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Many types of information do not require any experts to validate it. Person X committed crime Y. Prime minister blah is having an affair with bleh. There is

Many types of information do not require any experts to validate it. Person X committed crime Y. Prime minister blah is having an affair with bleh. There is a secret base at location T studying V. Most pieces of juicy information aren’t like secret scientific studies for anti gravity machines. They are just mundane things with excitement because of who is doing them and who it’s happening to.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
It's all still susceptible to the same principle. You think Prime Minister Blah is having an affair because the French translators with the highest clearance you're using haven't been watching a particular children's television show and so are unknowingly mistranslating the references to it in the transcript. If the tape had been released on the internet some schoolteacher in Canada would have pointed that out.
- kortilla 3y ago
  You’re overthinking it. Information is rarely that complex. “Here’s footage from a hidden camera in a private jet of a prime minister banging his mistress”.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Information is rarely that complex. Information is always that complex. "Intelligence" is a bunch of rumors and innuendo that get mushed together into an analyst's report. Even when you have what you believe to be incontrovertible evidence, because this is spy shit you have the possibility of a foreign intelligence service finding your hidden camera and using it to feed you whatever they like. And the fewer eyes you have on it, the less likely you are to discover the inconsistency with reality.
rprwhite 3y ago
But… all of the things you mention, like much in life, are susceptible to misinterpretation. Do you know, or does it just appear that way to the best of your knowledge. The black/blue, or white/gold, dress is a good example of seeing something doesn’t make it true, or false. The much bigger, much more critical, secret is knowing someone did something because you, or more likely someone under your direct command, was involved in the action. In which case the secret is the culpability more than the action itself.
Sharlin 3y ago
The experts in this case are the analysts whose job is trying to figure out the sorts of things you mentioned from intel that’s almost always patchy, misleading, simply wrong, gathered from different, often conflicting sources. Sure, there’s also a lot of simple factual information, but the juiciest, most classified parts are likely intel reports that are by necessity a result of interpretation.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

It's all still susceptible to the same principle. You think Prime Minister Blah is having an affair because the French translators with the highest clearance you're using haven't been watching a particular children's television show and so are unknowingly mistranslating the references to it in the transcript. If the tape had been released on the internet some schoolteacher in Canada would have pointed that out.

kortilla 3y ago
You’re overthinking it. Information is rarely that complex. “Here’s footage from a hidden camera in a private jet of a prime minister banging his mistress”.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Information is rarely that complex. Information is always that complex. "Intelligence" is a bunch of rumors and innuendo that get mushed together into an analyst's report. Even when you have what you believe to be incontrovertible evidence, because this is spy shit you have the possibility of a foreign intelligence service finding your hidden camera and using it to feed you whatever they like. And the fewer eyes you have on it, the less likely you are to discover the inconsistency with reality.

rprwhite 3y ago

But… all of the things you mention, like much in life, are susceptible to misinterpretation. Do you know, or does it just appear that way to the best of your knowledge. The black/blue, or white/gold, dress is a good example of seeing something doesn’t make it true, or false. The much bigger, much more critical, secret is knowing someone did something because you, or more likely someone under your direct command, was involved in the action. In which case the secret is the culpability more than the action itself.

Sharlin 3y ago

The experts in this case are the analysts whose job is trying to figure out the sorts of things you mentioned from intel that’s almost always patchy, misleading, simply wrong, gathered from different, often conflicting sources. Sure, there’s also a lot of simple factual information, but the juiciest, most classified parts are likely intel reports that are by necessity a result of interpretation.