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
2015-01-09
66
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 I 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, I 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 ended with
选项
A、their having found the owner of the wallet.
B、the stranger’s being scammed of his own wallet.
C、Dan’s disappearing and keeping the author waiting.
D、the stranger’s getting 1/3 of the money in that wallet.
答案
B
解析
细节题。由题干定位至第二段。由该段最后一句“A few minutes after Dan left,I acted agitated andtook off in search of him,leaving the pigeon standing on the street corner with a phony envelope and nowallet!”可知,那个被拦住的陌生人最后钱包被人拿走,手里的信封里也没有所谓的现金,[B]正确。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/UMdO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
EducationOutofSchoolI.Theoriginof"YouthHostel":AGermanschoolmasterstartedtheideaof"YouthHostel"in1907.Hetu
WhichgroupofpeoplecanNOTvoteintheBritishgeneralelection?
WhowasthefirstAmericanplaywrightwinningtheNobelPrizeforLiteraturein1936.
Whyisitimportanttohaveagoodrelationshipwithneighbors?
Artcanbemadeofalmostanything,includingsubstances【M1】______thathavenotbeenproducedandusedinage
AudienceAudienceisaveryimportantconceptforwriting.Theaudienceinfluencesthecontent,structure,style,etcofyour
TheInternetprovidesanamazingforumforthefreeexchangeofideas.Giventherelativelyafewrestrictionsgoverningaccess
Toseehowbigcarrierscouldcontroltheonlineworld,youmustunderstanditsstructures.EarthlinkgivesJenniferaccess
Manycancerpatientsarefindingnowhopeinanunusualandcontroversialapproachtocancertreatment.Thenewmethodhasbeen
A、Theprettydivineplace.B、Itswonderfulpast.C、Fantasticbirdsandreptiles.D、Agreatnumberoftemples.B
随机试题
下列关于生活常识的说法,不正确的是:
精神分裂症偏执型的突出临床表现为【】
医疗卫生机构违反条例规定,公开艾滋患者信息的,应依照哪项法规予以处罚
对于一国的偿债能力,国际上公认的评价标准之一是:外汇储备与短期外债余额相比应超过()。
实现有效进度控制的关键是()。
家庭费用分摊的方式包括( )。Ⅰ.统收统支法:家庭财务是由夫妻一方对双方收支统一记账管理Ⅱ.财产具体分割法:明确共同债权、债务和个人债权、债务,以及财产分割以后怎么去履行Ⅲ.三账户法:比较适合采取分别财产制的夫妻。夫妻各自记账,属于个人的支出由个人
在社会规范学习与道德品质发展的研究中,班杜拉的研究重点是()。
注:1.绝对额按现价计算,增长速度按不变价计算;2.三次产业分类依据国家统计局2012年制定的《三次产业划分规定》;3.行业分类采用《国民经济行业分类(GB/T4754—2011)》;4.本表中国内生产总值总量数据中,有的不等于各产业(行
Itisaneverydayobservationthatanimalsareborn,grow,andmaturethenbegintolosesomeoftheircapabilities,andfinally
A、Writethelabreport.B、FindoutProf.Smith’sschedule.C、Interviewsomehighschoolstudents.D、Finishtheirexperiment.D行动
最新回复
(
0
)