The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

While some people are really good at lying or dodging direct questions, many more are very good at lying to themselves. If you believe your own bullshit it's remarkably easy to look sincere while spewing it.

There are certainly many scammers out there, but also some people who believe their own marketing material. But the thing is that once you start picking apart one infinite growth pyramid, then you start seeing them everywhere, and eventually respectable people start trying to draw lines and claim that the bullshit on this side of the line is obvious and bad, but the bullshit on the other side is okay because reasons (reason #1: we can keep this running for at least another 100-200 years at which point I will be long dead)