Truth, strike two

[ciphergoth]

Thanks for some interesting and surprising responses to the JFK question. At the risk of creating more heat than light, let me try another example, one that I think might be a little less comfortable to be neutral about.

It seems that many people believe that on the morning of September 11, 2001, four thousand or more Israelis who were working at the World Trade Center did not show up for work.

Are those people wrong?

(Update: amended as per ajva's caveat)

Comments

[ajva.livejournal.com]

Yes, although I would amend your proposition to the following:

"It seems that many people believe that on the morning of September 11, 2001, four thousand or more Israelis did not show up for work at the World Trade Center, because they knew in advance about the attacks."

Just for avoidance of doubt. Otherwise someone is bound to say, "well of course 4,000 Jews didn't turn up to work there on that day; there are after all tens of millions of Israelis/Jews the world over who didn't ever turn up to work at the WTC, and on 11th September 2001 they didn't either..."

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Done, thanks. I chose this one because I think it's reasonably easy to screw down, and in any case the gulf between what the conspiracy theorists believe and what everyone else believes is so vast that hopefully no-one will piddle about asking if 3,999 Israelis and one person whose citizenship application was in the post turning up to work half a second too late would count.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'd say that facts that are either true or false are
1)>4000 Israeli nationals were employed in the WTC
2)>4000 of those people were supposed to be in the WTC on that day, at that time
3)They were not in the WTC on that day, at that time

We may, or may not, have actual evidence on these points (I certainly don't possess any relevant primary sources) with which to reach a conclusion; but they are things I would expect to be either true or false.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, if 1,2 and 3 were all proven true then that still isn't evidence that there was a conspiracy. Maybe the local kosher butcher was selling gone off meat (as an example situation where many Jews might be unexpectedly not-at-work).

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Probably. Whether they are right or wrong on that should be a statement that's relatively easy to check (offline absence reports etc), and I'd bet that Snopes or similar have debunked this story (I'm sure I've read such a debunking somewhere).

Whether they are rational in their belief might be a more relevant question. If the media to which Joe Public is exposed have hinted this story might be true, Joe would be justified in the belief but still incorrect (assuming that the story is incorrect).

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Ciphergoth's link went to Snopes's debunking; US State Department has a page as well, with links to mini bios of a fair number of Jewish people killed in the attack

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I agree that rational beliefs can be wrong, though in this instance I think you're too kind to Joe Public, who should be able to see the huge inherent implausibilities in such a story right from the off.

[mskala.livejournal.com]

I'd be surprised if there were four thousand Israelis employed to work in the WTC at all. From Wikipedia, the typical maximum population of those buildings was about 50,000, and I expect well over 90% of employees would have been US citizens. The spam message quoted in your link uses "Israeli" as a synonym for "Jew," but it ain't.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

There are so many problems with this story that it's hard to pick just one; yours is a prominent one, but I think Snopes puts their finger on the most mind-bending one - the idea that every single one of 4,000 people would allow their colleagues to go to their deaths without a word at the time or afterwards. I trust I won't be accused of Godwinning the discussion, but I'm reminded of this discussion from nizkor.org:

Supposedly the only evidence, "the postwar testimony of individual survivors."

First of all, consider the implicit conspiracy theory. Notice how the testimony of every single inmate of every Nazi camp is automatically dismissed as unconvincing. This total dismissal of inmates' testimony, along with the equally-total dismissal of the Nazis' own testimony (!), is the largest unspoken assumption of Holocaust-denial.

This assumption, which is not often spelled out, is that the attempted Jewish genocide never took place, but rather that a secret conspiracy of Jews, starting around 1941, planted and forged myriad documents to prove that it did; then, after the war, they rounded up all the camp survivors and told them what to say.

What's amazing is not just that they would posit such a ludicrously massive conspiracy, but that they would try to do so without even explicitly setting it out.

[some-fox.livejournal.com]

You're hurting my brain today in a good way ciphergoth. I'd be responding if I hadn't already put it through far too much trying to find a synthesis between Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir on the point of freedom and our relations with others.

Ouch.

[djm4]

(taking ajva's rewording as read, since I don't think you're trying to pull off atrick question here:)

What do you mean by 'wrong' (serious, non-snarky question)? I think with a question like this, it's important to be clear, and Bad Stuff will happen if we confuse the meanings.

'Wrong' as in 'what they believe is factually incorrect'? Well, snopes disagrees, and I generally trust their fact checking, but I didn't personally clock everyone in and out.

'Wrong' as in 'wrong to believe it in good faith despite the evidence, because they have other evidence'? I don't feel that I have an authoritative answer on that one, and 'wrong' seems too strong a word in that case, although I'd probably use it in casual conversation and then backpedal shamelessly if challenged about it.

'Wrong' as in 'morally-wrong anti-Semites who are willfully ignoring the evidence because of their own prejudices'? Quite possibly, although they would probably think the equivalent about me.

There are many shades of grey between those, of course, and almost certainly more meanings I haven't considered. But my general answer to that question is 'yes, they're wrong'.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I mean "mistaken". I think it would just about be possible to think this and not be a screaming anti-Semite so long as you were mind-numbingly gullible.

I'm not asking for 100% certainty, just enough confidence in your opinion that if you heard someone saying that, you'd contradict them. It sounds like you would contradict this if you heard it.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, what are these entries designed to achieve?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to work out how best to defend the proposition that some people are sometimes wrong and it's OK to tell them so.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Yup, they're wrong. (Why come off the fence here? Off the top of my head, because it's more important, there's clearer and more verifiable evidence, and I care more about it.)

The important question for me then becomes how much energy to devote to bringing them round to something less objectionable and how best to do that. (And a personal safety question too.) In this particular example, saying "you're wrong" is not where I'd be most likely to begin. I'd be strongly suspecting a deeper and even more important wrongness underlying that belief, and would try to tease that out and gently but firmly challenge it. The details of wrongness in this instance would be relevant and helpful in doing so, but not the only tools.

[dr-jen.livejournal.com]

Hi there *waves* just added you to my flist in case you wanted the recipe for that chocolate cake.

[babysimon]

The most sensible contribution in the thread!

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

>> one that I think might be a little less comfortable to be neutral about

That’s cheating :-p

You ought to be able to make your argument without resorting to emotional manipulation, or by putting your debaters in a position where if they disagree with you, they can be accused of anti-Semitism.

Keep it in neutral territory if you want to have a good debate about logic.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

No, I gave it some thought and I think this is the best question to further the debate at this point. I think there are stances it is easy to take when it doesn't matter, so I wanted to pick an example where it matters, and that's necessarily going to be at least a little emotive.

For the avoidance of doubt, I can't see myself accusing anyone of anti-Semitism. I'm sure the gut reaction of everyone reading the above story is the same; it's what you then do with it intellectually that I'm interested in.

XKCD says it better...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

http://xkcd.com/154/

(And actually I do think objective notions of right and wrong can exist without God, or an omnipotent observer. Or at least, that the only reasonable proposition is to behave as though they do.)

Re: XKCD says it better...

[blackmetalbaz.livejournal.com]

Your last point is spot on.

[fire-kitten.livejournal.com]

very interesting. I shall have to think... and have far too many meetings this afternoon to do it then.
do you mind if I also post about this on my journal?

[jhg.livejournal.com]

Assuming that it is not the case that >=4,000 Israelis failed that day to turn up to the WTC, their usual place of work: -

Yes those people are wrong. They have a demonstrably false belief.

A belief is a particular type of thought that has a relation to the external world. It purports to be about it.

(or, more precisely, the relation is something like this: Belief --> Fact --> World. Facts are always correct, this is part of the meaning of 'fact'.)

If the content of the belief and the relevant facts about the world match up - then we say the belief is a true one. If they fail to match up, it is a false belief.

That these believers are correct inasmuch as they are right that they have this belief (to the extent that anyone ever is) - that is utterly irrelevant.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in your opinion about this:
This is not the way that philosophers get at the meaning of truth -- log rolling on powder kegs. They de-emotionalize the issues so that they can see through to the underlying logic.

Does that sound right to you - am I making a philosophically illegitimate move here? Thanks!

[blackmetalbaz.livejournal.com]

Very late to the party, and having skimmed the other comments...

It seems to me that those people are almost certainly factually incorrect. As with anything, it is a question of probability. There is a vanishingly small but non-zero probability that the laws of gravity will stop working tomorrow lunchtime; that is why science deals with falsifiabilities, not verifiabilities. In this instance, we can check historical records and if >4000 Israelis were found to be working at the WTC and are discovered to have not turned up to work on 9/11 then that would be evidence in favour of our anti-Semite conspiracy loon; it wouldn't be absolute proof that they were part of a conspiracy, but it would be a fair leap if it turned out to be true. People have looked; it isn't true. But even before I checked the records, I'd be highly suspicious of such a claim because of the staggering unlikelehood of such a conspiracy being pulled off. Are they honestly suggesting that no-one before or after the event talked? This is the problem of almost all conspiracy theories.

Regarding some of the comments concerning an objective truth, I believe there is but would struggle to justify it. However, I think Karen's right that we should behave as if there is as the alternative does no useful work. I usually get into that discussion in relation to religion, but I suspect that would muddy the waters even more ;-).