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John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

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Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#721

30 years for tax evasion? No wonder he preferred to die. I mean, you’ll get jail time for severe cases of tax evasion in Germany, too, but it’s a couple of years at max and most of the time it’s on probation. How do you justify your draconic punishments in the US which is supposed to be a free country?

What does 'free country' even mean?

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#722
post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is GU?

Geometric Unity, Eric Weinstein's supposed Theory of Everything. It's likely a bunch of nonsense, but the man won't release a paper, so we can't know for sure. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/...

He published a GU paper a few months ago: https://geometricunity.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/Geometric...

(I haven’t read it, I’m not even remotely qualified.)

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#723
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are rich enough you are eccentric and colorful.

The obvious point you're making is about a double standard -- rich people are unfairly given more slack than others. But an alternative framing amounts to evaluating a method by its results -- basically saying "I don't know why you're behaving that way, but for reasons I don't understand it seems to work for you." That obviously falls apart if you can cleanly separate their wealth/financial success from their behavio…

McAfee is sort of given slack because he was bat shit crazy and kind of hilarious while also being a bit of a tech pioneer with a debatable legacy. Im personally not giving him slack, I'm just saying thats why...above him being rich at one point in his life. Also when you have a personal presence in general (through social media) people feel they know you and you are humanized more than some news headline or mug shot.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#724
post #66

I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as much. He invited me to sit down, and told him about when I was a teenager in the 90s learning about tech entrepreneurs at the time, I always thought he was pretty cool and had good ideas. I told him I respected him, and that I was sure he'd lived an incredible li…

Realise that people can be super nice to you and cruel/evil to somebody else. The serial killer living next door might be a great neighbour. That doesn’t change the facts of what he/she is.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK U.S. is the only country that makes you pay tax even if you are tax resident of different country. Ironically it does not apply to corporations that fail to pay billions in tax.

Well, that military won't pay itself...

Having a US passport entitles citizens to a lot of benefits globally, those benefits have to be paid for. It would seem odd that you can benefit from the US growing up, and once you make it, you can move to the Cayman Islands and not pay for the benefits you have received

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#726
post #3

Good or bad, what a sad ending to a colorful life. The guy was troubled and had many shortcomings, but he was colorful and also achieved success and arguably was one of the seminal figures in the nascent AV industry. Sad to see his fall from grace and into a world of extravagance, deceit and cheating (taxes) and, if allegations true, even worse; then to end it on the floor of a jail -all by his own hands.

Disobeying unjust laws is not cheating.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#727
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> did something more with his life than just take a lot of drugs and be weird. Not everything about a person is their public image though. Summing up a persons life like that, even if you disagree with his public image, is just inhumane. Did you know him? Did you ever even see him once?

> Did you know him? Did you ever even see him once? We're going to need to rewrite an awful lot of history if our standards for judging people are "knowing them and seeing them even once"

We would only need to rewrite the bad history books, which are, to be fair to you, an awful lot of them. :)

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#728
post #66

I met John in an Atlanta airport lounge years ago[1]. I recognized him immediately as I've always admired him, and I decided to go up to him and tell him as much. He invited me to sit down, and told him about when I was a teenager in the 90s learning about tech entrepreneurs at the time, I always thought he was pretty cool and had good ideas. I told him I respected him, and that I was sure he'd lived an incredible li…

Realise that people can be super nice to you and cruel/evil to somebody else. The serial killer living next door might be a great neighbour. That doesn’t change the facts of what he/she is.

Watch 'The Fall' mini-series for a good example

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#729
post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a legal standard, not a social or historical one.

It's a logical standard. You can't prove a negative (ie that you didn't do something and thus are innocent), so the burden of proof must always be on those making a claim to show that it is true. While it might not be as dangerous for the gossip column to employ fallacious reasoning as it would be for a court of law, that doesn't stop it from being wrong.

Outside the courtroom everybody makes judgements based on the balance of evidence, because we can’t possibly know enough facts to pass the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.

Re: John McAfee found dead in Spanish jail after court approves extradition to US

#730
post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not interesting when its 9 months in advance Maybe a few weeks People arent just able to make a perpetual conspiracy indefinitely in the future, or you dont have to entertain people trying to do that I wont here He has increasingly depressing messages in an increasingly dimmed outlook and an increasing time in prison

The guys been in prison before and seemed to enjoy it, posted pictures from prison in the dominican republic which is way worse than spanish prison. The guy talked about being content a week ago, "I'm old and content with food and a bed", he felt bad for the young people who were afraid of prison. He was still able to tweet and enjoyed interacting with people. If you think he killed himself, you don't understand how…

His whole brand was avoiding the US government, with everything else being a perpetual vacation and experience

Its very on brand for him to never reconcile this

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