Ugh, the McAfee stuff is way less important than the covid stuff, but I don’t have any interesting covid commentary, just incohate frustration. So, in re McAfee: right now I do think he killed himself, following three lines of thought:
I don’t understand who’s supposed to have benefitted from his death. “Preventing him from talking” doesn’t really make sense as a motive; there’s nothing publicly known that would identify “now” as a good time to kill him for that, as opposed to six months ago or whenever.
I didn’t read his twitter feed until today, so I’m reading it in light of his death, but to me it reads like a man in decline and losing hope. I grant this is pretty subjective, but go read his tweets from last October and compare them to the ones from April, and decide for yourself how they grab you.
People aren’t good at modeling changes to themselves over time, and especially aren’t good at tracking their own changes of mood (as when a patient’s family notices the effect of an antidepressant before the patient does). In general, I’d take a person saying “I’m definitely not going to kill myself, even after months of isolation in prison” as only very weak evidence.
If he was killed after all, I would guess it was by local forces (drug gang, government, etc) in retaliation for something fairly small-scale that we haven’t heard about. This explains the timing: once he was extradited, he’d be beyond their reach.
With respect to [1], “now” would be a good time for someone to kill him given that it might have been much easier to do while he was in custody. (Your un-numbered follow-up about locals being responsible for killing him seems as plausible as anything else!)
Ugh, the McAfee stuff is way less important than the covid stuff, but I don’t have any interesting covid commentary, just incohate frustration. So, in re McAfee: right now I do think he killed himself, following three lines of thought:
I don’t understand who’s supposed to have benefitted from his death. “Preventing him from talking” doesn’t really make sense as a motive; there’s nothing publicly known that would identify “now” as a good time to kill him for that, as opposed to six months ago or whenever.
I didn’t read his twitter feed until today, so I’m reading it in light of his death, but to me it reads like a man in decline and losing hope. I grant this is pretty subjective, but go read his tweets from last October and compare them to the ones from April, and decide for yourself how they grab you.
People aren’t good at modeling changes to themselves over time, and especially aren’t good at tracking their own changes of mood (as when a patient’s family notices the effect of an antidepressant before the patient does). In general, I’d take a person saying “I’m definitely not going to kill myself, even after months of isolation in prison” as only very weak evidence.
If he was killed after all, I would guess it was by local forces (drug gang, government, etc) in retaliation for something fairly small-scale that we haven’t heard about. This explains the timing: once he was extradited, he’d be beyond their reach.
With respect to [1], “now” would be a good time for someone to kill him given that it might have been much easier to do while he was in custody. (Your un-numbered follow-up about locals being responsible for killing him seems as plausible as anything else!)