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If Party A accuses Party B of misconduct and Party B claims that the accusation is false (explicitly or implicitly), then someone is lying. If you aim to be nob
by Steuard 10y ago
If Party A accuses Party B of misconduct and Party B claims that the accusation is false (explicitly or implicitly), then someone is lying. If you aim to be nobly impartial until compelling evidence is available, the logically appropriate response is not "assume the story is false" but "assume the truth of the story is unknown". There's no purely logical reason to treat one story or the other as the one that should be believed by default. (Mind you, you don't have to refuse to make any judgement at all before irrefutable evidence is available. I personally believe that there are better approaches.) In this case, I don't know whether Uber has given any sort of response (whether to affirm or deny any of this), but absence of a denial certainly can't be construed to make their case stronger.
I too often see a tendency for people to treat claims of wrongdoing more skeptically than counterclaims of innocence, especially where gender is involved. That makes me very, very uneasy.
- 67726e 10y agoUntil you have proved something has happened, it must be assumed that it did not happen. There is no reason to assume something is true just because someone claims it happened. Especially when it is a claim that can severely damage reputations, livelihoods, and lives.
- rdiddly 10y agoThere is also no reason to assume something is false just because someone claims it happened. It's irrational to assume ANYTHING about a claim, was the point. But okay, I'll start assuming everything is false. Starting with your comment.
- Steuard 10y agoTreating someone as a liar, however tentatively, can also severely damage reputations, livelihoods, and lives. There is not a neutral option here. (Or at least, a neutral balance is very delicate and hard to find, and your approach is emphatically not.) And I will point out that the course you advocate places those consequences on the party who, if truthful, has already suffered harm. That outcome is certainly not better than people assuming bad things, however tentatively, about the target of a false accusation would be.