
Venezuela’s PdVSA Misses $404M Payments on Bonds - JumpCrisscross
http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-pdvsa-misses-404-million-payments-on-bonds-1479768989
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patio11
_The information about a PDVSA default spread by the enemies of the fatherland
is totally false_ <\-- there should be a word for "A denial which is phrased
in such a fashion as to make listening observers think it is more likely, not
less likely, that the thing being denied actually happened."

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matheist
Related: conjunction fallacy

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patio11
That's not an example of the conjunction fallacy, as far as I can tell.

You've got a cat in a box. It was killed or not based on the outcome of a fair
coin flip. Your prior for the cat being alive should be 50%. If you hear
meowing and your prior stays at 50%, you are not very good at applying logic
to contrived scenarios.

We have a complex financial transaction in a black box. My prior on there
being a technical fudging on at least one term of it is, hmm, maybe 5%. If you
tell me "A reputable observer says there was no impropriety", that goes down.
If you tell me "A socialist says, while fulminating about imperialists, that
there was no impropriety", my new estimate is high-nineties.

The box is meowing, loudly.

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matheist
Gotcha, agreed. My first comment was based on a surface reading of your
comment. Retract.

(slight quibble about your example: a fulminating socialist could just as well
make that statement in the absence of impropriety. the additional information
that that's the _best possible_ report would indeed make it sound like a
meow.)

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bratao
Apparently PDVSA said that they made the payment.
[http://www.reuters.com/article/pdvsa-debt-
idUSL1N1DM1OK](http://www.reuters.com/article/pdvsa-debt-idUSL1N1DM1OK)

~~~
meira
So it was indeed an imperialist plot?

