Does anyone have any takes on the two Boeing whistleblowers who died under somewhat suspicious circumstances? I haven’t followed this in detail, and my guess is it is basically just random chance, but it sure would be a huge deal if a publicly traded company now was performing assassinations of U.S. citizens.
Curious whether anyone has looked into this, or has thought much about baseline risk of assassinations or other forms of violence from economic actors.
How many people would, if they suddenly died, be reported as a “Boeing whistleblower”? The lower this number is, the more surprising the death.
Another HN commenter says (in a different thread):
It’s a nice little math problem.
Let’s say both of the whistleblowers were age 50. The probability of a 50 year old man dying in a year is 0.6%. So the probability of 2 or more of them dying in a year is 1 - (the probability of exactly zero dying in a year + the probability of exactly one dying in a year). 1 - (A+B).
A is (1-0.006)^N. B is 0.006N(1-0.006)^(N-1). At 60 A is about 70% and B is about 25% making it statistically insignificant.
But they died in the same 2 month period, so that 0.006 should be 0.001. If you rerun the same calculation, it’s 356.
I think there should be some sort of adjustment for Boeing not being exceptionally sus before the first whistleblower death—shouldn’t privilege Boeing until after the first death, should be thinking across all industries big enough that the news would report on the deaths of whistleblowers. which I think makes it not significant again.
Ummm, wasn’t one of them just about to testify against Boeing in court, on their safety practices? And they “committed suicide” after saying the day before how much they were looking forward to finally getting a hearing on their side of the story? That’s what I read; I stopped at that point, thinking “about zero chance that wasn’t murder”.
I think the priors here are very low, so while I agree it looks suspicious, I don’t think it’s remotely suspicious enough to have the correct posterior be “about zero chance that wasn’t murder”. Corporations, at least in the U.S. really very rarely murder people.
That’s true, but the timing and incongruity of a “suicide” the day before testifying seems even more absurdly unlikely than corporations starting to murder people. And it’s not like they’re going out and doing it themselves; they’d be hiring a hitman of some sort. I don’t know how any of that works, and I agree that it’s hard to imagine anyone invested enough in their job or their stock options to risk a murder charge; but they may feel that their chances of avoiding charges are near 100%, so it might make sense to them.
I just have absolutely no other way to explain the story I read (sorry I didn’t get the link since this has nothing to do with AI safety) other than that story being mostly fabricated. People don’t say “finally tomorrow is my day” in the evening and then put a gun in their mouth the next morning without being forced to do it. Ever. No matter how suicidal, you’re sticking around one day to tell your story and get your revenge.
The odds are so much lower than somebody thinking they could hire a hit and get away with it, and make a massive profit on their stock options. They could well also have a personal vendetta against the whistleblower as well as the monetary profit. People are motivated by money and revenge, and they’re prone to misestimating the odds of getting caught. They could even be right that in their case it’s near zero.
So I’m personally putting it at maybe 90% chance of murder.
Poisoning someone with MRSA infection seems possible but if that’s what happened it’s capabilities that are not easily available. If such a thing would happen in another case, people would likely speak about nation-state capabilities.
I find this a very suspect detail, though the base rate of cospiracies is very low.
“He wasn’t concerned about safety because I asked him,” Jennifer said. “I said, ‘Aren’t you scared?’ And he said, ‘No, I ain’t scared, but if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.’”
Does anyone have any takes on the two Boeing whistleblowers who died under somewhat suspicious circumstances? I haven’t followed this in detail, and my guess is it is basically just random chance, but it sure would be a huge deal if a publicly traded company now was performing assassinations of U.S. citizens.
Curious whether anyone has looked into this, or has thought much about baseline risk of assassinations or other forms of violence from economic actors.
@jefftk comments on the HN thread on this:
Another HN commenter says (in a different thread):
I’m probably missing something simple, but what is 356? I was expecting a probability or a percent, but that number is neither.
I think 356 or more people in the population needed to make there be a >5% of 2+ deaths in a 2 month span from that population
I think there should be some sort of adjustment for Boeing not being exceptionally sus before the first whistleblower death—shouldn’t privilege Boeing until after the first death, should be thinking across all industries big enough that the news would report on the deaths of whistleblowers. which I think makes it not significant again.
Shouldn’t that be counting the number squared rather than the number?
Ummm, wasn’t one of them just about to testify against Boeing in court, on their safety practices? And they “committed suicide” after saying the day before how much they were looking forward to finally getting a hearing on their side of the story? That’s what I read; I stopped at that point, thinking “about zero chance that wasn’t murder”.
I think the priors here are very low, so while I agree it looks suspicious, I don’t think it’s remotely suspicious enough to have the correct posterior be “about zero chance that wasn’t murder”. Corporations, at least in the U.S. really very rarely murder people.
That’s true, but the timing and incongruity of a “suicide” the day before testifying seems even more absurdly unlikely than corporations starting to murder people. And it’s not like they’re going out and doing it themselves; they’d be hiring a hitman of some sort. I don’t know how any of that works, and I agree that it’s hard to imagine anyone invested enough in their job or their stock options to risk a murder charge; but they may feel that their chances of avoiding charges are near 100%, so it might make sense to them.
I just have absolutely no other way to explain the story I read (sorry I didn’t get the link since this has nothing to do with AI safety) other than that story being mostly fabricated. People don’t say “finally tomorrow is my day” in the evening and then put a gun in their mouth the next morning without being forced to do it. Ever. No matter how suicidal, you’re sticking around one day to tell your story and get your revenge.
The odds are so much lower than somebody thinking they could hire a hit and get away with it, and make a massive profit on their stock options. They could well also have a personal vendetta against the whistleblower as well as the monetary profit. People are motivated by money and revenge, and they’re prone to misestimating the odds of getting caught. They could even be right that in their case it’s near zero.
So I’m personally putting it at maybe 90% chance of murder.
Poisoning someone with MRSA infection seems possible but if that’s what happened it’s capabilities that are not easily available. If such a thing would happen in another case, people would likely speak about nation-state capabilities.
I find this a very suspect detail, though the base rate of cospiracies is very low.
https://abcnews4.com/news/local/if-anything-happens-its-not-suicide-boeing-whistleblowers-prediction-before-death-south-carolina-abc-news-4-2024