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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

I'd much love to read a paper like this applied to conspiracy theories that became true (Epstein, PRISM etc). Basically reverse engineering

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The paper does analyze a real conspiracy: Bridgegate.

Agreed! But did I miss the part where the Epstein conspiracy theory was demonstrated to be true?

Yeah. Without pulling up sources it's on his second paragraph of his wikipedia page, which tends to avoid conspiracies etc.

"He developed an elite social circle and procured many women and children who were then sexually abused by Epstein and some of his contacts."

Oh, that part. Absolutely. I didn't even realize that was ever considered a conspiracy theory. I thought GP was referring to his death!

Was most certainly branded as a conspiracy theory until it was revealed. This is why I think people are more apt to believe other conspiracy theories around him as well

What do you mean "until it was revealed"? There was some pretty exhaustive reporting a decade and a half ago, but no one really payed much attention. And certainly his high-profile connections weren't a secret.

Conspiracy-minded people imagine a deep shroud of secrecy around the Epstein affair that doesn't really exist.

> There was some pretty exhaustive reporting a decade and a half ago, but no one really payed much attention.

Considering how the media and public seem to usually enjoy getting their panties in a knot when the topic of child molestation arises, is this historic lack of interest combined with the current lack of interest not somewhat suggestive that something a little unusual might be going on here?

> a deep shroud of secrecy around the Epstein affair that doesn't really exist

Out of curiosity, how does one come to know such a thing? Do you have access to a data source that the rest of us don't?

I don't really understand your comment, but to restate my own: the Epstein stuff was basically all a matter of public record. I don't claim to have insight into why certain news stories and court cases become more popular than others.

My first comment is an observance that both the public and the media usually exhibit intense interest in matters that involve the sexual abuse of a child. Considering the Epstein affair involves the alleged systemic abuse of multiple children over a long period of time, and it involves celebrities (which itself usually attracts significant attention), the minimal level of interest it has received from the public and the media seems rather counter-intuitive.

Regarding my second comment, I was noting that you seem to have a sense of omniscience about you:

- "...a deep shroud of secrecy around the Epstein affair that doesn't really exist."

- "...the Epstein stuff was basically all a matter of public record."

Of course, if there was in fact a shroud of secrecy, or if some evidence on Epstein was not made available on the public record, you would have no way of knowing this. Yet, you speak as if you do know.

My armchair psychologist theory is that these sorts of incredibly common logical errors (several of which can be seen in this thread) are due to subconscious heuristics running on binary (True/False) logic rather than ternary (True/False/Unknown) logic. The human mind, both subconscious and conscious really seems to struggle with Null/Unknown. I have the impression that this phenomenon is increasing over time (perhaps due to increased internet usage, plus Trump), but I don't know how one might go about measuring such a thing.

Probable CIA asset running underage sex slaves for the elite wasn't exactly of public record, was it?

Or, rather: was it splashed over social media? Because statistically, nobody's reading, these days..as disgusting as I feel having written that.

Can people living in Virginia have an unbiased opinion on this?

> Without pulling up sources it's on his second paragraph of his wikipedia page, which tends to avoid conspiracies etc.

Slightly off topic, but I'm so happy wikipedia has finally stepped up an gotten rid of the stupid conspiracy theories that used to ruin their articles in the past because they turned a blind eye to the racist patriarchy of old white men that oppresses the working class and minorities.

Maybe they're referring to his actual crimes and not the conspiracy theory about how he died.

Right, because there is nothing suspicious at all about how the camera footage mysteriously disappeared on the night he died.

Sure. But that is the sort of thing that one says about something that is still a conspiracy theory. It hardly demonstrates that he was murdered with sufficient clarify to elevate this to the realm of accepted fact.

Epstein was possibly the most high profile case of child sex trafficking linked to people in power in all of history. Instead of being treated as such every procedure, protocol, and standard were botched, disregarded, "glitched", ignored, ect. You are never gonna get a video of Clinton, ect confessing to buying child prostitutes from Epstine.

I don't know. I find it more likely that people are just incompetent. The world is not nearly as finely run as conspiracy theorists like to think it is. Epstein was never going to allow himself to rot away in jail, so it's zero surprise that he committed suicide. He's never had to deal with the consequences of his actions, why would he start then?

Destroying the evidence so blatantly was incompetent. A competent group of conspirators that has the resources to blackmail US Presidents would have done things much more smoothly, including an entirely realistic looking video of Epstein killing himself.

Conspiracy theory conversations are fascinating to me. One the one side you have conspiracy theorists who have a rather loose practice of epistemology, relying heavily on heuristic intuition and a few "facts" in the formation of their beliefs. And then you have their detractors who seem to consider themselves intellectually superior, yet use essentially the same reasoning methodology (as it relates specifically to conspiracy theories).

Right, but he was kept on suicide watch, given paper clothes and sheets, and placed in a special jail cell specifically designed to prevent suicide, as they are currently doing with Ghislaine Maxwell: https://nypost.com/2020/07/09/feds-take-ghislaine-maxwells-s...

>It hardly demonstrates that he was murdered

"Epstein didn't kill himself" is about Epstein still being alive.

https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2019/08/epstein-foster-the-pe...

Well the footage of his death was "accidentally" erased.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51053205

That's pretty bad. It's also not particularly surprising to see more incompetence from a prison where guards did not do their job correctly and even went as far as falsifying records about their activities on the night of to cover their asses (regarding a detainee that had just been on suicide watch, no less). Their trial for these actions is set to start in June, after multiple delays.

You need a seriously screwed-up culture in the detention facility for this to even be considered by guards, much less attempted. Why would anyone assume that only the two guards that were indicted are somehow the only bad apples there and that everyone else is great at their job?

It would be interesting to compare the guards at this facility with others on topics like complaints from detainees or disciplinary actions, to get a better idea of how unusual this behavior was. So far 100% of the COs involved have demonstrated to be highly incompetent and even dishonest.

I have no particular opinion about what exactly happened to cause his death (mainly because I don't pass judgment based on the little evidence I have) but it's easy to see why many would consider these actions proof of a conspiracy though.

COINTELPRO, Operation Mockingbird, Bay of Pigs, the Sept 11 1973 CIA backed coup in Chile, Iranian-Contras, non-existant Weapons of Mass Destruction/Iraq, MKUltra, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Church Committee ... the list is as long as you want to make it.

Yeah, this paper does little to indicate this tool's effectiveness at distinguishing between "conspiracy" and "conspiracy theory". To me, a Conspiracy Theory is an unconfirmed Conspiracy that lacks a preponderance of evidence. I'd rather see some sort of weighted approach that factors for new evidence as it comes in, if it comes in at all. Even in a broad Conspiracy Theory, there may be parts of it that are true and parts of it that are untrue, it isn't a binary thing.

From the abstract, the authors are claiming that the big differences between real conspiracies and conspiracy theories is that real conspiracies involve a single domain, while conspiracy theories cross domains.

They explicitly contrast Bridgegate and Pizzagate. Bridgegate was real and only involved New Jersey politics. Pizzagate of course is a grab bag of everything.

Of course we can make a Bridgegate conspiracy theory by simply pointing out the fact that Chris Christie’s name translates as “Christ Christ”, and he was opposed by Mark Sokolich. And what’s another word for “opposed” or “opposite”? That’s right “anti”, as in the antichrist.

Now you might be suspicious, but we know from analyzing transcendentalist literature that the pronunciation of names is a symbol. “Chris Christie”, in addition to meaning Christ, leaves your mouth with a smile, while “Mark Sokolich” leaves your mouth harsh and jagged, like evil.

Furthermore, governor of New Jersey ordered the closures of the upper deck of the George Washington Bridge. Which isn’t surprising because George Washington was famously a Freemason, a group that’s connected to Hermeticism, which has the famous saying, “As above, so below.” Close the upper deck, close the ground.

“Ground” is just another word for “Earth”, and so what is above the Earth? That’s right the heavens. And what lives in the Heaven? That’s right God. But not just any god, the false gods, those from the heavens, the ancient travelers from the stars.

So you see, by closing two-thirds of the toll booths dedicated to the town, the governor of New Jersey performed a magickal working to ensare and imprison an alien battle fleet, commanded by the the reptilian demon that had replaced the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey.

This is just facts. It’s just that the whole is considerably less than the parts.

The connection of more than one domain does not automatically discredit a conspiracy theory. While your elaboration on Bridgegate is creative, as the poster above mine mentioned, other conspiracies involving multiple domains have been found to be true or at least partially true. Epstein island, MkUltra, etc.

So the approach I would take would be to isolate each claim in a conspiracy and assign some weighted value to each claim. Connecting aliens to Bridgegate would be obviously a tiny fraction of a percentage of likely to be true. But if someone were to make the claim that Bridgegate was connected to payouts from a lobbyist firm or that Chris Christie was associated with Jeffrey Epstein, I wouldn't necessarily dismiss that claim outright. It would remain an unverified but reasonably possible claim that would need further info or investigation.

That seems to speak to your own biases.

Now if I spun this conspiracy to say that Chris Christie created a traffic jam so that child sex traffickers protected by the mayor of Fort Lee couldn’t easily escape, while the New Jersey state police conducted a raid on secret bunkers under the GWB. Would you believe that? Because if you do, I have a bike to sell you in the basement of the Alamo.

Ok let me break apart your claims:

1. Christie has an interest in fighting child trafficking.

2. Christie used bridge closure to fight child trafficking.

3. Ft. Lee mayor defends child traffickers.

4. Ft. Lee mayor wanted to escape from a NJ police raid and bridge was the only path out.

5. Escaping via the bridge would have ensured Ft. Lee mayor's protection.

6. NJ state police were conducting a raid at GWB during bridge incident.

7. Bunkers at GWB involve child trafficking.

8. Ft. Lee mayor knew about child trafficking at GWB.

All claims can be viewed independently. Some claims have dependencies on earlier claims. If earlier claims turn out to be false (or extremely unlikely), any subsequent claims that have dependencies on those prior claims must be dismissed.

You apply some heuristic in your own mind like this all the time in the real world. You just probably never take a fully analytic and logical approach to it.

But that's roughly the system I use to evaluate the world. I don't dismiss things automatically but I won't buy into a claim without some evidence. But I will look at each claim independently because sometimes there is signal in the noise.

This evaluation plan sounds nice, but people don’t actually do any of this stuff for things they’ve internalized. Instead, when presented with new facts that undercut their preëxisting viewpoints, people reject them. There’s a term for this: confirmation bias. Everyone does it.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-...

Does everyone do it or are you just looking for examples of people doing it to confirm that hypothesis?

I absolutely love this rendition of the standard conspiracy theory

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