4 ms·

This reminds me of one I saw shortly after 9/11. The rumor was that bin Laden hated the US because an American woman had made fun of his penis. I believe this e

by Uhhrrr 5y ago

This reminds me of one I saw shortly after 9/11. The rumor was that bin Laden hated the US because an American woman had made fun of his penis. I believe this even less than the Marilyn Monroe toe story, but the Snopes "debunking" was that bin Laden had never been to America so it couldn't possibly be true - ignoring the fact that Americans leave the country sometimes. I was pretty unimpressed by the slapdash effort.

WalterBright 5y ago
I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. And even if a recording could be found of him saying that, he could always just say he was joking.
- bartread 5y ago
  > I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hearsay doesn't reach the necessary standard to be considered evidence in the first place in sensible forums, including most courts.
  - Uhhrrr 5y ago
    Yes. But the other thing is debunking rumors is the task they set for themselves. And in these cases, they went for the dopamine hit of writing "FALSE" over the eternally annoying "Unconfirmed".
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.
      - brightball 5y ago
        My wife just told me she was going to bed. It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason. Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on your willingness to trust the source and very little to do with actual truth.
        emodendroket 5y ago
        I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing. This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.
        brightball 5y ago
        Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false. Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.
        emodendroket 5y ago
        "False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.
        brightball 5y ago
        Exactly. And it would be the same if you included the word “doesn’t” in that statement. It just means that it’s all hearsay and only the people involved know the real truth. This is why gossip and rumors are such a powerful thing. We all want to think that what we know or what we heard is true, but very few people are willing to accept that what they heard might not be accurate. Especially once they have repeated it to someone else.
- dTal 5y ago
  You could find a guy saying "yeah I totally made that up". Or at least trace the origin of the rumor, and note that it doesn't plausibly connect with Osama's life. Or interview a bunch of people close to him who say they've never heard anything like that, and note that it's therefore implausible that a bunch of Americans somehow know. Or find the real reasons that he hated America, and note they're vastly more plausible and documented. Etc, etc. This is a classic "Russell's teapot". We should not give any epistemological weight to unfalsifiable things. To debunk them, it suffices to demonstrate that there was never any evidence to begin with.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Well, I think it'd be sufficient to say there is no proof it happened, the same standard we use to say that there aren't little gnomes who collect up all the water and turn it into water vapor, causing it to rain.

by Uhhrrr 5y ago

WalterBright 5y ago

I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. And even if a recording could be found of him saying that, he could always just say he was joking.

bartread 5y ago
> I don't see how hearsay evidence could ever be debunked. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Hearsay doesn't reach the necessary standard to be considered evidence in the first place in sensible forums, including most courts.
- Uhhrrr 5y ago
  Yes. But the other thing is debunking rumors is the task they set for themselves. And in these cases, they went for the dopamine hit of writing "FALSE" over the eternally annoying "Unconfirmed".
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    If the claim is true, the claimant should be able to produce evidence of it, such as someone who would have reason to know stating that it happened.
    - brightball 5y ago
      My wife just told me she was going to bed. It’s true. There’s no feasible way for me to prove it. Even if she were to record a statement saying that, indeed, she said that…she could be lying for some reason. Most of what we experience in life every day isn’t provable. That doesn’t make it any less true. It’s just exposes a weakness in what a person is willing to consider as truth, which is that it depends entirely on your willingness to trust the source and very little to do with actual truth.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        I mean, if you video of Osama bin Laden telling me the story, or one of his associates were on the record with it, I'd find it plausible. In this case we have absolutely nothing. This is rather elementary stuff. If you accept your "more expansive" version of the truth then I have to entertain pretty much any fantastical claim because it is impossible to disprove anything definitively.
        brightball 5y ago
        Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false. Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.
        emodendroket 5y ago
        "False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.
        brightball 5y ago
        Exactly. And it would be the same if you included the word “doesn’t” in that statement. It just means that it’s all hearsay and only the people involved know the real truth. This is why gossip and rumors are such a powerful thing. We all want to think that what we know or what we heard is true, but very few people are willing to accept that what they heard might not be accurate. Especially once they have repeated it to someone else.
dTal 5y ago
You could find a guy saying "yeah I totally made that up". Or at least trace the origin of the rumor, and note that it doesn't plausibly connect with Osama's life. Or interview a bunch of people close to him who say they've never heard anything like that, and note that it's therefore implausible that a bunch of Americans somehow know. Or find the real reasons that he hated America, and note they're vastly more plausible and documented. Etc, etc. This is a classic "Russell's teapot". We should not give any epistemological weight to unfalsifiable things. To debunk them, it suffices to demonstrate that there was never any evidence to begin with.
emodendroket 5y ago
Well, I think it'd be sufficient to say there is no proof it happened, the same standard we use to say that there aren't little gnomes who collect up all the water and turn it into water vapor, causing it to rain.