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How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

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Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#151

Post by guard-of-terra »

greendestiny wrote: post #29
johnloeber wrote: post #17

The difficult thing with this sort of article is that while it generally sounds plausible, the layperson reader doesn't know about the specifics. I don't know anything about BFO spoofing or handshake rings. This means that all I can really judge this article on is its presentation and logical reasoning, and while both seem okay, there's no way for me to evaluate the premises and finer points that the piece critically…

You can also ponder it from the perspective of a rational hijacker. Why fake BFO when you could have just had no pings at all?

Also, why only turn off pings when you are about to land, and not flying over china-pakistan-india mess?

Because this is where you can bury your evidence real deep.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#152

Post by barrkel »

Padding wrote: post #128
mikekchar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misinterpretation of Occam's Razor, IMHO. Simple explanations are not more likely to be true. What Occam's Razor says is that if you have 2 theories that fit the same data, you should pick the simplest one. Why? Because it is simpler, not because it is more likely to be true. It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth…

> It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth. Isn't truth the only thing science cares about? Of course truth alone doesn't mean much and we usually conduct science not just for the sake of it, but those are downstream concerns. > Are Newton's laws "true"? Well, they work reliably given certain constraints and they are definitely more…

You can't get to the truth from science. You can only build a model of reality.

The degree with which that model corresponds with reality is a measure of truth, for some definitions of truth. But it's still always a map, a projection from reality according to some set of rules. It never actually is reality.

The thing that science cares about is building a better model of reality. Better models mean better predictions and better storytelling. The former is highly useful. The latter, I'm not so sure. Convincing storytelling can elevate a model higher than it's worth. There's a lot of storytelling in macroeconomics, and similarly in evolutionary biology's just-so stories.

I wonder if viewing science through the lens of "true" stories about reality, rather than as a ratchet for generating more precise predictive models, encourages overweighted stories too much.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#153

Post by tomp »

Padding wrote: post #128
mikekchar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misinterpretation of Occam's Razor, IMHO. Simple explanations are not more likely to be true. What Occam's Razor says is that if you have 2 theories that fit the same data, you should pick the simplest one. Why? Because it is simpler, not because it is more likely to be true. It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth…

> It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth. Isn't truth the only thing science cares about? Of course truth alone doesn't mean much and we usually conduct science not just for the sake of it, but those are downstream concerns. > Are Newton's laws "true"? Well, they work reliably given certain constraints and they are definitely more…

> Isn't truth the only thing science cares about?

Not really. Truth is what math cares about. In science, there is no truth, there is just what is measurable, but that's just a proxy for reality, not the objective truth. Then you work with whatever measurements you have and try to predict more measurements.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#154

Post by madaxe_again »

greendestiny wrote: post #29
johnloeber wrote: post #17

The difficult thing with this sort of article is that while it generally sounds plausible, the layperson reader doesn't know about the specifics. I don't know anything about BFO spoofing or handshake rings. This means that all I can really judge this article on is its presentation and logical reasoning, and while both seem okay, there's no way for me to evaluate the premises and finer points that the piece critically…

You can also ponder it from the perspective of a rational hijacker. Why fake BFO when you could have just had no pings at all?

You can also ponder it from the perspective of a state who are very keen to keep the news media as distracted as possible from what you're up to.

If this was the goal, then it was achieved admirably - a mystery was provided, and the press took the bait, and largely ignored the brewing unrest in Ukraine.

In terms of the plausibility of his theory... it's plausible. It doesn't mean it's right, but it's plausible. I've been to Baikonur, and it's in the middle of absolutely nothing, has very, very high (Russian) security, and is a pretty ideal place to disappear anything.

The one thing I think he does get wrong is that he thinks building demolition in freezing temperatures is weird. This becomes a hell of a lot less weird when you realise that in the summer, temperatures there reach 50+ Celsius, and doing outdoor work in the dry cold is vastly preferable to doing it under the blazing sun.

It becomes even less weird when you consider that Baikonur is being edged towards end-of-life, as Russia are building their new cosmodrome at Vostochny.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#155

Post by stef25 »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #134
DanBC wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspiracy theories are bizare explanations of events that don't fit reality. Thus, Iran-Contra is not a conspiracy theory because it's true, even though it is a conspiracy.

That's a ridiculously narrow and exclusionary definition of conspiracy theories, one that's set up to only include those theories that are clearly delusional. If you asked a average person three years ago whether they thought that all their calls were being recorded and that the NSA was hacking into companies and stealing data you would have been called delusional and your explanation would have been bizarre and unre…

Ie, it's not because you're paranoid that they're not after you.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#156

Post by tomp »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #62
mikekchar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misinterpretation of Occam's Razor, IMHO. Simple explanations are not more likely to be true. What Occam's Razor says is that if you have 2 theories that fit the same data, you should pick the simplest one. Why? Because it is simpler, not because it is more likely to be true. It is important to remember that when we are dealing with scientific theories, we are not really all that concerned with truth…

In reference to your paragraph on scientific theory: In actuality nothing in science or in reality can be proven to be true. In science it is only possible to disprove or falsify theories. You can actually extract this concept from a famous statement in science and statistics: "Correlation does not imply causation" This basically means nothing can be proven, we can only correlate things. If you negate that statement…

> "No Correlation does imply non-causation"

You're wrong. Random variables can be uncorrelated but not independent [1].

In general, you can't apply "algebra" to logic as you attempted above and explained below. Logic is very precise. To "prove" that `A => B` is equivalent `~B => ~A`, you use truth tables:

    | A | B | A => B | ~B => ~A |
    +---+---+--------+----------+
    | 0 | 0 |    1   |     1    |
    | 0 | 1 |    1   |     1    |
    | 1 | 0 |    0   |     0    |
    | 1 | 1 |    1   |     1    |
Your statements above aren't equivalent; the first is a tautology (it's always true), whereas the second is standard implication, which can be false.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normally_distributed_and_uncorr...

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#157

Post by stef25 »

kpil wrote: post #149
bentcorner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole section seems implausible: > It’s not possible to spoof the BFO data on just any plane. The plane must be of a certain make and model, 17equipped with a certain make and model of satellite-communications equipment,18 and flying a certain kind of route19 in a region covered by a certain kind of Inmarsat satellite.20 If you put all the conditions together, it seemed unlikely that any aircraft would satisfy t…

Here's a simper theory: Some kind of structural failure caused a fire and possibly also a decompression - or the other way around. While following the procedure to handle the problem ( disable AP, descend, turn back, shut down the damaged avionics) the pilots lost consciousness and the plane eventually leveled out and kept flying until it run out of fuel. While it's not likely that something punches a hole in an aero…

I guess this indeed the most plausible theory. But then how plausible is it that no debris was found? Too much time went by, the area is too big for us to notice?

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#158

Post by bambax »

bhouston wrote: post #28
johnloeber wrote: post #17

The difficult thing with this sort of article is that while it generally sounds plausible, the layperson reader doesn't know about the specifics. I don't know anything about BFO spoofing or handshake rings. This means that all I can really judge this article on is its presentation and logical reasoning, and while both seem okay, there's no way for me to evaluate the premises and finer points that the piece critically…

I started reading this and then I thought of Occam's Razor. This theory is appears way too complex to be true, something much simpler likely happened.

Occam's Razor isn't a way to measure the complexity of a given theory, taken in isolation. Occam's Razor shaves off unnecessary causes, and says that given two theories of equal explanation power, we should choose the simplest one.

But in this case, there is no single simple theory; a crash is a simple theory but is very unlikely, given the available data and the searches that were performed.

The OP's theory of Putin stealing the plane and hiding it in Kazakhstan sure seems far-fetched, extremely complex and, well, crazy, but he acknowledges that fact, and it's still an interesting theory.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#159

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ekianjo wrote: post #93
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory goes: the simpler answer is more likely to be true because it is impossible for a series of events to be more likely. The probability of A + B cannot be higher than A or B alone. Of course that doesn't mean that A + B didn't occur, just that it is less likely.

> The theory goes: the simpler answer is more likely to be true because it is impossible for a series of events to be more likely. If that were true then we would never have been able to do chemistry in the first place and get anything done by synthesis. The same applies to manufacturing. It's by careful planning and science that you overcome the probabilities and make it possible to conduct a series of events with p…

A more charitable interpretation of what I wrote would take it in the context we're discussing here.

A + B become increasingly more likely if you contrive circumstances for them to occur together. But even then the overall probability is increasingly small if you consider the number of events that have to have occurred over the previous 13 or billin years.

Re: How crazy am I to think I actually know where that Malaysia Airlines plane is?

#160

Post by kbart »

bobmoretti wrote: post #36

The scenario described in the article could only have gone down with the support of a state level actor. In foreign affairs, states are mostly rational and risk-averse. The risk involved in such an operation would have been astronomical: - It stretches the imagination that in the Post-9/11 world, hijackers could access a panel in the cabin without raising passenger and crew suspicion. So the hijackers would have requ…

Exactly. Too much work, risk and investment for a very limited gain. I'd still bet my money on an unknown technical fault, everything else is just speculations with no proof whatsoever.
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