Comment by chubot
2 months ago
I have definitely experienced the sycophancy ... and LLMs have sometimes repeating talking points from real estate agents, like "you the buyer doesn't pay for an agent; the seller pays".
I correct it, and it says "sorry you're right, I was repeating a talking point from an interested party"
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BUT actually a crazy thing is that -- with simple honest questions as prompts -- I found that Claude is able to explain the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement better than anyone I know
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Associatio...
I have multiple family members with Ph.D.s, and friends in relatively high level management, who have managed both money and dozens of people
Yet they somehow don't agree that there was collusion between buyers' and sellers' agents? They weren't aware it happened, and they also don't seem particularly interested in talking about the settlement
I feel like I am taking crazy pills when talking to people I know
Has anyone else experienced this?
Whenever I talk to agents in person, I am also flabberghasted by the naked self-interest and self-dealing. (I'm on the east coast of the US btw)
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Specifically, based on my in-person conversations with people I have known for decades, they don't see anything odd about this kind of thing, and basically take it at face value.
NAR Settlement Scripts for REALTORS to Explain to Clients
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-ESZv0dBo&list=TLPQMjQxMTI...
https://www.nar.realtor/the-facts/nar-settlement-faqs'
They might even say say something like "you don't pay; the seller pays". However Claude can explain the incentives very clearly, with examples
The agent is there to skim 3% of the sale price in exchange for doing nothing. Now you know all there is to know about realtors.
Most people conduct very few real estate transactions in their life, so maybe they just don’t care enough to remember stuff like this.
People don't care if they're colluded against for tens of thousands of dollars? 6% of an American house is a lot of money
Because it's often spread over many years of a mortgage, I can see why SOME people might not. It is not as concrete as someone stealing your car, but the amount is in the same ballpark
But some people should care - these are the same people who track their stock portfolios closely, have college funds for their kids, etc.
A mortgage is the biggest expense for many people, and generally speaking I've found that people don't like to get ripped off :-)
A mortgage is the biggest expense for many people, and generally speaking I've found that people have no idea what they are doing and don't want to fuck it up so will happily pay lots of "professionals" whatever they say are "totally normal fees that everyone pays"
It's as simple as that successful people are selected due to their proud and energetic obedience to authority and institutions. It's tautological - the reason their opinions are respected is because institutions have approved them as people (PhD's!, management!) Authority is anyone wearing a white coat (or really any old white man in a suit with an expensive haircut), and an institution is anybody with serif letterhead.*
People are only aware of the deceit of their own industry, but still work to perpetuate it with varying levels of upset; they 1) just don't talk about how obviously evil what they do is; 2) talk about it, wish that they had chosen another industry, and maybe set deadlines (after we pay off the house, after the kids move out) to switch industries, or 3) overcompensate in the other direction and joke about what suckers the people they're conning are.
I can tell you first-hand that this is exactly what happened inside NAR. At the top it was entirely 3) - it couldn't be anything else - because they were actively lobbying for agents to have no fiduciary duty to their clients. They were targeting politicians who seemed friendly to the idea, and simply paying them to have a different opinion, or threatening to pay their opponents. If you look at how NAR (or any of these groups) actually, materially lobby, it's clear that they have exactly the same view of their industry as their worst critics.
* And by this I mean that if you are white, try to look older (or be old), buy a nice tailored suit, get an expensive haircut, incorporate with a name that sounds institutional, get letterhead (including envelopes) with a professional logo with serifs and an expensive business card with raised print, and you can con your way into anything. You don't have to be handsome or thin or articulate, but you can't have any shame because people will see it.