Nothing we know about anything rules out the possibility that we might later learn something new that shows differently. But we can only make informed decisions based on what we do know, because the unknown is infinite. In the end, most occurrences in the world are just as plain as they appear.
> So, only the naive would rule it out entirely based on only self-serving public narratives.
I don't technically disagree, but it is also just as naive to ignore our human proportionality bias and discount the relative probability of the available evidence.
But the comment that I was responding to claimed, "Southwest's meltdown was definitely not an attack." [emphasis added]
I'm not saying it definitely was an attack, nor even that it likely was. Just that it's premature to "definitely" rule it out so soon, a mere 3 weeks out, given the organizational incentives involved & base rates of both extortion/vandalism & (often well-meaning but at the very-least ass-covering) reporting-misdirection about the same.
You seem to agree with me that it remains a possibility, so not sure we actually disagree about any particulars of the event, just the discussion.
Imagine there were a well-refereed, bettable proposition like, say, "By the end of 2030, will either (a) someone be criminally charged for contributing to the Southwest service disruptions of late 2022; or (b) will a knowledgeable Southwest insider or law enforcement agent report they saw evidence that intentional acts worsened the Southwest service disruptions of late 2022?"
Just from base rates of such mischief, & without yet digging deeper, I'd consider an answer of "YES" to have around a 2-3% chance. And something with a 1-in-50 chance of having happened is absolutely a valid topic of speculation deep in forums like this!
Such tail events are where lots of the big wins, & big losses, for industry & society arrive. But also, such real-but-rarer outcomes get habitually ignored by simple mainstream summary coverage, which needs to put neat bows on stories for uninformed & distracted audiences, by short deadlines, reliant on spin from involved entities.
To protest deep in the threads, and insist that a few-weeks old official-sources story is "definitely" the whole explanation, case-closed, stop-speculating-its-hurting?
That's actually hostile to helping curious people understand a complex world based on limited & conflicted information sources.
> So, only the naive would rule it out entirely based on only self-serving public narratives.
I don't technically disagree, but it is also just as naive to ignore our human proportionality bias and discount the relative probability of the available evidence.