“I mean, my lord Salvara, that your own expectations have been used against you. You have a keen sense for men of business, surely. You’ve grown your family fortune several times over in your brief time handling it. Therefore, a man who wished to snare you in some scheme could do nothing wiser than to act the consummate man of business. To deliberately manifest all your expectations. To show you exactly what you expected and desired to see.”
“It seems to me that if I accept your argument,” the don said slowly, “then the self-evident truth of any legitimate thing could be taken as grounds for its falseness. I say Lukas Fehrwight is a merchant of Emberlain because he shows the signs of being so; you say those same signs are what prove him counterfeit. I need more sensible evidence than this.”
-- Scott Lynch, “The Lies of Locke Lamora”, page 150.
If I remember the book correctly, this part comes from a scene where Locke Lamora is attempting to pull a double con on the speaking character by both impersonating the merchant and a spy/internal security agent (Salvara) investigating the merchant. So while the don’s character acts “rationally” here—he is doing so while being deceived because of his assumptions—showing the very same error again
-- Scott Lynch, “The Lies of Locke Lamora”, page 150.
If I remember the book correctly, this part comes from a scene where Locke Lamora is attempting to pull a double con on the speaking character by both impersonating the merchant and a spy/internal security agent (Salvara) investigating the merchant. So while the don’s character acts “rationally” here—he is doing so while being deceived because of his assumptions—showing the very same error again