Posted by acdanger 3 hours ago
1. Many people intuitively assume that clumping/clustering of events implies non-randomness, and that random processes are smooth and low-variance. The opposite is true [1].
2. A consequence of 1. is that people often over-estimate their understanding of the likelihood of events and the degree to which they are conditional/dependent.
3. There was an intriguing comment on this site a few days ago [2], referencing Daniel Kahneman's work on System 1 and System 2 thinking. From memory it said that reality is a lot less explicable than we tend to think - and that a lot of what we casually think we know about the everyday world is just our brains filling in the gaps using quick and cheap System 1.
As to why people are clutching at science-fictional interpretations: perhaps they're looking for some excitement or novelty? That would be very human.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion
[2] Unfortunately I cant find the comment. I wish I'd favourited it.
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
But that number, 20 disappeared people per day, is gut wrenching. (US murders are at around 40 per day.) Surveillance sucks, but maybe at least it can be leveraged to find patterns when married to NameUs data. On the other hand I can sympathize with someone who just doesn't want to be found.
A disappearance of someone from the above background, vs someone who is say in midwest rural America or near areas where human trafficking crimes occur at a higher rate than normal, matters.
Further, their research/knowledge of sensitive government material also implies they likely have some form of overwatch or at least minimal monitoring for foreign agent threats from our government (or had in the past). Its not uncommon for high ranking military officials to have some form of training in counter surveillance tradecraft for this exact reason.
The odds these events are due to a foreign adversary given the multiple wars and geopolitical tensions are not negligible
From my personal experience, these are also the kinds of people that enjoy challenging and thrill seeking hobbies like mountain climbing, backpacking, etc that put them in a position where there’s some not insignificant chance of death in a remote location.
[0]: I don't like the word protest because words are meaningless. A mass gathering of people is a demonstration of force because manpower means firepower and firepower means simple power as all real world power comes from violence.
I've thought the same thing they expressed - perfect surveillance, if put into practice with omnipresent cameras tied to AI analysis for infinite government agents tracking each of us, would not be used to solve all crime but would be used to pre-emptively end any eventual needed revolution or mass uprising against the state.
Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
No.
Are we going to learn that physics no longer exists?
Even in the article, it lumps everything together as “in recent years,” but over the span of several years, people across a large country can die for all sorts of unrelated reasons. That’s just how basic mortality statistics work.
Also, the category “scientists” is far too broad. Unless we’re talking about the same organization, the same field of research, and the same timeframe, it’s hard to justify treating these cases as connected. The scope is too wide and the professions too varied. It feels like people are constructing conspiracy theories out of weak patterns because those narratives are more stimulating.
If we applied the same logic, we could take annual industrial accident deaths in the U.S. and claim they’re part of some coordinated assassination plan by capitalists. That obviously doesn’t make sense. (Although, to be fair, one could argue that industrial accidents reflect structural issues tied to capital, but that’s a different kind of argument entirely.)
What I’m really trying to say is that this kind of article feels like a product of the internet’s incentive structure — framing loosely related events as something suspicious in order to attract clicks and attention.
Here are the individuals mentioned:
* Michael David Hicks (JPL, comets/asteroids research) * Frank Maiwald (space research / JPL) * Monica Reza (aerospace engineer, JPL) * Nuno F.G. Loureiro (MIT, nuclear science and fusion) * Carl Grillmair (Caltech astrophysicist) * William Neil McCasland (Air Force, aerospace research) * Melissa Casias (Los Alamos National Laboratory, administrative role) * Anthony Chavez (Los Alamos, construction foreman)
I’m not sure what standard is being used to claim a meaningful connection here. The category seems extremely broad.
And the idea that “if you question it, you’re part of the conspiracy” is pretty convenient reasoning.
Honestly, I’d love to be part of some shadow organization secretly running the United States from behind the scenes — do you think they’re accepting applications?
I agree that people in administrative or support roles can still have access to sensitive information and could, in theory, be targets.
But that still defines a very large group. If we include anyone with potential access across different institutions, roles, and locations, then it becomes easy to see patterns in what could simply be unrelated cases.
The key question is whether there is any concrete overlap — same organization, same project, same timeframe, or any shared operational detail. Without that, it feels more like a pattern being inferred after the fact than evidence of a coordinated connection.
More broadly, if we make the category of “possible targets” to wide, it stops meaning much. The default assumption should be that these are unrelated events, unless there’s clear evidence tying them together. Simply saying they could be targets does't really change that.
American Thought Control and thought controlled Americans human sacrifice of the innocent to pay for their “Power.”
From the Satanic sacrifices of the 80s/90s, through the public shootings of the 2000s, to the rise of white nationalism and everything that stands for today, the occult shadow governance pervades all, for they have the ultimate Power to travel among and act as God in the minds of the vulnerable and unsuspecting.
It is a mob culture, with hierarchies who can hear every thought and memory in the human mind, not an organized cabal of rich wealthy people using encrypted chat.
And they do these things to control the narrative and prune dissent.
The mistrust in the government is well founded, as Snowden, CIA secret operations in the Cold War, Abu Gharib, etc. have shown. But conspiracy theories fully embrace the nihilistic view that truth is unknowable, everything is evil, and other people have far more power than is actually realistic.
At some point it becomes a literal mental disease, and if you truly believe what you’ve written you should seek help. QAnon and pizzagate are creations of internet trolls on 8chan who lie to the vulnerable to gain their own little power.
We are not alone in our own minds, and secret occult communities of Power have been among us throughout our humanity, the signs are there, only explained away as eloquently as yours.
FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX (228 points, 170 comments)
What is the current pattern in other industries?
Does the pattern exist elsewhere in the world?
Also ~10 in a year, modal age of established scientists + collaboration with us gov, the background rate is basically that... Basically a conspiracy theory at that point, and not even a good one.
> The speculation, she says, is "denigrating to their memories".
> Other loved ones reached by the BBC called the speculation "terrible" and "disgusting," compounding families' grief - but chose not to speak on the record because they didn't want to give the stories any more airtime.
this shit is harmful to people.