Debt Rattle December 29 2016
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Esther Bubley Negro alley dwellings near the Capitol, Washington DC 1943 • Trump On Russia Sanctions: ‘We Ought To Get On With Our Lives’ (R.)
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 29 2016]You want proof regarding Russian hacking?
Absent Putin fessin’ up on TV, I wonder if there is any “proof” that would convince those who “ridicule” every announcement of the US government? Then again, even a Putin confession could be by a body double in a “false flag” event arranged and scripted by the CIA. You know, the way they faked the Apollo trips to the moon to enhance US prestige.
I guess that we have reached the point where there is no proof of anything said by anyone. Perhaps all government officials, scientists, journalists and commentators will now be required to add a “should be read as fiction” disclaimer to all their published work.
I hear they have already put that disclaimer on the front page of the Federal Register. I can’t prove it, but if you do happen to see a copy without the disclaimer, it’s a counterfeit published by the Russians.
How about the slightest attempt at proof? Even a half-hearted, fabricated, spurious, false proof? Anything? Because right now, we literally have nothing but “appeal to authority”, the most common logical fallacy. Even the head of the 17(??) intelligence agencies publically told the CIA to knock it off. The CIA who was neck-deep in Syria and the only one promoting anything–without proof–until they finally got some guy in the FBI to bark once. When called on it, they as ever doubled down by saying it was Putin personally. And how on earth could anyone even claim to know that? Were they in his office? By the way, what “hacking” is supposed to have occurred? They altered the votes inside the voting machines? Like in the paper-ballot states Stein recounted? The Election computers Georgia says the DHS hacked? Or did Russia release information from a guy whose email password was “Password”? Or off a completely unprotected private server doing state business whose very existence is a crime? Because if there hadn’t been 30,000+ felonies listed there, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Hey, maybe it’s just me, but in my America, before you create another major diplomatic incident in yet another attempt to start a nuclear first-strike WWIII — and/or say perhaps two Russian diplomats get murdered in public — you make your case to the American people, which requires at least one piece of evidence. But in the new world FIRST we punish people we disagree with…personally, by name, not nations or administrations…THEN we look for evidence and have due process. If we someday find time.
All this from the people who brought you such hits as “Saddam is throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait”, “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda”, “the war in Iraq will pay for itself” Scud missiles falling on CNN’s green screen, Brian “my helicopter was taking fire” Williams, Clapper’s “The NSA is not spying on the American people”, “The DNC did not skew the California Primary” (fired), “the DNC was not involved in election fraud” (fired), “There is no warrantless wiretapping” (looking at you AT&T) and the StingRay cell intercept does not exist/is not used by police. But that’s not all! Also, there is no SR-71 Blackbird, “we are not involved in Iran-Contra,” “we never interfere in other nation’s elections,” and “Remember the Maine.” I mean, why would anyone doubt an authority with a record like that?
Humor me. One shred of evidence before you destroy the entire world and everything on it. Try.
Update: they released a 13-page report on hacker “Grizzly”, which the DHS itself makes clear they provide no assurances of, and reserves the right to be entirely fabricated. So Joe, you got you wish, they did in very fact provide the security disclaimer “Should be read as fiction.”
You can’t make this stuff up, but you can die from it.
Dr. Diablo,
Agreed, there is a lot of disinformation out there, some of it even from official sources. How to sort the wheat from the chaff? I think the winnowing process is breaking down even more than usual and appearance of constant demands for “proof” is just evidence of the breakdown.
What seems to be happening is that confirmation bias has become the biggest factor in what most commentators call “truth” and how they assess information presented in media. Why do people believe the Russia Times over the NY Times, or Donald Trump over Barack Obama, or vice versa? Now it looks like the main reason is political preference.
If so, all attempts to discern reality through presentation of evidence and reasoned persuasion are doomed to fail. That’s too bad; one shouldn’t be gullible and believe everything, but total cynicism allows one to believe nothing but well established preconceptions, certainly nothing new. “Prove it” is just the cynic’s way of announcing that no evidence from the other side will be believed.
I think an adult observer has to read many opinions and assertions from many sources, make a best-case judgement about evidence, accuracy and authority and come to a tentative decision about what is happening. If you don’t believe some authority, don’t believe them. But don’t ask for a “proof”, which can never be provided to your satisfaction, and then tout lack of “proof” as evidence of falsity. “Prove it” is a schoolyard taunt that should be left in middle school.
Dr. Diablo,
Here’s a good take on the whole issue of how we decide where veracity comes from. The topic is climate change, but the article is applicable to just about everything.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14074214/climate-denialism-social
Thank you for your well-reasoned response. Although there are a score of things wrong with the Vox article, particularly concerning the difference in outlook and authority among Conservatives, we certainly agree that the problem is discerning what or whom to trust, because in the new absence of people–and authorities–who aren’t caught lying, all the time, about pretty much everything, data sets and even reality itself cannot be agreed upon, much to all our trouble.
Science is one of our most vaunted and verifiable institutions, which makes it their incredible fraud and carelessness the premier example for the trouble with authorities. Science, which is supposed to be experimentally verifiable and peer-reviewed flip-flops so much that it would be easy to put out an encyclopedia a year for all the “popular” studies that were disproved or critically revised. There are a steady stream of scandals involving paid-for science, doctorates having fabricated their entire thesis work, as well as computers generating 200 word-soup articles which are published without anyone having read them, much less checked them for anything like, oh, the sentences made sense. And this is science, a provable field!
When confronted with such an appalling state, science has quite indefensibly doubled-down as saying it’s not that bad, these are single cases, and so on. That is to say, even in a field where truth is everything and repeatability is god, there is no move to punish liars or advocate for proof. Yet they wish to have the same reputation, the same authority, amongst all our tribes they once did. This is illogical. The only question is which groups will withdraw their group belief in their institution first and who will withdraw it later on, an answer which we now know. Conservatives, or better put, Libertarians, are the ones who most question institutions, and withdraw consent until trust can be re-established. (Technically, Conservatives must believe in institutions despite their faults, as per Monarchy, Church, customs, etc. Words mean things and should be used accurately to get an accurate view, Vox)
And again, this is science. How about media, who as I noted have been increasingly lying until you could come up with 50 easily provable lies a day? Or the governments and their economists, which of course Ilargi daily points out or actively debunks, as their lies continue to impoverish every person on earth, for which thousands die, for example in Greece? You can’t just call conformation bias or let’s give the benefit of the doubt. At the same time, the different ease with which a group believes lies, or disbelieves everything puts them on wildly different tracks, with wildly different views: two cultures inhabiting the same geographic nations, leading to a heated friction.
The ideal solution of course is to stop lying. Reform the institutions, drive out the cheaters, punish fraud, and restore trust and morality. But then those who are profiting, who owe their careers, their power, their fortunes, their very lives, to lying and cheating, would then lose power, influence, and quite likely all be arrested, imprisoned, and possibly hung. So you’re not going to see anyone reform themselves. At all. As all other times in history, it will be forced upon them as liars and the incorrect worldview they espouse, will cease to work, because by definition, if it worked, it would be accurate and the true. It, and they, will be replaced with something that works better and is therefore more true, over the continual and violent resistance of the liars. That’s just the way it goes.
This is what the Automatic Earth has been saying and recording for years, highlighting that it’s a political problem (of power) which will play out in economics first (and the real world increasingly on). But you won’t find consensus, because it’s the accuracy and authority of the institutions that is being fought over. At my age, there’s never been a day in my life that authorities haven’t bare-faced lied to me. Everything possible has been extracted, and they are at the maximum–provably so within the economic data and “populist” rebellion. Other generations have had different experiences. It’s a shame to differ in beliefs, but when a life-long liar speaks, you suspect and check his word.
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