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Why is anyone who challenges incomplete information labeled as a conspiracy theorist? The circumstances of Epstein's death are highly suspect and make no sense

Why is anyone who challenges incomplete information labeled as a conspiracy theorist? The circumstances of Epstein's death are highly suspect and make no sense at all. There are questions that need to be answered

andrewclunn 4y ago
We are embracing the term, because when everyone is a conspiracy theorist, it won't work to discredit people anymore by calling them that.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  If you ever find that teapot orbiting out beyond Saturn, let everyone know.
- krapp 4y ago
  I mean, the conspiracy theorists insisted Ghislaine Maxwell was going to be "suicided", there would never be a trial, all this information would be conveniently memory-holed and the media would never cover anything related to Epstein because their globalist controllers would never allow it. Literally everything happening right now goes against the conspiracy theorists' theories. Hell, they were trying to decode secret messages in Democratic Party emails about nonexistent sex dungeons in pizzerias when this broke, Epstein wasn't even on their radar. Now they're insisting they were right about everything all along. They're discredited because their thumbtacks and string bullshit always harms legitimate inquiry and discourse more than it ever helps[0..2]. They're only ever right in the same way a broken clock is. [0]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-qanon-impedes-legitimate-anti-trafficking-groups_n_5f4eacb9c5b69eb5c03592d1 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-qanon-impedes-legitimate-... [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the-children-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the... [2]https://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/article/view/579/436 https://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/a... edit: posted sources.
  - hanselot 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - henriquez 4y ago
    A broken clock would be right more often than the government and mainstream media have been on cases like this.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Except of course all the evidence which shows that isn't the case. Really, you should stop amplifying this nonsense.
  - andrewclunn 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - krapp 4y ago
      You think I've never encountered anyone like this in the wild? I live in Texas and I hang out here all the time. What I and most people understand about them and their beliefs comes directly from their own lips and keyboard fingers. Classic attempt at deflection, though. You can't discredit the message, so attack the messenger.
      - andrewclunn 4y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 4y ago
        Please stop. We have to ban accounts that post like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - dang 4y ago
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
His death aside, what is there to dispute? Did he or did he not have an island where he would enslave/have sex with 14 year old girls or not? Did he or did he not have girls inside the high school getting paid to solicit and bring other high school girls to his house to give him massages? Like what was Ghislaine Maxwell's defense? He was innocent and so was she? None of it happened? Some of it happened?
- colpabar 4y ago
  I'm confused by this comment - are you implying the answers to these questions are all so obvious that they are not worth pursuing evidence of?
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    I assumed they were obvious.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  No, I think his death is the issue. As with other magnets for conspiracy theories (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) the issues surrounding his death are enough. Having said the above though I care little about Epstein or the circumstances regarding his death. (Marvin Minsky, who I used to have an admiration for I have come to loathe from his association with Epstein.)
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > No, I think his death is the issue. There were already prominent and rampant conspiracy theories long before his 2019 arrest and death.
    - deadly_syn 4y ago
      I feel like conspiracy rheory is a reductive term considering epstien was found guilty twice over in court.
- 4y ago
anigbrowl 4y ago
The circumstances of Epstein's death are highly suspect and make no sense at all. I entirely agree. On the other hand, a lot of people insisted Epstein had been done in by the Clintons, (without specifying how of course), ignoring both the fact of Barr as AG being ultimately responsible for his safety and Epstein and Trump had a long-standing social relationship. So a lot of people who were 'just asking questions' seemed to be highly selective about which questions they were willing to entertain. One can generalize from this case to the wider moral panic underway at present about pedophilia. A great deal of it is in bad faith and aimed at injuring political opponents rather than making anyone safer or figuring out the truth.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  More importantly, most of the people screaming about pedophilia are arguably pedophiles escaping justice! Like, it's clear their supporters aren't blind, they just don't care.
tshaddox 4y ago
This always comes up any time someone uses the term "conspiracy theory," as if we don't all understand what is meant by the term. It's just disingenuous to pretend like we don't all know what sorts of conspiracy theories henriquez is referring to. Even if you genuinely believe in some of them, you still know what the comment is referring to.
- pksebben 4y ago
  Because it's not a useful term. It's a piece of political jargon used to dismiss an idea as crackpot. It's meaning isn't specific and will change depending on who's using it and in what context. I'll weekend my understanding, if I hear a definition of conspiracy theory that doesn't contain an ad hominem assessment.
tootie 4y ago
There is incomplete evidence on so, so many things. The worst allegations against Epstein and his supposed coterie of the entire world's elite is just something so incredibly delicious to the conspiracy-minded, that it's almost become a given that it's all true and the information is being suppressed. The rabbit hole is so deep and so broad it's just everything. I look at this kind of thing and think "maybe?" but like there are open-air conspiracies 1000X worse that play out in the media or every detail gets leaked at every step. It just seems unlikely that there really are much more salacious details to uncover.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I think there's a nuance between healthy skepticism and conspiracy theory. A skeptic, when faced with incomplete evidence, concludes they don't know. Maybe they would like to know more, who knows. A conspiracy theorist, when faced with incomplete evidence starts speculating about what could really be going on, and takes the absent evidence as a sort of soft proof they are right. Why else would evidence be missing, after all, if lizard bigfoot wasn't secretly running the shadow government. So for example, strictly speaking, very few of us have solid proof Epstein even existed, let alone died. We haven't seen him in person, haven't been to a lot of the places, only seen pictures and documents and 3rd hand accounts. This is reason to have some level of doubt about this, but does not elevate any other hypothesis to credibility, they're also just as doubtful if not more so. That's the difference between skepticism and conspiracy theory: staying at "I don't know". There are a great deal of things we have no cause to say we know for certain. That's just how it is.
- type0 4y ago
  > very few of us have solid proof Epstein even existed that's not scepticism
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    It absolutely is. Arguably closer to Capital S Skepticism (e.g. pyrrhonism), but it's still a case of lower case s skepticism. Starting from a position of not knowing, I have not seen empirical proof of Epstein's existence. I have not met him, I haven't met anyone who has met him, I've only seen things written about him, and regarding things written when I read about things written about the sort of things I know well myself, they're often wrong or incomplete. I don't judge the evidence for his having existed as incontrovertible. I'd say it's probably likely he existed, but I can't prove it. And as a skeptic, I would say of the things I can not prove, that I never left my starting point: I don't know.
  - beezlewax 4y ago
    Yep this was making sense until they started to get all philosophical. I mean can you prove anyone exists or anything?
moremetadata 4y ago
I think the instructions can be found in the bible. The depravity of the Canaanites an area which included Jericho, were opportunities for exploitation. https://womeninthebible.net/women-bible-old-new-testaments/rahab-prostitute/ https://womeninthebible.net/women-bible-old-new-testaments/r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho#Biblical_account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho#Biblical_acc... The label conspiracy theory was coined as far back as 1863 but was popularised by the CIA and no doubt other security services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_U... Honey Traps do seem to be the preserve of educated people, older people and security services personnel. "Conspiracy Theory" tends to be more related to males, where as the female equivalent is "gossiping" and "rumour mongering". The legal equivalent is "heresay".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

andrewclunn 4y ago

We are embracing the term, because when everyone is a conspiracy theorist, it won't work to discredit people anymore by calling them that.

shadowgovt 4y ago
If you ever find that teapot orbiting out beyond Saturn, let everyone know.
krapp 4y ago
I mean, the conspiracy theorists insisted Ghislaine Maxwell was going to be "suicided", there would never be a trial, all this information would be conveniently memory-holed and the media would never cover anything related to Epstein because their globalist controllers would never allow it. Literally everything happening right now goes against the conspiracy theorists' theories. Hell, they were trying to decode secret messages in Democratic Party emails about nonexistent sex dungeons in pizzerias when this broke, Epstein wasn't even on their radar. Now they're insisting they were right about everything all along. They're discredited because their thumbtacks and string bullshit always harms legitimate inquiry and discourse more than it ever helps[0..2]. They're only ever right in the same way a broken clock is. [0]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-qanon-impedes-legitimate-anti-trafficking-groups_n_5f4eacb9c5b69eb5c03592d1 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-qanon-impedes-legitimate-... [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the-children-trafficking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/technology/qanon-save-the... [2]https://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/article/view/579/436 https://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/a... edit: posted sources.
- hanselot 4y ago
  [flagged]
- henriquez 4y ago
  A broken clock would be right more often than the government and mainstream media have been on cases like this.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Except of course all the evidence which shows that isn't the case. Really, you should stop amplifying this nonsense.
- andrewclunn 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - krapp 4y ago
    You think I've never encountered anyone like this in the wild? I live in Texas and I hang out here all the time. What I and most people understand about them and their beliefs comes directly from their own lips and keyboard fingers. Classic attempt at deflection, though. You can't discredit the message, so attack the messenger.
    - andrewclunn 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - dang 4y ago
        Please stop. We have to ban accounts that post like this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 4y ago

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

His death aside, what is there to dispute? Did he or did he not have an island where he would enslave/have sex with 14 year old girls or not? Did he or did he not have girls inside the high school getting paid to solicit and bring other high school girls to his house to give him massages? Like what was Ghislaine Maxwell's defense? He was innocent and so was she? None of it happened? Some of it happened?

colpabar 4y ago
I'm confused by this comment - are you implying the answers to these questions are all so obvious that they are not worth pursuing evidence of?
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  I assumed they were obvious.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
No, I think his death is the issue. As with other magnets for conspiracy theories (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) the issues surrounding his death are enough. Having said the above though I care little about Epstein or the circumstances regarding his death. (Marvin Minsky, who I used to have an admiration for I have come to loathe from his association with Epstein.)
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > No, I think his death is the issue. There were already prominent and rampant conspiracy theories long before his 2019 arrest and death.
  - deadly_syn 4y ago
    I feel like conspiracy rheory is a reductive term considering epstien was found guilty twice over in court.
4y ago

anigbrowl 4y ago

The circumstances of Epstein's death are highly suspect and make no sense at all. I entirely agree. On the other hand, a lot of people insisted Epstein had been done in by the Clintons, (without specifying how of course), ignoring both the fact of Barr as AG being ultimately responsible for his safety and Epstein and Trump had a long-standing social relationship. So a lot of people who were 'just asking questions' seemed to be highly selective about which questions they were willing to entertain. One can generalize from this case to the wider moral panic underway at present about pedophilia. A great deal of it is in bad faith and aimed at injuring political opponents rather than making anyone safer or figuring out the truth.

mrguyorama 4y ago
More importantly, most of the people screaming about pedophilia are arguably pedophiles escaping justice! Like, it's clear their supporters aren't blind, they just don't care.

tshaddox 4y ago

This always comes up any time someone uses the term "conspiracy theory," as if we don't all understand what is meant by the term. It's just disingenuous to pretend like we don't all know what sorts of conspiracy theories henriquez is referring to. Even if you genuinely believe in some of them, you still know what the comment is referring to.

pksebben 4y ago
Because it's not a useful term. It's a piece of political jargon used to dismiss an idea as crackpot. It's meaning isn't specific and will change depending on who's using it and in what context. I'll weekend my understanding, if I hear a definition of conspiracy theory that doesn't contain an ad hominem assessment.

tootie 4y ago

There is incomplete evidence on so, so many things. The worst allegations against Epstein and his supposed coterie of the entire world's elite is just something so incredibly delicious to the conspiracy-minded, that it's almost become a given that it's all true and the information is being suppressed. The rabbit hole is so deep and so broad it's just everything. I look at this kind of thing and think "maybe?" but like there are open-air conspiracies 1000X worse that play out in the media or every detail gets leaked at every step. It just seems unlikely that there really are much more salacious details to uncover.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

I think there's a nuance between healthy skepticism and conspiracy theory. A skeptic, when faced with incomplete evidence, concludes they don't know. Maybe they would like to know more, who knows. A conspiracy theorist, when faced with incomplete evidence starts speculating about what could really be going on, and takes the absent evidence as a sort of soft proof they are right. Why else would evidence be missing, after all, if lizard bigfoot wasn't secretly running the shadow government. So for example, strictly speaking, very few of us have solid proof Epstein even existed, let alone died. We haven't seen him in person, haven't been to a lot of the places, only seen pictures and documents and 3rd hand accounts. This is reason to have some level of doubt about this, but does not elevate any other hypothesis to credibility, they're also just as doubtful if not more so. That's the difference between skepticism and conspiracy theory: staying at "I don't know". There are a great deal of things we have no cause to say we know for certain. That's just how it is.

type0 4y ago
> very few of us have solid proof Epstein even existed that's not scepticism
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  It absolutely is. Arguably closer to Capital S Skepticism (e.g. pyrrhonism), but it's still a case of lower case s skepticism. Starting from a position of not knowing, I have not seen empirical proof of Epstein's existence. I have not met him, I haven't met anyone who has met him, I've only seen things written about him, and regarding things written when I read about things written about the sort of things I know well myself, they're often wrong or incomplete. I don't judge the evidence for his having existed as incontrovertible. I'd say it's probably likely he existed, but I can't prove it. And as a skeptic, I would say of the things I can not prove, that I never left my starting point: I don't know.
- beezlewax 4y ago
  Yep this was making sense until they started to get all philosophical. I mean can you prove anyone exists or anything?

moremetadata 4y ago

I think the instructions can be found in the bible. The depravity of the Canaanites an area which included Jericho, were opportunities for exploitation. https://womeninthebible.net/women-bible-old-new-testaments/rahab-prostitute/ https://womeninthebible.net/women-bible-old-new-testaments/r... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho#Biblical_account https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jericho#Biblical_acc... The label conspiracy theory was coined as far back as 1863 but was popularised by the CIA and no doubt other security services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_Usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_U... Honey Traps do seem to be the preserve of educated people, older people and security services personnel. "Conspiracy Theory" tends to be more related to males, where as the female equivalent is "gossiping" and "rumour mongering". The legal equivalent is "heresay".

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]