Hacker News Reader

Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

I mean, he very likely killed his neighbor in 2012... so I feel like "colorful" undermines how much of a monster he's been for over a decade.

View on HN

There were some very disturbing allegations against him --which is why I included his fall from grace and the good or bad.

I would just add some skepticism to the charges only because the police down there can be corrupt and or inept and subject to bribery and so on. I don't know if there has been an independent international inquiry into the matter.

Anyway, I think it's sad to see people when they throw away all the earned achievements in such a debauched way.

> I would just add some skepticism to the charges only because the police down there can be corrupt and or inept and subject to bribery and so on. I don't know if there has been an independent international inquiry into the matter.

A US federal judge found him culpable for a murder civilly.

A US federal judge finding anything adds no validity to the claim.

Why not?

Not OP, but due to the low quality of judicial product lately

Unless it was uncorrelated, it would still be some evidence, yeah?

Because when people say "Innocent until proven guilty", what they actually mean is "nothing will change my mind."

> A US federal judge found him culpable for a murder civilly

False. A US federal judge entered a default judgement against him in a wrongful death suit. Murder is not a civil offense, the standards for civil wrongful death are not remotely the same as murder, and wrongful death liability (even based on a trial and evidence) doesn't indicate that one has even approximately committed murder. And, in any case the judgement was a default judgement because McAfee didn't answer the lawsuit, not a judgement based on evidence.

It establishes civil liability, but does not indicate anything (or even that anyone has reached any judgement) about the relevant facts.

> It establishes civil liability, but does not indicate anything (or even that anyone has reached any judgement) about the relevant facts.

Hence the word culpable, and not guilty.

My point was that the claim was of limited relevance in context, not that it was false.

You immediately call it false in your response.

That he was found culpable is irrelevant. That it was “of murder” is false. The grandparent was focussed on the discussion of culpability in the context of the segment that was quoted in the comment it responded to.

The point is that "murder" and "civil law" don't go together. Murder as a concept is always a criminal law issue.

> wrongful death liability (even based on a trial and evidence) doesn't indicate that one has even approximately committed murder

This is true in general, but not true specifically for this case. A wrongful death case does not need to indicate murder, as wrongful deaths can occur for many reasons. But in this case, the award of the $20 million in punitive damages (damages to punish the defendant, not to compensate the victim) specifically were for the torture and murder, with intentional malice, of Faull.

>the judgement was a default judgement because McAfee didn't answer the lawsuit, not a judgement based on evidence.

No it wasn’t. He didn’t automatically lose because he didn’t show up. The court, specifically the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, allowed the Faull estate to petition for a default judgement due to McAfee’s continued failure to respond and due to the merits of the case presented. They did not, and would not, allow a default judgment on a meritless case.

Pdf of the actual Decision. https://regmedia.co.uk/2019/03/20/mcafee-belize.pdf

If you are rich enough you are eccentric and colorful.

“He's mad?" "Sort of mad. But mad with lots of money." "Ah, then he can’t be mad. I've been around; if a man has lots of money he's just eccentric.”

― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

great book

Money enables what's already there.

In pecunia veritas.

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 behavior e.g. because they inherited the money.

I was actually referring to the slack given to him for apparent murder and putting the police force on a payroll.

“killing your neighbor, bribing the police and never serving a single day for it? What an eccentric person you are”

That could still be eccentric depending on the situation in which you ended up killing your neighbor?

E.g. he came at me with a fire axe. And I kicked him down the stairs.

McAfee terrorized him with his dogs, he killed McAfeed dogs, McAfee killed him.

Is that in the eccentric free pass list? Can you put the list on GitHub?

Call me eccentric, but intentionally killing a dog is as bad as killing a person.

At what point does killing an animal not really matter? For example, we squash bugs and don't feel bad about it but killing a dog is frowned upon.

This is not a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious.

At least part of it, though definitely not all of it, is that a pet dog is immeasurably valuable to its owner.

Valuable in what sense?

It is interesting to watch dogs being treated like humans, almost like children and that sense of care does not extend to very human neighbours.

I don't get it. Probably because its a cultural thing. Anecdotally, where I am from a dog is a dog and will never get more attention than a person. It's not allowed in the house because that's where people live and if you feel lonely you call up a friend or sibling - not cuddle a dog.

One might get the impression that some cultures place more value in a dog than a person, which is bizzare since it is just an animal.

Western European culture has long placed a lot of value on dogs. The over embrace of dogs over humans recently though as you’re describing, is a sign of our societal collapse. People have gone absolutely bananas over animals and pets in general over the past 20 years. It’s the social upheaval and economic squeezing of the lemons. People are tense and always in fear and panic. So if you’re not very religious, you may find your non-human comforts in your pets. Especially because everyone else around you is also in constant fear and panic. It really started around here on 9/11. And it’s just a constant ramping up ever since.

> The over embrace of dogs over humans recently though as you’re describing, is a sign of our societal collapse

I think you've summed up ,quite succintly, my suspicions about western hegemony. The west is like the Empire in Asimovs Foundation trilogy. Wveryone is too busy looking at their phones to realise everything around them is crumbling.

It's not necessarily cultural, for some people dogs/pets are a substitute for human company and are held in higher esteem, since they don't have some of the negative behaviors humans do (such as dishonesty, etc)

> Valuable in what sense?

Unconditional love is valuable for humans.

Wolves have also a huge positive impact in our economy. If we exclude the humans, the wolf is the animal that had saved more human lives in the history, so is in a special category. Dogs and wolves belong to the same species.

> If we exclude the humans, the wolf is the animal that had saved more human lives in the history

Would you mind elaborating on this point? In what way has the wolf saved uncountable human lives? I've only ever seen it portrayed as a human and livestock predator.

EDIT: I've been reading up on the matter. Historically, the wolf has been associated with disease control, as they tend to remove the weakest, sickest members of a given herd from the genetic pool.

So meat is murder?

Arbitrary (and inconsistent) moral standards. I can’t wrap my head around how the same people who think killing dogs is bad are fine with eating meat from pigs and cows. How do you draw a line? Dogs are more intelligent? Dogs are better pets? Dogs are more fun and loyal?

Objectively, none of this is probably true (except the last).

I don’t think the problem is with the killing of the dog. The problem is with the killing of a pet.

Yeah. It's pretty common for people to regard their pets as members of their family.

The poster you responded to (or should I say ranted at) told you nothing about their beliefs in regards to other animals.

If you kill a cow belonging to a rancher, I think they are going to object, and it's not because they think eating beef is wrong.

Every moral standard is arbitrary if you don't recognize the distinctions being made.

I would agree that someone who intentionally killed a dog and doesn't regret it is a terrible person, but I still think you'd be a terrible person if you subject them to death.

I think so too. At the same time I think I can emphatize with a person that does.

Kind of? What kind of person kills dogs?

I almost had to. A neighbor didn't think leashes or fences applied to his dogs and they cornered neighborhood children on more than one occasion and attacked one of them. The dogs went into another neighbors garage and attempted to attack him. He happened to have a rifle with him and gave them a warning shot. I'm not sure I would have, and I love dogs.

That was definitely a teachable moment for the owner had the dog been shot. It’s always the owners fault of course and not the animal’s but it’s pretty weird how some dogs are that aggressive and terrorize while others are no problem.

> Kind of? What kind of person kills dogs?

The kind against whom the same dogs are used as a terror weapon by a “colorful, eccentric” rich neighbor.

Have you read about Bill Gross and his feud with a neighbor? https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gross-legal-battle-scul...

Or, Rand Paul: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rand-paul-attacker...

Without specific information, I'd expect that in any similar situation, both parties had reasons for doing what they did, and it escalated because neither of them would back down. Obviously it's not something that only rich people do.

And beforehand without specific information, I would've assumed that Paul was at fault and Gross was not, based on public images and politics. But it was seemingly the opposite.

Belize cops seem to be manning the till quite frequently judging by the case of their ex Governor General’s relative and one of their own

Don't forget about the rape allegations.

The slack has a compounding effect

Like, sure public perception isn't immediately bad when someone is perceived as wealthy

But the immediate and long term consequences are very different whether people went along with it or not

People can have louder and wilder public opinions when they aren't beholden to current/future employment or even advertising dollars

Even convicted people that do not need employment are able to just go back to whatever they were doing. They are not marginalized.

Even before conviction they can pay fines and settlements and make it orders of magnitude more expensive for prosecution to even mount a case

I don't think it has as much to do with wealth as it has to do with how interesting/accomplished the person is, the more slack we give them culturally. The more boring/ordinary a person is, the less slack we give them in western culture. A poor person whose life has interesting or compelling elements to it also seem to get a ton of slack culturally for crimes.

Are you eccentric and colorful because you are rich?

Are you rich because you were eccentric and colorful?

Or just people find you eccentric and colorful just because they look at you now that you are rich?

Guilty until proven innocent?

Well, technically, that can't happen now..

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.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" isn't even the only standard of proof in a courtroom! That's only for criminal cases.

You mean like people judging others on Twitter based on gossip and quotes out of context? Society could do a lot better by imitating the justice system standards a bit more. The system was created that way for important ethical reasons.

It was created that way because of the extreme consequences of criminal conviction. Civil suits, which deal in money or injunctive relief, have a much lower standard of proof. Social opprobrium rightly has a standard lower than that.

It's no longer mere "opprobrium". These days it's losing your career (or at least your current job) and getting incessantly harassed. The calculus has very much changed.

(I'm not claiming that I have a solution for the problem, besides people individually waking up and realizing that it's a bad idea to rush to judgement. No amount of censorship or similar tactics could possibly solve this problem even if our benevolent tech overlords wanted to)

I'd say the standard in civil suits is the lowest ethically possible in judging people. It merely requires the claim to be more likely to be true that not. Below that, you're saying the claim is most likely false based on the evidence, but for reasons of extreme caution you will presume it is true. I certainly agree that happens in social media where the outcome of letting a "guilty" person get away with something is judged to be more unacceptable than the outcome of destroying an innocent person.

1) Lower than preponderance of evidence?

I believe you about it having such a standard (we can call it presence of evidence or presence of suspicion), but not on it being right.

2) Preponderance of evidence makes sense on civil suits because they are kinda inherently simmetrical. Either A loses or B loses. We would probably do better in using the standard of evidence for, say, a traffic violation, in the case of social "lets get this guy fired and try to make sure he never gets a job again" -- might not be enough of a standard, but better

The only standard mentioned in this thread was "beyond a reasonable doubt", to which someone replied that it should absolutely be the standard.

Did you mean to say "social opprobium" (aka, lets get this guy fired and kicked out of places) should have a lower standard of proof than "beyond a reasonable doubt"? Because reading your post I understood that it should be lower then the civil standard (i.e.: "preponderance of evidence")

Which I believe it *has*, but absolutely should not have

To clarify:

What do you think the highest and lowest standards of evidence should be for "social opprobium"?

And what is the maximum damage to ones life that "social opprobium" should ideally entail?

Nothing I said relates to the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard

It's not a logical standard, and you can prove a negative. For example, I can prove that I'm not dead, that there's no elephant in the room with me as I type this, and that my wife is not having sex with someone else right now because I can see her on the couch.

I wish people would stop saying you can't prove a negative. You can prove that you didn't do something by proving something else that logically excludes you doing it--such as being somewhere else at the time.

What about people who can’t prove a negative but truly are innocent? If you can’t guarantee that 100% can prove a negative, then innocent people would be convicted.

Innocent people do get convicted. Some negatives can't be proven, just like some positive assertions can't be proven.

What about people who can't prove a positive but truly are guilty?

In this fuzzy form of what "positive" and "negative" are, there is a symmetry that allows all arguments you have for one "side" to be easily flipped. Each positive is somebody elses negative. Not guilty? Not innocent? With that line of reasong you could not ever prove anything since it's "the negative" of something else.

Mathematical logic has a solution to this though. You may want to check out constructive logic. That's where the statement "you can't prove a negative" is reasonable but has very specific meaning.

In Aristotelian Logic, is said that you can't prove an Universal Negative statement. I guess at some point someone forgot the Universal part and ran with it, creating that misconception.

That's not what I'm talking about. You can't prove an arbitrary negative. Or even more rigorously, just because you can't prove a negative doesn't make the positive true.

You could have programmed a script to make this comment. The elephant might be invisible. That might be your wife's identical twin sister. You can always come up with a more elaborate explanation. You haven't proved your negatives, you've just made it harder to prove the inverse. And while specific examples might be easy, in general this is hard if not impossible to do.

It would be absurd to assume your wife is cheating at every moment where you can't see with your own eyes that she isn't - no the default assumption must be that the claim is false and evidence must be presented to the contrary.

You're confusing logic with epistemology in the context of legal proceedings and life in general. Epistemically, I prove there's no elephant in my room now because elephants can't be invisible, because I would feel it or hear it or smell it, etc. You can posit an endless number of additional premises to show that there may still be an elephant in the room, but you end up in logical paradox where any evidence of the elephant being present is inaccessible. At that point, what does it mean to say "there's an elephant in here with me that is completely undetectable, so lack of detection is not evidence of absence?"

In terms of epistemology, "proof" means reaching sufficient justification for considering a belief to be true, not validity according to an axiomatic system.

I mean, is that 100% true?

Probably (by which I refer to the standard of judgement in the civil suit). https://www.theregister.com/2019/03/20/mcafee_25m_lawsuit_ne...

That was a default judgement, which means he automatically lost because he didn't show up to court, not on the merit of the suit.

No it doesn’t mean that. He didn’t automatically lose because he didn’t show up. The court, specifically the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, allowed the Faull estate to petition for a default judgement due to McAfee’s continued failure to respond and due to the merits of the case presented. They did not, and would not, allow a default judgment on a meritless case.

Meritless cases don't even make it that far (the court refuses to hear the case), so while true this seems like an unnecessary quibble. Yes, the suit had enough to actually be heard by a court, but the reason for the judgement is due to McAfee's refusal to even participate. Said another way: if McAfee had participated, this is not the judgement that would've been reached. McAfee may have still be found responsible by the court, but not for the same reason.

It is certainly not the normal level of proof people take a court decision as being.

If I remember the story correctly the neighbour killed his dogs. That’s a pretty strong motive.

John Wick agrees

This makes me wonder if he was a source of inspiration for the movies...

Sounds like someone else with the same first name and motive.

Actually, John killed his own dogs after he believed they were poisoned by his neighbor. Were they really poisoned, or was that just one of his psychotic delusions(like his claim that Belizean officials were out to kill him but killed Faull by mistake)?

We'll never know. But we do know that his dogs were allowed to run free in a giant pack and attacked at least 6 people (probably more, but they may be locals and not ex-pats/tourists whose claims are more likely to be reported on)

He claimed that he gifted laptops to the Belizean government pre-loaded with spyware and alleged to have found evidence that multiple top officials were engaged in drug and human trafficking.

If true, would certainly be a motive for those officials.

Weird he never provided any proof of his claims about that. You would think that if he was invested enough to put his own life in risk(according to him) to find out the extent of corruption among officials in Belize, that he would, perhaps, release the information in some manner instead of just pretending like it never existed.

And what was the thinking of the officials who allegedly received the laptops? "Oh no, the man who gave us free laptops has been reading everything we've done on these laptops. Let's plan his murder on these laptops now. Don't worry about finding his address, it's just some home north of San Pedro right? Just go kill a guy and it must be John"

He mentioned in his tweets a lot will be released upon his death. We'll see I guess.

To anyone reading this: I will bet literally any amount of money that is available to me, with 10:1 odds, that no information will come out.

Didn’t McAfee bet to eat His own penis for some reason?

And lost, and refused to honor the bet.

It was over the price of bitcoin.

You waiting for any Q drops too?

There was a Q posted to his Instagram account an hour after his death was reported. Popcorn ready.

This is how conspiracies are created. There's no evidence and strong motive for him to create this conspiracy.

I'm a big fan of Occam's razor and in this case the simplest explanation, in light of _evidence_ of which there was plenty in the documentary, is that he was not truthful.

To be a bit pedantic, testimony is evidence. But I agree he was not very credible.

> He claimed that he gifted laptops to the Belizean government pre-loaded with spyware and alleged to have found evidence that multiple top officials were engaged in drug and human trafficking.

So he was looking to take out his competitors? Because he boasted of having sold 25KG of psychotropics in the previous year, so let's not mistake him for some vigilante.

Do you have a source for that? I don't doubt you, but I'd like to read the story.

> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/09/the-obscure-legal-dr...

Quantity claims:

> https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/8utitu/john_mcafe...

Wow, that reddit thread is really something. Thanks

"Actually, John killed his own dogs after he believed they were poisoned by his neighbor."

I've never heard he killed his dogs. I did hear he thought the next door neighbor poisoned his dogs.

He shot his dogs and buried them on his property (allegedly, because he thought they were poisoned). The last I heard of the dogs, the police had taken their corpses to see if they were shot with the same gun that murdered Faull. But odds seem low since it was known that John had a ton of guns and armed guards in Belize.

Even without being found guilty of murder... if you watch that documentary he hires very unsavory characters to be his armed guards 24x7.

You are one of the richest people on the planet and you choose to be an armed bully on a small island with a lot of poverty to exploit.

He could literally have any lifestyle he wanted.

He hadn't been one of the richest people on the planet in more than a decade.

Definitely did not have enough money for literally any lifestyle, especially seeing as it appears he owed a lot of money in back taxes.

Had a net worth of several hundred million in a country where the cost of living was 23% of the US might not be a "megayacht and private 787" lifestyle, but it would do pretty well.

He owed a lot of money in back taxes because he made a point of specifically refusing to pay them, not inability to do so.

His net worth peaked at $100M right before the 2008 financial crisis, which apparently decimated his investments.

If you spend a lot of money without paying your taxes, you still owe those taxes, which means you have significantly less money than you think you do. So when his aforementioned wealth peaked at $100M, the real value (i.e. minus taxes) was probably much lower.

Not withstanding the amount, I'm willing to be corrected there, but the latter part makes little sense:

Say I have $1M in the bank (or in Bitcoin), but I owe the IRS say $300K.

I leave the country, and take my money out of the reach of the IRS.

My "net worth" on an accounting statement might be $700K, but if I'm making a point of avoiding and biting my thumb at the IRS, I still absolute have access to $1M, regardless of moneys owed or claimed. And if I have no intention of paying those taxes, I'm certainly going to use that money. And McAfee was very actively saying "I'm keeping that owed tax and doing whatever the hell I like with it".

Given that McAfee himself claimed he had assets seized by the feds and had nothing at the end, I don't think even McAfee was ever as far out of reach as you think he was.

The IRS can seize assets. McAfee wasn't sitting on $100M in hard cash, most was in property and investments.

According to [0] he was down to about $4M in net worth after 2008, which isn't nothing, especially in a LCOL country, but for context, if he made 200k per year and put 10% away for retirement from when he was 25, he would have had the same amount.

[0] https://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/...

Suppose your assets lost 70 percent of their value soon after the tax year ended. Now your net worth is 300k while your tax bill is 400k, and you can only slowly get the over-payment back by deducting it against your current taxes.

We are assuming McAfee is just not paying taxes because craziness, but when you have volatile situation you can get burned by the rules pretty badly.

He didn't strike me as a bully.

He seemed to like his dogs (which I get!), and was out for the little guys of the world. He didn't like authorities whom abused their power.

I found him refreshing compared to most wealthy guys.

I am sad he's gone. I wish it wasen't fear over the IRS though.

(I don't think anyone should do jail time over taxes. You can take their money, but no jail time. Oh yea, I don't care if he was doing drugs (prescribed, or illegial). I don't think anyone should have to go through withdrawls in a cell. That last sentence was not aimed at John. It never felt right hearing that people are expected to withdrawal from any substance while in jail. I see a constant help wanted in my local paper for a Psychiatry position at San Quentin. If I was in charge, every suspect would have a Psychiatrist they can talk to, and medicated if needed, with in a hour of being locked up for any offense. It's got to be one of the most stressful event in a person's life.)

> He seemed to like his dogs

We offered the McAffees a puppy shortly after they moved to TN; they came out and played with the litter for a couple hours in our front yard, and they were both very much "dog people".

Our pack wasn't aggressive, as such, but everyone found them intimidating. John was quite happy being chewed by multiple small hounds, and the rest of the pack was OK with the idea of him having a pup.

Alas, they weren't stable enough to give a good home to a dog at that time (and told us so before the pup was ready), so that puppy went elsewhere; but I was delighted to meet them both and found them decent people to spend a bit with.

> weren't stable enough to give a good home to a dog

That was my instinct as well, after John told the story about paying his Belizean housekeepers to shit into his mouth from a hammock.

And if the ladies stories about his hammock usage is true...

[I stand corrected]

It hasn't been "John's software" since 1994.

lol. I had to look that up.

Maybe he hung out with Chuck Berry too much.

So people don't have to look that up, some women claimed he liked seemingly consensual scat. Not really comparable to alleged murder.

That makes him a monster?

yeah but the guy poisoned his dogs right?

Why did he kill his neighbor?

According to news story: McAffee's dogs kept terrorizing people on the beach, neighbor poisoned dogs, McAffee hired hitman to torture and kill neighbor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com