Live data from Hacker News

5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

cbc.ca

81–90 of 100 posts

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different than a placebo effect? You could give everyone a sugar pill and then if a few people started complaining about the side effects, another 30-40% would quickly follow. The human brain is incredibly susceptible to group think. I can't remember the exact psychological experiment, but I remember learning about how they did an experiment where they'd have a group look at pictures of things to defi…

That's what "psychosomatic" means. But the prospect you raise is maybe one of the scariest and lends itself well to conspiracies. It can mean someone, maybe deliberately, caused some mysterious illness among diplomats, through suggestion alone, causing international tension. Not my hypothesis of choice, but it may actually be a more plausible conspiracy theory than sonic weapons. Something happened, and something cau…

the fact that it affected 1000 people doesn't really matter. all you really have to do is explain the first 2, which can be something as benign as a social hypochondriac woke up with a headache.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#82
post #9

Everyone who looked at Havana Syndrome when it came out with a critical eye realized immediately it was a BS story. Sonic weapons? Oh please. Thing is, this sort of thing happens all the time. A prominent and current example is cops and fentanyl. If you listen to cops, they will tell you that just being in the rom with fentanyl can be deadly, breathing it in can be deadly. I'm not sure where this started but it's bec…

I agree with pretty much everything except for this: >Crime is lower on pretty much every metric than it was 20-30 years ago where the last big panic set in the mandatory minimum mania and the carceral state exploded. I see 'crime' all over now... it just isn't considered a crime now that it's been decriminalized. 20-30 years ago, I never ever saw open drug sales and drug use, open prostitution, mass looting/shoplift…

> I see 'crime' all over now..

This is anecdotal. The data just doesn't back it up (eg [1]). You've brought up a number of issues As for retail theft, even the Walgreens CEO had to admit the problem was overstated [2]. There are a bunch of reasons for it. One is the crime narrative. Another is its easier for companies to blame theft rather than poor inventory management and retail operations.

When you say you "see" crime everywhere, I suspect you mean it's all over your [social media of choice]. Today everyone has a camera.

Another example is kidnapping. It wasn't that long ago we had the generation with TV ads asking parents if they knew where their kids were and telling them to come home when the street lights came on. Now? There's a completely overblown fear of kidnappings. We hear figures of >800K children being reported missing a year. Almost all of them are custody issues. Stranger kidnappings are more like ~8/year [3].

Fomenting fear of a crime epidemic is an intentional and well-funded political objective.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/briefing/shoplifting-data...

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...

[3]: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N2SY199/

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#83
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what "psychosomatic" means. But the prospect you raise is maybe one of the scariest and lends itself well to conspiracies. It can mean someone, maybe deliberately, caused some mysterious illness among diplomats, through suggestion alone, causing international tension. Not my hypothesis of choice, but it may actually be a more plausible conspiracy theory than sonic weapons. Something happened, and something cau…

the fact that it affected 1000 people doesn't really matter. all you really have to do is explain the first 2, which can be something as benign as a social hypochondriac woke up with a headache.

It matters to those 1000. And explaining the first 2 is indeed all we need to do, but it hasn't been done yet. If it is just a social hypochondriac with a headache, fine, it is perfectly good explanation that will help treat these 1000 people and maybe take steps to limit damage caused by social hypochondriacs in embassies.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#84
post #2

The symptoms sounded like burnout from the beginning. Hypochondria is a common symptom of stress, depression, and other mental disorders. A scary and confusion symptom when one does not have tendencies for it normally. There isn't one clean piece of evidence for any energy weapon or attack hypothesis. It's about time the mass hysteria surrounding Havana syndrome is laid to rest.

What about the physical evidence from Gary Nolan?

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#85
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with pretty much everything except for this: >Crime is lower on pretty much every metric than it was 20-30 years ago where the last big panic set in the mandatory minimum mania and the carceral state exploded. I see 'crime' all over now... it just isn't considered a crime now that it's been decriminalized. 20-30 years ago, I never ever saw open drug sales and drug use, open prostitution, mass looting/shoplift…

> I see 'crime' all over now.. This is anecdotal. The data just doesn't back it up (eg [1]). You've brought up a number of issues As for retail theft, even the Walgreens CEO had to admit the problem was overstated [2]. There are a bunch of reasons for it. One is the crime narrative. Another is its easier for companies to blame theft rather than poor inventory management and retail operations. When you say you "see" c…

No, I mean I see it with my own eyes when I walk/drive the same streets of California I have my entire life. When I was a kid, I would go to the skatepark at 10 years old and be there all day and basically have zero parent supervision and it was 'safe'. There was only one homeless person who was basically an older guy who pushed around a TV and plugged it in at various public outlets. Now, I go to the same public places and they are literally infested with fentanyl zombies who are stripping the copper wire out of the street lights... I see prostitutes walking the streets in public half naked in LA. If you have lived in SF, LA, Sacramento, or any of the other major metro areas--you can see it with your own eyes. It simply wasn't like this when I was a teenager in the early 2000s.

>Fomenting fear of a crime epidemic is an intentional and well-funded political objective.

Sure, but I just want to be able to walk in public and feel safe. That has all rapidly changed since Prop 47 passed in 2014. The entire west coast of America is in rapid decline and it's incredibly apparent--just look at any underpass or freeway offramp. Go to east Oakland and check out the Mad Max style homeless camps--it's not something that was there in 2001. I had a bullet come through my bathroom wall in SF and SFPD threw it in a sandwich baggie and never called me or did any investigation. I had multiple trespassers at my apartment building but SFPD never did anything until I finally got a restraining order... but they'd only remove them and then they'd come right back. When my grandpa died a few years ago, within a few days squatters somehow found out and moved in. Things are pretty objectively worse than they were 20 years ago. And all the stats are juked and tweaked because cops won't arrest, juries won't convict, and judges won't sentence criminals in California. The statistics are just fake at that point.

I blame it on the rise of fentanyl and meth. Drugs are cheaper than ever and more widely available due to decriminalization.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homicides in the US today are 7.8/100k, which is still above the 1950 number. I wonder what accounts for the difference. Globally, the US has a higher rate than other countries likely due to guns, but it’s not like guns were illegal in 1950.

Having an entire generation where most of the men got drafted into a World War tends to dampen people's enthusiasm for violence.

That is a really profound point. I also bet people are a lot less likely to try something when every male over 18 has basically been trained in combat AND is healthy and fit...

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#87
post #2

The symptoms sounded like burnout from the beginning. Hypochondria is a common symptom of stress, depression, and other mental disorders. A scary and confusion symptom when one does not have tendencies for it normally. There isn't one clean piece of evidence for any energy weapon or attack hypothesis. It's about time the mass hysteria surrounding Havana syndrome is laid to rest.

This is the most foolish and most uneducated response I've read. You're saying nonsense.

Just because we don't have the weapon that causes the issue the issue doesn't exist and is all in their heads?

Get educated about what you're talking about. Watch some interviews of people that have it.

We even know the exact sound the weapon makes.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#88
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact that it affected 1000 people doesn't really matter. all you really have to do is explain the first 2, which can be something as benign as a social hypochondriac woke up with a headache.

It matters to those 1000. And explaining the first 2 is indeed all we need to do, but it hasn't been done yet. If it is just a social hypochondriac with a headache, fine, it is perfectly good explanation that will help treat these 1000 people and maybe take steps to limit damage caused by social hypochondriacs in embassies.

I bet it had to do with the 'Trump is a Russian agent propaganda' we were all fed for the last 8 years. Probably made people who were actually working for the government in risky positions abroad (i.e. Cuba vs Netherlands) super paranoid and vulnerable. I mean, wasn't it also Rachel Maddow who covered all this Havana Syndrome the most? I truly wonder how many people who had Havana Syndrome were watching MSNBC for hours a day.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#89
post #68
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I wrote "no evidence for ".

I mean the fact that they did this before, I think should go in the evidence column https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Signal After they got caught they put extra cladding up on the building, and the soviets in turn responded by just making their signal transmission stronger.

That is far, far most likely an RF signal used to power espionage devices. Both the US and the USSR played with putting passively powered espionage devices. The idea it was done to injure embassy staff at this point is a conspiracy theory.

Re: 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder rate went up by 22% in 2020[0] but it had went down back to the 5 range in the 2010s. Here's the full chart from that PDF. 1950 | 1960 | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2017 | 2018 5.1 | 5.0 | 8.8 | 10.4 | 9.4 | 5.9 | 6.1 | 5.3 | 6.2 | 5.9 >it’s not like guns were illegal in 1950. true but even a murder rate of 5 is high compared to Europe and this is likely due in large part to guns largely bein…

note that while Switzerland is sometimes used as proof that guns aren't the problem, they do ban private ownership of ammo.

As a Swiss: that's nonsense. How are you supposed to hunt, or go to the range, without ammunition?

See article 16a of our weapons regulation: If you buy it legally, you are allowed to own it.

Post reply on HN