[wpietri]

> criminality should be obvious to a general person

This standard would work for about 5 minutes before a criminal complicated things enough that their crime was no longer obviously wrong.

[TeMPOraL]

Indeed. Also, with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke: Any sufficiently complicated business model is indistinguishable from fraud.

[wpietri]

That's beautiful. And so very true.

I think the very best liars and fraudsters are the ones who they themselves don't know what's true. And what better way to not know than complexity!

[TeMPOraL]

That's related to Frankfurt's definition of bullshit[0]. If you purposefully say something that's not true, you're lying, but if you don't care at all whether what you say is true or not, you're bullshitting.

Complexity seems indeed very good at enabling bullshit - bullshitters caught spreading lies can just plead ignorance and point towards complexity.

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[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Harry_Frankfurt's_con...