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Comment by nindalf | Hacker News Reader

I have tried on many occasions to read posts on that sub but I found the hatred, the ALL CAPS, the doublethink and the crushing of any dissent nauseating. For example, members of that sub demonised a pizzeria owner with no evidence whatsoever, spreading lies and harassing him and anyone tangentially related to him. This incident is only the most recent one, by no means the worst.

What do you love about it that makes you go there everyday?

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For example, members of that sub demonised a pizzeria owner with no evidence whatsoever

I'm guessing that you say that based mostly on media coverage like the recent New York Times article? I think Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) has a more accurate view, which is that there is in fact a mountain of "obvious" evidence, but despite this almost all the connections and conclusions are likely false. I think it's worth the time to contrast his view with the "no evidence whatsoever" explanation that most of the media has taken: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153821538056/about-pizzagate.

Would you be satisfied if I amended "no evidence" to "no credible evidence"? Because that's how I see it. I didn't see a single valid thing being said throughout that fiasco.

The point is that the evidence seems credible if somewhat incredible.

It might not be convincing and certainly not conclusive but there are a series of remarkable coincidences.

> a series of remarkable coincidences

Could you elaborate? What are these coincidences and what is remarkable about them? And please don't say "read the emails!" or "watch David Seaman!" like the others.

I'll give you one example. And remember, this is a timeline, not working backwards from JP is a paedo. I'm not adding credence to the claims, but they are remarkable coincidences. The sort which would get a visit from the police if it was me and my brother.

You read JP's emails for political reasons, you find known paedo / child trafficing jargon in them (Cheese Pizza is Child Porn, various flavours of food describe children etc.). So you dig a bit deeper and then you look at this photo [1] where they look very similar to the police wanted images of Madeline McCann. Wow that's weird.

So you look at his email and find that at the time of the abduction, JP is out of the country and someone else is replying to his emails for him, something that doesn't happen regularly.

And then you find he is friends with suspected paedophile Clement Freud, who lives 1/3 of a mile from where the McCanns were staying. [2] And that they knew each other.

[1] http://www.thedailysheeple.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/20...

[2] http://victuruslibertas.com/2016/11/do-john-and-tony-podesta...

I think this is good example: if one accepts all these pieces as true, this counts as credible evidence. But the ones that are most certain aren't that damaging, and the ones that are most damaging (I don't think) are that certain.

Jumping to the most damaging, the second article you link says "One of our FBI insiders can confirmed the Intelligence community indicates John and Tony Podesta were in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3rd 2007– the day Madaline McCann vanished. The Podesta brothers were staying with a friend named “Clem”."

So far as I can tell, other than this assertion, there has been no evidence uncovered that the either Podesta brother was in Portugal at the time of the girl's disappearance. You reduce the article's claim that "they were staying a friend named "Clem" to saying only that they knew each other, but I haven't seen any proof of even this level of association.

As 'nindalf' asks, how do you balance the goal of finding the truth with the responsibility to avoid terrible damage to a innocent person's reputation based on something that (at this point) is based largely on trusting an unaccountable anonymous source?

I'm 'satisfied' that you seem to have to have considered Adams' argument, even if you then reject it. It takes significant good will just to read a suggested link, so I thank you.

Saying "no credible evidence" might technically be correct, but I don't think it explains why some people are so convinced that the evidence is conclusive. I think it's more accurate to say that some of the evidence appears credible, but the conclusion is unsupported because of the biased manner in which the evidence was collected.

I agree with Adams when he says "Confirmation bias looks EXACTLY LIKE a mountain of real evidence. And let me be super-clear here. When I say it looks exactly the same, I am not exaggerating. I mean there is no way to tell the difference." And I think he's right that other aspects of the political divide may have similar origins.

Where _is_ this evidence? I've actually read some of the articles and everyone seems to make vague references to "mountains" of evidence, but there doesn't seem to be any. I read your comment, I read your article, I still can't find anything apart from "its all there in the emails!"

Here's one article with surprisingly good grammar - http://therightstuff.biz/2016/11/27/pizzagate-2/. His evidence? NYT and WaPo are defending a pizza shop owner. Why would they stake their credibility on defending an insignificant pizza shop owner? Clearly there must be something afoot! Add it to the mountain of evidence!

Right now, I'm putting you on the spot. Come up with something even halfway credible.

I agree, it's tough to come up with anything stands alone as even halfway credible.

Most of it is persuasive only if you already hold a particular set of beliefs. For example, if you are a conservative Christian (I am not) showing that Podesta participates in (arguably) Satanic rituals is credible evidence that he more likely to abuse children. Is it "evidence" that his brother has risqué art depicting children on his walls? Yes, if you believe that only a pedophile would possess such art, or condone someone else's possession of such. I believe these conclusions are wrong, but are logical within a particular moral framework (that I don't share). So without knowing your beliefs, I may not be able to come up with anything that you view as credible.

For me, I find the NYT's portrayal of Alefantis as "just a pizza store owner" to be sufficiently disingenuous to be of note. Regular pizza store owners don't get listed as one of GQ's 50 Most Powerful People in DC. Alefantis was the romantic partner of David Brock (the founder of Correct the Record) and was a losing co-defendant with Brock in a lawsuit characterized as "blackmail". If you start with suspicions about someone, and then later find that someone has been successfully sued another party threatening to "spill the beans", I think this is weak but credible evidence that your suspicions may be justified.

There are leaked Stratfor emails where Pizza appears to be the name of one of their projects: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/13/1326067_testing-the-pi..., https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/13/1319020_pushing-pizza-.... This lends credibility to the idea that "pizza" might be a code word in emails like this: https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23757. Personally, I read this as testament to the quality of New Haven's apizza (http://www.eater.com/2014/3/18/6264277/the-definitive-guide-...) but I can see why someone not familiar with foodie culture would have trouble taking Clinton's response literally.

Last, I think that the discovery of prior accusations of Podesta's involvement in pedophilia is relevant. A year before his death, Andrew Breitbart tweeted that Podesta was a "world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer": https://twitter.com/AndrewBreitbart/status/33636278100561920. As an accusation without proof, it means very little, but if an independent path leads to the same conclusion, it becomes stronger. Still weak, still circumstantial, but if the discovery was truly independent, it seems like enough of a coincidence to justify looking closer.

But yeah, I find all the evidence to be weak and circumstantial. With a different set of beliefs/prejudices -- or if you have a strong intuition for the power of confirmation bias -- coincidence is the best explanation. But I think it's worth trying to understand why a subset of people genuinely do find the evidence to be credible, even if it's not.

> it's tough to come up with anything stands alone as even halfway credible.

Thanks for your candid response. We're both agreed that the evidence is highly circumstantial and its maybe worth a second look if the police have some slack. However, amongst many online communities, this circumstantial evidence was enough to start a witch hunt, harassing and intimidating people who just work at a restaurant, serving food.

The issue is that when we say "look maybe something is there, there's no smoke without fire", it encourages exactly those people who verbally and physically intimidate innocent people. The more responsible thing to do would be to say "guys, pipe down. There might be something here but its innocent until proven guilty".

This isn't what's happening, and they don't have the same conciliatory, nuanced approach you're taking. That saddens me.

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