‘Catch Me If You Can’ conman lied about his lifetime of lies
nypost.com
nypost.com
Maybe that story was based on the Catch Me If you Can guy, but I think possibly not because A Scanner Darkly came out before that movie.
Social identity being exaggeratedly fluid is a reoccurring theme in PKD's writing, so the topic fits.
Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" also invented most of the stuff in the movie/book but he knew how to play the role.
Buffalo Bill was just an exhibitionist showman that never did anything heroic but he knew how to pretend it.
And Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, ...
Well, you got the idea...
Would we have the iPhone if Steve Jobs were never born?
> You must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown. ... Before he can remake his society, his society must make him.
— Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology
> The first PDA, the Organiser, was released in 1984 by Psion, followed by Psion's Series 3, in 1991. The latter began to resemble the more familiar PDA style, including a full keyboard
And it’s not just me. A lot of very respected smart people think he was way above them. That’s not a conman.
Also, conmen usually have an expiry date or they have to switch roles or disappear into new communities once they get found out. Same with psychopaths. They get found out and get rejected by society. That’s not what Steve Jobs did. He was respected to the end and built products to the end.
As a side note, I also think the obsession with UX and design in tech never would have occurred without jobs. The only reason we have fairly well designed apps and websites at this point is jobs’ influence.
this is an absurd suggestion. Steve Jobs has been a pioneer in making computing ubiquitous
Do we know of one thing that Jobs actually invented or co-invented, or was he always the marketer?
In case you’re wondering, filing a patent with an improperly listed inventor is fraud and invalidates the patent. Every patent app includes a signed oath and declaration by the inventors that they did indeed invent it.
The idea that Jobs didn’t have direct input on the functionality of novel features of Apple products is beyond absurd.
Aside from the fact that he was notoriously hands-on, Apple has been coasting on his achievements and direction for over a decade now.
He was also very closely involved with every aspect of the products Apple was developing. Just watch any of his interviews. He knew all the details: technical, design, marketing.
So yeah, I'm not surprised he has his name on patents.
Recap (paraphrased):
"Jobs never invented anything"
"He was a pioneer"
"pioneer != inventor"
"You have to show proof that he claimed he was an inventor!"
"Nobody said he claimed he was an inventor."
I was taking the "reality distortion field" talk to refer to the cultlike status Job's fandom reached at its peak, where the "famous for being famous" effect came into play. I don't think he qualifies as a con man, and I don't think he claimed personal credit for the inventions of others (he never "took the initiative and invented the internet" like Al Gore).
As far as I'm aware, Steve Jobs was, in fact, both the founder and former CEO of Apple. Unless he was pulling one HELLUVA ruse that I was unaware of.
* He didn't create the Apple II, Wozniak did.
* He didn't create the mouse, GUI and Ethernet, the guys at Xerox's Palo Alto research centre did it.
* He didn't really create Pixar, bought it from George Lucas. His idea and project was to have the company to make and sell hardware for CG, because that was the only thing he had ever done at Apple & Next. The movie production was an offshot from the demos and the business of creating intros for television shows.
* He didn't create the iPhone. In fact Apple's engineers had to pressure him for years before he accepted. What got him accepting the idea was the fiasco on having iTunes into a Nokia phone.
* He didn't invent the Appstore. In fact he only accepted the idea of people making apps to the iPhone because 6 months after release the sales were collapsing.
Apple was and still is a very smart company. I concede that he was good at surrounding himself with smart people, and taking merit for what those people did.
Steve Jobs was not a con-man. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he never claimed personal credit for the things you're saying he didn't do; those were things that were attributed to him by others.
People also assumed Bill Gates created DOS because they are misinformed, no reality distortion field required.
The Apple II would likely not have been successful without both Wozniak and Jobs.
Would the iPhone have come to fruition without Job's leadership, vision, and design + negotiation skills?
Folks, especially humans for some reason, want to pin things on single individuals rather than groups. Even though our society and it's grand accomplishments are things that typically only groups can accomplish.
Even a person building "alone" is building something on the backs of those who came before them.
But that desire to name a single person as the "creator" leads to a lot of strife.
And hiring people who can bring them to you is worth even more, especially if you're able to hear them when they keep insisting.
Something a lot of engineers fail to realize is that a successful product is not just about technology, it is about timing, cost, ecosystem, market.
Who's to say Jobs didn't think the iPhone was not a good idea, but shouldn't be done earlier? The iPhone 10-15 years before the iPhone was the Newton.
* Woz would have remained an obscure engineer working at HP
* Apple would never have happened
* The Mac would have never existed
* Pixar would have vanished without a trace
* Apple would have gone bankrupt in 1999
* OSX would never have existed
* Apple would still be wasting its time marketing 420 SKUs of beige Macintosh, along with its panoply of zero-value-add peripherals
* Apple would never have tried to make an iPod, which was, for Apple, an insanely out-of-left-field hobby project driven by Jobs
* Without the iPod, there would be no iTunes Store, which near-single-handedly pulled the music industry into its post-Napster era
* There would be no iPad, a project inspired by Jobs’ personal reaction to a dinner with Gates
* There would be no iPhone, a project spun off from iPad development and fast-tracked for earlier release
* If Apple ever did develop a phone or tablet, it probably would have been based on NewtonOS and fail to crack 1% market share
* Android would have stayed on course to be a competitor to the Blackberry
Plus, he had to make the decision ultimately.
That's way way way way way way more important than I think most people realize.
Multi-touch displays was the key technology Steve Jobs needed to greenlight the iPhone.
Steve was completely invested in electing products that generated an experience the customer valued. This didn't always line up with the technical merits of the product. He subordinated the company to that goal, including holding releases back to hit a specific timing.
Steve said he did this strategy because he had the scar tissue to prove that making an amazing piece of tech and trying to market it, never worked for him.
He didn't create tech. He created relationships to the customer that made Apple billions.
He was however the catalyst that allowed many smart and dedicated engineers to develop the things they did. Giving them drive and direction, money and resources to play with and develop the toys of their dreams. I love the folklore.org website that talks a lot about this.
This means he does not fit in your list of fraudster and hucksters.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/18/they-st...
As easy as it is to disregard life choices because of trauma, I'm actually kinda unconvinced.
You're of course getting engagement here. But the key difference is this: Abgnale outputted nothing.
Steve Jobs outputted Apple, Pixar and Next (basis of Macos and iOS).
You can quibble over what share of what credit for the specific products of each of those three companies. But there's no disputing Next wouldn't have existed without him, nor Apple, and Apple would have failed without him. Pixar had been declined by 45 other investors; only Jobs said yes. So it likely would not have got off the ground without him.
Everyone involved in the output of those companies speaks highly of him and ascribe him a vital role. Key competitors do the same.
Your argument amounts to say:
1. He had a well known reality distortion field
2. Therefore he accomplished nothing and everyone who was there on the ground is wrong, for they were subject to this field
3. All of the output of those companies happened, no thanks to Jobs.
Point of my comment is people also accuse Jobs of outputting only a story. But it’s ludicrous to believe all the rest of the stuff is just coincidence that happens to surround Jobs, again and again and again.
Do you think orchestra directors or managers of sports teams contribute nothing to their team’s success?
(Other than the obvious, which is "this sounds unrealistic")
There is no trick that gives you information if person is lying that gives out on the spot. As much as pop-culture would like some eye movement or what not.
Only thing that gives away lies is cross examination and asking multiple times about the same thing in a slightly different way.
After asking 10 or 20 times about the same thing you might see that things don’t add up. It might be easier if you have 2 or more people making stuff up because if you separate them they will lie in a different way.
Of course there are also people so bad at lying that will give out at first interrogation…
After answering 10 or 20 times, even a person telling the truth might start to get confused and doubt their own recollection. Like semantic satiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation
That said, the hard part is realizing it's time to say you're going to sleep on it in the first place. They don't call it a confidence trick for nothing, and faced with someone who's very good at it, it's easy to want to buy what he's selling because the guy's just so dang likeable.
Point being, if someone has been telling you something and then tells you something unrelated that you can prove to be false, then you need to exert considerable mental effort to revisit the initial thing they were telling you in order to determine whether it is true.
I think this tactic works because gullible people are distracted by the idea of a freak snow storm in Houston, and more critically minded people focus their bullshit detector on the 'snow storm in Houston' story instead of the 'multi-year program' story.
In Abagnales the bar exam results and prison time should be verifiable, but besides that who knows. I wonder why the FBI wouldn't comment, seems like they should know whether he ever worked there or not.
People lie, evade, omit, or exaggerate all the time. For example, talking about things that make them uncomfortable. It’s one of those unconscious things that makes societies work.
This isn’t unconscious for me. I see everything and analyze it logically.
Detecting misdirection is fairly easy for me. When someone is actively lying, they are generally trying present specific body language and inflection.
What happens is they miss something and I see the mismatch between the fake and real signals. It’s very similar to reading a polygraph.
This isn’t a unique ability, most people have it and it manifests as a gut feeling. I’m neurodivergent and I’m able to give more than a gut feeling. I can usually point to what I’m seeing and explain it.
All that said, I haven’t found any general “tells” for good lairs. It’s an art, not a science. It’s one reason polygraphs aren’t allow in court and I don’t use this ability to make snap judgements. :)
I’ve had to learn to read people logically. I have no intuitive feeling for emotions. So I got good at analyzing and predicting people in a non-standard way. People don’t know what I’m looking at and don’t know what they need to fake.
For all of the people who have lied to me (successfully or not), I’ve seen no common patterns to look for.
That's why I compared it to a polygraph.
The gut feeling/discrepancy you notice in body language can only be used as a sign you should dig deeper. Just like a polygraph, it can't prove someone is lying or not. You have to cross-reference.
I do have feedback because I’m continually adjusting and refining the technique as my assumptions are confirmed or disproven. It’s similar to the technique I use for reading emotions. Occasionally I run across people who don’t follow the normal pattern and I need to adjust how I read them.
For the record I've always thought that Richard Feynman, while being an exceptional physicist, in his autobiographies it always feels like he is crafting narrative tales of how he wished he was.
That’s true generally, and especially true when a celebrity is involved. Humans are great liars and terrible lie detectors.
In short, rogue agents can have a natural leg up when they are able to effectively emulate a behavior model- except here it’s social, instead of military.
I saw a clip of a film some time ago (anyone idea of its name?). It has Chazz Palminteri in it. He played a conman. Him and a woman were waiting in a Western union (?) office. They got chatting, and in walks a GI. Chazz's character talks to the GI and starts to con him out of his money. The woman was aware of this. But he stops short of conning the GI. The GI leaves, and he explains how the con works.
Chazz and the woman then leave together. The point is that he was playing a long con against the woman and the aborted short con was just a ploy.
The moral of the lesson is that if someone reveals themselves to be a liar, then you should take them at their word. Having established themselves as liars, you should never trust them.
You’re thinking of Joe Mantegna in House of Games.
However a lot of Western society (though more American) prizes those who scam and hustle their way to the top, even if they endanger others in the process. We can't help but sit with our mouths open in wonder as the charming con man documents his free-wheeling life we would all wish to live if we only had the gusto.
Kidding aside, I think investigative journalists have been the ones to sound the alarm on the con.
It just makes it all the more impressive!
It's a low-effort drive-by statement so generic as to be practically meaningless.
Fraud runs in the family.
It seemed fitting given what we now know about how little he actually cheated.
Clearly you're lying.He just made one very big lie.
e.g
I used to do this. Still have a strong tendency to, and have to resist it. Everyone's lived experience is different, and I'd wager there is a large percentage of people across the globe alive now who have never, and will never, have any clue about Frank Abagnale and his story.
And that's okay.