Confidence Scheme
The truth is out there?
Hey! What does it take for you to believe a lie?
Whether we’re playing for keeps or struggling to stay alive, there’s a game of cat and mouse between the truth and utter nonsense — signal and noise.
None of us are immune to this trick of the trade, but all of us like to think we won’t get fooled again.
In my highly subjective analysis, I find there are two types of lies that are the most effective at convincing others.
Something false that sounds believably true
Something true that cannot be proven to be true or false
Both of these are the tools of the conman and are weaved together into an intricate and difficult to refute web.
Effective deception that forces us into doubt. We then are left questioning both the truth and our own judgment.
In fact, the beauty of it is that even if some parts are provably untrue, the unwitting mark is already fighting an uphill battle. Not to mention the innocent bystander who will just walk away thinking the fool and the thief are interchangeable concepts.
In other words, it doesn’t matter if you figure out the tell when your opponent has already won with their sleight-of-hand.
Faded Links
I went on a few AI adventures last week. My intention was less to learn and more to build something I lacked the knowledge — and the network to otherwise collaboratively cheat — to know how.
Before we open the toolbox though, I want to explain the idea more.
I found myself awake at an ungodly hour. As sleep evaded me and my thoughts grew ever darker, I was lost, bored, and scared with nowhere to go.
My former escapes across the internet have all decayed — their rotten cores have become unrecognizable from the communities I once knew and within whom I once felt home.
In a fit of cosmic desperation, I talked about that idea with ChatGPT — the electronic beast itself. From the oddness of that conversation, the bot suggested memorializing these emotions in some way, leaning heavily toward something technical.
🔗 Faded Links 🔗
A reflection of a time when hyperlinks were like little bridges, taking us to strange corners of the internet that felt more personal, more intimate. It wasn't about algorithms or endless scrolling. It was about discovery.
And I miss that.
Intellectual Limit
Now, the big issue with creating a website is that I don’t know how to do it.
I may have a vague idea of some of the components, but I don’t have a mind that’s well adapted to dealing with code.
So, I had ChatGPT regurgitate everything it could and pasted that into various text documents.
I then prayed for the best and through a long process of trial and error, ended up with something that mostly works. It was also apparent that there were certain limits to what the machine could help me with and I reluctantly needed to have a basic understanding of what the code was actually doing.
This was at its worst when it came to making the like and comment buttons actually work, but I digress.
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I am quite satisfied with how Faded Links eventually came together. The various random effects, the fuzzy nostalgic feel, and the way it reflects an older age of the internet.
Feel free to go to the website and experience a bit of my nostalgia. Depending on your browser, you may need to manually press “play” for the music to start.
Then you can sit back and enjoy the feed of random comments and random background videos for the duration of the song. If you pay attention, you’ll start to notice strange things happening to the text.
I made it so that they feed into each other, adding distortions and randomness over time. It starts innocently enough, but the internet I grew up with never stayed normal for long.
As I mentioned, I also made it so you can like and comment things, although it doesn’t affect anything.
At the end of the song, you’re brought to an “end screen” and can see a wall of all the possible videos that could have been playing in the background — you can also get to this screen by clicking on the Faded Links title text at any time.
If nothing else remains in a few short years, I’ll be happy to have the evidence of it existing at all remaining here on Nightly Noise.
Fake Praise
After that chaotic project, I was pushed into exploring more of AI and stumbled across a new tool from Google: NotebookLM.
It’s meant to be more of a study tool or something that helps you put together a research paper.
An incredible resource in that regard where you can dump in a bunch of PDFs or websites and it will sift through the information, creating a personalized local database where you can dive into the data and information.
In less abstract terms, you can ask NotebookLM questions and it will tell you how the sources answer them, not making connections unless the sources themselves specifically state them.
However, it will also confidently lie at times.
In that very AI way, it will say something is a fact, provide a source, but if you check the source the information isn’t there.
This is also remarkably human and something I never would have noticed unless I was testing it by feeding it a bunch of my own writing.
That wasn’t what most interested me though. The whole reason I started this adventure playing with yet another AI tool, was that I had heard you can click a button and generate a podcast.
So, after feeding it my writing, I clicked generate podcast and the result is remarkably believable.
The first impression is how well it mimics a generic podcast. These voices sound human — and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking they are.
The analysis is also very poignant and for the most part the AI reflects my own thoughts on my stories.
That being said, there are some odd tangents that veer into false statements. The entire conversation around my “fear of AI” is nowhere to be found in my writing. The comforting voices confidently discussing it would definitely have you nodding your head in agreement though.
It feels like the AI itself is self-conscious in a way, although the truth is more likely that Google trained it on a bunch of research papers that were critical of AI.
I can definitely see how it would be useful as a study tool, but the underlying issues of the conman and its soothing voice troubles me. Although I’m not sure how different that is to how we humans already interact with each other.
The confident salesman relaxes us into a false sense of security, and we nod along, none the wiser.
Mastermind
The petty criminals knew their place on the streets. They filled the holes like rats in the rundown apartments that lined them.
They were all tasked with a similar job.
Find a mark.
Scam them.
Bring the bounty to the boss.
Modern pirates in a concrete jungle, they didn’t glorify the career — they simply worked for their daily bread. Some came from broken families, some crawled through the mud after falling from the highrises.
When the choice was between death in the dirt or deeds dealt with dirty hands, you would be a fool to choose the former.
When family was involved, the decision was already made.
“You see that one?” The voice came from a balding man in his late 40s. He wore an old coat and his shoes were dirty. His face was shadowed in stubble and alcohol soaked eyes. He was speaking to a much younger man — a boy who couldn’t be more than 16-years-old. The boy looked scared, he was new to the streets and lost in the endless corridors of crime. “That’s our mark, Simon.”
“Are you sure?” Simon looked out the alleyway at the quiet street. It wasn’t even dark out yet, but there was only one person walking alone. A businessman with a briefcase that looked important. His suit was clean, but he didn’t have the money or status to tailor it to fit his size.
“We don’t question her orders.” The middle-aged man moved his arms with little ease. He was the opposite of nimble, but had much more experience in confidence schemes.
Simon simply nodded and noticed the faded letters on his colleagues coat.
Sean O’Brien
He wasn’t supposed to know the name. Daisy printed out specific orders about who could know who and they were all meant to follow them without question.
“You used to work downtown?” Simon tried to make conversation to distract himself from the secret knowledge he had gained. He knew Sean’s name. A Chief Fucking Officer or somesuch other important title that meant nothing when he was thrown out the window.
“I was just a fall guy in the corporate world, nothing more. What Daisy says there holds just as much importance as what she says here.” Sean shook his head and tried to refocus his thoughts. “Listen kid, we don’t have time to waste on idle chitchat like that. Let’s get the job done and go home. I have a family to feed.”
“Yes sir.” Simon moved out into the street and the dance began.
The boy bumped into the wandering businessman and the quiet confrontation quickly escalated into a disastrous plan.
“Watch where you’re going, kid!?” The busy man bent over to pick up his briefcase and Sean walked over to provide the second distraction.
“Is everything alright?” Sean said with that thick northern accent he grew up with. After years working in the city he learned how to hide it, but it was useful in his new career. “Is this boy bothering you, sir?”
“No, he just needs to watch where he’s going.” The businessman shook his head and was relieved to have someone closer to his standing — if not in status at least in age — to whom he could complain. “Kids these days don’t know their place. They don’t know how to show respect.”
“He means well, but he’s still learning. That boy’s known around here, the first in a whole generation to get into a good school so we’re rooting for him to get a job downtown.” Sean was an expert in this newfound distraction. Simon was meant to use it to make the quick swap. Nothing in his hand, but the air of respect, he replaced the briefcase with a handshake and Sean continued the conversation. “You know how many folks here end up as criminals so let’s leave him be and just be on our way.”
“Yeah… I actually grew up not far from here.” The businessman absentmindedly shook Simon’s hand and the deal was made. “My name’s Fats Palooka and if you tell Daisy I recommended you, you should have a good internship downtown if you need it.” Fats smiled and laughed as his hands moved from shaking Simon’s to shaking Sean’s.
“That’s very generous of you. I’m sure Simon will appreciate that for his future career.” Sean gave Fats a toothy grin and Simon hid the briefcase behind his back.
“Thank you, Sir. I’ll be sure to tell Daisy about your recommendation.” Simon’s words were not in the plan and immediately made Fats turn to look at the boy. Sean’s face went from a toothy grin to an evil grimace. That kid was ruining their paycheck and he needed to keep the confusion mixed in the air.
“Fats was it?” Sean pulled the businessman’s gaze back to his middle-aged body. “I heard the person who replaced me downtown had that name.”
“Oh? Are you…?” Fats began and Sean shook his coat to emphasize the faded letters embroidered on the chest pocket. “Sean O’Brien?”
“No one’s used that name in a long time.” Sean laughed and let himself fall into another practiced expression. The actors on the stage were beginning to show the wires for what they were. “You know how Daisy plays with titles and promotions.”
“Don’t we all…” Fats let his eyes fall to the floor. He stared at his spotless shoes, the same make and model as Sean’s. “I read the report. She said Sean O’Brien was dead. Fell out of the 80th floor window and her analysis was that his actions were the result of psychological instability.” Fats was consumed by a new confusion and Sean let the performance rise to the occasion.
“Hard to believe. Daisy just says what we’ll believe. There’s nothing more to her body than words on a screen.” Sean put his hand on Fats’ shoulder and embraced his pains, his worries, his sympathy for his own possible fate.
“I work on that floor now and I think about you sometimes.” Fats began tearing up as the pressure from his job weighed him down, shrinking his ego and pride to a fraction of the confidence he had when Sean and Simon first made him their mark.
“No, no. You can check with HR. Anyone who has that name left of their own volition. Daisy saw how much I wanted to spend more time with my family. If anything I would thank her for allowing me to move out here. It’s far from glorious, but at least we have each other.” Sean smiled and they both knew he was lying. The problem was, neither of them really knew what the truth actually was.
“Right. That makes sense.” Fats rubbed his face with one hand as he crossed his chest with the other. “I just never expected to meet my predecessor. You know how Daisy is.”
“Don’t we all?” Sean laughed and started walking down the street. Fats followed as Simon disappeared down the alley. “I also know how she’ll reprimand you if you’re late! Get on and get to it! I know you have more work than you can ever finish in a day.”
“Don’t we all?” Fats laughed as he swung his arms at his side and kept walking toward downtown.
Sean let out a heavy sigh and met his colleague down the dark alley. Success in their hands and another meal provided for his table.
For just a moment, Sean and Simon shared a thought. They wondered if what they were doing was right. They both shook their heads and remembered the truth at hand. After all, Daisy made sure the truth was buried long ago, and everyone knew the game wasn’t about truth at all—just survival.
Empty Thoughts
To further play on the theme of this week’s newsletter, I fed the completed draft into Google’s NotebookLM and created another fake podcast.
To further blur the lines of reality, I generated an image using nothing but the titles of each section as a prompt.
I rather enjoy how the surrealism starts in the first few seconds when it bugs out and accidentally uses the same voice for both hosts. That is quickly fixed with no explanation and I imagine many people would never even notice.
The real oddities come at about the seven minute mark where it pulls two quotes from this very newsletter that don’t exist:
Which brings us back to that question Bauer asks at the end: In a world where technology can perfectly recreate and manipulate how we experience things how can we be sure of anything? Even our own memories?
and:
It's like that moment in Mastermind when Sean looks at his reflection and he's not even sure if it's really him anymore or just some kind of mass created by Daisy.
It’s otherwise a pretty impressive analysis and, as always, it’s unsettling how well the voices make you think you’re listening to thinking humans.
Regardless of how faithful it is or isn’t, I do know that it would succeed in getting others more interested in my writing.
Because it can be impossible to convince others to pay attention to the split hairs between lies and unverifiable truths.
That then poses a more difficult ethical question around marketing and finding success from my own work in my own name.
One I don’t have the knowledge or tools to properly answer just yet.
I will, however, keep up the good fight of creating stories and expressing myself, however futile it is to stand against the rising tide.
Until next time.
Cheers,
JMB