more than once that is a fantastical story which the Scott Alexander rule would say you can't know for sure but there's a 19 out of 20 it's fake.

Let me give you that example. So here's an article from The Insider from March 31st 2024. A year-long investigation by The Insider in collaboration with 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel has uncovered evidence suggesting that unexplained anomalous health incidents also known as Havana syndrome may have their origin in the use of directed energy weapons directed by members of Russian GRU unit 29155.

That's they always blame Russia with the fake news by the way.

Say that again. There's a whole bunch of blaming Russia things for hacking and things that sound very similar. If you haven't seen the pattern it's not as obvious but go ahead.

Well I'm just giving you the headline. So it's Der Spiegel. It's 60 Minutes and it's The Insider which is an organization that I don't know. And they're saying uncovered evidence suggesting may have their origin in the use of a directed energy weapon. And when I looked at the NIH report on Havana syndrome it sort of suggests exactly what you just said. No evidence of MRI detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities compared to healthy volunteers who reported Havana syndrome.

Now let me give you a rule that I think is really useful to this conversation. You never really know what's true. So in this example for example maybe...

Wait a second. You never really know what's true 100%. You claim to know what's true.

No you're doing that 100% thing again. You're never 100%.

Forgive me. I am fairly literal. So if you tell me something and you use specific words I'm going to treat your specific words as what you meant. All right. But you can handle the fact that it never means 100%. Let me give you a universal. I will try. But as we're sort of going through this I may ask for clarification from time to time. So to get away from that standard of the 100% thing is problematic. The thing I use is whether your worldview predicts. So if your worldview predicts you probably you're close to reality. So when Fauci said these don't work I predicted he was lying and it was right. Okay. When the sonic weapon was introduced I predicted they would never find evidence of the weapon. Now the prediction is correct so far. But could it be wrong tomorrow? Yes. But the prediction so far is good.

Here's another one of the same type. We have these credible sounding reports that there are UFOs that have been captured with actual dead aliens in their big warehouse. The Scott Alexander rule says nope. That's so fantastical that you know it's not true. My prediction is we'll never see one of those aircraft. So far that's true. Now tomorrow we could see one and then I would say whoa that rule didn't work that time. So there are none of these rules that are going to work every time. Except that in the case of UFOs for example we have seen on radar, eyewitness accounts, many eyewitness accounts from different views of the same incident. We have Congressional testimony to this effect. We have under oath. We have voluminous evidence of the existence of UAP. And I'm on the same page with you that there are things happening that we don't understand and reports that we've not explained. Right. What I'm saying is that we don't have a warehouse with 12 UFOs in it that we know of. But yes. So my prediction is that that's as close as I can get to truth on that. Just that one corner of the issue is there'll never be a warehouse with 12 UFOs.

All right. Let me give you some others. Were you aware...

I feel like I have enough of your predictive powers at this point. I'm like great but let's talk. Can we talk about the media or no?

I think I'm going to. I thought we were. Let me give us some examples. We're talking about Fauci. We're talking about UFOs.

Oh I see. Okay. We're not talking about the reporting of those stories which is what I'm interested in because you told me that I can't trust the news. All right. So to me I see it all as the news. Fauci talking is the news. That's why I asked for clarification on what you meant by the news. And the news is the reporting of facts and events that actually took place. Not. Would you agree that when Fauci said masks are not necessary that the news all reported, the news covered what he said?

Yes I totally agree with that. Okay. So I think we're on the same page. I don't know that we keep going. Did you know...

So what I wanted to know and see if you don't want to do this because this is what I plan to do. I wanted to tell you what tools I'm using to determine which of the news stories are real. So if I could run down a few more you'd have something to challenge.

Are you aware that the CIA is known, it's documented, that they've used fake UFO sightings as distractions from news that they didn't want covered?

Yes.

And did you know that the CIA used to manipulate our movies and TV shows and media for the benefit of the country. You know trying to make us all patriotic and believe what the government was saying. But then that was illegal. It became Operation Mockingbird. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. Then that became illegal. And then Obama made it legal again. So in other words our CIA can propagandize us today. Did you know that?

I'm aware that the Obama Administration passed a law saying that Voice of America and I feel like radio for Cuba or whatever it was were allowed to broadcast in the United States. Is that what you're talking about?

I think that's a subset of the larger rule. They said there was nothing prohibiting some kinds of persuasion coming from our intelligence people directed toward the United States. I would need more information on that. Do you have a link?

Not with me but I could probably get one. So just for the sake of this conversation we can move on but I will not take you at your word on that that it's legal for the CIA to propagandize United States citizens. Yes I will not take your word on that.

All right. I'll stand on that being legal.

Are you did you follow the Twitter files and all the exposes?

Very vaguely.

Okay. So it got more attention on the right. The basic idea is that the intelligence people and the FBI were very deep into the social apps and telling them what they thought was real and what wasn't and trying to convince them to do less of this and there was a lot of banning and censoring etc.

Wait wait wait. That's a claim that I don't agree with. You're saying the government banned certain users on social media. Government itself.

No. I'm saying that the government worked with the social media. But when the government comes in and says you know you really ought to do this social media is at a weak position so I think most of them caved.

Again I'm not going to take you at your word for that. Here's what I will agree with because I do think there's probably truth in what you're saying which is that the government would look at certain accounts on Twitter for example and say this person is fomenting violence for example and we think you might want to take a look at this.

Well hold on let me. I have to interrupt there. I don't know if the violence was ever an issue. What they were it was mostly about pandemic misinformation, political misinformation. Okay. And a lot of the people who were banned and suppressed were later found out to be the correct ones especially the doctors. The doctors who had alternative views about vaccines and stuff. So we do know that the government because of the Twitter files through the FBI and through the actual government itself had deep ties and that a lot of people who worked for the social media programs were...

Wait a minute. When you say deep ties you're implying something that I don't believe to be true. Because again this is me being literal. So if I'm misunderstanding you please tell me. When you say the FBI has deep ties to certain social media and maybe all of them what I hear is the FBI is controlling social media platforms. When you say deep ties to me that means exerting control over as opposed to relationships with social media companies which I would expect and alerting them to misinformation that they can and then suggesting, maybe heavy-handedly suggesting, that they should do something about that. But that's different I think than having deep ties to. I think deep ties means that they had people who had regular relationships and regular meetings. I think there was even an office of the FBI in Twitter headquarters.

I don't know that that's so much but I would argue that if the CIA is your friend and wants you to do something it's not a pure relationship. If the FBI says you know we'd really like you to do this and here's our argument and the social media doesn't want to do it and there were cases where Twitter actually said no. It's hard to say no.

So here's what I found from December 16 2022. This is in the National Review and this is what I would expect by the way. Hold on I just have to get rid of these popups. It says this is the beginning of the article. The FBI frequently communicated with Twitter's trust and safety team before Elon Musk acquired the company. The sixth installment of the Twitter Files expose series reveals between January 2020 and November 2022 over 150 emails were exchanged between the FBI and former Twitter trust and safety head Yoel Roth. It d