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..."

[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).

[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.

[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.

[djm4]

Probably, if I were minded to say anything at all. Despite my reputation, I don't always lose sleep over Someone Being Wrong On The Internet, still less The Victoria Line.

[djm4]

Well, for starters, decouple that into two separate propositions.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's a balance between etiquette and preventing harm. One or the other of your original people is likely mistaken, but the harm of believing in someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald is relatively low compared to the harm of believing (and repeating) a concept that Israel was complicit in 9/11.

Much as Americans are thought to be rude, flat out saying, "you're wrong" is unusual in polite company here.

(I consider this unfortunate. But every time I return a forward from one of my dad's friends by linking back to the snopes entry I'm doing something somewhat rude, particularly if I do a reply-to-all, which is required to keep it from propagating. So it becomes a bit of a calculation - no, the shark pictures aren't from a shark that got saved from a net, but does that really matter? But "ZOMG Avoid X product because of Y mistaken awfulness" is something I'm going to correct.)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

OK: I'm trying to work out how best to defend the propositions that (1) some people are sometimes wrong and (2) it's sometimes OK to tell them so.

Currently it's the first I'm having trouble with; I feel if I could get that well established I'd be able to make a start on the second.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I wasn't imagining strangers on the Victoria Line! Feel free to substitute some more contradiction-friendly environment.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think that the defence of (2) is independent of (1) and runs "dinner parties would be really dull otherwise".

[djm4]

Fair enough. (It wasn't a snark, by the way, and I hope it didn't come across as one - I was genuinely trying to be helpful.)

I feel if I could get that well established I'd be able to make a start on the second.

I think you're mistaken. I suspect (from knowing some of the things you'd like to feel justified in telling people they're wrong about) that you'll be able to show (1) for a high degree of certainly about some things, but that they often won't in general be the things you'd like (2) to apply to. That's certainly my experience - sometimes, I just have to accept that I'm telling people they're wrong without the safety net of absolute certainty, or else I have to agree to differ.

None of which should be taken to mean that I think it's a bad thing to try to establish the truth as best I can in most situations, especially if I'm about to tell someone that they're wrong (whether it's 'definitely' wrong or 'overheard conversation' wrong).

[djm4]

I was reading '...you would contradict this if you heard it', as too much of a moral imperative, then; my apologies.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Oops, yes, I had thought it was a mild snark, sorry and sorry to be snarky in response.

You might be right, but the discussion of which things it's OK to contradict can't start until I've established that there's at least one occasion on which it's OK.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Although my first comment was slightly tongue in cheek, I'm still not quite sure why "some people are sometimes wrong" is a pre-requisite for "it's okay to tell them so". Apart from anything else, it assumes that it's only okay to tell people that they're wrong if you're right that they're wrong, and actually, I think when two people disagree it's okay for both of them to tell the other that they're wrong, because we (and they) don't know which of them is wrong until a consensus is reached (and possibly not even then, but at that point we have stronger evidence for which view is correct)

[adjectivegail]

Yes, I've had this dilemma as well. My boss at a previous workplace sent forwarded an email to all the women in the office, about that old chestnut that tampons contain asbestos to make women bleed more. Now, she was my boss so I really didn't want to show her up and embarrass her. But on the other hand I really didn't want the majority of our large and predominantly female workforce to suddenly worry about a product that presumably a fairly large proportion had been using most months for several years if not decades!

Now that I think about it, it ocurs to me that what I could have done is replied to all and then taken out the boss' email address, and then replied to the boss separately...

[henry_the_cow]

You're wrong to worry about it; just get stuck in ;-)

More seriously, it seems obvious to me that most of us are wrong much of the time about many things. Do you disagree?

Re (2), is your concern whether to say, "You're definitely wrong", as opposed to, "I disagree", or, "That seems unlikely because..."?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

You can only get stuck in if the people you disagree with believe that a disagreement can have substance at all.

it seems obvious to me that most of us are wrong much of the time about many things. Do you disagree?

I think that has to be true, but I think it's overwhelmed by the number of things that we're right about and we don't even notice, down to things like we're right that turning the handle will open the door and turning the kettle on will boil the water.

Re (2), I think they all mean the same thing.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

The prerequisite is just that it's *possible* to be wrong. If it's impossible to be wrong then obviously telling someone they're wrong puts you on a hiding to nothing. I agree with the rest of what you say.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Heh :-) although to turn a serious point on a tongue-in-cheek comment, I also worry that people sometimes seem to have opinions as a thing to show off at dinner parties - that they have something to say about X rather than that they actually think something about X even when they're not at a dinner party. I've called this "opinions as stamp collections" in the past; Dennett calls it "believing in belief".

To a certain extent I think that's something we all do, but I try to make the distinction clear in conversation; if that's what I'm doing, I'll tend to preface my remarks with something like "I'm often tempted to think that..." or some such disclaimer.