REAL ADVENTURERS DON’T LOOK LIKE JAMES BOND: THE FRAUD FRAUDSTER WANTS TO LET YOU KNOW HE IS A FRAUD.
Colette told the budding George Simenon: true literature should not sound literary, forcing him to strip his style of fake gold. It is the same with science: true science doesn’t look like job-market science, and true scientists know that. For instance, the “happiness” economist Bruno Frey has the best publishing record of any of his peer >300 published papers, but even economists don’t think much of him. And, of course, real business doesn’t look like MBA businesses; real risk takers often look like accountants; real professors don’t look like pipe-smoking tweed-clad portraits; really rich people don’t wear tailored suits and often fly premium economy. Real mercenaries like Bob Denard are more likely to look like college administrators.
Most of us traders knew that Madoff was a fraud, even if it took a while for the system to figure it out. There is something about absence of substance that ends up screaming at our inner BS detector, as if the fraud wanted to be the first one to tell you that he was a fraud, by over-imitation and making his gold glitter a bit too much. It may take a while; we may be fooled a bit, but our BS detector ends up eventually working.

via REAL ADVENTURERS DON’T LOOK LIKE JAMES… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Facebook.