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She was confident in her judgement that the UVA Rape On Campus story that disgraced Rolling Stone was true as well. Then she was wrong there, and she could be

by nkurz 10y ago

She was confident in her judgement that the UVA Rape On Campus story that disgraced Rolling Stone was true as well. Then she was wrong there, and she could be wrong here too. But I think the greater commonality between the cases is that the "very difficult to believe events" turned out in the end to be false. Decide for yourself then I did. I read the thread, I watched the birthday video, and I read some of the suggestive emails (I even quoted one in a different comment here). I'm sure I've missed a lot, but my conclusion from the parts that I saw was that it's still extremely unlikely that Podesta is involved in pedophilia, and quite unlikely that any of the other named parties close to him are either. This is not statistics. It's deduction. Given all of these facts, which hypothesis best fits them? I think the most likely explanation is that the supposed points of evidence are misunderstandings due to massive cultural differences. In particular, I think the correlation between all the points of evidence you raise and the actual behavior of pedophiles is very low, and the conjunction of 100 such points is still overwhelmed by one's prior beliefs. Section 17 of Scott Alexander's recent article trying to explain why accusing Trump of being racist is counterproductive is relevant to this point: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wo... But we'll see. I could be wrong. I still have (barely) enough faith in the world to believe that if Reddit's interpretation is true, the truth will eventually come out.

camperman 10y ago
> But I think the greater commonality between the cases is that the "very difficult to believe events" turned out in the end to be false. The cases have literally nothing to do with each other. That Cecilia Kang has authored falsehoods about both changes nothing about the facts of either. > but my conclusion from the parts that I saw was that it's still extremely unlikely that Podesta is involved in pedophilia, and quite unlikely that any of the other named parties close to him are either. It's easy to just scratch the surface and conclude that there's nothing to see here. > I think the most likely explanation is that the supposed points of evidence are misunderstandings due to massive cultural differences. In particular, I think the correlation between all the points of evidence you raise and the actual behavior of pedophiles is very low, and the conjunction of 100 such points is still overwhelmed by one's prior beliefs. Except that the pedophile ring theory explains every single data point perfectly. Your theory doesn't explain anything. > I still have (barely) enough faith in the world to believe that if Reddit's interpretation is true, the truth will eventually come out. I hoped I was wrong. I don't think I am :(
- echaozh 10y ago
  You know, ordinary people may have massive cultural differences with pedophiles. Jokes aside, anything can be explained by massive cultural differences. Taking more wives, marrying underaged girls can be considered civilized so long as there are enough people backing it up.

by nkurz 10y ago

camperman 10y ago

> But I think the greater commonality between the cases is that the "very difficult to believe events" turned out in the end to be false. The cases have literally nothing to do with each other. That Cecilia Kang has authored falsehoods about both changes nothing about the facts of either. > but my conclusion from the parts that I saw was that it's still extremely unlikely that Podesta is involved in pedophilia, and quite unlikely that any of the other named parties close to him are either. It's easy to just scratch the surface and conclude that there's nothing to see here. > I think the most likely explanation is that the supposed points of evidence are misunderstandings due to massive cultural differences. In particular, I think the correlation between all the points of evidence you raise and the actual behavior of pedophiles is very low, and the conjunction of 100 such points is still overwhelmed by one's prior beliefs. Except that the pedophile ring theory explains every single data point perfectly. Your theory doesn't explain anything. > I still have (barely) enough faith in the world to believe that if Reddit's interpretation is true, the truth will eventually come out. I hoped I was wrong. I don't think I am :(

echaozh 10y ago
You know, ordinary people may have massive cultural differences with pedophiles. Jokes aside, anything can be explained by massive cultural differences. Taking more wives, marrying underaged girls can be considered civilized so long as there are enough people backing it up.