Theme: Deception

https://www.quora.com/Are-verbally-fluent-intellectuals-often-handicapped-by-their-exceptional-verbal-ability-because-it-allows-them-to-subconsciously-manipulate-their-language-to-effortlessly-produce-verbally-persuasive-but-otherwise/answer/Curt-Doolittle?share=2bbe0b99&srid=u4Qvhttps://www.quora.com/Are-verbally-fluent-intellectuals-often-handicapped-by-their-exceptional-verbal-ability-because-it-allows-them-to-subconsciously-manipulate-their-language-to-effortlessly-produce-verbally-persuasive-but-otherwise/answer/Curt-Doolittle?share=2bbe0b99&srid=u4QvIMMORALITY SHIFTS WITH (A) INTELLIGENCE, AND (B) WEALTH

Contrary to Pinker’s “Better Angels of Our Nature”, all that occurs as we either gain intelligence or gain income, is that we** shift the means of predation** upon others up the chain of complexity and indirection.

Here is a simple series of the means by which we commonly increase the complexity of parasitism and predation upon one another:

Murder -> Violence -> Theft -> Fraud -> Fraud by Hazard Creation -> Free Riding -> Privatization of Commons, Socialization of Losses -> Fraud, Hazard and Privatization through Financialization -> Fraud, Hazard and Privatization through Proceduralization -> Fraud, hazard, and Privatization by Damage to the Informational Commons (“propaganda, advertising, public intellectual pseudoscience”) -> Material Conspiracy -> Political Rent Seeking -> Political Corruption -> Coup or Conquest.

So yes. And some well known groups specialize in persuasive but hazard producing pseudoscience, pseudorationalism, and propaganda. Particularly by utilizing the frailty of the law to ally with the government against the people.