Occam’s Razor suggest he was exfiltrated.
Occam’s razor is a rule of thumb which suggests that if several hypotheses explain the same thing, the simplest one should be favored. When we have a missing person with several unknown variables, until we see some evidence, any guess is as good as other. And no hypotheses should be ruled out.
On HN we also like Bayesian analysis, so instead of looking for the simplest explenation, we should be asking what we already know. What is the probability that this person was disappeared by the government, given that 3 other students have been disappeared by the government lately? Given that these 3 other students were also people of color? Etc.
Really? So that he was abducted by aliens is also on the table and has the same probability?
Obviously there can be some prior information that makes „he was exfiltrated by Chinese intelligence services“ more likely than „he was disappeared by US intelligence services“.
I’m not saying there is, but philosophically, you don’t need to know anything more than „A person with relations to china disappeared“ to be able to determine one hypothesis as the most likely one.
We can set the same prior probability to all the possibilities, that is fine. But given the evidence the posterior for alien abduction is very close to 0, if not just simply 0.
Given the recent pattern of behavior from the US government, we have seen quite a few people disappeared. The posterior for US government involvement is IMO much higher than exfiltration. That said, no government involvement is higher still (and is actually the hypothesis favored by Occam’s Razor).
There is a long series of scientists in the US that were secretly working for the Chinese government. It is simply the most likely explanation that this is another instance of that.
It also doesn't make any sense that the US government would secretly "disappear", as you put it, this individual while they are openly deporting thousands elsewhere, often based on flimsy evidence. Furthermore, if you are secretly getting rid of someone, you do it to avoid taking responsibility. Why would you send the FBI to raid their residence afterwards? That immediately connects you to the disappearance, thereby sabotaging your own scheme.
Chinese exfiltration is also a conspiracy theory. In fact chinese exfiltration requires a larger conspiracy than USA disappearance. If you want to apply Occam’s Razor (which you shouldn’t), you should actually favor disappearance over exfiltration (but really you should favor no government involvement).
> There is a long series of scientists in the US that were secretly working for the Chinese government.
If that is so, can you provide me with a list. That list would actually have to be pretty long to make exfiltration the likeliest hypothesis. Like there would have to be more than a couple of dozen cases this century.
EDIT: I did quick googling to find any sources which backs your claim. This NY Post article is the strongest one (https://nypost.com/2025/02/20/us-news/us-science-labs-face-g...) it is basically a propaganda piece citing far right US politicians who claim extraordinary numbers (like 8000 scientists) without any evidence. As we know extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Both the Chinese and USA governments engaged (or have been accused of engaging) in unlawful kidnapping of their own (and foreign) nationals from foreign countries over the last decades.
So I'm not sure how one can dismiss the possibility that this is indeed one of such cases.
The obvious one being if the FBI is arresting a spy they would not be doing search warrants on his properties weeks after he goes missing. They do that stuff immediately.
Instead if we're speculating, this far more sounds like the FBI are playing catch up to circumstances that became suspicious after a few weeks.
It was a joke in a joke book, and has been taken entirely out of context by most people who use it to justify anything.
Murphy's Law Book 2, January 24, 1980 A book of jokes, meant to be humorous.
No previous literature related to it before then.
I can't help but laugh when people use it now, so I guess its still funny... in a way.
It says a lot about the character of a person that takes a joke and uses it in a way, that it was never intended to be used. Useful knowledge to keep in your back pocket if needed.
If you're talking about the students I think you are, they're detained in Louisiana and Texas. They haven't been "disappeared" in any way.
Wikipedia has a list of imprisoned spies in the USA. It is pretty sparse, the last spy to be convicted in the USA was in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies
Searching the DOJ homepage with the search term “spy” (to see which they have showcased) gives us 209 results, including a bunch of news around the 2009 conviction. The most resent news I found was from 2022 (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/five-individuals-cha...) a very vague news which is actually more about harassing private citizen (presumably piggy-banking out of the anti-asian hate following Covid). The most resent news about actual spying against the US government was from 2020 (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-cia-officer-a...) Alexander Yuk Ching Ma. He was actually found guilty in may 2024 (so he is missing from that Wikipedia list). The DOJ article about the conviction doesn’t use the word spy, so it is missing from my search, but here it is: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-cia-officer-s....
Given the above, I think it is safe to bet that if he was arrested for being a spy, the DOJ would indeed want to showecase it. However, spies are very rare, and the likelyhood of OP’s case being a spy is very low. It is much more likely that he disappeared for other reasons.
They also use various means to charge people. Lying to a federal agent is a serious crime. Almost any misuse of federal funds can a a serious crime.
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/01/04/ge_turbine_china_...
This is slightly misleading. While it is true that the person with the highest probability of murdering you is your partner (at least, if you're a woman), it is more likely that the murder is a stranger to the victim than to be the spouse of the victim.
For example, in the FBI's 2011 dataset [1], of the 7076 murders by someone with a known relationship to the victim, 1295 were by a husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. This is compared to, of course, the 2700 murders committed by acquaintances and 1481 by strangers. From this, we can see ~18% of murders are by their partners and ~60% are by someone quite a bit further flung.
The reason why both statistics are simultaneously true is that most people have only a few partners (focusing the entire risk on a small group) where as there are many thousands of people in the latter categories (creating a very diffuse risk).
So, if you were to bet one which person murdered someone, you would do well to guess one of their partners. If you had to guess if the victim knew their murderer, you should bet that they did not.
[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
You've misused Occam's Razor.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_maximum_entropy
That was known at the time of my post.
We now also know now at the time of his escape, Indiana University had terminated his Professorship. And has continued to disavow he and his wife.
I did not misuse Occam's razor, my knowledge of public facts simply exceeded yours.
Occam's razor requires an adequate accounting of the facts, not speculation.
All you have mentioned is speculation, and the facts you have mentioned don't support this narrative, neither when you first mentioned it, nor now.
You misused it, and trying to falsely justify that you didn't is deluding yourself.