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

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

#401

Post by autoexec » Tue, Sep 12, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #330

mulmen wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>But none of this is well reasoned. 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 declassi…

> The CIA's docs haven't been declassified and released.

If they were, would you believe them?

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

#402

Post by tomrod » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 11:22 AM UTC

sekh60 wrote: post #189

tomrod wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furor which may well have been caused by unacknowledged aircraft like the above. But who knows, maybe an intelligence or sapience from another world just wants to confuse people, or something similar in the long probability tail of life experience in this universe.

Aliens are doing for the lulz.

Right?

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

#403

Post by pliesfan97 » Sat, Sep 16, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #322

pliesfan97 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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…

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.