It is, I assume this post has been made because Elon recently said when he addressed the media next to Trump that they supposedly found people who were 150 years old collecting social security payments.
What has followed is people coming out of the woodwork to explain how this may have been reflected in the system since the system was written in COBOL and the reasons why those people were reflected that way the system, that they likely weren't actually having those payments made and it there wasn't the wastage of tax payers money as Elon claims.
Whereby citizens that don't have a recorded age are represented with an age of 0 and COBOL backdates their age from 1875.
It seems to be Elon's DOGE team having access to data that they have little experience in reviewing and understanding and are spreading claims that are false.
> What has followed is people coming out of the woodwork to explain how this may have been reflected in the system since the system was written in COBOL
There’s zero evidence these “people coming out of the woodwork” have any idea what they are actually talking about. No evidence they have ever worked for SSA or have any insider info on how its systems work. It appears these “people coming out of the woodwork” are just random nobodies speculating in public (likely incorrectly), and people are repeating their speculation because they like how it sounds and they don’t know enough about the topic to realise that it probably isn’t true
Well if I can't tell what side you are criticizing with your broad quotes then my point is they aren't really effective. Which is why I said posting vague quotes about totalitarianism doesn't really do much.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Do you consider the original quotes "unsubstantive", too, seeing how it's flagged yet upvoted? Because like it or not, you have a lot of that on this website, most recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112777
I'm afraid I don't understand your question. I did take a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43112777 and can say that yes, that's definitely a flamewar comment that breaks the site guidelines and that we ask users not to post here. I've replied to that commenter elsewhere.
Unfortunately your reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43113282) also breaks the site guidelines. If you keep doing this, we're going to have to ban you, so it would be good if you'd please stop doing this.
Telling me "if you think this is some kind of roast against one side" that's not saying it's unclear, it's telling me what the quotes were supposed to achieve in my mind, and that it failed to achieve that. Hence, straw man / goal of their own making. Second reply doubled down on that with "if I can't tell what side you are criticizing" -- that's not asking me to explain either.
> random nobodies speculating in public (likely incorrectly), and people are repeating their speculation because they like how it sounds
That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions" [0], that's the first quote. The second one elaborates on why it must be that way, because the fish stinks from the head. That's all, really. It was mostly for the person I replied to, because they were the one wondering about something that reminded me of Arendt. I thought maybe they might get something out of it, and if anyone else does too, cool.
And they're too long, admittedly, but if I just quoted the exact bits, that would not even make it clear in what context she wrote it, instead of just stealing her phrasing.
[0] I put that in quotes because I think it's different from ignorance, or deception out of selfish motives. As Arendt put it in the second quote, "simple-minded trust in the salvation value of stubborn devotion without regard for specific, varying factors" to me is exactly what we are seeing. People not missing a single beat when their claim is refuted. Nit-picking, or shifting the goal post, or just not acknowledging it. All that varies, but the not seeming to mind, at all, that is what sticks out to me.
Of course that applies to all sorts of "sides". In this case, the American left and right both have flavors of it. Why wouldn't they? And I guess cults or extreme religions probably do, too. That is, outside their dogma, everything else can be just made up on the spot and said and/or believed when it's useful, and everything can be sacrificed, including the world and factuality itself.
And that's the key point, I think: there are movements that "just" seek to bulldoze all opponents, without being also at odds with factuality itself (oldschool religions were convinced in the truth of their claims, which is far cry from the cynicism of "totalitarianish" stuff, which will tell you something entirely different tomorrow than today, that's the only constant). But probably with mass societies and the rootlessness they foster, this new, even more lethal thing came into the world.
> > random nobodies speculating in public (likely incorrectly), and people are repeating their speculation because they like how it sounds
> That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions" [0], that's the first quote.
Allow me to clarify what I was saying: there is no inherent problem with “random nobodies” speculating about things - I am myself a “random nobody” in this context. The problem is when people start talking about those pseudonymous speculations as if they were coming from genuine life experience with this particular computer system, or closely related computer systems-which is what I interpreted the comment I was replying to as claiming (or at least it could be read as implying it). Furthermore, while both I and the sources for these speculations are “random nobodies”, I’d say I’m a much more informed random nobody, because I’ve read enough COBOL documentation to realise that what they are saying is of dubious plausibility, whereas it appears they haven’t.
That’s not to say I’m endorsing Musk’s claims about “150 year old social security recipients”-I don’t know what the actual truth behind them is (and I don’t think anyone else publicly discussing them does either), but I think more likely than not they are an exaggeration, distortion or misinterpretation - so I do think they are probably (at least partially) wrong - but (outside a small cohort of current and former government officials and contractors, who likely are restrained by confidentiality obligations from participating in the public debate) nobody knows exactly how and why they are wrong - but I know enough about COBOL to know that COBOL-centric theories about why Musk is wrong are very likely themselves wrong.
And finally, replying to someone’s comment with quotes - without any explanation of why you think the quotes are relevant to the comment you are replying to - isn’t a helpful communication style. Rather than leaving people guessing at what you are trying to say-or leaving them with the onus of asking you to clarify-much better to just explain it explicitly in your initial reply. Plus, I have the suspicion that your reply was triggered by a misunderstanding of my position - that you were reading me as saying “Musk is right”, when what I’ve actually been saying (not explicitly in that particular comment, but I think it becomes clearer if you read my other comments on the topic) is “Musk could well be wrong-indeed more likely than not he is-but not for this reason”
> That made me think of how Arendt described the pre-totalitarian mishmash of opinions and totalitarian "opinions"
That is genuinely all. If that is not welcome here, fine, but this "what are you trying to say?" as if there has to be some other layer I just don't get, or this flagging spree against me now.
> much better to just explain it explicitly in your initial reply.
"this made me think of" is implied to me. I could have put some specific phrase in italics, but other than that, just flag the thing. Any reply I make just gets used against me anyway, so do whatever.
You literally have that backwards. The misinfo is that COBOL would be back-dating to 1875, as is made clear by the linked StackExchange thread and anyone else that has actually used COBOL. Regardless, people without an accurate age in the Social Security database should not be getting payments either, even if they are not actually 150.
Okay regardless of whether I had it backwards the intent of my post was still correct. That there may have been people in the system that were 150 years old, due to the COBOL language.
And who says they actually were being paid, was that just assumed or did they find that people were inappropriately being paid? It is been circulated that there is an automated component that prevents that from happening if people are aged past 115 years old
It is irresponsible to stand up in front of the Whitehouse and spew that there are people receiving social security payments that are 150 years old, without performing a formal inquiry into the matter or communicating the detail appropriately.
> That there may have been people in the system that were 150 years old, due to the COBOL language.
Yes, but this is the whole aspect that is misinformation: there is no evidence that (alleged) “150 year old social security recipients” has anything to do with COBOL. That appears to be simply some speculative and likely incorrect theory that some random cooked up, and people that don’t know any better are repeating as fact
It is entirely possible that Musk/DOGE’s claims about this topic will turn out to be incorrect - but if they do, then I very much doubt that the actual reason, whatever it may turn out to be, will be due to any feature of the COBOL language (or the implementation of it SSA is using)
The solution to Musk’s misinformation isn’t anti-Musk misinformation
Furthermore, while I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk’s claims turn out to be a exaggeration or distortion, they are an exaggeration or distortion of genuine internal government info - being weighed against uninformed speculation by Internet randoms
Personally I'd be more worried by uninformed speculation by the unqualified internet randoms currently reallocating the government budget than uniformed speculation of internet randoms pointing out that given their representation of "genuine internal government info" makes no sense there might be multiple more logical explanations. I don't think the barriers to comment on internet forums should be higher than the barriers to running the country, but YMMV
this is why the social media powered bullshit machine is so effective.
Scenario: Chief executive president says that children are raped by unicorns. People react by saying, there is no way, unicorns don't exist. How do you know they don't exist? There are no animals with a unicorn-looking long twisted horn on their foreheads, some people respond. Somebody else points out that Narwhals exist and somehow we've reached the conclusion that people astonished with the president in chief are somehow just people with musk derangement syndrome and talking from their asses.
In the meantime the extraordinary claim that started all this goes unaddressed and we're ready to repeat the cycle with the next inflammatory bait that takes no time to produce and drains all the energy of all those who want to make sense of it.
They specifically said these people are getting payments. That means whether the cause is accurate representation in the database, or inaccurate representation in the database, this linchpin data should invalidate any payments.
That's ingenuoua. He posted the ssa's process for culling 115 year olds above. Also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Presently, there is no evidence.
This is precisely why business and government are different entities. Business is a wealth-creating opportunity with less responsibility. Government may not be low-latency, but its aim is to be responsible and correct. Confusing the two is a major problem.
What was the claim? That there are millions of people above 120 years old in the SS database that aren't marked dead? That doesn't sound extraordinary, or a claim that's hard to challenge by even past employees that had access to the data. but all we got is propaganda and FUD.
Presumably in the SS database. Is your idea that he should give everyone on the internet access to this database? Because other than seeing it for yourself, I'm not sure what evidence he can provide that you will believe.
More than zero would be a start. You said it's not viable to give evidence of claims during a press conference, okay, but it's been a while since then.
His team ran a query and shared the results. How is that zero? What do you expect him to provide? Litterally NOBODY is arguing that the results aren't accurate based on data other than an, easily verifiable, erroneous claim about the COBOL platform or "mUsK SAiD iT"
In fact, if you read that document, it mentions there are exceptions in which the automated process doesn't terminate someone for being >115, and the termination has to be done manually for:
> Beneficiaries with other claimants active on the record;
> Dually or technically entitled beneficiaries with a discrepancy among records (information pertaining to date of birth (DOB), suspension, and termination; or
> Beneficiaries in an active pay status on a dually entitled record.
What we don't know, is how many >115 records get pushed to manual processing, and how efficient that processing is. Is there a backlog? How big is it?
It mentions that one thing that can prevent the automated process, is when they have multiple records for a person, and they have conflicting dates of birth – and then they have to follow some process to resolve the discrepancy. What happens if they get stuck and can't work out which date of birth is the right one?
It also mentions how in some cases they need proof of death to carry out the manual termination. What if their attempts to procure such proof are unsuccessful?
Speculation: maybe there are a cohort of individuals who are long deceased, but they fall into one of the exceptions to the automated termination at 115 process, SSA is missing proof of death, and if nobody is actually "cashing the checks", it might be administratively easier to just keep on "paying" them by printing the checks and then burying them at the back of a filing cabinet than to cancel their social security. Maybe that's who these "150 year old social security recipients" are. So nobody would actually be committing fraud, and the government isn't really losing any money (since the checks are never cashed). Not exactly good, but maybe not quite as bad as Musk et al make it sound either. And quite likely it is just a small handful of people who are a rounding error in the federal budget.
>...exceptions in which the automated process doesn't terminate someone for being >115
You gave a several good explanations about why the current automated processes don't mark the records as deceased. But those are excuses. Just because the design of the system is flawed, that doesn't mean the system isn't in error because the code implements the design.
All those sound like it needs to be fixed to me. As somebody that deals with data for large enterprises that are nowhere near, obviously, as the government, but definitely companies with 100k employees and several in the Fortune 20. It's rudimentary to:
- have a data staging area before data gets into any financial system intended for payment transactions. Those staging systems can be used for analytical, reporting, and especially data cleaning.
- No use one record to represent the obligations to a completely different records of the same type. i.e. overloaded corrupt master data.
Uncurated data systems should be treated completely differently than systems that actually impacts financial transactions. Just because it's taxpayer money, they shouldn't be able to avoid criticism because they're wasting the money. If anything they should be more accountable.
There has been an ongoing dispute between the SSA and its OIG about what to do about millions of dormant accounts for which SSA lacks a date of death. [0] SSA OIG views these accounts as a risk and wants them marked as presumed dead. SSA argues that it is unnecessary, that it would cost millions in administrative and IT costs for little real benefit, that there is a risk of accidentally marking living people as dead, and disagrees that it is a fraud risk since no benefits have been paid to these dormant accounts for many decades, and any attempt to “reactivate” one of them would be flagged as an anomaly and investigated as potential fraud. It would not surprise me if Musk’s claims of “150 year old social security recipients” turn out to be a distortion of this pre-existing debate. The distortion is in presenting these accounts as active cases of fraud, since the vast majority of them haven’t received benefits in decades, or never claimed them to begin with - they are mostly long-dead people who were registered with the SSA in the first few decades of its existence, but for whatever reason their death was never reported to the SSA (the processes for doing so were less effective decades ago and so the further back you go, the more deaths were “missed”)
What has followed is people coming out of the woodwork to explain how this may have been reflected in the system since the system was written in COBOL and the reasons why those people were reflected that way the system, that they likely weren't actually having those payments made and it there wasn't the wastage of tax payers money as Elon claims.
Whereby citizens that don't have a recorded age are represented with an age of 0 and COBOL backdates their age from 1875.
It seems to be Elon's DOGE team having access to data that they have little experience in reviewing and understanding and are spreading claims that are false.
Google it.