Comments on: Nov 12th (day 30): No Evil Geniuses

By: _

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:45:50 +0000

Mitnick?

By: A real case of an evil genius « Bumblebee Labs Blog

A real case of an evil genius « Bumblebee Labs Blog — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:50:51 +0000

[...] Evil Geniuses are so rare that it’s still surprising when one actually surfaces. In this case, the plot is so deviously brilliant I can’t do anything but heartily applaud it. I’ll let The Guardian take over from here: The women were led to believe they were being filmed for a Big Brother-type television programme, according to the Dogan news agency and other news reports. Instead, their naked images were sold on the internet by their captors. [...]

By: The Lazy Evil Genius - Essays

The Lazy Evil Genius - Essays — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:57:50 +0000

[...] downright paradoxical. A colleague of mine deems this the “no evil geniuses paradox” and does a good job of defining it. Slate did a ten-part series offering that many theories as to why the US has suffered no [...]

By: Shalmanese

Shalmanese — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:50:57 +0000

I don't think they being overly competent is the correct explanation. It strikes me as far beyond the capabilities of any organization to pull that off consistently.

I think your observation is an interesting avenue of speculation and I suspect the correct answer has to do with one or more of your assumptions not being valid.

One thing to consider is that almost no organization regards *themselves* as evil. Terrorists think of themselves as freedom fighters, security agents think of themselves as patriots.

By: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

Tomasz Wegrzanowski — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:34:52 +0000

A related question is why there seem to be so few evil geniuses among existing conspiracies, like national security agencies, organized crime, militaries, "terrorists" etc.

They can afford to hire geniuses. They have goals that are recognized as "evil" by many people outside their organization. They don't have that many moral qualms - they've all been known to kill random people if it suited their interests. So why don't they use evil geniuses more?

Or perhaps they do, except they're so good it almost always stays secret. For example if CIA was responsible for protests in Iran, that would be an evil genius success, and they would obviously not want to talk about it.

I think the problem is open.

By: The no obnoxious rich people paradox « Bumblebee Labs Blog

The no obnoxious rich people paradox « Bumblebee Labs Blog — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:41:38 +0000

[...] the no obnoxious rich people paradox may be the key to also understanding the no evil geniuses paradox. In both cases, the paradox is that it’s so easy to imagine these people existing that [...]