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Khan Sheikhoun: Separating Evidence from Speculation in the UN JIM Report

The human mind doesn’t deal well with complexity. It seeks shortcuts, often being fooled by one of many cognitive biases. One of the goals at Rootclaim is to reduce uncertainty by breaking down complex questions into more manageable pieces. This whole system is strengthened by the open crowd-sourced approach, which increases the breadth, depth, and creativity of the analysis. A good case in point is the contrast between the recent UN Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) report on the Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack, and the Rootclaim analysis of the same incident.

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A closer look at the recently published UN Human Rights Council report about the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

UN HRC Report 36/55

On September 6, 2017, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) published a report addressing the April 4 Khan Shaykhun attack. The report found “reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Shaykhun.”  This finding seems to bolster the hypothesis that the Syrian Army was responsible for the attack. That would justify inclusion in the related Rootclaim analysis. However, a closer look reveals that this is not the case.

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Finding Bin Laden: Did Pakistan Know

Hiding in Plain Sight

For almost a decade, Osama Bin Laden eluded escape, despite a $25 million bounty on his head. That ended in May 2011, when two American helicopters touched down outside a walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. American soldiers stormed Bin Laden’s safehouse, shooting and killing him. Bin Laden’s death raised more questions than it answered. The most glaring question: did the Pakistani government realize that Bin Laden was hiding under their noses?

The Rootclaim analysis of this question looked at extensive evidence. This included information reported about the Bin Laden compound, leaked communications, US behavior following the raid, statements by Pakistani leaders, and the findings of the Abbottabad Commission Report. Continue reading

Dealing with Dependencies: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370

What Caused the Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014. The location of the plane and the reason it is missing remain unknown. In order to find the most probable solution to this mystery, the Rootclaim analysis of this story currently considers nine hypotheses: the pilot committed suicide; the co-pilot committed suicide; passengers hijacked the plane; the pilot hijacked the plane; in-flight fire; turbulence; the flight was shot down; fuselage crack; and that an improperly repaired wing-tip caused the crash. At the moment, the evidence suggests that the pilot crashed the plane while committing suicide.

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Estimating Initial Probability: Don’t Forget the Prior!

Overlooking the Initial Probability

One common trap of human intuition is failing to take into account the plausibility of an event before considering the context-specific evidence of the case at hand. Without knowing how plausible a hypothesis is in general, it is easy to fall into the trap (test yourself!) of overestimating the initial probability for inherently unlikely theories. This is known as the Prosecutor’s fallacy, one of the main flaws of human reasoning.

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When Logic Goes Wrong: Survival Guide

Logic Is Dead

As discussed in a previous post, logic fails in the real world. Real-world problems do not lend themselves to logical reasoning since any non-trivial issue involves some uncertainty (Was the report accurate? Is the test result a false-positive?). When the problem is also complex, involving large amounts of information with intricate dependencies, then uncertainty can render the logical argument meaningless.

How Does Anyone Make Decisions?

Given these hurdles, how has humanity managed to make any progress at all? How do we deal with uncertain information in cases of high complexity? Continue reading

Aerophobia: Fighting Heuristics with Probability

Heuristics: Decision-making Shortcuts

What are you more afraid of: boarding a plane, or getting into a car? For many people, flying comes with nervousness or trepidation. Such concerns don’t reflect realistic concerns. Car crashes claim more lives each year by orders of magnitude. But they do reflect something else: a cognitive trap to which almost everyone is susceptible.

Making decisions can be difficult. To help us along, our minds use a number of cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts, called heuristics, allow us to make more rapid decisions with minimal calculations. Unfortunately, while generally efficient, heuristics can also lead us astray.

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Every Logical Argument You Ever Made Was Wrong

Isn’t Logic Great?

Who doesn’t like logic? We idolize Sherlock Holmes’ ability to solve mysteries by “eliminating the impossible.” In arguments with friends, we try to prove we’re right using logic, rather than intuition or emotions. And we especially enjoy pointing out others’ logical fallacies–preferably using latin terms.

Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. Finding logical fallacies is actually much less impressive than you might think. That’s because in the real world, all arguments violate the principles of formal logic.

Yes, perhaps every logical argument you have ever encountered was flawed.

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Ghouta Attack: Challenging Conventional Wisdoms

Ghouta Attack

On August 21, 2013, the war in Syria reached a new low. Horrific pictures and stories began to spread about an attack near Damascus. Reports of chemical weapon use in the Ghouta region soon followed.

It was soon confirmed that there had indeed been a chemical attack. Deadly sarin-gas rockets had hit multiple areas within the Ghouta region, causing hundreds of casualties. But while there had clearly been an attack, its origins were less obvious. Syria, Russia, the US, UN, and opposition fighters all argued about who was responsible. These claims often reflected political interests more than truth-seeking. At Rootclaim, we set out to sift through the evidence in search of more objective conclusions.

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MH 17: Weak Evidence Matters

Discounting Weak Evidence

One pitfall to avoid is prematurely discounting seemingly weak evidence. Weak evidence can take many forms. It could be evidence that seems very unlikely under all hypotheses. Or it could be evidence that is non-intuitive and doesn’t seem to fit what we consider “conclusive” evidence.

When evaluating evidence, it’s easy to get distracted looking for “irrefutable” evidence (more on that in an upcoming blog post). However, that’s a mistake. What’s really important is the ratio between how likely evidence is under the hypotheses.

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