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_ Meta Discussion _ 2½ Men, 13% Women, 3 Hookers and a Wiki-Philly Cheesesteak
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
The February 7 episode of Two and a Half Men, “http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1811260/â€, provides the perfect tutorial on Ponzi schemes.
I have a feeling I'll be referring to it often.
Jon 
Posted by: Zoloft
Add 'n' to title and shake well, then.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Trying to correct the defects of Wikipedia Culture by recruiting more participants of any class or kind is like trying to correct the defects of a Ponzi scheme by pumping more dollars into it. And that is not a good thing.
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QUOTE
The pivot of the analogy is that one is to Credit what the other is to Credibility. As I said on another thread, there's a striking clue in their common etymology — Credit and Credibility are of “Credo†Compact. A Credit Ponzi scheme uses a little bit of credit with one investor to gain a little more credit with next investor and just keeps amping it up until the whole scheme collapses, which it must do sooner or later because the fundamentals needed to back up the trades are totally lacking. A Credibility Ponzi scheme does the same thing with the species currency of specious facts.
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By way of clarifying what I'm saying here, consider the analogy between a Credit Ponzi Scheme and a Credibility Ponzi Scheme. The pivot of the analogy is strikingly clued by the common etymology — credit and credibility are of “credo†compact.
- A Credit Ponzi scheme uses a little bit of credit with one investor to gain a little more credit with next investor, and so on, and so on, progressively ramping the credit balloon up until the whole scheme collapses, a thing that has to happen sooner or later because the fundamentals needed to back up the exchanges are totally lacking.
- A Credibility Ponzi Scheme does the same thing with the species currency of specious facts.
Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Look at how Jimbo and the other promoters of the scheme operate. They start out with the contributions of many small investors, all of whom ask for no more credit where credit is due than the minimal recognition of individual contributions promised by some copyleft license, plus the promise to abide by the advertised policies. By the time that most of them find out exactly how much those promises are worth they have already lent their credibility to an enterprise that can and will use it to discredit them once they begin to catch on and try to blow the whistle on the scheme. Meanwhile, the promoters have moved on to bigger boards of play. And bigger. And bigger. And so it goes.
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Posted by: Jon Awbrey
QUOTE
Credit does not rest in a promise — just as credibility does not rest in a premiss. Credit resides in the fact that someone believes the promise — and credibility resides in the fact that someone believes the premiss.
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