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This unbelievably cynical. I don’t buy it.

jjeaff 4y ago
Same. Are they faking the abnormally high rates of suicide too?
origin_path 4y ago
Why not? Disability benefits always have this problem. The UK did a massive effort some years ago where everyone claiming disability was re-reviewed, because there had been a constant run of stories in the press and complaints to MPs about people claiming it fraudulently. There were people who were claiming they couldn't leave the house who were caught going on foreign vacations, people who were acting like they couldn't walk who were caught on CCTV outside the assessment center walking perfectly healthily and so on. Where there's free money, there will be people who find ways to get it. Was ever thus.
- azinman2 4y ago
  What you’re describing is just generic fraud, and is expected to be uniformly distributed. Thus you’d expect to see it across the CIA at random and not in a big non-uniform lump with people spending time in Cuba all reporting similar conditions. Then you also have the fact that damage to their vestibular system can be seen.
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Yes, agreed, in this particular case it sounds a bit odd to be fraud. I'm just pointing out that the belief in disability benefits fraud in general isn't unbelievably cynical, it's pretty rational. In this case maybe it's offset by specific details of the cases.
- _HMCB_ 4y ago
  “Why not?” (!)
- chownie 4y ago
  You're missing the killer context to that UK story in that it turned out they'd been denying legitimate applications on a worrying scale, the fraud rate was actually fairly low
  - origin_path 4y ago
    The system's own claims of fraud rates can't be taken seriously; claimed fraud rates were low before the big re-assessment but abuse was sufficiently widespread for it to become a major political issue anyway. All disability benefits systems are always riven with fraud, this isn't exactly a secret. The CIA is based in the US which is a particularly extreme example: there the numbers on long term disability closely tracks general economic performance, with big rises when there's a recession and subsequent fall when the economy recovers. The UK certainly had many cases of outright "fraud" (whereby you should consider a claim fraudulent if the person is clearly exaggerating their inability to work). That's why at the start of the re-assessment there were over 7,000 people claiming they were unfit to work because they had sexually transmitted infections, and 10,000+ because they were too fat. Huge numbers of people voluntarily stopped receiving disability payments rather than be assessed at all! Looking it up, the overall rate at which decisions in the UK were appealed against was ~40%. About 60% of appeals were denied. If you wanted to you could therefore consider that the fraud rate was 24% towards the end of the program. But in the earlier days the fraud rate was more like 75%! That's a high fraud rate by any definition, but even so is certainly an under-estimate. The people in question are unemployed, they've got time and there are no downsides to appealing. Meanwhile the appeals authority is, again, entirely un-incentivized to deny applications beyond the fact that if they never did they'd be replaced. We should expect a massive false negative rate on denials. The original system ATOS used was check-box and computer driven for that reason: it's much easier to design an objective and fair system when you're not in front of someone who's crying and saying they're in pain. It would take a heart of stone to deny people "free" money which is what benefits creates at the point of individual assessment, so you can't rely on individual's subjective judgements. They will almost always side with the complainant, especially if they have to do it in person. There's tons of psychological and emotional downsides to being the "bad guy" and zero reward.
    - 4y ago
shmde 4y ago
If a system can be gamed, it will be gamed eventually.
bitmunk 4y ago
Cynical about the literal CIA? I'm still not convinced it's not some weird counter-productive PSYOP.
- azinman2 4y ago
  It’s about the people working for them. Not the organization itself. And what would be gained? Here’s the problem is conspiracy theories: when you divorce yourself from needing any evidence to draw a conclusion (nothing that could go before a court of law or a scientific paper), then anything is possible. No means to confirm or refute it! Why not claim that actually the CIA agents are working for Cuba and trying to reduce moral for the rest of them? That’s equally plausible as a generic psyop, but would at least have a more clear outcome. And I just made that up… or did I? Maybe I’m working for the CIA! I mean Cuba! No Russia! Once you go down that rabbit hole, you throw away everything. So the baby goes with the bath water. You’re totally ungrounded, and at that point you’re totally manipulatable to whenever wants to create a conspiracy for their own agenda, even if that agenda isn’t very clear or sophisticated (eg aliens are doing X). A healthy amount of skepticism is important. Too much and you’re wrong most of the time yet no logical argument or lack of evidence convinces you. If this happens at the societal level, it’s devastating.
  - bitmunk 4y ago
    Well the grandfather comment talked about disability compensation inflation, aka, simple fraud. I don't think it overly outrageous to consider that someone that works for an organization that (recently!) backed death squads, would stoop to fraud for personal gain. They have done literal illegal human experimentation (MKUltra) on random people or even on their own. I'm not saying that I KNOW this is X plot with Y intentions (most probably it's just mass psychosis) It's just that I do not take what a CIA operative says at face value.
    - spamuel 4y ago
      I don't think an individual working for the CIA inherits anything from the CIA training militias in South America any more than I think the guy who refills the coke machine at my job inherits national socialist sympathies.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
You should visit the South of Italy

Same. Are they faking the abnormally high rates of suicide too?

Why not? Disability benefits always have this problem. The UK did a massive effort some years ago where everyone claiming disability was re-reviewed, because there had been a constant run of stories in the press and complaints to MPs about people claiming it fraudulently. There were people who were claiming they couldn't leave the house who were caught going on foreign vacations, people who were acting like they couldn't walk who were caught on CCTV outside the assessment center walking perfectly healthily and so on. Where there's free money, there will be people who find ways to get it. Was ever thus.

azinman2 4y ago
What you’re describing is just generic fraud, and is expected to be uniformly distributed. Thus you’d expect to see it across the CIA at random and not in a big non-uniform lump with people spending time in Cuba all reporting similar conditions. Then you also have the fact that damage to their vestibular system can be seen.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Yes, agreed, in this particular case it sounds a bit odd to be fraud. I'm just pointing out that the belief in disability benefits fraud in general isn't unbelievably cynical, it's pretty rational. In this case maybe it's offset by specific details of the cases.
_HMCB_ 4y ago
“Why not?” (!)
chownie 4y ago
You're missing the killer context to that UK story in that it turned out they'd been denying legitimate applications on a worrying scale, the fraud rate was actually fairly low
- origin_path 4y ago
  The system's own claims of fraud rates can't be taken seriously; claimed fraud rates were low before the big re-assessment but abuse was sufficiently widespread for it to become a major political issue anyway. All disability benefits systems are always riven with fraud, this isn't exactly a secret. The CIA is based in the US which is a particularly extreme example: there the numbers on long term disability closely tracks general economic performance, with big rises when there's a recession and subsequent fall when the economy recovers. The UK certainly had many cases of outright "fraud" (whereby you should consider a claim fraudulent if the person is clearly exaggerating their inability to work). That's why at the start of the re-assessment there were over 7,000 people claiming they were unfit to work because they had sexually transmitted infections, and 10,000+ because they were too fat. Huge numbers of people voluntarily stopped receiving disability payments rather than be assessed at all! Looking it up, the overall rate at which decisions in the UK were appealed against was ~40%. About 60% of appeals were denied. If you wanted to you could therefore consider that the fraud rate was 24% towards the end of the program. But in the earlier days the fraud rate was more like 75%! That's a high fraud rate by any definition, but even so is certainly an under-estimate. The people in question are unemployed, they've got time and there are no downsides to appealing. Meanwhile the appeals authority is, again, entirely un-incentivized to deny applications beyond the fact that if they never did they'd be replaced. We should expect a massive false negative rate on denials. The original system ATOS used was check-box and computer driven for that reason: it's much easier to design an objective and fair system when you're not in front of someone who's crying and saying they're in pain. It would take a heart of stone to deny people "free" money which is what benefits creates at the point of individual assessment, so you can't rely on individual's subjective judgements. They will almost always side with the complainant, especially if they have to do it in person. There's tons of psychological and emotional downsides to being the "bad guy" and zero reward.
  - 4y ago

shmde 4y ago

If a system can be gamed, it will be gamed eventually.

bitmunk 4y ago

Cynical about the literal CIA? I'm still not convinced it's not some weird counter-productive PSYOP.

azinman2 4y ago
It’s about the people working for them. Not the organization itself. And what would be gained? Here’s the problem is conspiracy theories: when you divorce yourself from needing any evidence to draw a conclusion (nothing that could go before a court of law or a scientific paper), then anything is possible. No means to confirm or refute it! Why not claim that actually the CIA agents are working for Cuba and trying to reduce moral for the rest of them? That’s equally plausible as a generic psyop, but would at least have a more clear outcome. And I just made that up… or did I? Maybe I’m working for the CIA! I mean Cuba! No Russia! Once you go down that rabbit hole, you throw away everything. So the baby goes with the bath water. You’re totally ungrounded, and at that point you’re totally manipulatable to whenever wants to create a conspiracy for their own agenda, even if that agenda isn’t very clear or sophisticated (eg aliens are doing X). A healthy amount of skepticism is important. Too much and you’re wrong most of the time yet no logical argument or lack of evidence convinces you. If this happens at the societal level, it’s devastating.
- bitmunk 4y ago
  Well the grandfather comment talked about disability compensation inflation, aka, simple fraud. I don't think it overly outrageous to consider that someone that works for an organization that (recently!) backed death squads, would stoop to fraud for personal gain. They have done literal illegal human experimentation (MKUltra) on random people or even on their own. I'm not saying that I KNOW this is X plot with Y intentions (most probably it's just mass psychosis) It's just that I do not take what a CIA operative says at face value.
  - spamuel 4y ago
    I don't think an individual working for the CIA inherits anything from the CIA training militias in South America any more than I think the guy who refills the coke machine at my job inherits national socialist sympathies.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

You should visit the South of Italy