Creativity secrets from armed robbers, fraudsters and other criminals | Hacker News Reader

Creativity secrets from armed robbers, fraudsters and other criminals

denisecullen.com.au

58 pointsDeeMC18 comments

Gotta take all of this with a grain of salt, especially since this whole article is explicitly based on people who did end up in prison, whose plans did all fail, regardless of their hubris.

> Yet one of the hallmarks of a criminal thinking style is something called super-optimism. On a scale designed to measure this tendency, high scorers act as if they’re wearing a “bullet-proof” vest, in the sense that there’s no way their plans can fail.

Super-optimism doesn't seem like something to emulate.

Yes, it's a biased sample - those who were caught. Except for Raymond Stansel who lived the last four decades of his life as a free man.

I've read 'Vuile Jatten, Schone handen'(Dirty thefts, clean hands), a dutch book where a criminal (thief, conman, insurance fraud arsonist,...) tells parts of his life story. The author/criminal is a smart and complicated men, with plenty of talents. The book proves a lot of creativity and human insight in him.

Of course, the author is the worst person to trust as reliable narrator and I hope to never meet him. Even so, he made me see the criminal life in a new light.

BTW if anyone knows more of these , I'd love to read them.

https://www.bol.com/be/nl/p/vuile-jatten-schone-handen/10010...

If you want something written from a criminal viewpoint, but not from a criminal, I highly recommend A Burglar's Guide to the City: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22237142-a-burglar-s-gui...

It's more about architecture and security than it is about crime, but still very good.

Book looks really interesting - thanks. I've just ordered a copy.

Thanks for the tip - I'll look him up.

I’ve often thought that the creativity and intelligence shown by Curtis Warren – a drug baron from my home town – would have easily made him a great CEO if he hadn’t have been written off by society from a young age, coming from a ghetto at a time of extreme unemployment and racism. Nice to see that idea reiterated here, even though alongside his high IQ Curtis also had a penchant for physical violence.

Hey, thanks for your comment. I hadn't heard of Curtis Warren before, but he looks like he'd be an interesting case study for the next story I write on the subject. Good tip.

Another good angle to consider is the possibility of creative professionals being profiled as criminals from drag net esqueue semantic and linguistic analysis. The Gaussian distributions surely favor each other. Are creative professionals sitting ducks online?

lead singer of punk band sells some junk, is now singled out (pun!)

Interesting article, but I have to comment on the light gray text. It's almost unreadable (to me). At least there's Reader mode...

Thanks for your note - I've relented and changed the text to black. Appreciate you picking that up and letting me know. Cheers.

I viewed the old style on the Wayback machine and actually preferred the grey text.

You’ll find people complaining about low contrast. They can just use reader mode in my opinion.

Stick with whatever design you prefer.

Thanks for defending my original design choices! The change is something I've been thinking about for awhile, it didn't take much to tip me.

One other suggestion? Intense resource pressure spurs creativity.

As some experiments: try writing a technical spec with a pencil and a single sheet of paper that you can't replace. Suddenly every word counts.

Try organizing your day around only having Internet for an hour at a time, twice a day. It's a great exercise to hone your discipline.

Great suggestions - thanks.

Good article, made less so by the over-large and gratuitous stock photos.

"Necessity is the mother of futile dodges"

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