首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
On a Los Angeles street corner in 2000, I was the "inside man" in a classic con game called the pigeon drop. A magician named Da
On a Los Angeles street corner in 2000, I was the "inside man" in a classic con game called the pigeon drop. A magician named Da
admin
2015-08-29
40
问题
On a Los Angeles street corner in 2000, I was the "inside man" in a classic con game called the pigeon drop. A magician named Dan Harlan orchestrated it for a television series I cohosted called Exploring the Unknown(type "Shermer, con games" into Google). Our pigeon was a man from whom I asked directions to the local hospital while Dan(the "outside man")moved in and appeared to find a wallet full of cash on the ground. After it was established that the wallet belonged to neither of us and appeared to have about $3,000 in it, Dan announced that we should split the money three ways.
I objected on moral grounds, insisting that we ask around first, which Dan agreed to do only after I put the cash in an envelope and secretly switched it for an envelope with magazine pages stuffed in it. Before he left on his moral crusade, however, Dan insisted that we each give him some collateral("How do I know you two won’t just take off with the money while I’m gone?"). I enthusiastically offered $50 and suggested that the pigeon do the same. He hesitated, so 1 handed him the sealed envelope full of what he believed was the cash(but was actually magazine pages), which he then tucked safely into his pocket as he willingly handed over to Dan his entire wallet, credit cards and ID. A few minutes after Dan left, 1 acted agitated and took off in search of him, leaving the pigeon standing on the street corner with a phony envelope and no wallet!
After admitting my anxiety about performing the con(I didn’t believe I could pull it off)and confessing a little thrill at having scored the goods, I asked Dan to explain why such scams work. "We are that way as the human animal," he reflected. "We have a conscience, but we also want to go for the kill. " Indeed, even after we told our pigeon that he had been set up, he still believed he had the three grand in his pocket!
Greed and the belief that the payoff is real also led high-rolling investors to fuel Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff’s record-breaking $50-billion Ponzi scheme in which he kept the money and paid an 8 to 14 percent annual annuity with cash from new investors. As long as more money comes in than goes out, such scams can continue, which this one did until the 2008 market meltdown, when more investors wanted out than wanted in. But there were other factors at work as well, as explained by the University of Colorado at Boulder psychiatry professor Stephen Greenspan in his new book The Annals of Gullibility(Praeger, 2008), which, with supreme irony, he wrote before he lost more than half his retirement investments in Madoff’s company! "The basic mechanism explaining the success of Ponzi schemes is the tendency of humans to model their actions, especially when dealing with matters they don’t fully understand, on the behavior of other humans," Greenspan notes.
The effect is particularly powerful within an ethnic or religious community, as in 1920, when the eponymous Charles Ponzi promised a 40 percent return on his fellow immigrant Italian investors’ money through the buying and selling of postal reply coupons(the profit was supposedly in the exchange rate differences between countries). Similarly, Madoff targeted fellow wealthy Jewish investors and philanthropists, and that insider’s trust was reinforced by the reliable payout of moderate dividends(so as not to attract attention)to his selective client list, to the point that Greenspan said he would have felt foolish had he not grabbed the investment opportunity.
The evolutionary arms race between deception and deception detection has left us with a legacy of looking for signals to trust or distrust others. The system works reasonably well in simple social situations with many opportunities for interaction, such as those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. But in the modern world of distance, anonymity and especially complicated investment tools(such as hedge funds)that not one in a thousand really understands, detecting deceptive signals is no easy feat. So as Dan reminded me, "If it sounds too good to be true, it is."
The game is to illustrate
选项
A、a way of scamming.
B、evil side of human nature.
C、how economic scams work.
D、inter-personal mistrust.
答案
C
解析
推断题。本文前三段都是在叙述the pigeon drop这个游戏是怎样进行的,因此对这个游戏的评论和总结应该出现在第四段,该段第一句就提到“Greed and the belief that the payoff…”,由此可知作者是以小窥大,从一个两人制造的小骗局的简单道理来说明大环境下的经济骗局,因此[C]正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/8OOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
AmericanLiteratureAliteratureistherecordofhumanexperienceandpeoplehavealwaysbeenimpelledtowritedowntheirimpr
AmericanLiteratureAliteratureistherecordofhumanexperienceandpeoplehavealwaysbeenimpelledtowritedowntheirimpr
InthisJune,theAmericanMuseumofNaturalHistorywillintroduce1.______itsfirstMasterofArtsinteachingprogram,whic
Manyartiststodayareinwhatiscalledappliedart.Theyusetheirabilityinadvertise,interiordecoration,orsomesimilar
______deliveredhisworld-famousspeechGettysburgAddressduringtheCivilWar.
WhowroteTheAmerican?
TheheadoftherulingpartyandthatoftheOppositionpartyinBritainarecalledrespectively.
Advertiserswillhaveaudienceofnearly145million【M1】______peoplefortheSuperBowlonFebruary6th,andmostconsume
WhichofthefollowingisNOTatypicalfeatureofModernism?
我不敢说生命是什么,我只能说生命像什么。生命像向东流的一江春水,他从最高处发源,冰雪是他的前身。他聚集起许多细流,合成一股有力的洪涛,向下奔注,他曲折的穿过了悬崖峭壁,冲倒了层沙积土,挟卷着滚滚的沙石,快乐勇敢地流走,一路上他享受着他所遭遇的一切
随机试题
男性,57岁,反复上腹闷痛10年,近来加剧,消瘦纳差,应首选哪项检查
藏象学说的形成基础,以下哪项不正确
甲公司购置了一套需要安装的生产线,与该生产线有关的业务如下: (1)2019年9月30日,以银行存款购入待安装的生产线,增值税专用发票上注明的买价为468000元,增值税税额为60840元,另支付保险费及其他杂费32000元,不考虑其增值税。该待安装生产
历史上看,当社会成员对其所处环境感到不理解、不确定、不安甚至恐惧的时候,“巫术文化”就会兴起,文化的“巫术化”能反映当今国人,尤其是精英阶层对于当今社会的焦虑。这种焦虑的原因在于,既有的社会理论都无法对当代风险社会的遽然兴起做出合理解释,或者即使可以从学理
读下图.回答下面各题。当地球公转到A点时,此时为北半球的()。
腾讯网曾对教师不当行为进行了一次调查,结果如下:(资料来源:卫建国,教育法规与教师道德[M],北京:北京师范大学出版社,2013:135.)结合“教师不当行为调查结果统计表”,回答下列问题:(1)调查表中列举的教师不当行为违背了《中小学教师职业道德
当社会总供给大于总需求时,政府可以采取措施刺激出口,鼓励资金流出。()
中华人民共和国的成立标志着()。
下列选项中不属于软件生命周期开发阶段任务的是
CellPhoneLetsYourSecretOutYourcellphoneholdssecretsaboutyou.Besidesthenamesand______【51】thatyou’veprogram
最新回复
(
0
)