4 ms·

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

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.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      No. It’s not even hearsay. That’s the point.
  - brightball 5y ago
    And come on, “Unconfirmed” clearly means there is no evidence to confirm this. “False” means not true. I don’t expect anyone reading to interpret that differently.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      So the existence of fairies and unicorns is merely "unconfirmed"? I would consider that term to mean that there is one reasonably credible report that has not been corroborated.
      - brightball 5y ago
        Do you have any reports claiming to have seen them? Do you trust the source?

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.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    No. It’s not even hearsay. That’s the point.
- brightball 5y ago
  And come on, “Unconfirmed” clearly means there is no evidence to confirm this. “False” means not true. I don’t expect anyone reading to interpret that differently.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    So the existence of fairies and unicorns is merely "unconfirmed"? I would consider that term to mean that there is one reasonably credible report that has not been corroborated.
    - brightball 5y ago
      Do you have any reports claiming to have seen them? Do you trust the source?