Are rationalists any less susceptible to online scams than a random sample of the general population? I would hope that no one here has fallen for “hey it’s me, Ozzy Osbourne, I’m not really dead, I’m just on the Crazy Train and I need $300USD...” unsolicited messages. But who knows, maybe there’s some affinity scam “It’s me Eliezer, I’ve picked you to help me fight bad AGI, can you send me $300USD...”
When it comes to your average scam, I’m sure rationalists fall for it less than average. But you could surely come up with some very carefully crafted scam that targets rationalists in particular and has higher odds of convincing them than the general public.
It also depends on what exactly you consider a scam. To some people, FTX was a scam, and rationalists almost certainly were overrepresented among its customers (or victims).
I was specifically thinking about fraudulent accounts and messages like the Ozzy Osbourne example or basically anything based on the Nigerian Prince Scam where there is it is highly unlikely that a dead celebrity or royalty is contacting the mark out of the blue.
You raise a good point about FTX and the number of rationalists it hoodwinked, but that is a different (and perhaps more interesting) phenomena than the one I’m querying about.
Are rationalists any less susceptible to online scams than a random sample of the general population? I would hope that no one here has fallen for “hey it’s me, Ozzy Osbourne, I’m not really dead, I’m just on the Crazy Train and I need $300USD...” unsolicited messages. But who knows, maybe there’s some affinity scam “It’s me Eliezer, I’ve picked you to help me fight bad AGI, can you send me $300USD...”
When it comes to your average scam, I’m sure rationalists fall for it less than average. But you could surely come up with some very carefully crafted scam that targets rationalists in particular and has higher odds of convincing them than the general public.
It also depends on what exactly you consider a scam. To some people, FTX was a scam, and rationalists almost certainly were overrepresented among its customers (or victims).
Proof of concept (not very careful) -- unfortunately, we don’t have the data about its success rate.
Interesting to see that more than one comment had the sentiment “yeah it’s a scam—but let’s use this as an experiment.”
I was specifically thinking about fraudulent accounts and messages like the Ozzy Osbourne example or basically anything based on the Nigerian Prince Scam where there is it is highly unlikely that a dead celebrity or royalty is contacting the mark out of the blue.
You raise a good point about FTX and the number of rationalists it hoodwinked, but that is a different (and perhaps more interesting) phenomena than the one I’m querying about.