{"id":1436,"date":"2014-10-04T19:23:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T19:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattralston.net\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2014-10-06T18:02:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T18:02:00","slug":"the-secret-life-of-walter-obrien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/the-secret-life-of-walter-obrien\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret Life Of Walter O&#8217;Brien"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NW7oNpzBSGc\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I spoke to Walter O&#8217;Brien again regarding his claims of being a genius, which is what the tinny\u00a0CBS procedural <em>Scorpion\u00a0<\/em>is loosely based on. <a href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/television\/scorpion-on-cbs-features-genius-marketing\/\" target=\"_blank\">I had been suspicious<\/a> of O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s claims, as he proclaimed himself a bonafide supergenious yet sounded merely pompous and also said a bunch of stupid shit like that Blackwater should assassinate unpopular world leaders at will, which I found to be idiotic.<\/p>\n<p>I was a little bit too easy on O&#8217;Brien in my first post, having taken for granted most of his claims as being halfway substantiated. They are not. To recap:<\/p>\n<p>1) O&#8217;Brien claims to have the 5th highest IQ in the world.<\/p>\n<p>2) He claims to have hacked into NASA&#8217;s database at which point he was given an Extraordinary Ability Visa by the US Government.<\/p>\n<p>3) He claims he was a prolific computer programmer\u00a0from a young age whilst living on a farm in rural Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;Brien has propped himself up to a Godlike status, so initially I was intimidated to speak to him. Then I remembered God is just pretend. Once I started asking him questions I realized he is merely a liar who tricked CBS into purchasing the rights to his life story. CBS currently has him lawyered up and have apparently\u00a0barred him from offering any details to people like me who call him pretending to be reporters from LA Weekly.\u00a0He cannot back anything up.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/OBrien.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1439\" src=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/OBrien.png\" alt=\"OBrien\" width=\"400\" height=\"505\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/OBrien.png 400w, https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/OBrien-237x300.png 237w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When pressed, a nervous O&#8217;Brien points only to\u00a0various news articles to substantiate his claims. Perhaps he knows the press corps died of smoke inhalation after Watergate and is currently represented mostly by lazy suckers who print what the government tells them, and that I, as an American, don&#8217;t hold them up to a high\u00a0standard. I wonder if <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jayson_Blair\" target=\"_blank\">Jayson Blair<\/a> ever did a puff piece on O&#8217;Brien? (RIP Michael Hastings.)<\/p>\n<p>All of the lazy copy and paste repurposed articles\u00a0written about O&#8217;Brien after he helped sell a TV show are based on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/culture\/media\/scorpion-how-an-irish-genius-saved-the-world-1.1890383\" target=\"_blank\">one initial article<\/a> in <em>The Irish Times<\/em>. This\u00a0leaves one exhibit to\u00a0backup to his plethora of claims. What if he convinced some dumb writer of a pack of lies and has coasted ever since? Or paid someone&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I asked O&#8217;Brien if he could prove his IQ score was valid.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t prove them beyond\u00a0what has been written&#8230; the burden of proof would be on you to prove I am wrong.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not a genius, but I know when someone&#8217;s pulling the wool over my eyes. Pascal&#8217;s Wager debunked this type of schlock long ago. In short:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;God exists, because you can&#8217;t prove he doesn&#8217;t.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not really. God needs to come and introduce himself and until then you&#8217;re weird if you\u00a0trust a guy you&#8217;ve never met. There is zero reason to believe any of O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s claims, and as he has been advised to not disclose any information by the morons at CBS who paid seven figures for his story and are advising him to keep mum, the burden of proof has shifted squarely onto him.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s computer security firm called Scorpion is legitimate or not. I don&#8217;t know how CBS can name a show after a legitimate business and not be fined heavily by the FCC either. O&#8217;Brien\u00a0claims to have security contracts with the government, which I believe not necessarily because he told me, but because of his familiarity with paramilitary corporations such as Blackwater (they changed their name to\u00a0Akademi\u00a0because people started to talk) and Halliburton among others. The media frequently <a href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/conspiracies-death-press-corps\/\" target=\"_blank\">props up<\/a> such war mongering one percenter stock holder associations, which I mentioned to O&#8217;Brien as he bristled.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;This just looks like conspiracy theory stuff that does you more harm than good in my opinion. You are missing the real story here and the real good that comes out of the show.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8216;The real good.&#8217; A TV show glorifying the military industrial complex and offering a nuanced world view, featuring a chubby nonthreatening male lead and a chick with nice tits. What am I missing? When I initially heard O&#8217;Brien speak about Scorpion he detailed his role as, aside from Executive Producer, a Consultant.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I explain to the actors what they are actually talking about, help them grasp the concepts.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The show isn&#8217;t that heavy bro, and these actors probably don&#8217;t appreciate you insinuating they are too dumb to learn basic bogus security jargon speak. They probably think you&#8217;re really annoying.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if O&#8217;Brien is a shill. I do know his story is bullshit. I don&#8217;t really dislike him personally. I find it comical he was able to deceive CBS and everyone else into granting him EP rights on a network show. I know his story is a house of cards, and I genuinely hope he does not have me accidentally hit by a bus\u00a0just for the halibut, although I doubt he is in that deep.<\/p>\n<p>My only question at this point is whether the government is using him or not, and whether or not he is aware. I retain a healthy skepticism.<\/p>\n<p>Music by Leonard Cohen.<\/p>\n<p>3\/3\/15<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spoke to Walter O&#8217;Brien again regarding his claims of being a genius, which is what the tinny\u00a0CBS procedural Scorpion\u00a0is loosely based on. I had been suspicious of O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s claims, as he proclaimed himself a bonafide supergenious yet sounded merely pompous and also said a bunch of stupid shit like that Blackwater should assassinate unpopular &#8230;<a class=\"post-readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/politics\/the-secret-life-of-walter-obrien\/\">read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[759,760],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1454,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattralston.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}