The Cons: See the Scams is a website enabling one to learn about con artists and their varied activities. It will be enlightening and it will be entertaining  .  .  .  except when you learn about a con to which you have fallen victim in the past without being aware of it. Entertainment then undergoes a metamorphosis to Regret.

Core Concepts in

The Cons:

See the Scams

When someone mentions “a con” it can be confusing due to its varied meanings and usages. The following gives examples of common meanings:

Cons:

     “Con” can refer either to the person or to his specific exploitative actions.

Examples of “Con” as the person:

     Confidence man, con man, con, sociopath, psychopath and other names are similar and might be used to describe the person engaging in these deceptive activities.

Examples of “Con” as exploitative actions: 

     The big con, the little con, the grift.

Cons are all around us. This does not mean that they are dangerous, frightening cons. Most are not. Yet they contain the seeds of the problem – the exploitative actions contained in a con are so embedded in our everyday interactions that their familiarity acts to keep them hidden. Little cons share a functional structure with big cons, causing the structure to be hidden and seem benign. They are not harmless.

This shared functional structure creates remarkable complexity due to the lack of adequate knowledge about what a con is, either the person or the action. Until knowledge about cons is systematically assembled the tactics of cons are favored.

The first requirement for exposing cons – con artists or their actions — is to build knowledge about what they are, the elements used in cons, and how each contributes to the functional structure of a successful con.

The second requirement is to specify the neural mechanisms that underlie the hidden, disguised behaviors of cons that are so damaging to individuals and to societies. The specification of neural mechanisms validates observations describing the elements and functional structure of cons. The specification simultaneously indicates why cons are so frustratingly effective by demonstrating how brain organization and functions shapes this effectiveness, and determines how the specific beneficial and destructive behaviors have their respective effects. An understanding of neural mechanisms also motivates us to use the knowledge to anticipate potential actions of a con and avoid falling victim to them.The third requirement for exposing cons is to apply this knowledge to activities to protect people from the personal life disruptions of dangerous cons and to better insulate societies from the creeping menace of cons who cripple the group activities necessary for a civilization. The primary protective activity is education for everyone, an education that continues as con artists adjust their exposed tactics as they lose effectiveness.

What is “The Cons”?

     The Cons: See the Scams

     and

     The Adolescence of American Culture: Cultural Scams and American Cultural Decline

are two public websites that evolved from The Thinker, the original site, which is no longer public. The Thinker remains as the conceptual home for the two sites, a place of concept-building. All material in the two public websites is initially to be found as drafts in The Thinker.

The “final” conceptual material of The Thinker, when complete, is presented as the content for the two public websites:

thecons.info

americanadolescence.com

A new post generally is published each Friday (The Cons) and Tuesday (American Adolescence).

These two sites present scientific and humanistic material making it possible for you to build knowledge and skills. There is no mechanism for communicating with anyone at either website. It is not possible to seek comments or ask questions. This is intentional. The natural, appropriate impulse of each person engaged in learning is to make it social learning – meaning to talk to others, ask questions, and engage in information exchange and disputes. This is not the purpose of these two websites.

Instead, these two sites are intended to present information, some of it quite novel, for anyone to use for personal learning. All the material necessary for learning about these topics is available in the posts.

Learning occurs through effort — work — meaning careful attention to the materials (text, quotations, photos, and videos) and engaging in thought about how the information is related to you, the reader. Each reader is unique.  Therefore, the ease or difficulty of each presentation will differ for each reader according to his or her life experiences. In this sense, talking to others about a presentation will be both beneficial and confusing, because life experiences — and the resulting accrual of knowledge and skills — differ for each person. Three sentences might be immediately clear to one person, while opaque and confusing to another person of equal intelligence. This creates the advantage of beginning by reading and repeated review of presentations long before talking to others about the presentations. Returning to posts for further study after thought and application of the concepts is beneficial. Successful learning is dependent on one’s intellectual effort; the information is available.

The vast majority of people have the intelligence necessary to read and understand the presentations (text or media) on these websites. More education, of course, will make learning easier. Regrettably, socioeconomic inequality spawns educational inequality, which, in turn, is the seedbed for inequality generally. Within educational inequality one variety has special significance: while learning during the years of one’s education one is developing an increasing capacity for intellectual work. As is well known, intellectual work is the most strenuous species of work, more arduous than physical work. For this reason, we  experience a strong impulse to avoid intellectual work. 

Watch the entire film, not just a clip. Read the entire book, not just a quotation. Listen to the entire musical piece, not just a minute or two.

Learn to recognize and understand meanings in your life and relationships. Learn to recognize others who understand meanings in their lives and relationships.

The Cons enables you to understand how genes and culture shape the development of each person, from the beginning of our lives. The posts begin by examining how the complexity of our lives confuses us and seduces us into a neglect of more complete understanding. While this is an easier path, it also produces a vulnerability to scams that take advantage of our preference for leisurely fun and the avoidance of intellectual work .

The posts are organized to provide interesting, vivid, entertaining examples that encourage thoughtful engagement:

Two types of quotations provide guidance, context, and orientation:

  1. “Voices”presents the comments of individuals throughout history, experts in the humanistic sciences and the general sciences, about significant phenomena encountered in our lives and the meanings that underlie them. These comments are rendered as text (“paper clips” – e.g., quotations) or media (e.g., “film clips”)
  1. “The Scientific Spotlight” presents descriptions of underlying biological or physical mechanisms by neuroscientists and other scientists that are relevant to a topic.

You will gain a more accurate understanding of the meanings of the actions and communications of others, and, most importantly, a better understanding of the meanings of your own actions and communications.

The information helps you See Your World by learning to recognize and describe meanings of human behavior that you previously failed to see, through the experiences of films, myths, stories, commentaries, science, history, music, images, literature, biography, and journalism.

You will learn about life’s treasures and trials, games and ghosts, pleasure and pain, loves and lies – what happiness is and how we find it, or not. You will learn to See Your World, more realistically, in its fullness and its distinctive detail.

J. Gerald Young, M.D., was Professor of Psychiatry, and then Research Professor of Psychiatry, in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He is the founder of The Media Sciences Group. He is past Editor-in-Chief of the Book Series of the International Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions (IACAPAP) and was a member of the Executive Committee of IACAPAP for eighteen years.

Dr. Young received a B.A. in English literature from the University of Notre Dame, and his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School, where he also completed an internship in internal medicine. His residency training, in psychiatry and also in child and adolescent psychiatry, was at St. Luke’s Hospital Center, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York City. He completed a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the Yale University Child Study Center. He served as a lieutenant commander at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda Maryland for two years, during which he was also on the faculty of the Georgetown University School of Medicine.

In the past, Dr. Young was tenured Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and founder and Director of the Laboratory of Developmental Neurochemistry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Child Study Center, where he was a Berger Research Fellow and a W. T. Grant Foundation Research Scholar. He was Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Hospital in New York City, where he was also Director of the Laboratory of Developmental Neurochemistry.  Dr. Young was Director of the Developmental Neurobiology Program and Associate Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. He received training as a psychoanalyst and child analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in New Haven, CT. 

Dr. Young is a past Chairman of the Psychopathology and Clinical Biology Research Review Committee of the National Institute of Mental Health. He is a past Chairman of the Committee on Research of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, where he was also a member of the Editorial Board and the Program Committee.  Dr. Young was a founder of the Research Forum for that organization.  He is board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in psychiatry, as well as in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is a member of many scientific organizations.

Dr. Young has edited or co-edited eight books and authored more than 100 scientific papers and chapters, among which are:

Shapiro, A.K., Shapiro, E., Young, J.G. and Feinberg, T.E., (1987), Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome, Second Edition, Raven Press, New York.

 Chiland, C., Young, J.G.(editors), (1992), New Approaches to Mental Health from Birth to Adolescence, Yale University Press, New Haven.  French edition:  Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

 Chiland, C. and Young, J.G. (editors), (1990), Why Children Reject School:  Views from Seven Countries, Yale University Press, New Haven.  French edition:  Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

 Young, J. Gerald (editor), (1994), Entretiens diagnostiques structurés pour enfants et adolescents, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

 Chiland, C. and Young, J.G. (editors), (1994), Children and Violence, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey. French edition:  Presses Universitaires de France, Paris

 Young, J. Gerald and Ferrari, Pierre (editors), (1998), Mental Health Services and Systems for Children and Adolescents:  A Shrewd Investment.  Philadelphia: Brunner/Mazel.

 Gomes-Pedro, J., Nugent, K., Young, J. G., and Brazelton, B. (editors), (2002).  The Infant and the Family in the 21stCentury.  New York: Brunner-Routledge. 

 Young, J. G., Ferrari, P., Malhotra, S., Tyano, S., and Caffo, E. (editors), (2002).  Brain, Culture, and Development.  New Delhi: MacMillan. 

Dr. Young was elected as Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He received a Certificate of Appreciation from the Autism Society of America, and a Certificate of Achievement from the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities of the State of New York. Dr. Young was honored with a 1998 Books of the Year Award by the American Journal of Nursing, the official journal of the American Nurses Association, for the year’s most outstanding book in psychiatry (Mental Health Services and Systems for Children and Adolescents:  A Shrewd Investment).