Hiding in plain sight
Superbowl Sunday is here. Or get up early Monday, as it is in my house. I’ll have watched it in 45 minutes by 7am tomorrow.
The name Warren Sharp meant nothing to me until ten minutes ago {here}, but as an infamous name in punditry, gambling, and – as reported by the NYer – with legitimate links as both poacher and gamekeeper in the worlds of professional sport and gambling, I suspect I will be seeing his name again. Or at least his pseudonym.
Visibility | Behaviour | Trust
My heuristic toolbox rattled as that revelation was read. A man too keen to keep a lid closed. High visibility but defensive in identity is a behaviour that gives reason to not immediately offer much trust. When new information offers reason to trust less, it is our own behaviours that necessarily change. We need to step closer and see more. Much as with our home grown current truth dodging politics. We see the lies, we more closely attend to the suspicious behaviour, as reduced trust is replaced by wider sources of information and intervention.
I’m sure Warren Sharp’s real name is less interesting than the mystery. But there is a wider point here. Gambling visibility is on the increase. Be it betting online, bingo on our phones, charities advertising weekly lotteries (in the name of their benevolent cause). How has this more overt behaviour that is aimed at playing on gambling habits been allowed? With the revelations of who is propping up political interests – maybe something is beginning to look more covert through another lens. Maybe my comparison of politics and gambling is more than just analogous.
And if visibility | behaviour | trust is nothing more than my heuristic warning light, it’s on full alert as the biggest gamblers of all in the pyramid builder crypto-currency world prepare to engulf the Superbowl tonight.