US Officially Blames Russia

caveman1917 said:
So we at least agree that she was indeed at the meeting?

Any reason why the fact of someone having some odd ideas on the side would make her a less "trustworthy" authority on whether the director of an organization said something in a meeting than the "trustworthiness" of the organization in question, which is known for such luminary activities as attempting mind-control and employing disinformation campaigns?



What is really beautiful is to see self-declared "skeptics" promoting blind faith in intelligence agencies.
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So now you were caught appealing to authority, your going to retreat to examples in the ancient past?

How logical.
 
caveman1917 said:
So we at least agree that she was indeed at the meeting?

Any reason why the fact of someone having some odd ideas on the side would make her a less "trustworthy" authority on whether the director of an organization said something in a meeting than the "trustworthiness" of the organization in question, which is known for such luminary activities as attempting mind-control and employing disinformation campaigns?



What is really beautiful is to see self-declared "skeptics" promoting blind faith in intelligence agencies.
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Did you feel even the tiniest bit of irony when you wrote this?
 
phiwum said:
Goodness, you think the best thing for a mathematician to do is to mix probabilities into his deductive proofs? What a strange solution!
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You should open a textbook on probability theory and be surprised to find that, yes, it is based on deductive proofs. What else do you think is being used in probability theory, your vague heuristics?

No, Peano arithmetic is not the proper framework for adding numbers together. There are many more suitable frameworks for doing so.
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Give one.
 
caveman1917 said:
What's being done here isn't science and has nothing to do with science. It's pure ideology packaged as "critical thinking".
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No, it isn't; it's trying to find the best explanation for the observations. You think the intelligence community got it wrong? Well, "critical thinking" suggests that we should have a full investigation to see how well the evidence and the reasoning stand up. You, on the other hand, are content with willful ignorance on the matter because it suits your ideology.
 
caveman1917 said:
So we at least agree that she was indeed at the meeting?

Any reason why the fact of someone having some odd ideas on the side would make her a less "trustworthy" authority on whether the director of an organization said something in a meeting than the "trustworthiness" of the organization in question, which is known for such luminary activities as attempting mind-control and employing disinformation campaigns?
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The fact that she is a proponent of conspiracy theories makes me distrust her reported quotes of CIA officials. I'm surprised you don't think similarly.


What is really beautiful is to see self-declared "skeptics" promoting blind faith in intelligence agencies.
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Yes, that would be beautiful. You tell me who is promoting blind faith in intelligence agencies. We'll laugh at him together.

I believe you'll find the strongest thing I've said is that, in this case, where all of the agencies agree and a bipartisan group of congressmen find the evidence compelling (and, as someone pointed out, an independent private firm came to the same conclusion), I find it more probable than not that the Russian connection is true.

I don't consider that conclusion to be advocacy of blind faith.
 
caveman1917 said:
What's being done here isn't science and has nothing to do with science. It's pure ideology packaged as "critical thinking".
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You're right that it isn't science. It's a part of logic. It is not "ideology", which is a bizarre way to characterize it.
 
caveman1917 said:
You should open a textbook on probability theory and be surprised to find that, yes, it is based on deductive proofs. What else do you think is being used in probability theory, your vague heuristics?
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A bizarre non-sequitur. Of course probability theory is a mathematical theory.

Your suggestion was that I somehow add probabilities to deductive proofs so that, if I understood you, I would be marking uncertain propositions. It is a silly notion.

Give one.
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The heuristics we learned as children, lining up the digit positions, carrying the one, etc., is the right framework for doing addition. Duh.
 
A'isha said:
We only have her own word that she was at this meeting
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No, we also have independent information that she held an official position at the time which would put her in this sort of meetings. We also have independent information that the CIA at the time was engaged in disinformation campaigns (surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and operations against Libya) which makes it more likely that Casey would indeed have said something akin to that.
 
caveman1917 said:
No, we also have independent information that she held an official position at the time which would put her in this sort of meetings. We also have independent information that the CIA at the time was engaged in disinformation campaigns (surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and operations against Libya) which makes it more likely that Casey would indeed have said something akin to that.
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Proof by saying stuff.
 
WilliamSeger said:
No, it isn't; it's trying to find the best explanation for the observations. You think the intelligence community got it wrong? Well, "critical thinking" suggests that we should have a full investigation to see how well the evidence and the reasoning stand up. You, on the other hand, are content with willful ignorance on the matter because it suits your ideology.
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Outright ********, I've been asking for the evidence from the start. As opposed to most here who have been arguing that one should accept the claims on ideological grounds.
 
caveman1917 said:
You should open a textbook on probability theory and be surprised to find that, yes, it is based on deductive proofs. What else do you think is being used in probability theory, your vague heuristics?

Give one.
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If I should open a textbook on probability theory, I would expect to find a definition such as "the study of random phenomenon." Probability theory is worse than useless for non-random phenomenon; it's highly misleading.
 
caveman1917 said:
No, we also have independent information that she held an official position at the time which would put her in this sort of meetings. We also have independent information that the CIA at the time was engaged in disinformation campaigns (surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and operations against Libya) which makes it more likely that Casey would indeed have said something akin to that.
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Each of these claims (she held an official position, the CIA had disinfo campaigns) is justified fundamentally by an appeal to authority on your part, unless you have direct evidence. As such, you are relying on an argument that you have explicitly called fallacious.

To be fair, you're wrong that all such appeals are fallacious, but since you haven't actually retracted that claim, I thought I'd point it out.
 
caveman1917 said:
No, we also have independent information that she held an official position at the time which would put her in this sort of meetings.
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No, we have independent information that she was the assistant to Reagan's Domestic Policy Adviser, then an assistant at the Justice Department, neither of which are positions likely to put her in secret meetings with the head of the CIA where he lays out their secret plan to misinform all of America.

We also have independent information that the CIA at the time was engaged in disinformation campaigns (surrounding the Iran-Contra affair and operations against Libya) which makes it more likely that Casey would indeed have said something akin to that.
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Which is nothing more than "I want to believe!" speculation.
 
WilliamSeger said:
If I should open a textbook on probability theory, I would expect to find a definition such as "the study of random phenomenon." Probability theory is worse than useless for non-random phenomenon; it's highly misleading.
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Nah, it depends on the interpretation of probabilities. In Bayesianism, probabilities are interpreted as degrees of belief, the so-called subjective interpretation. Probability can certainly well model reasoning with incomplete information.

What is silly is to think that all of our reasoning should come down to formal or statistical methods, as if a human being can literally have a probability distribution over every proposition that we might use to describe our world, a distribution which includes considerations like: what is the probability the E, given that person X said E -- for each and every person X.

Probability theory and Bayesianism are good models for reasoning about uncertainty, and maybe they can be used in limited settings in AI, such as expert systems. To pretend that all "meaningful" reasoning is either formal or probabilistic is just nuts.
 
caveman1917 said:
Outright ********, I've been asking for the evidence from the start. As opposed to most here who have been arguing that one should accept the claims on ideological grounds.
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BS. You've been "asking for the evidence" knowing full well that you are not going to get classified information until it's declassified. The first time I asked you if your skepticism meant that you supported a full congressional investigation, you said "no" with no explanation. Every time I've mentioned it since then, you ignored it. I haven't seen this "arguing that one should accept the claims on ideological grounds" that you're claiming; that's a strawman deflection from your weak argument. All I've seen here is arguing that the claims in the report are made by intelligence professionals and they are apparently convincing to virtually everyone who has seen the evidence -- including DJT to some vague extent -- therefore they should not be dismissed on ideological grounds, which is what you want to do.
 
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