Bad Argument: "Focusing Bias" used as "proof" of viewpoint

Focus Bias (also known as Focusing illusion, Focusing effect, or Spotlight Effect), is a type of cognitive bias where the mind emphasize the portion of the issue they have exposure to (personal experience, personal calculation or consideration, etc.) and ignore / de-emphasize the portion of the issues that they don't see / understand, and thus cannot evaluate. This very often happens in MLM. Supporters of a scheme tend to overemphasize the importance of portions of the MLM system they have been exposed to, while ignoring the portions of the system they know little about.

One way this manifests itself is the supporter thinks because they experience ONE PART of the scheme, and that part seem to work fine, the entire scheme must be fine (and legitimate!)  I termed this "it paid me!" argument.

For TVI Express pyramid scheme, it would be the website, or sometimes, the actual trip that came with the membership, and for a few, the actual payout at one or two levels of the matrix. They don't care about the obvious pyramid scheme aspects of the scheme.

For Zeek Rewards, it would be the penny auctions, the "giving away bids", watching their "cash account" build up, and for some, real money in their bank. They pay no attention to where the money is really coming from, are there enough auctions to generate that much profit, and so on.

For Lyoness, it would be the how shopping build up their "accounting units" therefore they conclude that Lyoness works great, and they pay no attention to the part where you can BUY your units and recruit others to do so and thus benefit from it.

For each of these scams or suspect schemes, the supporters basically had the focusing bias where they focuses almost EXCLUSIVELY on the parts they have been exposed to, and they somehow feel that is the ONLY part that mattered (to them), while ignoring any other parts they had not been exposed to or know about.

That is a very dangerous position to be in, as there's more than a few ways a MLM business can cause you trouble.

Watch How Magician Thief Apollo Robbins explains Misdirection

TED (conference) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your brain has limited amount of processing power available, and generally it concentrates on one sense or another, or it can spend time going over your previous memories, but rarely if ever, do both with any sort of proper efficiency. Thus is the power of misdirection... Focusing on the things that you thought were important, but wasn't.

Apollo Robbins, the "gentleman thief", otherwise known as a theatrical pickpocket, makes a living by taking stuff out of other people's pockets in front of live audiences, and returning them, in amusing and mind-boggling ways. He recently got on TED talk and explained how his techniques work: your attention span (aka "Frank") is solo-tasking... can only do one thing at a time. Sound, vision, touch, smell, taste, or memory search. It can't do multiple things at once. And even when you see or hear, you engage only a tiny portion of your various senses.

When you see something, you only focus on the portion you need to focus on, even though you technically saw the whole thing. If I ask you to take our your smartphone and ask what icon is in lower right corner, put it away, then ask you did you see what time it was on the phone... would you know? That's part of the misdirection... You did see the phone... you just didn't see the clock portion (upper right in almost all instances).

Thieves and scam artists use the same tricks to get you to pay attention on parts you *can* see, known as the "focusing bias", and ignore the parts you can't see (fraudulent claims of profitability).  Magic always have a link with cons, as magic is basically playing with your confidence of your senses. However, magic is benign, while scams are not, as observed by magician Joss Stone.

How Does Peter Principle Affect MLM?

Peter Principle states that "employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence". Of course, Peter Principle is talking about work and promotion within a company, where there are rules and ethics and such governing such promotions. Does Peter Principle apply to the MLM world? Very much so, albeit with much more disastrous consequences.

At its heart, Peter Principle is about how human beings apply their bias: why change what works, even though its a new situation. When this is applied to people, i.e. a person will keep doing what he's doing, even though he's promoted to a new set of responsibilities, that person will no longer advance unless s/he learns new set of skills.

However, such change of responsibility are sorely lacking in network marketing. When you "grow" in MLM, you don't really take on bigger responsibilities other than training or inspiring new members.

Network marketing has two primary skills: sell products/services, and recruit people. Both can be called "sales" to a certain extent, but require very different persuasive arguments.

To sell a person the product/service, you will argue that the service/product will make his/her life better in some way, and the price to benefit ratio is good, esp. among any competitors.

To sell a person the position (i.e. recruit), you will simply appeal to the person's greed, envy, and pride. Don't you want to be financially independent? Don't you want to be successful (like other people)? Don't you want to join a winning team? So on and so forth.

One appeal to base desires (7 deadly sins, any one?) while the other appeals to logic. Guess which one is easier? Appeal to the sins, of course.

Bad Argument: I Know What I Am Doing! (No you don't)

NOTE: this is a completed version of a previous post

Sometimes, when you tried to reason with a supporter of suspect scheme, and they have no logical retort to your points, they will instead bring out the "I know what I am doing" bad argument, which generally goes like this:

A: Acme XYZ is a scam because ____, ____, and ____.

B: I know Acme XYZ is not a scam. I know what I am doing. It's my business, not yours.

This is a total red herring, because it neither argues against the premise, nor argues for the counter-premise. It is completely unrelated.

What's more, there are several problems with one. One of which is "illusory superiority", in that we always think we are better than we really are. It's called "self-esteem". But there's more.

Are the Herbalife Diet Clubs Legal? (Hint: Probably not!)

Let's get to the point: Herbalife's best selling point: the diet club, is probably illegal in most instances, because they are not licensed or permitted to prepare food. In fact, I doubt most even have a license to retail food. 

Previously we've discussed Herbalife many times, and some of the stuff is how people who support Herbalife believe that most of its value is from the "diet clubs" that its distributors are running. I've discussed the problems with that particular view, though recently I realized I made a bad assumption. Peterson apparently introduced Herbalife to Mexico back in late 1980's, but nobody started doing "diet clubs" in Mexico until 2003, and it backfilled into the US in 2006. (I had assumed he introduced stuff to Mexico much later.)

However, here's a more interesting question... Are the diet clubs even LEGAL?

Now you're probably going, huh? How can a diet club be illegal?

By being an illegal food preparer and retailer without the proper permits.

TelexFree UK Office is a lie, and here's proof (UPDATE: "New" address is also a lie)

Previously I've explained why TelexFree has no US office. Both addresses are just a mailbox. Recently TelexFree suddenly started showing a UK office:

And it quickly mushroomed into various Facebook groups, unofficial announcements that "TelexFree opportunity has reached UK", and so on and so forth.

No one seem to have even bothered to check the actual address itself:

15 Bromet Close, Watford, Hertfordshire, WD17 4LP UK

What if you Google that address? You will find that it's home to many different businesses. This is just on the first page:

They can't all have the EXACT SAME ADDRESS, can they? 

Is TelexFree Playing Payment Roulette Just Like ZeekRewards's Dying Days?

Those who kept track of Zeek knew that during its final few months, it was playing "payment roulette", as it shuffled its payments all over the world, switching credit card processors like Lady Gaga changing outfits at a concert. It also had a bit of problem shifting funds among multiple eWallet providers. And the credit card processors are often on the other side of the globe (Cyprus, Greece, Korea, etc.) , which triggered many credit card fraud alerts, which then caused even more panic among its members.

Now apparently, TelexFree is doing the same, as "brand name" processors are dumping TelexFree.