Liberty

No, I've already shared way more thoughts on this story than my share. But since you brought it up, I'd love to see your numbers and assumptions on it.

I agree. If I had to put a probability on it being true with the info I have, it would be around 70%. but that's just based on priors + a few hundred words of writing, so of course it's a weakly held belief. I think there's always been a lot of stories like that that we never heard about before and were never otherwise reported, especially if it's a near-miss, but now with the internet, more are brought to attention because anyone can tell their story. There's fakes too, of course. But I posted it as a mini-horror story, one event that happened to one person at one time. Just a "oh crap, imagine what that would be like". Just like when I read about anything else I haven't personally experienced, like marines on Peleliu or Rwanda genocide victims and perpetrators (Google "Night of the Machete") or sailing across the Atlantic, to broaden my mind to more than just my own experiences. You guys turned it into a congressional hearing.

Holy crap. Can't imagine the weigth of some of the glass that was required to get some of those shots... Must've looked like this:

Of course it matters, reality always matters. But if we can only post things that we are 100% sure are true and personally verified, 99.9% of posts on this forum, and on the internet as a whole, would vanish. It's fine to post something and say "I don't know if this is true but I think it was worth a read, take it for what it is". It also matters what the stakes are: I'd have a much higher threshold for posting health recommendations than for posting a random human interest story. If we learn more about it later in either direction, we update our belief, but we don't have to put everything in the "I know it's 100% true" or "I know it's 100% false" bucket right away based on little info. Most things are somewhere in the middle. And when you learn something later, it's like with investing, it's possible to have been right for the wrong reasons or vice versa. The people who have the right process were those who were calibrated well based on the evidence (or lack of) at the time, not those who gambled on red or black and were lucky to be shown right by facts that only came out later and that they didn't have at the time.

Its not my attention on this thread to be an asshole here or mean. There is a definite predictable pattern on these stories but its goes both ways. Here are some threads which exemplify it: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/this-girl-is-really-amazing!/msg226754/#msg226754 http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/personal-finance/the-28-year-old-retiree/ The pattern here is: 1) Someone posts a somewhat unusual story relating to a woman (or something else) 2) Board strongly doubts the story 3) Posters claim the board is being sexist and only being overly doubtful because they are women There are a few possibilities here: 1) The board is sexist and overly skeptical of women 2) Society and some posters on this board tend to be overly credulous regarding stories the fit a certain typical feminist type narrative or just generally credulous when it come to stories that fit their already pre-existing beliefs The one things I would note is that the skeptics on this board generally don't have a bad record either regarding women or other things. They are often right to doubt. Emotionally if you identify with the story it doesn't feel good to have them attacked but some detachment here is necessary. I know there is often an emotional charge to these arguments because when someone attacks something associated with a belief you have...you end up feeling like they are attacking you. I've been guilty of not listening to the board in these situations and its definitely been detrimental to me. Let me catalog a good example which I'm embarrassed about. I'm the poster that posted the 28 year old retiree thread. I definitely believed the board was being overly skeptical and negative. And the story connected with my pre-existing prejudices because I am a huge fan of the concept of early retirement. I bought two books off her site based on her recommendation which were terrible. I realized but never said that writser was right. I'll post a few comments from writser: Skepticism is my default setting when people try to sell me things,because I am frugal. And given the affiliate links, books and seminars on most of the ERE blogs these gurus are definitely trying to sell me something. Writser.....you were right!!! I didn't lose much money here but I did learn an important lesson!! And Rb, you were right. I should have realize what I was being sold and the trick that was being played. It's called sample bias, or cherry picking in this case. There are countless posts about men on this board, a lot of them turn out to be wrong or money losing, but you're not coming out "people post about men and they turn out to be wrong, here's two examples". Elizabeth Holmes says something about women, but Jacob Wohl or Martin Shkreli isn't seen as being about men... I said over and over again that I don't know if the story is true and posted it as is. My problem is with the objections. I think they're weak, and part of a double-standard that isn't being applied evenly. I live near the border of two canadian provinces. I see something happen all the time (on both sides, as a mirror image): People say that the drivers from the other province are bad drivers. The reason? Because if someone cuts you off or drives badly but they have a license plate from your province, you don't notice anything special and go "that's a bad driver". But if they have a plate from the other side, you go "that's a bad ontarian/quebec driver". And it happens over and over until you see a pattern and it seems like people from the other side constantly drive badly, because our brains don't count actual frequency, they just notice what stands out. So there's countless examples all around the net and this forum of stories about men turing out to be untrue. And since women are just people, there's plenty of those too. But stories about women seem to stand out to you as saying something specifically about women. Maybe you ought to question that. As for the quote from me, there's a lot more context to it that I got into at the time: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/personal-finance/the-28-year-old-retiree/msg308379/#msg308379 http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/personal-finance/the-28-year-old-retiree/msg308390/#msg308390 I'm not against being skeptical or whatever. This is a strawman. I'm against what I see as weak arguments. To me the story is in the "interesting, but I don't know if true" pile, like a lot of other stuff in life. I'm fine with putting things in the gray zone. When I see people wanting to dismiss it outright, I look at their reasons, and in this case, find them to be weak and double-standards and things I don't get when I post similar things about men ("she didn't write it how I think she should've, there's no date and police record on this anonymous story, people don't make movie reference when telling the truth" (seriously, you know that out of 7 billion people nobody references movies when something movie-like happens to them?), etc). That's all I'm saying.

The main point is to include it in the search feed rather than have it hidden, and to have a better name that will resonate with more people. The fact that there's more than just science in there is a good thing, not a bad thing, and figuring out how to work that into the idea is what needs to be done, not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, IMO. Right now Scholar is kind of off to the side. I think pretty much 100% of power users (scientists, technical people, academics, etc) who should use it already know about it and use it. But there's a much larger group of people who might use it once in a while if it was presented to them in the right context, but they just don't know about it or don't think to go do a search in it when they're looking for something. This group is so much larger than the academics and power users that even if just a very small fraction of it was pushed to Google Scholar, it would probably increase the reads and reach on most papers (or at least the abstracts) by a lot, and some people might get hooked into these sources or develop into scientists or technical people later on (I know that if I hadn't had access to the internet growing up there's a lot of things I'd never have learned and my life would be a lot different).

That's true, and that would be a downside to this. Even putting it in the normal feed without a name change would be good, though I think Scholar is not a good name for 99% of people, they'll never click on it even if you put it in the feed. "Science" makes people think "I wonder what the scientific sources say about it" and "Scholar" makes most people think "I'm not a university professor or a PHD student so I guess this isn't for me." So either they could find another alternative to Scholar that works (I can't think of one at the moment, but I'm sure there's something), or scholars looking for non-scientific things will get used to the new name and know that it's where they can find their stuff. Either way, even if it needs further tweaking, I think this idea is marvellous and would expose more people to better quality sources -- never underestimate removing friction and making things convenient and visible.

Maybe it depends on the field, but I've found more and more free-access journals in my searches in the past few years. Also, if you find something really interesting, you can usually email the researcher and asked for a copy of the paper. They get zero money from the paywalled journals and are usually happy to have more people read their work, so they're usually happy to help.

".@Google could dramatically increase worldwide science literacy overnight by simply renaming "Google Scholar" to "Google Science" and adding a link to it from the main search box, encouraging people to search it. The word "Scholar" is Ivory Tower. "Science" is Bill Nye." Sometimes the best ideas are simple. I thought this was brilliant. Hopefully it gets to the right people at Google... If you're not already using it, Google Scholar is great: https://scholar.google.com *I know it's not literally "no cost" because of the opportunity cost of that real estate of screen, but it's still totally worth it and the kind of thing that the old Google would've done in a heartbeat. I hope the modern Google still has some of that in it...

The bird of prey shots are beautiful. He has a good eye in general, very nice.

A couple more comments by the original poster of the story:

I love it when people go "things should have happened the way I imagine it, and it didn't, therefore it's not true". That's not how life works. I could tell you a bunch of stuff that happened to me or friends of mine that don't fit neatly into "what should've happened" or "what usually happens" and yet it's true stuff. The pattern I'm noticing is of a huge double standard with these kinds of stories. If some random dude online tells a story of almost being robbed and maybe killed or badly hurt by a bunch of guys and getting away or whatever, it's like, "oh man, glad you're ok, that sucks", but if a woman tells a story of almost being attacked/raped/etc, it's suddenly the Spanish inquisition and none of it is credible because all of a sudden everybody's an expert in how real stories should be told. I just shared a story I saw for what it is. I'm not asking you to make an investment decision based on it. I don't know if it's true, but I find the opposition to it to be pretty weak, yet along predictable lines.

::)

You don't think they all talked about what happened afterwards? Or maybe you're imagining her writing this as it happens?

The pattern that I'm seeing is the "oh, they're just looking for attention" which has been said of women talking about these kinds of things forever. We've recently seen just how frequent what they were talking about was with Trump/Weinstein/Cosby/that doctor for the US gymnastics olympics team/etc. I'm NOT saying that people should be afraid of kidnappings as something statistically likely (probably more likely if you're a pretty 20yo drunk woman rather than a 40yo man, though), but it's likely that someone traumatized by an attempt would end her post with "be careful out there about people pretending to be uber drivers". Your objections of no date and police records for an anonymous post don't make sense. It wouldn't be anonymous otherwise. And if you post anonymously with a throwaway reddit account, what attention are you getting exactly? I know we have intuition about how likely these things should be and when we hear about them frequently it sounds fake, but the internet is a big place and if millions of people converge on reddit, there's going to be a ton of unlikely stories that are true. And how do you share something that happened to you like that WITHOUT looking like you want attention? It's a catch 22 and people can always shoot you down and disregard you with no reason... So these objections are not good enough for me. Doesn't mean you have to believe everything you read, it's a judgement call, but if I think "assume this story happened for sure, how would it be written differently than it is now by a traumatized person trying to stay anonymous" and I don't see too much. I don't know what happened or not, or if it's fake, but I don't agree with what you call red flags. If she really was attacked by guys speaking another language, is she supposed to not mention it because people will say she's just trying to incite against foreigners? If they really said they were an uber, should she not say it because... But then you'd probably say it wasn't detailed enough to sound credible. With that kind of thinking you can try to tear down any story, real or not, and end up never believing anything that isn't convenient to you, just like people didn't believe women being sexually harassed for so long. So I just posted it as something that I think probably happened, and if anyone can point to a red flag more specific than yours, I'm totally willing to change my mind. I'm just explaining why I disagree with you on these. Here's a current story of disappearance, and I don't know what happened there either, but it does happen (or maybe she just ran away or had an accident or whatever): https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/26/us/missing-university-of-iowa-student-mollie-tibbetts/index.html

That it does not sound credible, obviously. If there were multiple women randomly nabbed outside of night clubs in order to be trafficked, there would be a media frenzy. But there's no such thing. There's a story posted to a subreddit heavily dedicated towards outrage content. You're saying something different. I'm not saying it's common, or that we can know it was trafficking and not just rape or something else (she's saying what she thinks it was, doesn't mean it's right). But I know that people disappear and it doesn't always make the media, often because we don't know what happened, especially if it's not blondes... No. The person who posted this, who's also a member of this forum, wrote: https://twitter.com/YoloCapMgmt/status/1023055681815900161 "Scary stuff for women to be mindful of. Seems like a low probability event but I know a couple people (including myself) who were snatched as young kids. https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/92hu6m/i_was_almost_takentrafficked_in_austin_tx/" Do you want to see their police report too?

Yeah, it could be fake. It's a story shared on the internet. What's your point? I'm not saying pass a law based on it. I'm sharing it for exactly what it is, just like when someone on this forum shares a story about their lives and I might no ask for police records of it. Human trafficking is real. Gang rapes are real. If someone is sharing an experience under an anonymous account, do you think they're going to give an exact date and police record so they are immediately identified and doxxed and harassed by the hordes of 4chan trolls on the internet? I didn't take it as a generalized thing against eastern europeans or taxi/uber drivers, just as someone recounting their own specific experience. Would it have been better for you if it was the fabled white van full of dudes with NYC accents?

Something a bit different, but I thought this first hand-account was worth sharing: Via @YoloCapMgmt

Liberty, If you read the tweet by Mr. Browder, that you linked to earlier in this topic, it contains: [My emphasis here.] Mr. Browder uses the Russian website press release as source, and by logic, you don't see any basis in that press release as basis for Mr. Browder's tweet, for the part that I've emphasized. So, my question here is: What is this? 1. Mr. Browder takes the public Russian statement for more than what it is, by quoting it incorrectly in his tweet, thereby elaborating on it, with no real basis?, or 2. Mr. Browder takes the public Russian statement as par, but is in possesion of further information, which he includes in his tweet, without adressing source? In short: Who are those public US officials, that are involved in this new [<-?] case, mentioned in the aforementioned tweet by Mr. Browder, not mentioned in the Russian Press Release? John, it seems like I had misread your earlier post. The way I read it, it sounded a bit like: "But also look at what the Russians are saying about Browder, please go read their side of the story" and "how can he make his tweet with the linked article" as in "he has no reason to complain, he's a criminal", which elicited my reaction of "they have zero credibility" (they could accuse him of killing Archduke Ferdinand, it wouldn't change anything to me...). Now I understand what you meant, thanks for adding further explanation. The twitter link that I sent is a thread. If you look down it, you'll see that Browder links to other articles including this one: https://rg.ru/2018/07/17/rf-napravit-v-ssha-zapros-o-neobhodimosti-doprosa-eks-posla-makfola.html Translated: Putin is basically trying to go after those who put sanctions on his cronies, and he knows that even if he doesn't get them, he's creating a huge chilling effect by trying to scare other officials who might think about going after the Russian Mafia by making it known that he's going to try to reach them even outside of Russia (as he has done repeatedly to Browder). Russia is not a normal state, yet the international community kinds of pretends that it is. So it's a bit like if the local crime boss was also a police officer, and when you displease him, he can put a warrant in your name and try to make your life hell through official-looking channels and charges, picking you up in a police car while wearing a uniform, etc... But I'm also assuming that Browder as the main target, mentioned by name by Putin in Helsinki, has more information than just what is public. He might not always have a convenient article to link to with everything in it. If you've read Browder's book, you know that Kyle Parker was instrumental in getting the sanctions against Russia turned into law, and now Putin is also going after him: More background here; https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/meet-the-capitol-hill-staffer-whos-in-putins-craw/ There's a podcast with Parker here: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/one-of-putins-wanted-the-excellent-kyle-parker/ And with Browder here: https://ricochet.com/podcast/q-and-a/wanted-by-putin-whats-it-like-to-be-bill-browder/ In which he says that Russia has tried to pin multiple murders on him! Yes, they pretend he's a serial killer...

Go ahead, what would you like to add?

Browder's lawyer was tortured and killed because he helped uncover corruption (it was actually a $200m+ tax-refund scam that the Russian taxpayers paid for), Browder had to flee the country and abandon all he had built there. He successfully pushed for sanctions against the criminals responsible for the situation and many countries, after looking deeply at the facts, followed suit. Ever since, Russia has been going after Browder and trying to discredit him and get the sanctions removed. In that context, and the context of Russia being a severely corrupt mafia-like state that kills journalists, jails political opponents and controls tightly the media and judicial system, I'm sorry, but official Kremlin statements about Browder or the Magnitsky act don't have any credibility, and the fact that Russia is trying to use Interpol and other judicial means to reach a foreigner that stood up to it is scary af (including trying to make a deal with Trump to get Browder to Russia, a deal that Trump called 'incredible"). He'd never get a fair trial there. He's lucky he's a UK citizen now. I don't care that the BBC compressed their long statement into a short one, the BBC is not a propaganda mouthpiece. Read Browder's book and see how the charges against him in russia and his trials came about, you'll see what kind of Godfather/Kafka crossover they're dealing with over there... I don't remember the exact details, but basically the police raided his offices, and later he learned that with some corporate documents they were able to do some stuff in the name of some of his companies in some remote part of russia, then they hired a lawyer in his name who went to court and pleaded guilty for him. Every time he's tried to show Russian authorities proof of what he discovered or his paper trail, they basically ignored him and in a country without a free judiciary, nobody's going to go after Putin and the oligarch. Crazy banana republic stuff.

They have zero credibility. Bunch of thugs and crooks know that the Magnitsky act is one of the only things that hurt them at present, because it throws sand into their game of pillaging Russia and spending and hiding the money in the West. When people like Putin or Xi or Ergodan or whoever are going after you on trumped up charges of corruption or tax evasion, you know you did something to piss them off.

New attack by the mafia-state:

We're not talking about the same things, and you seem to be conflating environmental movements and protecting the environment, which sometimes overlap and sometimes don't. I'm also not saying that technological progress can't improve things, clearly it's something I often write about. Just that it would be much worse without regulation in situations where there is market failure, like if catalytic converters were an option on cars or whatever, I've already given examples. In cases where there is clear market forces present in favor of cleaner tech, like solar becoming cheaper than other sources, then that's not a market failure, even though solar would be even more competitive if fossil fuels couldn't externalize a lot of their costs to society's health/the environment and hadn't been so subsidized (directly and indirectly) for decades. If you're saying that environmentalists have often been misguided or ineffective, or even counter-productive, and sometimes even less necessary because there's already a societal consensus, then I totally agree. But that's a different discussion. I'm talking about improving results (consequentialism), not having good intentions or activism or whatever. And I'm pro-nuclear, have been for a long time. My fave design is the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), but I'd be happy with a push for smaller uranium breeders or other IV-V generation designs too.

I haven't seen one yet, but the book 'Becoming Facebook' was pretty good.