[mindslight]

So, you've spent enough effort studying the details of the Michael Hastings case that you can actually conclude the conspiracy angle is so outlandish that it can even be used as a reliable indicator of a broken general reasoning process? That is a mighty strong claim, and I'm surprised that the quality of evidence is high enough to support it and that you were so interested in it.

I haven't, and don't really have feelings on the case either way - it seems inactionable and thus uninteresting. But it seems to me that the reasonable uninvolved opinion should be to treat views on Michael Hastings's death as unindicative of much else at all.

[tptacek]

Hastings died in a car crash. Hastings was a journalist who had covered national security topics. Therefore, Hastings was killed by the US government.

That is the entirety of the Hastings conspiracy theory, which the commenter leading this thread has promoted on HN in the past.

[dTal]

No it isn't, your syllogism is a straw man. Hastings died under what are commonly known as "suspicious circumstances", which you omit in your rush to denigrate. A more accurate summary:

Hastings was a journalist who had covered "national security" topics. Hastings sent the following email:

"Hey (redacted names) -- the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues. Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the rada[r] for a bit. All the best, and hope to see you all soon. Michael"

Hasting died 14 hours later at 4:20 AM when his speeding car veered into one of the many trees lining the road. There were no skidmarks, suggesting that the vehicle was under control. Nobody knows why he was driving at that time.

It's hardly ironclad proof of a conspiracy, but you are not contributing to the discussion.

[streetnigga]

You are the one that brought up conspiracy in reference to Hastings[0]. Stop lying as if I was the one to inject it into the topic of spying. This disinformation bull your are pulling is seriously detrimental to any possible discussion.

To everyone not tptacek: Look at my comments, none suggest Hastings died due to tptacek suggested conspiracy.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294895

[chc]

How much have you studied leprechauns? Do you feel qualified to comment on them? What would you think of me if I insisted that leprechauns were behind all the major world events of the last decade?

There are lots of things we can't prove or disprove, and it's good to acknowledge that. But that doesn't make ideas based on huge logical leaps and not much evidence reasonable. It's possible (in the sense of not impossible) that leprechauns are real and do manipulate human history, but the reasons anyone would think so right now are so paltry that even if it did somehow turn out to be the case, the people who supported the theory right now would still not seem any more credible than a broken clock.

[mindslight]

I would honestly be interested in the first 0.5-10 minutes of your leprechaun theory (depending on beer consumption, and if I'd heard similar things before), then I would try to change the subject and hope that there was more to you. And the same would apply if you were to go on a rant about how people who take joy in the idea of leprechauns are positively stupid.

It's not that true/false are equally credible, it's that assertion of either one starts off utterly non-credible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all that. This applies to proving the existence of leprechauns. But it also applies to positively disproving the existence of (a specific definition of) leprechauns, especially with the goal of using that result to imply something else.

Insisting the definitiveness of either take on a middleground is akin to rooting for sports teams (not that that isn't fun, but don't think you're helping spread truth).