Con artists Know More About Psychology than Psychologists?

Is it possible that marketers, con artists and salesmen know more about human nature than psychologists? Could it be that the drive for money and direct results indirectly got them a better understanding, driven by practicality?

Vanity, greed, fear and other human traits are used all the time by marketers, salesmen and con artists. It is the way they get results. Perhaps they're not conscious that they're doing it. That doesn't change the fact they're using their knowledge of human nature to get people to do what they want them to.

Even if you're using so called "white hat" techniques, like reciprocation (giving away free stuff to build trust), and doing so knowingly, or perhaps unknowingly, it's still too vague. The con artist can (and does) use reciprocation to build trust and finally, when the time comes, pull the con.

There's a thin line between the con artist and the marketer. And that's because they both know and do pretty much the same things.

The marketer, however, uses it to build trust and then actually delivers a solution to some problem, or a set of valuable knowledge.

Yet it's so easy for a marketer to turn into a con artist, or for a con artist to turn into a marketer.

And that's because the means are identical. Only the end differs.

I am fascinated by human nature, the good and the bad. Our vanity, greed and ego; The way we build an illusionary "self" based upon our thoughts, feelings, and memories and call it "I"; Or "me" - The structures of our ego. This is the illusion that plagues us all. Perhaps the cause for our sufferings. That's what buddha and other really profound people think, anyway.

What makes a person into a con artist? What constructs does he build into his ego to feel alright about it? Is it greed? Or are there other motivations? I don't think he'd do what he was doing if he didn't feel alright about it.

Marketers and con artists know more about human nature than most psychologists do. Sure, psychologists need their knowledge for practical purposes as well. They need to cure depression, or anxiety, or other mental illnesses. But there's no accurate way to measure their results. And from my experience with psychologists, most of them don't even bother. They don't measure if they're successful or not. Hell, they don't bother defining "success". With marketers and con artists it's easy to tell how successful they are - Are they making any money? It's not theory and speculation for them. They don't "think" this might help, or might provide "results", whatever that might be for the psychologist.

They need results, and they have a way to measure them. And, the good ones anyway, are getting them.

How do psychologists measure results? "Well, if my patient commits suicide, then I failed. Doh!"

Idea Scavenging

Idea scavenging is one of my favorite activities. Let me explain. There are a lot of ideas out there, but they mostly suck. A few of them are what I like to call "exotic ideas".

A scavenger goes through a lot of crap (ideas) before he finds something something really cool (an "exotic idea").

I'm not talking about marketing. A good marketer can take an old idea, and in the "there's nothing new under the sun" sense, repackage it as his own new, innovative idea.

People who present exotic ideas do pretty much the same thing. You might be wondering at this point what the hell am I talking about. On the one hand I said exotic idea people are not doing what marketers are doing, on the other hand I said they're doing pretty much the same thing.

What I'm trying to say, in my typical ineloquent way, is that there are very few new ideas, but lots of new perspectives. A good thinker usually gives you a new perspective to look at thing. So most good thinkers are in fact very similar to a good marketer, only the motivation differs. It is very rare indeed that a thinker gives you a new idea, and if he does it usually takes decades or more untill people start taking his idea seriously.

Found any exotic ideas lately?