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

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

On a matter of taste, neither party is "right" or "wrong" as you say, unless they're talking about how good Guns'n'Roses in which case they are of course quite wrong. I like your rainstorm example - and I'd extend it to science which is so well established that seriously questioning it at this stage is just madness, like evolution. But of course there can be matters of objective fact about which no-one is certain enough to make bald assertions, so they have to be qualified, even though they may be straightforwardly right or wrong.