ciphergoth: (Default)
[personal profile] ciphergoth
For the purposes of this post, I don't really care who shot JFK; it's just a convenient mystery with which I can ask a question about truth.

Alice believes that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. She believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Texas Book Depository, aimed a loaded rifle and shot JFK, at which point his head visibly exploded as seen in the Zapruder video.

Bert disagrees; he doesn't know for sure who shot JFK, but the one thing he's sure of is that Lee Harvey Oswald was not pointing a loaded rifle out of the window of the Texas Book Depository at the President at the fateful moment.

What do I believe? As I say, I neither know nor care, but there's one thing I know for sure: one of Alice or Bert is wrong. In sufficiently weird conditions both of them might be wrong, but one of them is wrong for sure. We may never know which of them is wrong, but at least one of them is definitely wrong.

Does anyone disagree with this?

In which case...

Date: 2008-05-19 01:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] valkyriekaren.livejournal.com
I'd suggest you look away now, as the old sports announcers used to say, because you'll probably not enjoy what's pretty obviously coming next.

Re: In which case...

Date: 2008-05-19 01:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drdoug.livejournal.com
*penny drops* Doh! Of course. Given that, I think I'd want to defend my line above in conversation with [livejournal.com profile] djm4 even more strongly! For Alice, the key fact is that Oswald is guilty - how he did it is not terribly relevant. Bert might think he can prove that Oswald wasn't in the Book Depository, but that's not going to convince Alice, since for her that was only ever a trivial detail.

Re: In which case...

Date: 2008-05-19 01:52 pm (UTC)
djm4: (Default)
From: [personal profile] djm4
Well, yes, but if Chris turns out to be correct, then they still said things that they were wrong about, even if in their mind they classify it as 'well, maybe I was wrong about that, but it wasn't important and so doesn't change my basic point'.

Re: In which case...

Date: 2008-05-19 02:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drdoug.livejournal.com
True indeed - but I think that means that [livejournal.com profile] ciphergoth's position that "at least one of them is definitely wrong" might well be perceived by the participants as the least accurate of the three starting positions.

Re: In which case...

Date: 2008-05-19 02:10 pm (UTC)
djm4: (Default)
From: [personal profile] djm4
I agree, and I do think that's an important point, but that wasn't what I thought was being asked by [livejournal.com profile] ciphergoth.

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Paul Crowley

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