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>No, they aren't Have I been mislead? If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such cons

>No, they aren't Have I been mislead? If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.

rspeele 6y ago
It's kinda like how Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster could be real, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that they are almost certainly not real. Some motivated people have spent a lot of time and money trying to find proof of those creatures, and come up with nothing but some blurry pictures (including some known to be intentional fakes) and conjecture. So there's not much reason to take them seriously.
- jtxxwl2 6y ago
  It's also kinda like how Al Capone might not have ordered the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he probably did, even though no one could definitively prove it. And also kinda like how Kim Jong Un might be the preferred candidate of 100% of North Koreans, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he is almost certainly not.
  - rspeele 6y ago
    Thanks for the additional examples. Another good one is the moon landing. I don't strictly know we went to the moon, I don't have direct proof, but based on the evidence available to me and the crappy arguments from people claiming we didn't, I'm pretty confident it happened. As usual these arguments never really end, but thanks to prediction markets, this time the people who believed the possible-but-highly-unlikely outcome, "Trump actually won", ended up donating lots of their money to the people who believed the much more simple and plausible scenario: "No, he didn't".
    - jtxxwl2 6y ago
      >this time the people who believed the possible-but-highly-unlikely outcome, "Trump actually won", ended up donating lots of their money to the people who believed the much more simple and plausible scenario: "No, he didn't". No, that's not what happened. People who believed the odds of the courts ruling in favor of Trump made the payout worth it gave their money to people who believed the odds of that not happening made the payout for that scenario worth it. Of course, courts only have access to the evidence which is given to them by either side, so really we only know that the evidence Trump's legal team was able to get its hands on on short notice was not sufficient to convince the court to take the very significant step of overturning election results. We do not know who "actually" got more legitimate votes.
yibg 6y ago
Big difference between the general statement of "vote rigging is impossible" and "this last election wasn't rigged". The usual claim is the latter, not the former.
- jtxxwl2 6y ago
  If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries I'm not convinced that it is. Sure, election rigging happens, but that's not the “getting away with it” that would be at issue. Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes), or it usually is quite evident in even the very short-term, and either fails to do enough to change results, does enough to change results but is corrected by institutional processes, or it does enough to change results and is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried. There's not a whole lot of modern cases where election fraud is discovered only long-after the event rather than virtually in real-time. Is vote rigging and conspiracy to rig votes possible in the modern world? Yes. Is it ever both significant and not immediately evident? It's not impossible, but it doesn't seem to be the case. If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered.
    - jtxxwl2 6y ago
      >Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes) Why do you think that's implausible? What evidence of election fraud would you expect to be left behind that would be difficult to dispose of? >is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried. By whom? >If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered. Why would that be expected? Many crimes are much harder to prove if the perpetrator is not caught in the act. Why would you not expect election fraud to be among them?

rspeele 6y ago

It's kinda like how Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster could be real, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that they are almost certainly not real. Some motivated people have spent a lot of time and money trying to find proof of those creatures, and come up with nothing but some blurry pictures (including some known to be intentional fakes) and conjecture. So there's not much reason to take them seriously.

jtxxwl2 6y ago
It's also kinda like how Al Capone might not have ordered the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he probably did, even though no one could definitively prove it. And also kinda like how Kim Jong Un might be the preferred candidate of 100% of North Koreans, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he is almost certainly not.
- rspeele 6y ago
  Thanks for the additional examples. Another good one is the moon landing. I don't strictly know we went to the moon, I don't have direct proof, but based on the evidence available to me and the crappy arguments from people claiming we didn't, I'm pretty confident it happened. As usual these arguments never really end, but thanks to prediction markets, this time the people who believed the possible-but-highly-unlikely outcome, "Trump actually won", ended up donating lots of their money to the people who believed the much more simple and plausible scenario: "No, he didn't".
  - jtxxwl2 6y ago
    >this time the people who believed the possible-but-highly-unlikely outcome, "Trump actually won", ended up donating lots of their money to the people who believed the much more simple and plausible scenario: "No, he didn't". No, that's not what happened. People who believed the odds of the courts ruling in favor of Trump made the payout worth it gave their money to people who believed the odds of that not happening made the payout for that scenario worth it. Of course, courts only have access to the evidence which is given to them by either side, so really we only know that the evidence Trump's legal team was able to get its hands on on short notice was not sufficient to convince the court to take the very significant step of overturning election results. We do not know who "actually" got more legitimate votes.

yibg 6y ago

Big difference between the general statement of "vote rigging is impossible" and "this last election wasn't rigged". The usual claim is the latter, not the former.

jtxxwl2 6y ago
If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries I'm not convinced that it is. Sure, election rigging happens, but that's not the “getting away with it” that would be at issue. Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes), or it usually is quite evident in even the very short-term, and either fails to do enough to change results, does enough to change results but is corrected by institutional processes, or it does enough to change results and is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried. There's not a whole lot of modern cases where election fraud is discovered only long-after the event rather than virtually in real-time. Is vote rigging and conspiracy to rig votes possible in the modern world? Yes. Is it ever both significant and not immediately evident? It's not impossible, but it doesn't seem to be the case. If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered.
  - jtxxwl2 6y ago
    >Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes) Why do you think that's implausible? What evidence of election fraud would you expect to be left behind that would be difficult to dispose of? >is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried. By whom? >If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered. Why would that be expected? Many crimes are much harder to prove if the perpetrator is not caught in the act. Why would you not expect election fraud to be among them?