "say "So the cookie crumbles; such are the rules" ignore that Rules can be changed.

I think Professor Scott Galloway agrees with me.

 

[laughing dog]

The likes of Musk, OTOH, have not defrauded their way into power by "baffling people with sophisticated bullshit". Yarvin et al's ideas are adolescent nerd fantasies with niche appeal. Musk has been allowed to BUY power thanks to decades of neoliberalism:

The underlying cause of our situation is inequality. We have allowed too few people to accumulate too much wealth. The imbalance has grown so severe that a tiny number of individuals with twelve-figure net worths have the means to purchase so much political power that they can effectively make the federal government’s decisions. The significant thing about the way that Elon Musk is presently dismantling our government is not the existence of his own political delusions, or his own self-interested quest to privatize public functions, or his own misreading of economics; it is the fact that he is able to do it. And he is able to do it because he has several hundred billion dollars. If he did not have several hundred billion dollars he would just be another idiot with bad opinions. Because he has several hundred billion dollars his bad opinions are now our collective lived experience. The inequality, the decades of regulatory failures that led up to Elon Musk’s net worth, were the precondition for all of the insanity that is now playing out. It is easy to lose sight of this amid the daily headlines and the cartoonish corruption and the outrageous statements and the think pieces about the esoteric philosophy of Mencius Moldbug. It is tempting, because of the sudden severity of our situation, to imagine that there is a secret, hidden reason driving it all. ​

There’s not. This is the outcome of the class war—the same class war that we have been talking about for decades. This is what happens when it is lost."​

This is a key point.

Many people treat life as a game in which a person with $100,000,000,000 is just as entitled to his wealth, as the handsome guy is entitled to the prettiest girl; or the best tennis player is entitled to the Wimbledon trophy. But a rational economic system should be designed to help society as a whole. People prattle about Adam Smith and his alleged support for "Laissez faire. Chien mange chien" but have obviously never read Smith since he emphasizes this same point.

Perhaps fascists (or "fascist enablers" to repeat a charged label) like the idea of ceding huge wealth and power to a deranged and bigoted narcissist. But those who shrug and "say "So the cookie crumbles; such are the rules" ignore tht Rules can be changed.

There really ought to be rule that anyone who bangs on about Adam Smith ought to be forced to read his The Theory of Moral Sentiments and then his An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It’d stop some of the laissez faire nonsense.

 

[ZiprHead]

Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.

www.wired.com

 

[Swammerdami]

Is this the right thread to complain about disinformation?

YouTube seems to be thoroughly riddled with garbage lies. Not just from the usual Putin-MAGA bullshit machine but also lies "allied" with the anti-fascists, click-baits from investment advisors, etc. etc. When I click 'About' on a Facebook Friend suggestion the occupation is often "content creator." I guess this is what young entrepreneurs do these days. Is there an easy way to tell YouTube "Do not show any more videos from this channel"?

I like Jasmine Crockett and often click on videos about her. I clicked the following to see only gibberish about "DNA ... daughter ... Tiana Meredith." What??

Aha! Just now I loaded the URL to confirm for this post and see "In this fictional legal showdown, Donald Trump launches a high-profile lawsuit against Rep. Jasmine Crockett," So the YouTube admits to being utter fiction!!!
I may be gullible, but the @EliteNostalgia channel is loathsome. Clicking to it, it seems to be dozens of such fictions, almost all with Jasmine as heroine. If I complained, could YouTube take this channel down? (Please don't tell me this is Jasmine trying to get a few extra dollars off her fame.)

 

[TV and credit cards]

Strange. My YouTube doesn’t have that stuff. My YouTube mostly has stuff about Japanese carpentry.

 

[ZiprHead]

Strange. My YouTube doesn’t have that stuff. My YouTube mostly has stuff about Japanese carpentry.

Yup. If you click on it you are going to get more of it.

 

[WAB]

Is this the right thread to complain about disinformation?

YouTube seems to be thoroughly riddled with garbage lies. Not just from the usual Putin-MAGA bullshit machine but also lies "allied" with the anti-fascists, click-baits from investment advisors, etc. etc. When I click 'About' on a Facebook Friend suggestion the occupation is often "content creator." I guess this is what young entrepreneurs do these days. Is there an easy way to tell YouTube "Do not show any more videos from this channel"?

I like Jasmine Crockett and often click on videos about her. I clicked the following to see only gibberish about "DNA ... daughter ... Tiana Meredith." What??

Aha! Just now I loaded the URL to confirm for this post and see "In this fictional legal showdown, Donald Trump launches a high-profile lawsuit against Rep. Jasmine Crockett," So the YouTube admits to being utter fiction!!!
I may be gullible, but the @EliteNostalgia channel is loathsome. Clicking to it, it seems to be dozens of such fictions, almost all with Jasmine as heroine. If I complained, could YouTube take this channel down? (Please don't tell me this is Jasmine trying to get a few extra dollars off her fame.)

Yes, YouTube has become a cesspool of complete bullshit. Unfortunately, you click on one questionable video out of morbid curiosity and your feed is inundated with similar garbage.

Funny how YouTube won't let you say 'fuck' in the first eight seconds, and censors many other expletives and trigger words, but allows complete lies, outright fabrications, to be posted, and to earn money. One recent short claimed that Ozzy Osbourne left his entire estate to Yungblud.