Last week I was robbed of $60 by a confidence trickster.
I was out for my daily "COVID Walk" downtown and as I was coming down Wellington out in front of the Wendy's fast food joint. Just in front of me, a South Asian guy in a late model van turned in front of me, rolled down his window and gestured me over. I assumed he wanted directions.
Instead, he started into a frantic patter about being from out of town, not knowing anyone here, that his vehicle was almost out of gas, that his wife and family were in the back, that his credit card had been refused. Moreover, he mumbled something about COVID-19 and said he was frantic to fill his tank so he could get home.
Being the sort of guy I am, I thought "well, it could be a scam, but what the heck, there's the outside chance it isn't---in which case I could understand his situation". I reached into my pocket and was going to give the guy a twenty. But he clicked into over-drive, saying he didn't want my charity. He said "look at my car---I'm a rich guy", he said he would give me a gold ring from his finger in exchange for $60.
At this point a car behind him (he was blocking the entrance to Wendy's) started honking and the driver rolled his window down and yelled at me about this guy blocking the entrance. The guy pulled forward five feet, stopped and went on about being in trouble and that the ring was worth a lot more than $60.
Thinking that I was probably been ripped off, but willing to accept that there was an odd chance that I wasn't, I peeled off $60 from my bill fold and gave it to him. A couple days later I went to a pawn shop and took out the ring and said "The oddest thing happened to me the other day----". The owner finished what I was saying "this guy stopped you and was desperate for gas to get home---right?" He looked at the ring and told me it was worthless costume jewellery.
I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about what happened, talking to friends, and, thought I might share some of the ideas that came to mind.
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The first thing that came to mind was a feeling that I never want to be the sort of person who is too cynical to actually help strangers. This got me thinking about E. O. Wilson and his assertion that human beings are "eusocial" animals---just like ants and bees.
The idea is that one of our core evolutionary adaptations is that we help each other. We use culture in addition to genetics to create super-organisms called "tribes", "cities", and, "nations" of individuals who help each other survive and flourish. The instinct that drove me to give money to the confidence trickster in the van is similar to the one that got me to start various community development projects, run as a candidate during elections, and, write this news blog.
We live in eusocial colonies---just like bees and ants---and our ability to do so comes from natural selection through both genetics and culture. That is to say, most of us have an instinct to help each other, and, the cultures that didn't create mythologies and institutions that augmented these instincts were out-competed by others that were more supportive.
If this sounds far-fetched, consider two hypothetical civilizations. One of them, the Groovoid Empire exists next to Republic of Familystan. The myths, philosophy, religion, and, literature of the Groovoid Empire places a huge emphasis on people's responsibility to everyone else in their community. In contrast, Familystan defines helping your family as the most important ideal. When an outside force---say the Banzai Autarky---attacks both cultures they have to defend themselves. The Groovoid army's leaders have totally committed themselves to defending the entire population. In contrast, the leaders of the Familystan army are people who are constantly thinking about how to help their family members. Groovoid aristocrats would rather watch their families be tortured to death than betray the empire. In contrast, the Familystan rulers can be easily "turned" simply by threatening their wives and kids.
Which culture has a better chance of winning the war against the Banzai Autarchy? (Incidentally, if you think my hypothetical example is far-fetched, I'd point out that for both Canada and the USA our official stance is to never negotiate with kidnappers. Ask yourself whether this is a Groovoid or Familystan policy.)
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Readers might ask the obvious question: "well, why did the guy who took your money do this if we all have the same instinct?" The problem is assuming that all individuals are the same. When scientists say "the members of such-and-such species are like this", they are making an over-generalization. What they should really be saying is "the majority of individuals within a species are like this". That's because there exist sub-populations with many creatures.
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| Bluegill sunfish (what gender do you think it is?), photo by Scott Harden c/o Wiki Media Commons. |
Consider the bluegill sunfish. Scientists have discovered that it has four different genders.
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| Table from the website Gender-Inclusive Biology. |
As you can see from the above chart, there are significant differences in the colouring, internal anatomy, and, lifespan of all four genders.
In addition, there is a significant difference between how they relate to each other for reproduction. To understand this point, it's important to know how bluegills reproduce. The eggs are laid in a spawning bed, fertilized, and, protected by adult males. The simplified version would say that the males fertilize and protect the eggs. But that is an over-generalization.
It turns out that 85% of the spawning beds have one female laying eggs and one large male fertilizing them. But detailed observation shows that 11% have one female with one large and (usually) one medium male. A further 4% have two females and one male (the article doesn't identify which type).
A further complication comes from the fact that large males only make up 15% of the spawning male population---even though they end up doing most of the spawning. (Remember, 85% of the beds only have one large male plus one female.)
The ratios of the different types of males and the reproductive pairings are important to understand. It only makes sense to have medium and small males if there are large ones. That's because medium males fertilize some of the eggs that large males guard because they seem to help the large males in some way that doesn't seem obvious to researchers. In contrast, small males charge in and dump sperm when the large male and the females are mating in the hope of fertilizing some of the eggs before they get chased off. The large males try to chase off the small ones, but there are more of them which means it is inevitable that some of the eggs get fertilized by the smaller males doing their "drive-bys".
The important point to remember is that the large males end up doing almost all the work protecting eggs from predators because the smaller males don't get involved (and are too small to be of much use anyway). This means that if the smaller males completely "overwhelmed" the large ones and wiped them out of the gene pool, the reproductive success rate of the species would go down---which would benefit none of the different subsets. That suggests that there is a statistical "sweet spot" where the minority of large males protect almost all the eggs, while the majority of smaller males get to reproduce while "free-riding" with regard to protecting the young.
I've gone into some detail to explain the intricacies of bluegill reproduction only to point out that our general understanding of what a species is, what reproduction strategies are, "instincts", etc, are generally very simplified in public school science classes in order to explain basic principles. Things are a lot more complex in the real world.
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Just like with bluegills, it's important to realize that there are sub-populations that exist within the larger context of human society and pursue an alternative reproductive strategy that depends on the existence of the larger one. (And please remember, unlike bluegills, human beings/human society reproduce both through genetics and culture.)
This gets me back to the guy in the van. His genetic and cultural inheritance probably told him that contrary to my worldview---which says that people should help one another---the world is a constant struggle where there are two types of people: "wiseguys" and "suckers". I am a sucker, which is why I could be "taken".
Wiseguys are part of a sub-culture in Guelph, Canadian, and, human society that promotes it's own description of reality, code of conduct, and, teaches various technologies to it's members. After the fact, I recognized one of the technologies confidence tricksters use to separate a sucker like me from my money.
In martial arts we are taught that there is a "tempo" to a fight. That is, there is a inherent rhythm to a conflict and the wise fighter can use it to his advantage. The simplest example of this is where someone learns to press an advantage so hard that the opponent never gets a chance to "catch up" once they get caught on their "back foot". The best example I could find this comes from one of the hugely popular Ip Man movies that star Donny Yen. Consider the following clip.
This comes from Ip Man Two where the plot revolves around a racist British heavy-weight boxer who uses his training plus his enormous punching power to beat all the Kung Fu masters in Hong Kong except for Ip Man. Ip beats the Brit by closing the distance and using "chain punches" that keep the Western boxer on his back feet so he can't use raw punching power to overwhelm him. Instead, the boxer is reduced to protecting face his face with the odd attempt to land a "hay-maker" which Ip can avoid relatively easily.
I raise this example because it illustrates what the confidence trickster did to me in order to get past my rational defences. The fast patter he did and the stressful environment he was playing in (did I mention that there was another car behind him with a driver yelling at us to stop blocking the traffic?) acted like Wing Chun "chain punches" to overwhelm my ability to think through what I was happening to me. Indeed, a couple times I tried to tell him to go to a pawnshop downtown to sell his ring, but he never let me finish my sentence because he would just jump in and repeat his patter about how he needed my help right then and there.
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I mentioned this to a friend who has travelled a great deal and she reinforced the idea that of the technology comes down to this flurry of language that keeps people on their back feet so they can't think straight. She pointed out another part of the technology with an incident from her life.
She was walking down a street in Turkey with her son and she noticed a shoe salesman ahead of her who had a brush fall out of his box of tools. Without a moment's though, she sped up, grabbed the brush and took after him to give it back. She handed it back to him, at which point he started following her and offered to do all sorts of things for her---at a modest fee.
What had happened was the boot black was actually "trolling" for tourist suckers. The idea is that anyone who grabbed the brush and ran up to give it to him was---almost by definition---someone who had a very strong eusocial instinct, which made them vulnerable to being "played". I did exactly the same thing when I made eye-contact with the guy in the van and came over when he rolled down his window. If I'd just ignored him, he would have rolled the window back up and probably gone back out the back of the business to go somewhere else and start trolling again. (Incidentally, this is why most city people walking down a busy sidewalk won't give eye-contact to beggars---on an instinctual level they know it will inevitably make them the focus of unwanted attention. This ability to selectively "tune out" parts of your surroundings separates them from rubes like me.)
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My wife told me that I am extremely vulnerable to this sort of thing because I grew up outside a small farming village and the largest city I've ever lived in is Guelph. This means that I have an extremely well-developed sense of community and I am constantly thinking about how I can help other people. This makes sense, as in the area where I grew up, Norwich, people really did look out for each other. If someone needed help they rarely needed to ask---people would just show up and offer. My old-order Amish neighbours still had barn-raising "bees". And when the local hockey arena was condemned, the community got together to donate materials and build the new one---tout suite. As a result of this childhood, I have something like a flashing neon sign over my head that alerts wiseguys that I am a sucker.
My significant other, in contrast, grew up in the city and can see wiseguys a mile off. This is an important survival skill for her, because as a smoker she often ends up standing outside of bus and train stations while travelling. And this is absolutely primo geography for small-scale hustlers like the guy who nailed me last week. She says she doesn't hold any of this against me, as she too never wants to be the sort of person who would never offer a helping hand to a stranger simply because she's afraid of getting hustled.
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A couple more points need making and they both came from my friend who dealt with the boot black in Turkey.
She mentioned someone that she thinks currently might be hustling her to give him a significant amount of money for a reason I won't go into. She told me that while her "spider sense" is tingling over this, she doesn't really hold it against him. That's because she knows enough about this fellow's life that she knows he's had an extremely hard time of it---a really abusive childhood, bad health, not much luck in work, etc. As she see it, he's had to learn to be the way he is in order to survive. In cases like his, it's possible to say that he's the result of our entire society letting him down.
I can relate to that.
The second point she wanted me to consider was that there are all sorts of wiseguys in the world. My experience last week was with one at the absolute bottom of the food chain. There are also ones that inhabit the middle and top rungs of the ladder.
Who am I talking about? Well, one group are the politicians who put their own personal ambitions ahead of the good of the community. I recently heard a commentator on the CBC podcast West of Centre who suggested that the reason why Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party government can't come up with a strategy for protecting the population from COVID-19 is because when the Progressive Conservative and Wild Rose parties merged nothing was said about what the new party would actually be for. Instead, everything was about how to win power from the NDP. Faced with the fact that any policy that would actually help Albertans would undermine their support among their base, party leaders---like Jason Kenney---have always opted for keeping in power rather than "do the right thing". This makes them totally unprepared both---psychologically and institutionally---to deal with an acute healthcare crisis.
Another group of mid-level wiseguys are the dozen or so people who own web-based businesses that make money off selling vaccine disinformation through social media. But they only stay in power because top level wiseguys---like Fox News, Facebook, Youtube, etc, are happy to make lots of money off the torrent of misinformation and anger that is created by various trolls like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Alex Jones, Maxime Bernier, etc. These businesses and institutions have taken the technology of scammers to even greater heights of abuse. Moreover, they do it by taking advantage of several (what they see as) "weaknesses" that sustain our modern democratic society: freedom of speech, assuming people are innocent until proven guilty, respecting people's right to dissent, freedom of religion, etc.
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That's enough for this week. Be nice to each other, keep up with the distancing, wear a mask, remember to carry around your vaccination info---and maybe next year all of this COVID stuff will be a nasty memory.
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