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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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In other words, the half life of cover ups is shorter and the big crazy stuff is just not going to fly.

This is false. As others pointed out MKUltra got exposed by a lucky coincidence. The full extent of the program is still not known, and an alternative version of events were all the documents were properly disposed of, and we never hear of it outside of the testimony of a few traumatized kooks, is hardly implausible.

You can’t call my theory about hypothetical modern day plots being far more unlikely false by citing an ancient one as you have because you aren’t addressing any of the points I made about why the past was different.

You’re simply not engaging the points I made by describing the particulars of MKUltra.

I disagree. The point I'm making is that MKUltra got exposed not due to a "half-life on cover ups", but because of a fluke, where an alternative version of events could result in it always remaining a rumor (a.k.a. crazy conspiracy theory) at most. A shorter half-life cannot fix the issue, because that was not the source of it.

Now you might say that whatever changes were implemented after the cold war would not have allowed it to go undetected (rather than merely catching it sooner), but you haven't really backed your claim, if it is the claim you are making.

I’m using “half life” metaphorically. I’m not literally saying there is a causal mechanism directly affecting every plot the way it works in chemistry.

An MKUltra today would be far less likely to either get off the ground or remain covert for the reasons I outlined. That the actual MKUltra was exposed by the dint of luck back in the day does not challenge what I am trying to relate.

This is probabilistic thinking applied to evaluating incomplete evidence. The environment has changed a lot in 50+ years and so directly mapping plots of yore onto potential plots today is a faulty model because the priors are not updated sufficiently.