this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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If I didn't have ethics, I could con so many religious people...
I think about this sometimes I could go to school and build a career for myself, or I could make way twice the money in half the time doing shit like this.
Sometimes I hate that I have a sense of guilt. Life would be so much easier if I were a psychopath
But psychopaths never feel love
They either completely lack or struggle with recognizing emotional empathy.
I don't think that's true? They have a dysfunctional guilt/shame system but they still have other feelings, right?
Interestingly, a quick google didn't really answer this. It seems pretty split as to whether they can or can't. I don't think there's really a definitive answer. My guess is that it probably depends where you fall (I imagine it's a spectrum like most things), and some can, some cant
That suits me just fine
If it makes you feel any better, it's probably hard to figure out when to get out. You'll always feel like you can do just one more because the last one worked out so well, but each time you cash in, more people will see the truth and might want in on it until you find yourself in a situation where you can't stop even if you wanted to because then the others who you are propping up will turn on you.
So what if they turn on you? Once you're rich just admit it's a scam and walk away. The believers will continue on.
Jehovah's Witnesses predicted the end of the world in 1914. When that didn't happen they lost members but came back quickly enough. Then they predicted it for 1975. Same thing happened, and now they have more members than ever.
There were likely some Mormons and definitely some fellow Freemasons in the angry mob that killed Joseph Smith. He was in way too deep to just walk away, even if his brand of narcissism would have allowed him to contemplate that.
As the other commenter mentioned, things could get violent. Being wrong about a prediction means that the leaders look as dumb as the followers, but saying outright that you scammed the followers means you deliberately made them look stupid.
But even if they aren't mysteriously angry about it, it's still illegal. I wonder if the prosecutors going after Trump plan on going after him again from that angle once they prove his election steal claims were fraud because he used those claims to solicit donations.
If it was illegal to scam people in the name of religion the world would be a much better place...
It's not the legal status (fraud is already illegal), it's proving that it is indeed a scam rather than some dumb shit they actually believed, as well as knowing that it's more likely to trigger a persecution complex and doubling down than improve the lives of the victims (because if it's a plot to harm their religion, they don't have to feel like idiots for giving the scammer money).
It's a different story if the religious scammer openly admits that it was always a scam and just doesn't care what anyone thought of it. Easier to prove and the victims are already angry and feeling like idiots for falling for it.
It is completely ethical to remove the funding power from those who would cause others to suffer.
Just sayin, you have options.
Yeah, but you're not really conning the higher-ups, you're conning the grannies who are going to church and giving away their social security money. And they really don't deserve to be conned even if it would be easy to con them.
They're going to be conned. Might as well be by someone who can help them with that money.
Argumentum ad lgnorantiam
Argumentum ad pessimism, actually
Can you explain what that means, and what the other guy said please?
He called me an idiot. I said no, I'm a pessimist
My intention wasn't to call you an idiot (which me misusing that Latin phrase would make ME the idiot lol), it was to point out the "If I don't do it someone else will" moral justification / fallacy that a lot of people, such as drug dealers for example, use to skirt the moral responsibility of their actions.
I long ago came to the conclusion that a slice of the American Dream is still out there to be had, as long as you don't mind cutting it out of a bunch of suckers and rubes. Alas, my petty sense of morality is stopping me from joining the ranks of the wealthy elite, but at least I can sleep at night knowing my lifestyle isn't directly financed by the misery of people I made a conscious choice to hurt.
That's almost universally true at the multimillionaire and above level unless you inherited it all. You don't get that rich without stepping on everyone you can to get there.
Elon Musk has ruined a ridiculous number of people on his way to the top and he continues to do it.
Conning religious people isn't unethical /s?
Could easily rationalize it. Suckers are going to find a religion to con then no matter what. You could provide a less harmful option.
I'm not saying you should, but you could find a way to justify it. It's pretty easy money.
I don't think a 'less harmful' con makes the con any more ethical. And I don't want to take poor people's money. A lot of people giving to televangelists are people living on social security and the like.