Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

JohnRoth wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:That's the point I'm trying to hammer into people's heads. A competent analyst does not discard a hypothesis simply because they think it's unlikely. Stated another way, a competent analyst does not usually reach a conclusion. This tends to frustrate policy makers who want something definite, but working in the "hall of mirrors" doesn't lead to definite conclusions until it's all over and the rubble has stopped bouncing, and sometimes not even then.

And yes, fallsfromtrees was quite correct: it was the Mesan Space Navy, not the Mannerheim SDF (MSDF) I was referring to.

SWM wrote:I don't think that anyone has suggested that the analysts would or should discard the idea. What I have been saying is that it is not unreasonable for those analysts to not come up with the idea in the first place. I agree completely that a good analyst should not simply toss away the idea once someone suggests it. But it hasn't been suggested yet in text, and all I'm saying is that it is plausible for no one to have come up with the idea yet.

Well, maybe. The logic chain as I see it starts with this question: if it would have been horribly unlikely for a normal survey to find it, how did they find it? "From the other side" is an answer that ought to occur to anyone with two brain cells more than a wombat.

The next question is then: why aren't they exploiting it? There are a half dozen obvious answers for why an organization they suspect might not be quite what it seems isn't exploiting a prize resource.

Once they've got that far, "enemy action" as a reason for the Harvest Joy not coming back is one fairly obvious conclusion.

I tend to agree; that's a chain of reasoning that should occur to them and it's a hypothesis that they can't rule out based on available evidence.


Though I would point out that one of the other low probability theories that they shouldn't discard is that the wormhole was hard enough to find that the Mesan's never did find it.

That it's only a massive coincidence that there actually is one wormhole in a system where a junction was rumored to be. Harvest Joy found the wormhole due to a very careful and exhaustive survey based on the belief it was there. If the Mesan thought they know why a false rumor about a junction was circulating then they wouldn't view that rumor as reason to do an exhaustive survey.


(Sure, we know that that's an incorrect hypothesis. But it's one that the intel guys don't appear to have enough to rule out)

Hutch wrote:

kzt wrote:Even if they got a nice letter from the MA telling them that this was their WH and that intruders would be shot, how would it help?

There is no practical approach to force a defended WH that has anyone even vaguely competent defending it.

To any and all newer posters...lest ye be tempted to answer kzt's implict challenge in sucessfully attacking a wormhole, please don't go there. Like the Solly SD's, it is a topic that has been tossed to and fro among the Forum denizens and despite numerous ideas (I liked mine the best, of course), none stood up under critique.

That said, if you really, really think you have an idea nobody else could possibly have considered....well, we'll see.

Maybe what we need is something like the 1632 forum at Baen's bar has - a file that lists topics that have been beaten to death, and that any further discussion constitutes necrotic equine abuse. Attacking through a worm hole is one - what to do with the used Sollie SD's is another. Then we could ask new people to read through the file before thay attempt to resurrect one of those topics.