A team of former FBI investigators claims to have identified D.B. Cooper
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I think everyone should take a look at the Wikipedia article for theories of who actually wrote the works penned to name "Shakespeare" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_questio...) and scroll down to the "Alternative Candidates" section. When you read one, the circumstantial evidence looks perfect. Then you read another candidate and you say "gee that sounds really valid too...". Obviously they can't both be right, but each one presents circumstantial evidence that seems to connect perfectly.
After you've red the alternative candidates, read the "Case for Shakespeare's authorship", which is the case that it really was Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon that wrote the plays. There's some hard evidence (though not enough to be 100% conclusive, it's probably 90% conclusive, and enough convince most scholars) that makes the rest of the theories seem totally unfounded.
I went on a bit of a rant here, but hopefully my point comes across, that circumstantial evidence is really quite far from real hard evidence. Unless some guy comes forward with those bills with the correct serial numbers or someone finds a body, it's going to remain an unsolved mystery.
On the contrary, you’ve described an intuitive way of teaching the dangers of overrelying on circumstantial evidence.
Well done.
You are absolutely right. Unfortunately for all of us this simple bit of wisdom is considered heresy in modern society.
It does make sense on the surface... but once you factor in the source and the (very likely) alternative that he simply died in a massive forest into which he parachuted, I don't know, I'm just less convinced.
Plus as we saw with the Silk Road DEA/Secret Service bitcoin theft stuff, federal agents don't necessarily make good criminals simply because they were well-trained feds/LEO.
At night, in the dark, I'm not sure if it would be worse getting stuck 50 or 100 feet off the ground, in a tree that can't be safely climbed, or dropped right in the middle of an unfamiliar frigid lake, and having to swim to shore before hypothermia sets in.
I think, getting stuck in some widow-maker of a tree leaves you with a fighting chance to wait until daylight, to negotiate how to overcome the hazard, but a lake forces you to struggle, possibly into a bad decision, because you have to act before the cold overwhelms you.
You can reject the accepted theory (the standard explanation) if you can falsify some part of it -- this is literally part of the scientific method. Alternate theories arise because the accepted theory has serious holes in it. Some of these alternate theories turn out to be circumstantial, some turn out flimsy and silly, and lots turn out to be ludicrous conspiracy theories. Reasonable people who hear the wild conspiracy theories often wrongly conclude that the standard explanation must be right because the alternate theories are so wacky.
To use you own example: The standard Shakespeare, the one from Stratford-upon-Avon, allowed his children to grow up illiterate (this is an agreed fact among Shakespeare scholars). For someone who valued the English language so much, who was one of the greatest writers of the English language, it seems unimaginable that he would not have made any effort to see that his children learn to read and write. For me, that alone is enough to reject the standard explanation (though I can cite other holes). It doesn't mean I can prove who the real Shakespeare was. It certainly doesn't mean that I accept the crackpot theories.
My point is that if the accepted theory has serious flaws, and you reject it, that doesn't mean that you have to choose one of the crazy theories, or circumstantial theories, or any theory. It's enough to say that the standard explanation is wrong or deficient.
Alternately, if they couldn't read they'd have to go see his plays performed. That Shakespeare really was a shrewd businessman.
When an argument hinges on the sentiment “it seems unimaginable…” it often means that circumstantial evidence is being recast as something more definitive than it is.
His children were all female, no? You didn't educate women in those days.
You are applying 21st century first world standards to 16th century denizens.
No, actually. He had one son, Hamnet, who died aged 11.
Hole h in conventional theory c exists, therefore c is invalid and alternative theory a is correct is the kind of illogical reasoning that is the underpinning of so many conspiracy theories. Alternative theories need to have their own support for them, not simply rely on missing gaps of knowledge in the conventional theories.
There are thousands of factors at play but the credibility of the authors of the theory plays a huge role. Most conspiracy theorists are self-learned "experts" not from the field of inquiry but often coming from other scientific disciplines that provide them with the air of some scientific credibility even if they are laymen in the area of inquiry. In fact, that's such a hallmark of conspiracy theories that I would call those without that property "alternative theories" instead.
In case of Shakespeare, many other theories are just alternative theories, I suppose. Anyway, unless you're an expert yourself the credibility of the authors is key.
It was pretty convincing for some.
The document was a manual for a clothes washing machine.
I've tried to find the link but can't at the moment. I think it was in one of the skeptics.com.au publications.
Our brains are really, really good at taking some sparse information and pattern-matching it up to a complex interpretation. And then convincing ourselves that the interpretation is the only one possible.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17438733
When I looked at the example at the top of the paper, where Steve Carell is misidentified as Zooey Deschanel, I thought - I can envision the AI saying (anthropomorphically) yes, I know that looks like Steve overall, but just look at those eyes - that has to mean something. Kind of like a conspiracy theorist/paranoiac.
This is the case in Japan. No body, no declaration of death. It means people who died in disasters can be declared "missing" indefinitely.
It does make me wonder -- can someone wrongly declared dead travel to Europe, invoke the GDPR's right of rectification, and force credit agencies and the like to make them undead? This seems like it might be faster than getting appropriate court rulings.
Would be interesting if someone gave it a try, though - doubly so on a biometric passport - if all the biometrics check out but you're officially dead - what will the result be?
Chances are you'll find yourself in an interrogation room with lots of law enforcement wondering how on earth you managed to substitute a dead person's biometrics for your own...
Additionally, I suspect no institution would interact with YOU in any capacity - seeing as you're dead - but rather interact with your estate.
Lawyers and bureaucrats would have a field day for years if someone gave this a try. :)
The implementation will be corrected to match the documentation.
I do the same. I find it useful practice for spotting the logical leaps/fallacies, and it's good to be reminded that circumstantial evidence is not proof.
I wish they explained this in some level of detail that makes it remotely believable.
I have to agree that the evidence in the article seems flimsy at best. Maybe the book makes a better case for it, but I'd be concerned that it isn't one of those things where someone who is 100% convinced about something doesn't attribute every tiny little coincidence as concrete proof of their theory.
Rackstraw served under Sherwood in two classified units, and Sherwood was familiar with his writing style having deciphered some of his earlier messages. When he saw the fifth and sixth typewritten letters, he immediately thought the “odd letter and number combinations” were indicative of the type of coded message that Rackstraw would send.
or something
Maybe there are details I’m missing, but it takes away from the legitimacy of the claim in my opinion.
Surely "saw a way through good ole Unk" means he found a way to steal from Uncle Sam.
Even with the evidence, I'm sure it's far beyond me to assess it, but it seems insane that people are dismissing a highly trained codebreaker's extensive work because 2 specific sentences in a newspaper article cribbed from multiple letters aren't immediately obvious to the layperson.
https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/DBC-Letter-5...
https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DBC-Letter-6...
Definitely nothing obvious to this layperson.
Edit: just noticed the 3 71s in the first image, ok that's a little interesting.
The Bureau were more skeptical, concluding that Cooper lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience. "We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," said Special Agent Larry Carr, leader of the investigative team from 2006 until its dissolution in 2016. "We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve 'chute was only for training, and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked."[83] He also failed to bring or request a helmet, chose to jump with the older and technically inferior of the two primary parachutes supplied to him,[53] and jumped into a −70 °F (−57 °C) wind chill without proper protection against the extreme cold.[110][111]
Sounds crazy, right? But then you remember this guy hijacked a plane and then jumped out of it and maybe crazy is exactly right.
I think the sheer brass balls of it will keep people interested, and the "disappearance" will let the mystery run and run.
But Occam's razor says no money was ever found because he never got up after reaching the ground.
I'm pretty confident that the FBI is not the inventor of it, so obviously there should be some information out there about "encoding a message to that the encoded message is human language".
Obviously there's a mapping (assuming x,y are unknowns)
(x | "through good ole Unk") -> "by skyjacking a jet plane".
(y | "And please tell the lackey cops") -> "I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw,"
Doesn anyone know candidates for this type of mapping?
Why didn't all that FBI brainpower tail the guy and get a sample of his DNA that could be compared? I kept reading in the story and it was never mentioned. If the FBI refused to run the test well then you know they're protecting him which I doubt.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/db-cooper-dna-results-match/story?...
1. D.B. Cooper boards the plane.
2. D.B. Cooper reveals a bomb, and with it, his intent to kill everyone on the plane, placing himself in control of their jeopardy.
3. He then, demands assistance, which involves the FBI. This, after placing everyone's life in danger, with the threat of violence.
4. The thing he asks for is absurd, and anyone who has ever used a parachute would raise an eyebrow at accepting equipment from a hostile entity. Even the FBI.
5. Once handed to him, there will be no way for him to look at the equipment, to see if it works, within the confined space of the plane.
6. As long as the money is real, someone making demands like this would expect the parachute to be real too. Especially, providing that their experience and status as a parachutist remains at novice level, with no specialization for preparing equipment.
7. The FBI could have easily provided him with real money and a sabotaged parachute, leaving him to plummet to his death. And why not?
There are obvious risks to this play. What if D.B. Cooper had been smart enough to unpack and inspect the parachute before jumping out of the plane, and then, what if he noticed the sabotage and blew up the plane?
That's the primary risk, there are other risks, and alternative options in the FBI's corner in this story.
They could have also opted to have the fighter jets circle back and gun D.B. Cooper down, before a working parachute reached the ground.
But, no matter what, no one seems to have considered the possibility of a vengeful off-the-record FBI. Which, of course, we all know, definitely existed back then.
so why hasn't he been arrrested huh?
“The FBI officially suspended active investigation of the case in July 2016, but the agency continues to request that any physical evidence that might emerge related to the parachutes or the ransom money be submitted for analysis.”
1) "Rackstraw – a former Special Forces paratrooper, explosives expert and pilot with about 22 different aliases – was once a person of interest in the case, but was eliminated as a suspect by the FBI in 1979. His elimination was controversial amongst the investigating agents, and he remained, for many, the most viable suspect in what remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in the United States."
Rackstraw is the obvious choice.
2) "Rick Sherwood – a former member of the Army Security Agency, which decoded signals during the Vietnam War – cracked the codes. Rackstraw served under Sherwood in two classified units, and Sherwood was familiar with his writing style having deciphered some of his earlier messages."
They got someone who knew Rackstraw to look into whether it might be Rackstraw.
3) "Using codes that only Rackstraw would have known, Sherwood honed in on two sentences for analysis. The first sentence, “I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk,” was decoded to, “I want out of the system and saw a way by skyjacking a jet plane.” And the second sentence, “And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name,” was decoded to “I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw, D.B. Cooper is not my real name.”"
This person came up with a possible solution that fingers the exact target he set out to finger.
That's fine as far as it goes, but it'd be a hell of a lot more convincing if either they got a cryptographer with no knowledge of the case or individual to come up with it, or if the target wasn't the obvious guy they were literally looking for evidence against. Especially since the translations, as retold in the article, seem awfully tenuous.
And speaking of those translations! "And please tell your lackey cops" translates to "I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw, "? Really? What sort of code...is this exactly?
I mean, if we assume there's a code where the word "lackey" means "Robert" and the word "cops" means "Rackstraw", and so on, then yes, that sentence does mean what is claimed, but that's 1) a pretty strange code and 2) you could just assume it's a different code where "lackey" means "Vladimir" and "cops" means "Putin", and now it incriminates the Russian president. That there is a code that incriminates Rackstraw doesn't mean it's the code that was used (if, indeed, any code was used; the letters as quoted aren't especially cryptic).
Alternatively...well, what is the alternative? I don't see a lot of potential ciphers here that yield the astonishing results claimed.
> “We now have him saying, ‘I am Cooper,’” Colbert told Seattle PI. “Rackstraw is a narcissistic sociopath who never thought he would be caught. He was trying to prove that he was smarter than anyone else. But he couldn’t fight 1500 years of brainpower on our team.
Maybe they needed a few more years of brainpower. (Also, if you believe the story, it wasn't about 1500 years of brainpower, but the fact that they talked to one guy who used to be Rackstraw's boss, and is claiming without proof that Rackstraw used to use a code where "Unk" mean "hijacking a jet" and "lackey cops" meant "Robert Rackstraw". I don't really believe that, but if you do, then this is mostly just about talking to the one guy who just happened to have the one scrap of secret info that identifies the hijacker, man, if only they'd thought to talk to the prime suspects ex-boss from the very start!
In short: What a pile of nonsense and poor writing.
To dismiss it all based on a brief newspaper blurb is insane.
"Using codes that only Rackstraw would have known, Sherwood honed in on two sentences for analysis. The first sentence, “I want out of the system and saw a way through good ole Unk,” was decoded to, “I want out of the system and saw a way by skyjacking a jet plane.” And the second sentence, “And please tell the lackey cops D.B. Cooper is not my real name,” was decoded to “I am 1st Lt. Robert Rackstraw, D.B. Cooper is not my real name.”"
If we trust the facts stated in the article, Sherwood applied a pre-existing code used by Rackstraw to two sentences, each of which contained a hidden meaning. So (according to the journalist!) we don't need the six letters, we just need the two sentences. Which is...fine, sure, that could be a pre-existing agreed upon cipher! But that tells us nothing; this isn't about crypto, it's about simple logic. Even if the code exists (questionable) and appears to match, that doesn't prove Rackstraw is DB Cooper, it just means you can't reject the hypothesis.
> without having the background the cryptographer
As above, you don't need to be a cryptographer to evaluate these claims. Further, the article doesn't claim he is a skilled cryptographer, nor is what he allegedly did cryptography.
As you say, the writing is poor, and the nonsense in the article might have nothing to do with the actual claims being made. But what the article describes is simply nonsense, and can be dismissed out of hand. Whatever is happening, it's not what the author wrote.
And as others have noted, we actually know what's in letter six, and there's just nothing there: https://dbcooper.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DBC-Letter-6...
It's a letter from someone apparently claiming to have been trained by the government, and who used that training to steal the money, which means it could have been written by anyone who'd read a single news story about the hijacking; nothing suggests it's from the actual hijacker. And crackpots constantly write letters like this after major cases, and as noted by the article, it can't even be linked to the other letters, much less the hijacker, making it even less relevant. And yet this is what the the article claims is the smoking gun? Please.
(Plus...it's just a letter, not the second edition of the Voynich Manuscript. Doesn't mean you can't hide a message in it, but it does make it much harder to conclusively show a message was hidden.)