Y'all realize that as long as no one is talking about how Trump - in order to cover his own ass - let Epstein die in jail, luckbox is happier than a pig in **** right? He doesn't believe this nonsense, he's a bog standard maga chud.

I had to scroll through almost 200 ****ing posts just to get to a damn meme in this meme-level orange thread. WTF!?

Re-read David's bit on magic!

There is a lot of evidence that we didn't land on the moon but...?

I tried to find a clip of the scene from episode 3 of season 2 of mindhunter, where they are in Atlanta interviewing the black serial killer. Luck’s responses explaining his thought process for his conspiracy Theory her reminded so much of that scene.

Hey I asked you for strong evidence and you came with some weak stuff. But I'm sure as long as we keep it socratic method style and pretend to troll each other, we can uncover all the secrets of this world.

It doesn't quite apply. In the world of magic tricks we know from experience that there is always a trick. Perhaps a really tricky trick requires some out of the box thinking, but it's never a true paradox where one is forced to choose between two contradictory positions. Believing in real magic is never an option, but here there is an actual alternative hypothesis--suicide or murder is a false dichotomy.
Sklansky's claim is that basically even though it looks like murder, that it doesn't really make sense--but he forces himself right back into a position that is equally problematic.

This has been explained to you time and time again. Really, we shouldn't have to explain to a grown-ass adult why Ben Garrison cartoons are offensive, but nonetheless I've asked you to read up on the history of antisemitism and its relationship to conspiracy theories on the thin, thin chance that your raised by wolves act is real. That you continue to pull this babe-in-the-woods routine makes it pretty clear you're acting in bad faith.

And what are the chances that Luckbox is correct that Epstein is alive.

Mostly I was curious about which ones were the alt-right ones. I already know that you think any talk about neoliberal/neocon uniparty stuff is anti-semitic (it isn't).
It looks like we're getting to the same issues we had in the culture thread. Here comes Buckley Jr ruining culture talk due to his racism--except we have conspiracies ruined instead.
Given you looked dumb yesterday and you're going for the same ploy, I'd say it's you acting in bad faith.

I don't know that the "narrative" is problematic, but it seems like a problem that he was taken off suicide watch and given an opportunity to commit suicide. And it certainly seems like people in the prison were negligent. I have no problem with an investigation to determine whether anyone exerted influence to facilitate Epstein's ability to commit suicide.

Sure. I'd like more detail on the source of his wealth. And if there is more information on why he was not prosecuted more aggressively the first time around, I'd like to hear that as well.

I doubt it, but I will readily concede that I am not particularly knowledgeable about qanon. I don't spend nearly as much time on conspiracy stuff as you do.

Not really.

Ok. I'm glad you addressed those and I had crossposted asking if you would. 3 & 4 we can talk about. It does tie in with qanon stuff and qanon is disinformation--so it's a line of argument that you are missing.
The media angle I also consider really interesting--especially the way in which leaks have taken place, the whole story about somebody posting on 4chan about it before news broke, stuff with Vicky Ward, etc.
Not that any of that would change anything of course.

And as part of taking a critical look at the media--where is the media? It's been days since it was revealed that Epstein’s legal team had concerns about his suicide. I can't find any new stories on this. Baden is absent. The lawyers claimed they would have an updated response and they haven't produced one. (End of friday maybe?)
Let's just say even if you assume they are doing their work completely out of the media-- the media doesn't seem to be asking any questions but instead running with stuff about Prince Andrew and Ghislaine's alleged faked photos. Epstein story continues but without the murder mystery plot.
This doesn't surprise me but for the reality normalizers here, isn't it a bit odd that they'd make a big splash with all this broken bone stuff complete with lawyers challenging the results and then that whole front just goes completely cold? And what makes more sense--that this would happen if this were a completely organic story or if this is what we would see were it a psy-op?
(And that tmz story about the broken thyroid cartilage they claimed to have an exclusive on went nowhere but is worth mentioning).

Cellmate relocated, no camera, guards sleeping, screams heard from his cell. Lots of coincidence. The maxwell in n out pic being staged is the least weird part of this story which is really saying something.

Jeffrey Epstein's High Society Contacts
I want to draw attention to this article from last month that contains this interesting tidbit about Steve Bannon visiting Epstein.
I think there is an angle here I want to explore about how Trump's Epstein connections play into this--namely how it makes this thing a bipartisan story--but I also think the Bannon connection is interesting. But I'll have to look more at that.

I don't know or care. The reason for my earlier post was to expound on a mathematical/logic concept, ie an overarching piece of evidence that swamps all the evidence on the other side. Sometimes that concept entails ex presidents. Sometimes that concept entails two point conversions. Its all the same to me.

You seem to completely ignore the intelligence possibility. Maybe you don't think they're capable - I don't know but I'm not at all certain. I gave my formula before and it's more or less independent of the evidence and your last point.

Assuming non-zero possibility for intelligence related then I'd happily put the rest as zero possibility as it's a rounding error at most.

Okay, so to be clear, your theory is basically "there is no Epstein"?

The problem is basically your priors. Your theories about Epstein do not seem that insane if I'm willing to grant the assumptions that "psy-ops" are happening all the time and that there is a cabal of shadowy figures doing this stuff for nebulous reasons. I am willing to grant that ~all of the evidence for Epstein existing and being dead require at least some reliance on their being some non-fake government / media somewhere.

There is nothing specifically wrong with believing unfalsifiable things; there are probably many things that are true and yet would be extremely difficult to disprove if they were false. However, discussion of them becomes kind of pointless.

Can you expand on why you think this is happening and what the point is? And who, specifically, you think is behind it? I don't need names but like a general size and makeup of the world-controlling group would be nice.

I'm not sure you care about specifics here but I think the prior probability of murder being possible in this case is not nearly as low as you are making it out here. I'm not saying I think he was murdered but if multiple billionaires really desperately wanted him dead I don't think the probability of them pulling at off is even close to as low as 0.1%.

This isn't a paradox, it's just Bayesian probability.

Assume you have an AIDS test that is 99% accurate (i.e. if you have AIDS it says yes 99% / no 1% and if you don't have AIDS it says no 99% / yes 1%) but you know that only 0.1% of the population has AIDS.

If you pick a random person and give them the AIDS test and it comes back saying they have AIDS, what is the probability they have AIDS?



The fact that antisemites espouse conspiracy theories does not mean that others should not espouse them because of their similarity to what antisemites say. That's ****ing stupid.

I assume the basic history that we are told about Epstein teaching at the Dalton School and then going to work at Bear-Stearns is correct. Perhaps I shouldn't and especially because it's Vicky Ward writing his early history, but she at least references legal action with the SEC that he was involved in.
It's only after that time that Epstein seems to drop from public view--resurfacing in 2002 as an international man of mystery. Having Epstein's history fully nailed down though, I don't think is required or possible.
Re "priors": I wouldn't say psy-ops are happening all the time, regularly for sure--but I don't think those are necessary to think that something is amiss with the Epstein story. It can be looked at independently although I do think it is important to note how strongly connected it is with the basically known psy-op called qanon. But there is an actual connection there not merely the commonality of me thinking they are both psy-ops.
The issue that comes from saying that my thoughts are unfalsifiable is if that argument is used to reject real lines of argument. It is possible to connect dots and look at bigger pictures. It isn't trying to solve a geometry problem, it's using inductive reasoning to try and draw a bigger picture from incomplete information.
I watched a youtube take last night of somebody arguing that Epstein is basically a scapegoat for the ruling class where they've loaded up all their sins on him to burn him and hopefully reinstill some confidence in the system.
I think there is some amount of truth to there, but that that idea is basically wrong. I don't think the idea is to attempt to maintain or support the current system but to tear it down--which is much more radical idea obviously, but it ties into a lot of the fakery that surrounds Trump, particularly Russia stuff and qanon.
As far as the general size of the ruling class ~ 10,000 seems reasonable but it's just a guess. I don't think speculating about how all the ins and outs of how the system works will help us much here though.
There are issues with trying to use Bayesian probability to determine the outcomes of real world events. Prior probabilities is merely a euphemism for preconceived biases, and biases can be strong, especially in a world built on lies.

You keep saying this but I certainly don't know that qanon is a psy-op. What is the evidence of this?

This makes ~no sense to me at all. The Epstein thing certainly doesn't seem to have helped the "ruling class", if anything it has created the impression that huge numbers of them are pedophiles that are literally raping children.

I don't see how this benefits the elite over the prior situation where as far as I know people didn't think that. Why did they need a scapegoat for this? If it was actually happening, why would they intentionally make it public? I don't get it man.

This is all so vague.. I really would need more details esp. surrounding the bold.

And still, I want to know... why? By all accounts the current system is pretty great for people at the top. Tearing it all down seems like a really stupid thing for a billionaire to want to do. Why do you think they would want to do this? What is the point?

Just in general, it seems bizarre for the people at the top of any system to want to burn it down. It is the opposite of what you would expect their motivations to be.

Ok, 10k people. Is this like ~ the 10000 richest people in the world. AFAICT the cutoff for this would be ~$200mm net worth.

How do you get into the club. I know someone personally with a net worth (my extremely rough estimate) of about ~$100mm. If he flips a coin for his wealth and wins does he get to enter the club?

Do Powerball winners get into the club?

What? How would you conclude there is a secret system without any theory of how it works? Presenting a coherent theory of this seems extremely important to convincing anyone that this thing exists. The theory doesn't need to be right, but it needs to fit with the available evidence.

I agree that things change when the initial probability estimate is itself uncertain. However the general ideas still apply.

Well here you're just trolling.
I'll try to see about getting to your post later.

I thought about leaving that out because I thought you might interpret it that way, but it isn't a troll.

There was a $1.4bn powerball jackpot. Even if you took the $900mm cash option and paid 50% in taxes the winner of that thing is in the top 10,000 richest people in the world.

Is he part of the ruling class? Can he become part of it if he leverages his newfound wealth correctly?

How about the person I know with $100mm? Is he (a) ruling class? (b) not ruling class with no opportunity to join? (c) not ruling class but could join?

A big thing that makes this implausible to me is the necessity of a hard cutoff between in the club and not in the club in order to make these theories work.

It's also worth nothing that a lot of the members of this club seeming dislike each other, or at a minimum have very different ideas about government and how the world should work.

Can anyone really imagine Donald Trump, Sergey Brin, the Koch brothers, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Savarin, Rupert Murdock, Warren Buffett, and Vladimir Putin working collaboratively in a conspiracy?

I guess Luckbox is going to say that most of the apparent conflicts among members of this group are manufactured by the conspiracy. How is anyone supposed to respond to that?

I used to play tennis with a guy whose father is a billionaire--and not just any billionaire but a known, googleable one involved in philanthropy. I've never met him and I don't know the son that well either. We played a handful of times and the first time I took a set off him was the last time we played as his wife had a baby shortly after.
There are lots of very rich people out there and I don't have any reason to believe that any unspecified rich individual is "a part of the club".
But if you're one of those rich individuals attending meetings like Davos, or *gasp* the bilderberg group--then you become more suspect. I'm not sure why the bolded is such a concern for you.
I don't think hard cut-offs exist for the elite. Things are compartmentalized imo. I don't know this as fact but it's what I think. Someone can serve the ruling class without necessarily understanding all of what is happening or what the other hands are doing. And we're really getting off into the weeds but I suppose some of it is necessary if I'm going to make arguments like Epstein being the harbinger of an elite driven paradigm shift in society.

Can you see how having the appearance of a ruling class at odds with themselves would help serve that same ruling class?
Do you believe that when Trump calls the media the enemy of the people that he means it?

Remember how we had that discussion about non-falsifiability?