Are you suggesting that he was targeted before he became the director of the FBI? That seems unlikely. Once he became an obvious target surely the FBI should have secured his past, present and future communications. But I have no idea what protocols there are for such things, I'm just going off common sense, a notoriously sketchy starting point in the crazy world of the current US administration.
> Even by the standards of 1914, Russia was a backward country. Most of its citizens were serfs, often tied to the land they worked, like serfs in the Middle Ages.
Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, more than 50 years before the start of the First World War.
This is a world that I have no knowledge of so I expect my comment is commensurately naive, but it does remind me of the days when I was an avid race-goer. If I bet on a horse to win that's all I wanted it to do; if the horse and jockey expended all their effort and won, fantastic, if they lost, better luck next time. Slow and steady may win the race in some circumstances but it's not the tactic most punters are hoping for. The analogy would be more complete if the loosing horses were sent to the knacker's yard and their stable hands all dismissed with only the trainers living to try, try, try again.
Fair enough, I must remember to wake up properly and think before I type. I suppose it was the lack of a preposition that threw me. The jibe about the quality of their journalism was gratuitous nonsense and which I regret and apologise for.
This is the second time that I have notice a title change in HN where the original article has "The Man..." or "The Woman..." changed in the HN title to "A Man..." or "A Woman...". Why is this done?
I don't know anything about facial recognition software so I'm probably underestimating the difficulty of alerting the system and it's operators to the interesting possibility of giraffes and zebras wandering around the urban environment.
Why is it a thought experiment? After all envelopes, cash, experimenters etcetera exist. It could be a real experiment. On the other hand what theory or hypothesis would it be testing?
What’s the problem with Monty Hall? The solution (switch to the other door) is demonstrably true. I believe it’s called a veridical paradox.
> Imagine you are given two identical envelopes, each containing money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. Having chosen an envelope at will, but before inspecting it, you are given the chance to switch envelopes. Should you switch?
Unless the imaginary “giver” shows you what was in the other imaginary envelope you’ll never know. We don’t even know if this imaginary person is telling the truth. How do you know that “One contains twice as much as the other?”
I have never been offered a choice of cash containing envelopes in my life – maybe because I have never worked in a job where bribes could be usefully employed.
The whole “problem” is about as worthwhile a subject of contemplation as, say, “Do flying pigs taste more like partridge than earth-bound pigs?”
Does anyone know of a paradox that works/exists in the real world? I mean something a bit more substantial than whether some random dude claims to be a liar and you supposedly bother to wonder whether or not he’s telling the truth.