I found a comment I had made several weeks ago in a previous mugging thread comparing P Muggings to Spam. Since Chain letters/comments are a type of spam, (albeit, usually less malicious than more dangerous spam) I’ll post it here with a few changes.
This seemed very similar to a standard hack used on people that we already rely on computers to defend us against. To be specific, it follows an incredibly similar framework to one of those Lottery/Nigerian 419 Scam emails.
Opening Narrative: Attempt to establish some level of trust and believability. Things with details tend to be more believable than things without details, although the conjunction fallacy can be tricky here. Present the target with two choices: (Hope they don’t realize it’s a false dichotomy)
Choice A: Send in a small amount of utility. (If Choice A is selected, repeat False dichotomy) Choice B: Allow a (fake) opportunity to acquire a large amount of (fake) utility to slip away.
Background: Make a MASSIVE number of attempts. even if the first 10,000 attempts fail, the cost of trying to hack is minimal compared to the rewards.
For chain letters of the type you mentioned specifically, they seem to replace Choice B with Choice C: Allow an opportunity to avoid a large amount of (fake) disutility to slip away. And instead of having the original spammer continue sending out the spam, they recruit the now subverted target to send out spam.
Here’s the link to the original mugging thread I was reading. It was a St. Petersburg Mugging thread and not a Pascal’s Mugging thread, but I see a lot of similarities between the different types of P Muggings.
I like your analysis. I think one of the under appreciated aspects of this mugging is the time limitation. ‘Post in the next X minutes’ is key to ‘Choice C’:
Allow[ing] an opportunity to avoid a large amount of (fake) disutility to slip away.
Specifically, it makes the person have to think about this with a limited time span and decide on what they perceive to be the action of lowest possible danger, with the [spectacularly gruesome details] of extremely low probability seeming to be more danger than wasting some time. It also has the effect of spreading the meme more quickly.
If we assume Y% of people who read the comment would spread it in each generation, the total # of times it is viewed is dictated by the gap between each ‘generation’ of people who spread it. By forcing the mugged to spread the meme within Z minutes, the meme becomes:
‘Bumped’ in a message board, granting greater visibility
Spread with a smaller gap between generations, and so more effective at propagating
I agree with your point about time limitation acting as a an important influence. My understanding is that time limitation influences human behavior in all sorts of ways, which is probably why a substantial percentage of TV ads have some kind of call for urgency (“Limited Time Offer” “Act Now” “Don’t Wait, Call Today”)
Also, is there a specific name for this sort of advertising behavior? I was interested in looking up more sources on this but I couldn’t find any reasonably high quality ones.
I found a comment I had made several weeks ago in a previous mugging thread comparing P Muggings to Spam. Since Chain letters/comments are a type of spam, (albeit, usually less malicious than more dangerous spam) I’ll post it here with a few changes.
This seemed very similar to a standard hack used on people that we already rely on computers to defend us against. To be specific, it follows an incredibly similar framework to one of those Lottery/Nigerian 419 Scam emails.
Opening Narrative: Attempt to establish some level of trust and believability. Things with details tend to be more believable than things without details, although the conjunction fallacy can be tricky here. Present the target with two choices: (Hope they don’t realize it’s a false dichotomy)
Choice A: Send in a small amount of utility. (If Choice A is selected, repeat False dichotomy) Choice B: Allow a (fake) opportunity to acquire a large amount of (fake) utility to slip away.
Background: Make a MASSIVE number of attempts. even if the first 10,000 attempts fail, the cost of trying to hack is minimal compared to the rewards.
For chain letters of the type you mentioned specifically, they seem to replace Choice B with Choice C: Allow an opportunity to avoid a large amount of (fake) disutility to slip away. And instead of having the original spammer continue sending out the spam, they recruit the now subverted target to send out spam.
Here’s the link to the original mugging thread I was reading. It was a St. Petersburg Mugging thread and not a Pascal’s Mugging thread, but I see a lot of similarities between the different types of P Muggings.
I like your analysis. I think one of the under appreciated aspects of this mugging is the time limitation. ‘Post in the next X minutes’ is key to ‘Choice C’:
Specifically, it makes the person have to think about this with a limited time span and decide on what they perceive to be the action of lowest possible danger, with the [spectacularly gruesome details] of extremely low probability seeming to be more danger than wasting some time. It also has the effect of spreading the meme more quickly.
If we assume Y% of people who read the comment would spread it in each generation, the total # of times it is viewed is dictated by the gap between each ‘generation’ of people who spread it. By forcing the mugged to spread the meme within Z minutes, the meme becomes:
‘Bumped’ in a message board, granting greater visibility
Spread with a smaller gap between generations, and so more effective at propagating
[Edited for proper formatting]
I agree with your point about time limitation acting as a an important influence. My understanding is that time limitation influences human behavior in all sorts of ways, which is probably why a substantial percentage of TV ads have some kind of call for urgency (“Limited Time Offer” “Act Now” “Don’t Wait, Call Today”)
Also, is there a specific name for this sort of advertising behavior? I was interested in looking up more sources on this but I couldn’t find any reasonably high quality ones.