New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory • Hacker News Board

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#241

Post by theultdev » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

oconnor663 wrote: post #125

ip26 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the anti-conspiratorial explanation for that? I can imagine a million different things they’d love to hide, but what would the legitimate, honest/harmless reason?

The anti-conspiratorial explanation would be that the government flagrantly broke tons of laws over the years, both in the US and abroad, and that they don't want to publish details about that (even though none of those details actually involve trying to kill Kennedy).

Well that's still a conspiratorial explanation, just a different conspiracy.

Though we do know these agencies have broken laws and done some pretty nasty stuff like MKUltra over the years.

So they really have no stock and should have been broken up a long time ago. No conspiracy theories needed really.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#242

Post by knowingowl » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #93

knowingowl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, a "marine sharpshooter" is an almost meaningless term. Virtually any physically healthy person is capable of meeting this bar with an hour or two of practice. It sounds way more impressive than it is. Oswald was in no way a highly skilled shooter. In fact, he had extremely basic firearms skills.

He won awards for marksmanship. I agree it isn't a hard skill to learn, but it's still takes some effort.

It was not an "award for marksmanship" by any definition and it requires far less effort than learning to drive a car or ride a bicycle. What's the point in being obtuse here?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#243

Post by tmnvix » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #188

kelnos wrote: post #98

Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these ev…

I am reminded of an incident relayed to me by an office worker in the early 2000s. A colleague had left the building at lunchtime and had been witness to some kind of shooting incident where robbers or gang members on motorcycles had opened fire on someone or something else - I don’t think it was ever discovered what the target or cause was. This was in South America, so not a wholly unusual scenario. But the debrief…

A really interesting example here in a PBS doco of someone's experience of time 'stretching out' in a dangerous situation. It includes footage of the entire event, the individual's recollection, and a possible explanation:

https://youtu.be/7eCniXtM__g?si=26Gbd2w8PEozKL0i&t=2768

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#244

Post by simonh » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

interestica wrote: post #206

EliRivers wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The JFK assassination has been such a recurrent theme for so long that I reckon I might have memories of it, even though it happened decades before I was born.

As time goes by I'm less and less sure that I saw the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 live. I think there's a similar "induced memory" surrounding who watched the challenger disaster live. (Fwiw, I'm still pretty sure I watched it live)

I didn’t see it live, it was on a news replay minutes after it happened. I remember thinking I have to tell my brother and my dad, but what will I say? It felt a bit like when you stub your toe and it doesn’t hurt yet, you know something bad has happened and this is the pause before the impact hits when you tell everyone. I seem to remember them asking what exactly had happened, and I struggled to explain what I’d seen on the few seconds of replay I’d seen, and couldn’t really describe it.

Years later we discussed it and they were both adamant we all watched it live on TV. Am I misremembering, or them, or all of us? Tough one.

With 9/11 I seem to remember one of the impacts only being seen from the explosion, but you couldn’t see the plane itself. Maybe that was the second one?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#245

Post by jmyeet » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:44 PM UTC

I highly suggest people go watch "inside the book Depository" [1]. It's long but it gives a good overview of the sequence of events and the discrepancies.

Thing is, it's not a conspiracy theorist video. The best part of the video is the last segment where the creator uses all the examples to show just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, even when fresh let alone decades later. They go on to say that pretty much any conspiracy theory relies on cherry-picking certain details as irrefutable while ignoring others and this is esentially an arbitrary decision based on whatever narrative someone is pushing.

Additionally, the details supposedly changed never make sense for a conspiracy that is supposedly powerful enough to arrange all this.

Lastly, people often see things through a modern lens. Presidential security is a big one. JFK used to stop his motorcade and go into the crowd. Anyone with a handgun could've ended him. These people weren't all frisked and vetted. It was a different time. JFK's assassination is probably a big part of why presidential security changed. So the idea that you needed to have or be a sniper (or a team of snipers) is a silly one and based on modern assumptions.

Myths in this area persist too despite them being debunked. One that springs to mind is that you couldn't fire Oswald's rifle fast enough. CBS and the FBI tested and debunked this in the 1960s [2].

When this happens you'll often find the conspiracy theory moves the goalposts from it being "impossible" to "very hard". I'm sure it was hard but Oswald was also irrefutably a Marine-trained shooter.

Personally my theory is that any mystery surrounding JFK is much like that of 9-11: intelligence agencies caught with their pants down, not wanting to upset allies and/or not wanting to expose intelligence assets.

The last point I'll make is a study was recently done on the link between narcissism and conspiracy theories [3]. Now this has a lot of relevance to why who gets sucked into QAnon and their political leanings. But it's relevant beyond that.

A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that random things happen. They'd rather believe it's all part of a plan. It's almost preferable if it's a nefarious force as some people love to LARP as being oppressed or even just being brave warriors standing up for what's righteous. But this shares a lot of the psychology with those for a predilection for religion. And narcissim is the definition of main character syndrome.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_...

[3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35816915/

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#246

Post by kevinmchugh » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #179

beowulfey wrote: post #148

At this point the effects of the JFK assassination are so far back in history that new knowledge of possibly real and alternative sequences of events should have little impact on society as it is now. Let’s say it was orchestrated by political enemies—what effect would this have on things today? The state of US government is so dramatically different from back then. This kind of discussion is really only interesting…

> At this point the effects of the JFK assassination are so far back in history that new knowledge of possibly real and alternative sequences of events should have little impact on society as it is now. Let’s say it was orchestrated by political enemies—what effect would this have on things today? The state of US government is so dramatically different from back then. Is it? If it happened before it could happen agai…

Of course, there's a lot of evil things from that same time frame that have since been uncovered: CREEP/Watergate, mkultra, cointelpro, or more recently Iran-Contra, Snowden.

It takes a long time for some coverups to be uncovered (Tuskegee syphilis experiment took decades) but I think we have to downgrade our expectations that an uncovering will happen as time goes on.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#247

Post by PrimeMcFly » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:47 PM UTC

diogenes4 wrote: post #47

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s an amazing bit of history. Sure, it's the obsessing over conspiracy theories that I don't get. There's no way to verify the various speculations, so what's the point?

There's no way (for most of us with finite resources) to verify the vast majority of history, even recent history, even history that happened today. To me this is like saying "who cares what may or may not have happened in the past". This particular conspiracy theory is interesting because the assumed enemy here—the Soviet Union—was ostensibly (and seeming authentically) unhappy to see this happen. So who wanted JFK…

> There's no way (for most of us with finite resources) to verify the vast majority of history, even recent history, even history that happened today.

That's an entirely different issue.

> So who wanted JFK dead and why?

Again, Occam says Oswald.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#248

Post by superposeur » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:48 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #118

Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tang…

I think what drives much conspiracy-theorizing are two facts: 1) people have terrible intuition about physics outside a very narrow range of everyday conditions, 2) people are viscerally unaware of fact 1).

For instance, I recall sitting next to a table of 9/11-truthers meeting up at a coffee shop. Their discussions kept circling back to the sheer implausibility of a fire causing structural beams to buckle. People don't have intuition for jet-fuel-hot fires; nor skyscraper-high gravitational potential energy. Similarly, the dynamics of a high-speed bullet is so far outside people's intuitions that they derisively call its behavior "magic."

I'd like to hope that at least problem 2) could be ameliorated if good laboratory-based educational experiences were widespread enough; the terribleness of everyday intuitions smacks you in the face quickly when you try to do even a basic experiment. On the other hand, maybe the old dictum holds true that education benefits those most who need it least.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#249

Post by Waterluvian » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:49 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #188

kelnos wrote: post #98

Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these ev…

I am reminded of an incident relayed to me by an office worker in the early 2000s. A colleague had left the building at lunchtime and had been witness to some kind of shooting incident where robbers or gang members on motorcycles had opened fire on someone or something else - I don’t think it was ever discovered what the target or cause was. This was in South America, so not a wholly unusual scenario. But the debrief…

Is it an issue with forming memory, or did the person experience ten minutes worth of 11 seconds?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#250

Post by jonplackett » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 9:50 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #210

jl6 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reminded of an incident relayed to me by an office worker in the early 2000s. A colleague had left the building at lunchtime and had been witness to some kind of shooting incident where robbers or gang members on motorcycles had opened fire on someone or something else - I don’t think it was ever discovered what the target or cause was. This was in South America, so not a wholly unusual scenario. But the debrief…

Time dilation is well known to occur in dangerous situations. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fpsyp.12836

Time dilation is pretty amazing.

I experienced it one time when I accidentally put the car into a a skid at 70mph. I remember calmly realising the car was moving sideways. Having time to ponder that for a few moments. Then deciding to start steering into the skid. Then think about that for a while. Release the break a bit. Finally we did a full 360 and ended up in the middle of the road again.

It seemed like it took a minute or more but was probably a few seconds if that.

Brains are awesome! (My younger self driving ability, much less so)