Re: Steps 2-100: profit, and kill poor children.

1

I feel like if you think it's all wet, it's probably good informational hygiene not to link to it at all. Why let it into our priors? Per the Davies Mantras.

I'm curious if it follows the pattern recently identified to me that conspiracy theories as a genre take the form of assemblages of "anomalies". Little things designed to make you scratch your head and say, that's funny. But often they're factually false, or only strange when presented misleadingly, or just genuine coincidences, but the key is that they don't actually link up with a logical, connected story, they point every which way, sometimes imply the people responsible are taunting the public with hidden messages rather than covering everything up, but they do get their audience in the mindset of "Something must be going on," and remain hospitable to a wide range of interpretations.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 5:49 AM
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Is 1 generic advice, or specifically that I should take the link down?


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:15 AM
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You should keep the link up because Bayesian reasoning is just circular if you let it be and because it's your blog.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:19 AM
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Unless it's still Standpipe's.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:23 AM
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No, I am not requesting you take the link down. Just musing for the future.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:39 AM
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What a bio for an anonymous Substack. "Yes, this is the account Elon nuked on Twitter--the one with the thread connecting all the dots that had over a million people on it. Go easy--I'm new here."

Big "'straightforward from here' guy" energy.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:40 AM
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Which now that I look at it was a woman who meant it sarcastically anyway. Maybe I mean Eric Garland, "time for some game theory" guy.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:53 AM
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There's a lot of reddit energy around this theory, and one of them linked to this link as a starting place. I don't find it intriguing enough to read thoroughly, but it's also genuinely hard to imagine that Elon/Trump/etc would turn down any opportunity to cheat. Like, occam's razor would assume they'd try in some lazy, flailing way.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 6:57 AM
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Also occam's razor implies that the author is the one who promoted it on Reddit as a good primer.


Posted by: heebie | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 7:01 AM
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Unless Occam used a five-bladed razor.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 7:08 AM
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I gave up when they pulled out "she can't possibly have lost all 7 swing states, that's so improbable". Not if the electorate moved 2% to the right it's not!


Posted by: Don P. | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 7:46 AM
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Yeah, I remember all the modeling people before the election saying "we don't know who is going to win, but probably whichever does win will win 6 or 7 of the swing states."


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in" (9) | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 7:52 AM
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I blame Musk. I think he threw a bunch of new, poorly informed voters into the electorate.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 8:10 AM
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RFK probably added a few percent to the margin too.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 8:22 AM
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Excuse me, RFKJ.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 8:22 AM
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I think it's disrespectful to "junior" someone whose father has been dead for longer than I've been alive. So I only use "RFK jr."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 8:25 AM
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Unless Occam used a five-bladed razor.

Fuck it, we're going with the fifth simplest explanation.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 8:50 AM
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I think almost no one is able to properly evaluate these kinds of claims.

I also think that there's no reason to believe that American elections are being held in an above board manner.

Historically the reason voting machines are used instead of pencil and paper is to make it easier to steal elections.

Computers mean you need even fewer co-conspirators to determine the election.


Posted by: Roger the Cabin Boy | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:12 AM
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19

Why believe that the electorate chose Donald Trump if you don't have to?


Posted by: Roger the Cabin Boy | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:15 AM
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Because I have to have some kind of accurate perception of my country in order to make decisions.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:17 AM
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21

Truth is beauty, beauty truth?


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:18 AM
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22

That's beyond me. I'm going to behave differently in a country that wants to give concentration camps a try than I would otherwise.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:22 AM
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I feel like it doesn't matter if most people want to give concentration camps to try or not since the country is doing it anyway.


Posted by: Roger the Cabin Boy | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:30 AM
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I, for one, am glad that we no longer have to speculate about whether anyone will block the 45 billion dollars for the concentration camp agency bill.


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 10:45 AM
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I'm not glad about any part of this.


Posted by: Roger the Cabin Boy | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 11:00 AM
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At least Michael Madsen didn't live to see this.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 11:20 AM
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Fuck,


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 11:50 AM
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22: I thought there might be pushback from employers but then I saw this

https://bsky.app/profile/fetchstep.bsky.social/post/3lszigsx7cc2t

He said that the farmers were going to be the owners of slave laborers.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 11:54 AM
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19: Because that way lies the same madness that "why believe that Joe Biden won in 2020 if you don't have to?" has already done to Republicans. And because I don't believe that these clowns could sneak deploy hostile voting software at scale without including enough obvious bugs that would trigger multiple investigations of the software. That's one of the hallmarks of batshit conspiracy theories: simultaneously believing that the conspirators are super-efficient about carrying out their plans and keeping the thing secret for years while simultaneously leaving enough gaping holes that a high-school outsider can unravel the plot. Like the people who posit an enormous JFK conspiracy that has bumped off hundreds of people who "caught wind of it" over the years without asking why conspirators who were that good and that organized would ever have tried to bump JFK off in front of thousands of witnesses instead of just having him die of a quiet "heart attack" while visiting one of his mistresses. Much smaller conspiracy required, much less likely to leak, and you can blame any minor discrepancies that turn up on well-meaning attempts to protect Jackie's feelings from the truth of his death. You know, like the assassination of President Harding. What assassination, you ask? Exactly.

(No, I don't think that Harding was actually assassinated. But it's an example of what a successful (and small) conspiracy might look like from the outside, which has a fighting chance of remaining secret and protecting the conspirators.)


Posted by: Dave W. | Link to this comment | 07- 3-25 12:30 PM
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