Randall Williams is your brother? He’s one of my favorites from the Meateater crew. Thanks for sharing his dissertation, I’ve been meaning to check it out at some point.
Wouldn’t the argument then be that it shouldn’t matter to her if her house goes down a bit in value since it wasn’t liquid wealth anyways?
So it’s a win-win in a way - either you’re rich enough to pay the mortgage on an expensive property in which case lowering property values in expensive locations is a bit redistributive or it won’t affect you really in which case who cares?
Did you read the article? I’m curious what points you actually refute. The author made specific arguments about the development of art and style, not the amount of culture produced.
New York despite all its flaws (or probably because of them) seems to actually be the producer of the most cutting edge art in the US, but it doesn’t amount to all that much.
I’m also not sure about the Russia point. War and censorship is not new for Russia.
I still wonder what Paul Stamets was alluding to about crimini mushrooms and cancer risk on his episode of the Joe Rogan podcast where he seemed unable to talk freely
Paul Stamets is a great story teller, but he’s regarded as a quack among the scientific community. Going on Joe Rogan and alluding to some conspiracy that would bring him harm for warning people of the truth about eating mushrooms is particularly silly, because in doing so he communicated the warning he supposedly had to hide. Are we supposed to believe the conspirators they would harm him are okay with him telling everyone to avoid portabello mushrooms as long as he doesn’t reveal why?
As per reddit, so take it with a grain of redd salt:
"What he doesn't want to say out loud in plain English is that agaratine containing mushrooms LIKE PORTABELLOS when consumed RAW are highly CARCINOGENIC while some compounds in white button mushrooms can help prevent and treat breast cancers agaratines can cause cancer, they are heat unstable so if cooked it's not a big risk but raw like they are served often in salads really could be causing cancer. If someone like Stamets came out and said that point blank he could be sued for making radical claims..." [0]
Its reddit though and far less hand wavy for the reddit poster to also note agaratine also degrades rapidly when stored and is only theorized to be carcinogenic, the proof of which remains to be shown.[1]
[1]Schulzová, V.; Hajslová, J.; Peroutka, R.; Gry, J.; Andersson, H. C. (2002). "Influence of storage and household processing on the agaritine content of the cultivated Agaricus mushroom". Food Additives and Contaminants. 19 (9): 853–62. doi:10.1080/02652030210156340. PMID 12396396. S2CID 23953741.
(https://sci-hub.se/10.1080/02652030210156340)
As the reddit comments state, "big portabello." Mushroom farming is a big business, even for Stametz, and widespread, predictably alarmist media coverage about the yes but no nature of carcinogens in criminis wouldn't be good for business. So he did a less than optimal job of steering clear of the issue on Rogancast. And everyone picked up on it, except for news media, so far...
I mean, scientists, public commentators, regulators have been calling out agribusiness over tobacco, sugar, meat, alcohol for over a century at this point. It slightly stretches credibility to imagine that someone complaining about mushrooms on a podcast would be the breaking point.
In general, the rule of thumb is to never eat any mushrooms raw. But there are a few exceptions, including button mushrooms. I won't eat raw mushrooms, except maybe truffles (if you really cook truffles then what's the point?).
And they are both currently, wide spread exceptions. Food safety bodies do not require them to be cook, their raw use is widespread, some mushroom experts still say it is ok, etc. The status quo has not yet changed.
It’s quite sad to read him talk in 2005 about how online content was so authentic and not PR spam :/
I wonder if there will be another new type of media technology that will go through this same evolution, or if “authentic” content will gather somewhere else.
I think this is partially why things like discord and in general semi-private circles are very popular. Here on HN discord is often criticized cause it's inherently a closed platform but that also makes it less accessible for content enshittificators.
I personally believe it's somewhat possible that there was some CIA involvement in JFK's assassination. I did not watch the entire video, but the part that addresses potential CIA involvement seems to have 2 main flaws IMO:
1. It only addresses the Vietnam War as a potential motive and "debunks" this motive. Geopolitics is complicated, and there are countless other potential motives, especially surrounding Cuba and the CIA's involvement there (Bay of Pigs, etc). The parts of the video I watched (including part 2) did not seem to address this at all. Eliminating one motive does not by any means eliminate the possibility of CIA involvement.
2. The video's creator seems to assume that CIA's involvement would consist of "hiring" Oswald to perform the assassination and that Oswald would have full awareness of the plans, etc. This is not the only scheme in which a conspiracy may have taken place, and in fact seems like a highly unlikely and unsophisticated scheme. It seems much more likely that Oswald was "used" rather than "hired" and that he was either convinced or coerced to shoot Kennedy. This is how murderous intelligence organizations do their dirty work (the CIA is known to have killed people) - via coercion, power, politics, propaganda, and not via direct orders or contracts. Assuming my theory is correct (of which I do not have certainty), Oswald likely had his own motives to wanting to shoot Kennedy, but it required a conspiracy to actually get him to carry through with it. This model of the relationships and dynamics involved seems entirely foreign to the video's creator and is completely unaddressed.
In general, discourse around the JFK assassination and potential conspiracies focuses way too much on the shooting itself - ballistic physics, positions of possible shooters, analysis of film. This is a complete distraction from the more important question which is around Lee Harvey Oswald's incredibly suspicious relationships and contacts with known CIA people.
This is what’s fascinating and terrifying about conspiracy theories. You’re clearly an intelligent person who can articulate their thoughts. But none of this is well reasoned. In the face of compelling evidence you propose vague, unsubstantiated alternative theories. This is a bottomless pit. It’s not hard to make up a fantasy to explain reality. But that way lies madness. Reasonable people can disagree and arrive at the truth. But constantly inventing unsubstantiated counter arguments simply delays the inevitable conclusion to the detriment of everyone.
Conjecture: A is not the culprit because motive xyz does not check out.
Reasoning: That doesn't exonerate A, who could have other motives.
Without agreeing with it, that looks perfectly well reasoned to me.
Compelling evidence exonerating the CIA you say? Well ok, I'll believe that when I see it, just like any other evidence from gravity onward. The CIA's docs haven't been declassified and released.
The meta argument is the one which is unreasonable. Forming reasonable small arguments is easy. People engage them easily. But because so many can be created so cheaply it’s possible for people’s minds to cloud.
Ok so you acknowledge it was well reasoned and you are apologising to op for saying it wasn't. And moving forward you've come to:
So many well reasoned arguments can be created so it is possible for people's minds to cloud.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here but it seems like it's not contributing anything much to the discussion. Perhaps your mind clouded before you wrote it?
edit: did you edit your original post /after/ I replied?
I would say that a compelling argument against the CIA being involved is that they would have done a way better job of covering their tracks if it really was them. Think about it: Professional spooks who know they would probably receive a death sentence for treason if caught planning an assassination attempt on the president.
And think about the number of people involved in an organisation like that who pledged allegiance to serve their country and now have to go along with killing the president. Just so incredibly unlikely. People watch too many cloak and dagger movies.
Conspiracies have several variables, from feasibility in general, to number of collaborators, to motives, to methods of discovery.
Assassinating a popular, progressive president in the 1960s was very doable and didn't take a lot of people to pull off. It will never be settled as to the true motive of the killing.
Compare this to "the moon landing was faked" or "9/11 towers were not only an inside job, but imploded" and they are much less plausible.
People DO conspire. History is filled with examples both large and small.
Suspecting a group of people of conspiring is not scary, there are lots of crazy theories out there that do no harm, ancient aliens, crystal skulls, all kinds of stuff.
"conspiracy theory" is a term with a lot of power, I would argue that people in power who actually do conspire have a pretty good incentive to call things that might expose them by that term. This ensures that the media cannot cover the topic without hurting their own reputation and that people who discuss it will be in the out-group and less likely to be taken seriously. In fact, they also have an incentive to play up the craziest ones (pizzagate, birds aren't real) to discredit and cover what might actually be a real case of conspiring.
You cannot stop people from coming up with crazy theories and talking to each other about them, particularly in the age of the Internet. The only thing you can do is discuss and provide evidence against them. Using that label only emboldens believers nowadays, since they become more convinced that the powerful are using the power of the term to suppress them.
Seems well-reasoned enough to me. That doesn't make it true, but given that the official story has some practical problems, it doesn't seem like something we can dismiss out of hand.
I think this comes down to a philosophical difference in how we approach truth in the face of uncertainty. The truth here is clearly uncertain (and probably unknowable) at this point. I approach uncertain situations with a Bayesian perspective, meaning I have a certain preconceived understanding of the dynamics at play and I allow facts to shift that conception to ultimately form a conclusion consisting of how likely I believe each scenario.
In this case, history dictates that my Bayesian priors should be strongly shifted towards at least some "conspiracy" at play considering the how other leaders have been killed in the past by some conspiracy. History also dictates specifically that the CIA is capable of similar conspiracies (although this would probably be the biggest/most dramatic). The facts paint a pretty clear picture of how the assassination actually happened, but an entirely unclear picture of the motivations. Other tidbits of information strengthen and weaken these prior understandings (in my opinion they strengthen overall), but since they are only vague tidbits, the shift in understanding is small.
I believe you call this "unsubstantiated" because you do not allow history to form a prior understanding of the dynamics at play. You also seem reticent to allow for fuzzy truths or uncertainties to exist. This is entirely incongruous to the way I, and many other folks on HN, perceive the world, hence the disagreement. There fundamentally is a bottomless pit of possibilities of what happened, but this is the method in which I and many other narrow down that pit to vague likelihoods.
> It’s not hard to make up a fantasy to explain reality.
Unfortunately this isn't limited to conspiracy theories. We spent the better part of the years with leaders and scientists forcing similarly baseless explanations down or throat rather than taking the time to collect the data that actually supported the politically favorable talking points. There were countless fantasies made up to explain the risks of the specific virus, efficacy of masks, net benefit of vaccination, etc.
> This is a complete distraction from the more important question which is around Lee Harvey Oswald's incredibly suspicious relationships and contacts with known CIA people.
Distraction is the point.
Distraction from several key points which beg a series of questions.
- Dulles formed the CIA from the OSS.
- Dulles hated Castro and thought he'd trigger a full scale invasion by launching the Bay of Pigs "raid"
- Dulles was not all that happy when that plan, not only failed, but triggered his dismissal from the agency he formed and headed up, by JFK.
- Dulles, may not have been a psychopath, but he calmly watched his sister almost drown in the ocean, before their finally mother rushed to save her.
JFK was forced to go along with the bay of pigs (he was against it) on the other hand he got us too close to the brink of annihilation --one can imagine these two things would displease some people --whether that rises to assassination by an internal faction is unknown --though maybe if they released all material that was supposed to be released we'd maybe have a better idea.
