832
evangelism
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
Alternate take: this is the same sort of mark self-sorting that scam artists use.
A reasonable person isn’t gonna reply to a typo-ridden email from a Nigerian prince. But those few who do are going to be easy to get everything from.
Imagine you’re an executive at the company your dad founded. You’re an idiot. Everyone knows you’re an idiot. But you think you’re smart. This guy is willing to consult with you about how your company will use AI (for a modest fee, of course). You don’t understand AI, but you think you do, and you just need someone to help with the details. And everyone has to nod their heads and agree to pay him because they’re afraid of getting fired.
You don’t have to fool everyone.
I have watched those exact guys eat an organization I worked for alive. At the end, they had like... 10 business consultants and 1 junior engineer. At an electronics engineering company.
https://i.natgeofe.com/n/4c509f20-8730-4cd1-a90b-6681394c92ca/NationalGeographic_1742512_3x2.jpg
I can still hear the penny dropping in my mind when I went from ‘How can anyone fall for that—it’s so obviously a scam…’ to ‘Oh, right…’ It sounded too Machiavellian to be true. I wonder if it was so carefully designed from the start, or a process of natural selection?