[HN Gopher] Modeling cycles of grift with evolutionary game theory
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Modeling cycles of grift with evolutionary game theory
Author : ibobev
Score : 72 points
Date : 2026-02-24 13:54 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oranlooney.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oranlooney.com)
| apothegm wrote:
| Maybe, but... the cycle can be very long. Everyone in Russia is a
| skeptic or a grifter, and it's been that way for decades with no
| sign of grift being on its way out.
| w10-1 wrote:
| The vast majority have justified skepticism from long history
| of abuse. But very few people are grifters, because that would
| require an expensive roof. missing from my transactional
| analysis is a general goodwill, the likelihood that someone
| would help if it didn't cost much. In Russia, the skepticism is
| so high that one only helps one's close friends.
| lukas099 wrote:
| Sounds like they've reached an evolutionarily stable
| equilibrium and the conditions that sustain it are stable too.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Birth rates are the evidence against this, and this is true
| for all industrialized nations.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| This is a great post. It's even got useful ternary diagrams, and
| it gives an explanation of why the NFT grift disappeared. Too bad
| cryptocurrency in general is only mentioned in the context of rug
| pulls. This theory must not extend as far as whatever powers
| crypto.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| The meta strategy seems clear: if the world seems full of
| grifters, stop being a Mark, and start being a Skeptic.
|
| Or, I suppose, go on thinking this time is different.
| energy123 wrote:
| Don't believe the latest fashion on social media, including the
| latest thing it's fashionable to be sceptical about. That rule
| of thumb performed well the last 10 years.
| allthetime wrote:
| The simple version: get off social media.
|
| The dilemma for me is that aspects of social media (namely
| information sharing and learning) are incredibly useful,
| while others (contrarian argumentation, propaganda, attention
| black holes) are very harmful.
|
| I go through cycles of abstaining from online interaction
| because I've sunk into the dark side too much but then return
| with a stronger intention in order to feed my hobbies and
| mind. I've found that it's not so simple to just "not
| believe" what you see and read as being constantly bombarded
| with political messaging necessarily pushes you to one side
| or the other unconsciously.
|
| So yeah, for me the best way is to cut that feed off
| entirely, instead of pretending I have any kind of effective
| fire wall against its deeper mental effects.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| > Don't believe the latest fashion on social media, including
| the latest thing it's fashionable to be sceptical about.
|
| I don't think choosing to believe in something just because
| other people are piling on being skeptical of it is a viable
| strategy. If you hear a lot of people pointing out "X is a
| scam" you shouldn't refuse to believe them on principle.
| kruffalon wrote:
| I don't think that's a viable strategy.
|
| If you're a Mark (=trusting person) I don't think you can just
| decide to become a Skeptic.
|
| I admit I skimmed the article and even if I would read more
| closely I don't think I would understand it better.
|
| I'll use my intuition for how individuals transition between
| the roles.
|
| Mark -> Skeptic: requires to be have been grifted and possibly
| having the grift explained by a Skeptic. Or possibly having
| someone close to you get grifted.
|
| Mark -> Grifter: I'm not sure it's possible, but maybe the
| corruption pdf posted[0] is a clue.
|
| Skeptic -> Grifter: desillusion about the point of not grifting
| since _everyone_ else is doing it too. So maybe late stage
| corruption[0] or just nihilism based on seeing grifts succeed
| so much.
|
| Skeptic -> Mark: honestly... Shrooms maybe? Or finding and
| being chosen into a trusting community.
|
| Grifter -> Skeptic: I think realising that you've hurt someone
| in an unexpectedly harsh way could help this transition.
| Otherwise I don't really know besides being short of Marks.
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47177186
| smogcutter wrote:
| I think a missing piece of this analysis for the present is the
| way that hyper-skepticism can come back around and make you just
| a different type of mark. Sovereign citizens, for example.
| Edman274 wrote:
| People that don't buy insurance because they think it's a scam,
| then end up impoverished after a foreseeable accident or theft,
| as a more common one.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Foreseeable accident?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Not buying flood insurance while living in a flood plain is
| an example I've seen in my city
| macintux wrote:
| How many renters have a useful amount of renter's
| insurance?
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Probably a lot? I've moved around a bunch over the past
| 20 years, so have had several landlords. I think all of
| them for the past decade have required proof of insurance
| when signing the lease. I don't think anyone I rented
| from required it before 2018ish
| sq_ wrote:
| Echoing a sibling comment, lots of landlords require it
| now, and the basic packages that insurers offer you as a
| bundle with auto or other forms of insurance are pretty
| decent, depending on state.
|
| Typically seems like $100-200 per year for coverage that
| would handle the loss of most of one's possessions,
| provided you don't get screwed by "well, you don't have
| the receipt" or "we only cover water ingress, not floods
| or leaks".
| 63stack wrote:
| I thought you can't even get that if you are in an area
| that is often flooded.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Sovereign citizenry is such a strange thing to me. It's all the
| parts of a conspiracy theory with none of the interesting
| things like aliens or lizard people. No those are replaced with
| strange interpretations of laws and ordinances.
| Muromec wrote:
| It's not strange really, it's tax evasion with an addition of
| larping to not feel bad. Oppressive government is in fact out
| there, but you feel that you can neither challenge nor escape
| it, so it's just that -- sublimation of sorts
| dooglius wrote:
| What exactly is hyper-skeptical about them?
| MoltenMan wrote:
| I think this makes sense as part of the existing 'skeptic cost'
| kerblang wrote:
| I don't there is some threshold of extreme skepticism at which
| someone suddenly reverses polarity under skeptical duress and
| flips over into a mark. Rather, you just have a mark trying to
| be good at skepticism and failing horribly.
| w10-1 wrote:
| To this model I would add the transaction costs for vetting a
| transaction, the cost of identifying and engaging transaction
| partners, and the relative sensitivity to a negative outcome (the
| stake as a percentage of total stake).
|
| I believe that would enable you to identify more or less corrupt
| industries.
|
| Unfortunately, both stakes and information costs make governance
| prone to abuse. To see why it's not nearly as corrupt as one
| might expect from this model, you'd need reputation cost and
| benefit, where trusted governments and leaders attract higher
| functioning citizens and industries.
| jurschreuder wrote:
| A population of Marks is a highly efficient one. At the speed of
| trust.
|
| In a company you will want to cultivate this, since interactions
| within the company are far more frequent than with the outside
| world.
| Muromec wrote:
| The same applies to the country population -- it's always them
| others who are up to something.
| intalentive wrote:
| I am going to steal this code and run a different analysis. The
| author mentions that skeptics avoid grifters without punishing
| them. I am curious how things play out in the Seven Samurai
| model, where instead of marks you have peasants and instead of
| grifters you have bandits. What happens if you have samurai not
| skeptics? Who both take rice from the peasants and protect them
| from greater exploitation by bandits.
|
| This would be a simple governance model, and you could predict
| something like "revolution" when the cost of samurai exceeds
| their benefit.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| this "The start of a slide into a new post-truth dark age?"
|
| Not sure we'll evolutionarily get out of the loop this time.
|
| From 2016 to 2026. That is 10 years for Republicans to realize
| they are being grifted, scammed, etc... Not sure they will ever
| be realizing it. Will take another generation. Which I guess is
| the point, another generation of evolution cycles might break the
| loop.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| What about grifters who are also marks? Grifters aren't immune
| from grift.
| notatoad wrote:
| >Grift is cyclical, and any period of high grift will soon give
| way to a period of high skepticism
|
| so how do you explain the immediate jump from crypto grift
| straight into AI grift? i'm not saying all crypto or all AI is
| pure grift, but both of those industries have had higher than
| average levels of grift, without any skepticism in between them.
| The NFT crash did not seem to be followed by any period of
| skepticism at all.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think a further development is that skeptics are, in many
| contexts, losing the tools and leverage needed to reject the
| grifters.
|
| For example, if you need cell phone service, and all the options
| have converged on requiring binding arbitration, being a skeptic
| about binding arbitration will not help you.
|
| Maybe more on point, if you want to be an AI skeptic, but are
| also aware that AI can work, how can you establish a plausible
| level of skepticism accurately? Laypeople probably can't.
|
| So the rise of grift might also be seen as a sign of the systemic
| frustration of effective skepticism.
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