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I'm don't buy into conspiracy theories and am a firm advocate for Hanlon's razor but this story is really hard to swallow. This is the passage from the relevant

by air7 7y ago

I'm don't buy into conspiracy theories and am a firm advocate for Hanlon's razor but this story is really hard to swallow. This is the passage from the relevant Wikipedia article: > The jail informed the Justice Department, when Epstein was placed in the special housing unit, that he would have a cellmate and that a guard would look into the cell every 30 minutes. These procedures were not followed on the night he died.[4] On August 9, Epstein's cellmate was transferred out, and no new replacement cellmate was brought in. Later in the evening, in violation of the jail's normal procedure, Epstein was not checked every 30 minutes.[4] The two guards who were assigned to check his cell overnight fell asleep for about three hours.[21] Two cameras in front of Epstein's cell also malfunctioned that night.[5] Also assuming it's true one might expect, given the gravitas of this case, that the multiple people responsible for such gross negligence would be prosecuted and brought to light and justice.

ScottFree 7y ago
> I'm don't buy into conspiracy theories I do. How many "conspiracy theories" have we lived through in tech? I can name two right off the top of my head: prism and carnivore. Whenever there's an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"
- paulcole 7y ago
  > what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!" Ah, you mean like the link between vaccinations and autism? Or are you just taking about the conspiracy theories you want to believe in?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    That's a weak argument. One conspiracy theory was proven false so they must all be false? Does that apply to scientific studies, too?
    - paulcole 7y ago
      Pardon the bluntness, but your argument is equally weak. > Whenever I hear an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"
      - ScottFree 7y ago
        That's not an argument. My argument was the preceding statement. Maybe you should work on identifying what is and is not an argument before attempting to formulate your own.
        paulcole 7y ago
        How was my comment even an argument? More of an observation that you likely have a theory you don’t stand behind except when it validates your existing beliefs.
  - bvhg3 7y ago
    The general dismissal of "conspiracy theories" as being categorically untrue and the realm of insane people is such a tired notion. Happily for the power structure, it is the very notion they hope we all parrot. Countless comments here and in similar threads start with some preamble about not believing in conspiracy theories, but... People all over the world are engaged in conspiracies. A theory is an attempt to understand a complex reality. Anybody who thinks that governments ever cover up wrong-doing is a conspiracy theorist. Do you believe that your government ever lied about something? This whole insistence on not bearing the "label" is so mind-numbing. Can we get past the superficiality of name-calling and talk about reality? Of course, we sit around and say conspiracy theories can't possibly be true because of vaccine+autism and flat earth. End of story. Well it turns out there are links between vaccines and developmental disorders, but maybe those fears are overblown by scared parents (yeah, don't look too closely). You can argue that it's a worthwhile risk to take for the preservation of civilization. But to say there is no link is false. The world is full horror being perpetrated by powerful people. But we were taught by the evening news that conspiracists are whackos. One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth.
    - paulcole 7y ago
      > One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth. Like I asked the other person with this exact same opinion. Do you believe this to be true of all media or only the media you already disagree with?
      - ScottFree 7y ago
        I've already answered this. Drop the rhetoric, please.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- xvector 7y ago
  How many times do people need to be hit over the head with conspiracy "theories" to realize that many of them are startlingly close to reality? The inability of most people to read between the lines baffles me. It's not that hard, especially for an adult with even the barest understanding of the concepts of nuance and subtlety.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  You aren't paranoid if your paranoias are true
d1zzy 7y ago
That's only extraordinary if you assume that: - those cameras functioned before that night, when they might as well have been broken for months and/or often broke - moving cellmates very rarely results in not having someone else move in in the same day - guards don't usually sleep on their shifts If however, you assume the much more likely situation that the cameras were already broken or often broke, that guards pretty much always sleep on their shifts and don't follow procedure, and that cellmates are often moved out without a replacement, then it stops looking very unlikely. Then it's just a case of selection, the fact that Epstein succeeded in killing himself means he had the opportunity to do it, meaning the fact that we look into the situation after he has successfully killed himself implies all those things that need to happen for that to be possible likely did happen. It's like finding bugs in complex multi-layered systems (think airplanes), it's not sufficient for one thing to fail to get a catastrophe, but a multitude of failures combined. And in this case that doesn't seem unlikely at all unless we get more data as to how statistically unlikely each of the listed conditions are normally in that prison.
- doctorpangloss 7y ago
  And that people could be put into suicide watch as a punitive measure. So suicides are rare despite all the flaws because most people on suicide watch aren’t suicidal.
- fiblye 7y ago
  That’s quite a few assumptions to make. Notably that a prison with such high profile prisoners is fine with cameras that break regularly, but don’t permanently break—just small periods of time, and nobody ever considered to get such a strange problem fixed. If those cameras failed often, I’m sure they’d have countless hours of videos that spontaneously cut off as proof.

by air7 7y ago

ScottFree 7y ago

> I'm don't buy into conspiracy theories I do. How many "conspiracy theories" have we lived through in tech? I can name two right off the top of my head: prism and carnivore. Whenever there's an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"

paulcole 7y ago
> what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!" Ah, you mean like the link between vaccinations and autism? Or are you just taking about the conspiracy theories you want to believe in?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ScottFree 7y ago
  That's a weak argument. One conspiracy theory was proven false so they must all be false? Does that apply to scientific studies, too?
  - paulcole 7y ago
    Pardon the bluntness, but your argument is equally weak. > Whenever I hear an overwhelming chorus of "that's conspiracy theory!" what I hear is "don't look too closely! You might find something!"
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      That's not an argument. My argument was the preceding statement. Maybe you should work on identifying what is and is not an argument before attempting to formulate your own.
      - paulcole 7y ago
        How was my comment even an argument? More of an observation that you likely have a theory you don’t stand behind except when it validates your existing beliefs.
- bvhg3 7y ago
  The general dismissal of "conspiracy theories" as being categorically untrue and the realm of insane people is such a tired notion. Happily for the power structure, it is the very notion they hope we all parrot. Countless comments here and in similar threads start with some preamble about not believing in conspiracy theories, but... People all over the world are engaged in conspiracies. A theory is an attempt to understand a complex reality. Anybody who thinks that governments ever cover up wrong-doing is a conspiracy theorist. Do you believe that your government ever lied about something? This whole insistence on not bearing the "label" is so mind-numbing. Can we get past the superficiality of name-calling and talk about reality? Of course, we sit around and say conspiracy theories can't possibly be true because of vaccine+autism and flat earth. End of story. Well it turns out there are links between vaccines and developmental disorders, but maybe those fears are overblown by scared parents (yeah, don't look too closely). You can argue that it's a worthwhile risk to take for the preservation of civilization. But to say there is no link is false. The world is full horror being perpetrated by powerful people. But we were taught by the evening news that conspiracists are whackos. One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth.
  - paulcole 7y ago
    > One thing I've learned is that if the media repeats something over and over again in order to imprint it into your brain, it's probably because there is an agenda behind it and not because it's the good old truth. Like I asked the other person with this exact same opinion. Do you believe this to be true of all media or only the media you already disagree with?
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      I've already answered this. Drop the rhetoric, please.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
xvector 7y ago
How many times do people need to be hit over the head with conspiracy "theories" to realize that many of them are startlingly close to reality? The inability of most people to read between the lines baffles me. It's not that hard, especially for an adult with even the barest understanding of the concepts of nuance and subtlety.
tomc1985 7y ago
You aren't paranoid if your paranoias are true

d1zzy 7y ago

That's only extraordinary if you assume that: - those cameras functioned before that night, when they might as well have been broken for months and/or often broke - moving cellmates very rarely results in not having someone else move in in the same day - guards don't usually sleep on their shifts If however, you assume the much more likely situation that the cameras were already broken or often broke, that guards pretty much always sleep on their shifts and don't follow procedure, and that cellmates are often moved out without a replacement, then it stops looking very unlikely. Then it's just a case of selection, the fact that Epstein succeeded in killing himself means he had the opportunity to do it, meaning the fact that we look into the situation after he has successfully killed himself implies all those things that need to happen for that to be possible likely did happen. It's like finding bugs in complex multi-layered systems (think airplanes), it's not sufficient for one thing to fail to get a catastrophe, but a multitude of failures combined. And in this case that doesn't seem unlikely at all unless we get more data as to how statistically unlikely each of the listed conditions are normally in that prison.

doctorpangloss 7y ago
And that people could be put into suicide watch as a punitive measure. So suicides are rare despite all the flaws because most people on suicide watch aren’t suicidal.
fiblye 7y ago
That’s quite a few assumptions to make. Notably that a prison with such high profile prisoners is fine with cameras that break regularly, but don’t permanently break—just small periods of time, and nobody ever considered to get such a strange problem fixed. If those cameras failed often, I’m sure they’d have countless hours of videos that spontaneously cut off as proof.