Hacker News Reader

Comment by espeed | Hacker News Reader

Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik said yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury (see interview for details http://goo.gl/PaMRa).

Pieczenik is on the Council on Foreign Relations and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. He is a former US Navy Captain, and he went through Harvard Medical School while he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.

View on HN

Before I watch any long videos, I would like to know how he explains all the Bin Laden videos released on Al Jazeera?

I remember one specifically which was released to rebut claims of his death several years ago, in which he mentioned recent news to prove that he was, in fact, alive.

I'm not unwilling to believe that the government would lie to us or whatever, but I do require both proof and convincing explanations of any available data to the contrary. Right now, we have lots of confirming evidence and no good explanations of why it was all wrong.

That said, I expect the conspiracy theories to go on for decades. I'm sure there will be TV specials discussing it, just like there are for JFK, the moon landings, Roswell, etc.

Testifying in front of a grand jury is boring. Providing evidence is interesting.

Listen to the hour-long interview where he provides details.

I'd rather not waste an hour of my life listening to a conspiracy theorist.

People from the State Department are now conspiracy theorists?

Anyone who propagates conspiracy theories are conspiracy theorists. Who they works for is completely irrelevant.

How should someone from the government or Council on Foreign Relations (http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=P) speak up if something is BS? -- it's not often that they do.

Council Shmouncil. It's self-claimed "nonpartisan resource for information and analysis". Which means they can BS as much as anyone on internet.

What's the State Department?

It's not good to be dismissing unpopular ideas, a very popular idea before Iraq invasion was ....(you know the story). I'm just saying listening to both sides of the argument before conclusive making up ones mind is a good idea. I have not seen the said video and am not endorsing it, just commenting on the idea of openness, with all due respect. :-)

This particular dumb theory can be easily disproved: if the US government really were involved in some dumb-ass scheme to kill Bin Laden in 2001 and then not bother to tell anyone about it for nearly ten years (even, say, circa 2004 when Mr Bush really would have liked to have that for his re-election campaign) then they'd also be supervillainish enough to kill this guy for talking about it.

Sometimes it's not good to dismiss "unpopular" ideas, but it usually is a good idea to (provisionally) dismiss dumbass ideas which don't appear to make sense and for which there isn't any damn evidence.

Think you missed my point my man, you are talking about analyzing and then dismissing the idea (totally agree and cool), I am speaking of people who dismiss prior to analysis just because the idea is unpopular and not a part of the mainstream ideology. Hope this makes sense.

Well for a start it's not about "ideology". Ideology is about the way the world should be, and it's a matter on which the reasonable people of the world can and should disagree.

The date of bin Laden's death (if indeed he is dead, if indeed he ever existed) is a fact-of-the-matter thing; it's either one way or it's another way, and there shouldn't be much room for reasonable people to disagree at all. Reasonable people may be uncertain on such matters, but they should all share similar degrees of uncertainty.

I am not sure why you insist on missing my point repeatedly when I have clearly stated right from that start that "I have not seen the said video and am not endorsing it". My point was about attitude not the video, again in even simpler language:

Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss after thinking about it and looking into it = Good.

Ironically, I should dismiss your response because you’re repeatedly beating the same dead horse. ;)

Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss after thinking about it and looking into it = Good.

So whom, exactly, are you accusing of dismissing it without giving it any thought?

I am happy you finally get what I've been trying to say Mr.3. And no, I'm not getting into it again with you :-) (it's a public forum, look it up). It's not that serious anyway. Happy Cinco! :)

Instead of dismissing one idea or the other, it would be more interesting to ask why someone with Pieczenik's credentials and connections would say that when he did.

Generally speaking, people don't dismiss conspiracy theories merely because they are minority viewpoints. The dismiss conspiracy theories because it is obvious the fail the logic sniff-test.

If you gave equal time to every theory, no matter how basicly logically flawed, you would end up spending all your time just watching poorly edited videos on youtube. Dismissing something as a conspiracy theory isn't closeminded, it's a basic defensive mechanism.

Popular beliefs are barely ever logically qualified by every single person who believes them (most folks are blind followers - they'd rather take your word for it than go through the trouble, I understand), and secondly you are saying that alternate theories fail a test, that is my point, test before disqualifying, don't just disqualify.

Curious to know about your username "burgerbrain"? ;)

Rule of thumb: whenever someone tells you that you should watch some random hour long video on the internet to really 'get' some dubious claim, don't.

I have avoided wasting countless hours of my life like this.

You should really make a video about that...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com