The stupidity of this amazes me
I had to read a book called The Bell Curve about ten years ago. It was very controversial and I bought it, I just didn't buy the reasoning (don't think race was at the heart of the differences). He pointed out that smart people were having fewer kids and dumb people were having more (Think Bill Gates as compared to that asp guy who's on baby momma #3). Not only were the smarter people having fewer kids, but they tended to be wealthier - again, think of the previous example. So the smarter people had more resources to nurture their kids and could put more effort into their development since they had less of them. On the other end, poorer people had more kids, had less resources to dedicate to them etc. While individually things can vary dramatically (we all know of rags to riches stories, over conversely, Paris and Nicole) - but overall, he hypothesized that there was going to be a cognitive elite driven mainly by this phenomenon and technology. Being computer illiterate gets more and more costly each passing year. So perhaps it's totally coincidental and has nothing to do with this phenomenon, but at least as far as crooks go, seems to me they are clearly on the less desirable tail of the congitive elite curve . (For my more pedantic readers, I'm certainly aware of the fact that dumb crooks have always been and will always be, and that it's media access that makes it seem like there's an increase). But I'm tellin ya, at some level, when it comes to dumb, we aren't regressing toward the mean, instead, we're moving towards the tails. Spammers/Phishers et all show way more sophistication than crooks of old, then you see stuff like this . Heck, my hometown paper's Dave Barry fills his blog with humorous stories of dumb crooks. These guys may not be the dumbest I've heard of, but they sure are dumb. "Joe, what do you think that barking sound is at this abandoned Nursing home? Uhh, beats me Bill. Oh crap, it's a bunch of police dogs - you run left and I'll run right and maybe we can outrun them."