I don't! Dammit, read the post! No one on god's green earth trusts the FBI at their word, but that doesn't mean you can assume the opposite of what they said is true without evidence!

I suppose that depends on the expected reaction to either believing or not believing. In this case, from my perspective, I see two intended reactions to the claims of Russian subversion:

1) To delegitimize the President-elect 2) To foment war with Russia

I didn't vote for the guy but I don't think he's near so bad as his political opponents try to paint him. I'd like to at least give him a chance and to whatever degree he turns out to suck, I'll still blame the Clinton campaign for promoting controlled opposition 'pied pipers' rather than promoting a robust debate in the interest of the American people.

Wrt #2, I will certainly demand very strong evidence before yielding any resistance to that notion.

Seriously. Clapper lied directly to congress under oath on TV. The whole "they know whats best for us and our only choice is blind faith" attitude is really disturbing.

> The whole "they know whats best for us and our only choice is blind faith" attitude is really disturbing.

This is so, so insulting. There is no way a fair observer could read the comments here and conclude that the people who find Russia hacking the DNC credible do so because they have blind faith in Clapper or the FBI or anyone else.

> There is no way any a fair observer could read the comments here and conclude that the people who find Russia hacking the DNC credible do so because they have blind faith in Clapper or the FBI or anyone else.

Isn't that what you were more or less saying here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13281736

No. I believe the official version (that the reason the intelligence agencies are accusing Russia of hacking the DNC is because believe it did) because the alternative is less plausible and there's no evidence for it. That's pure Occam's Razor, no faith involved.

The FBI has lied and will lie again, getting me to believe they lied about something is not hard, but they don't generally do it in big, obvious ways that are easy to disprove and involve a lot of co-conspirators and don't accomplish anything.

That's not how Occam's razor works. You don't pick the most likely single outcome and then just assume that to be true with 100% confidence. Occam's razor is just an informal statement of the fact that you should assign a higher a priori probability to simpler hypotheses. It doesn't mean you should ignore any marginally less likely hypothesis.

Please stop accusing people of being 100% confident. It's such a weak, insulting tactic. What is the alternate hypothesis that's "marginally less likely"?

(Please remember what question we're trying to answer. It is not "Who hacked the DNC?". We are not in a position to know; hell, we don't even know there was a hack. It is also not "Is the FBI trustworthy?" Of course they're not. It is "Why are US intelligence agencies saying they have proof that Russia hacked the DNC?" The base hypothesis is "Because they do." The alternate hypothesis is what you're supplying.)

> Please stop accusing people of being 100% confident.

To quote you:

> No. I believe the official version

> What is the alternate hypothesis that's "marginally less likely"?

That Russia didn't hack the DNC. I think it's actually marginally more likely than that Russia didn't hack the DNC than that they did, but I was humoring you.

I repeat:

> "Why are US intelligence agencies saying they have proof that Russia hacked the DNC?" The base hypothesis is "Because they do." The alternate hypothesis is what you're supplying.

What do you mean by "base hypothesis" or "alternate hypothesis"? Those aren't real terms in hypothesis testing. I think you might want to do some reading on Bayesian reasoning, and its relationship to Occam's razor.

Those are not highfalutin technical terms, just casual everyday language. Stop waffling and tell me what this theory is that I'm a brainwashed sheep for not believing!

Alternative hypotheses are that they don't like to have their activities monitored, and they like people that can be manipulated with propaganda. Trump seems potentially problematic in both respects.

If these organizations are involved in questionable undertakings (it's their job, so I think we can agree the answer is yes), it's not much of a stretch of the imagination that they like to operate without supervision.

everyone is innocent until proven guilty... there is no any prove in report that hacking even took place, date, time, size of materials, exact mechanism of attack, which email address was compromized, which link was attached to email, what happened after link got openned, why outlook did not block link, why anti virus did not block exploit be installed, which exploit , why firewall accepted outcoming traffic to unknown source outside of trsuted network ... why russians ?

I don't necessarily disagree, but a guilty charge shouldn't be based on the "most plausible" explanation.

I, for one, wholly support the "insulting" of the treasonous reptiles that infest our secret agencies, on every possible occasion. The nation and world would be better off if they all jumped in a lake.