John Richardson

[Herlock Sholmes]

Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam: appealing to a lack of information to prove a point.

This is a fallacious argument which is deemed invalid.

And how do you classify you’re claim that she wouldn’t have eaten during that period when that comes from an absence of information too?

[Fleetwood Mac]

You don’t know what occurred during that missing period.

I don’t know what occurred during that missing period.

Yet you keep claiming that she wouldn’t have eaten. It’s very simple. You don’t need Latin. Just a smidgeon of reason. Try it.

Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam: appealing to a lack of information to prove a point.

This is a fallacious argument which is deemed invalid.

[Fleetwood Mac]

well then you must be flabbergasted at the amount of people convicted in a court of law by eyewitness testimony

There's a post on this thread which explains why eye witness testimony is held in such high esteem and why it shouldn't be.

That post relates to articles, assessing actual eye witness testimony.

It's time you stopped simply posting broad, uninformed opposition to this and instead do some reading.

That assumes you want to learn as opposed to parrot outdated and demonstrably flawed concepts, of course.

Here's a starter for you:

Myth: Eyewitness Testimony is the Best Kind of Evidence – Association for Psychological Science – APS

The claim that eyewitness testimony is reliable and accurate is testable, and the research is clear that eyewitness identification is vulnerable to distortion without the witness’s awareness. More specifically, the assumption that memory provides an accurate recording of experience, much like a video camera, is incorrect. Memory evolved to give us a personal sense of identity and to guide our actions. We are biased to notice and exaggerate some experiences and to minimize or overlook others. Memory is malleable.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

well then you must be flabbergasted at the amount of people convicted in a court of law by eyewitness testimony

I have been flabbergasted by the numbers of innocent people convicted in a court of law by eyewitness testimony.

[Herlock Sholmes]

well then you must be flabbergasted at the amount of people convicted in a court of law by eyewitness testimony

None of them could be trusted though Abby.

[Abby Normal]

I'm pretty sure you responded in this way a few pages back, and I answered then as I'll answer now.

The articles, and those are only three of many, are concerned with witness recollection first and foremost. They are concerned with how the human mind works. How we store, process and recollect information. Whether or not it is a suspect or simply recalling an event, is irrelevant.

I'll remind you:

Why is a witness’s account so often unreliable? Partly because the brain does not have a knack for retaining many specifics and is highly susceptible to suggestion. “Memory is weak in eyewitness situations because it’s overloaded,” said Barbara Tversky, a psychology professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York. “An event happens so fast, and when the police question you, you probably weren’t concentrating on the details they’re asking about.”

Hundreds of studies have cataloged a long list of circumstances that can affect how memories are recorded and replayed, including the emotion at the time of the event, the social pressures that taint its reconstruction, even flourishes unknowingly added after the fact.

Contrary to common intuition, however, courtroom statements of confidence are very poor predictors of accuracy (26–29). The cause of this confidence–accuracy disparity is well captured by Daniel Kahneman’s cognitive “illusion of validity” (30). Subjective confidence in a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgment is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. Declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.

Without awareness, we regularly encode information in a prejudiced manner and later forget, reconstruct, update, and distort the things we believe to be true.

Psychological scientist Elizabeth Loftus studies memories. More precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn’t happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It’s more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics, and raises some important ethical questions we should all remember to consider.

Feel free to take note of a pertinent point in the last paragraph: more precisely, she studies false memories, when people either remember things that didn’t happen or remember them differently from the way they really were. It’s more common than you might think, and Loftus shares some startling stories and statistics.

well then you must be flabbergasted at the amount of people convicted in a court of law by eyewitness testimony

[Herlock Sholmes]

Straw Man fallacy: refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion. Nobody said: "no witness can be relied upon".

The stupidity of this, is that when all of your logical fallacies are pointed out, which you post ad nauseam; you simply continue to post these logical fallacies.

A fallacious argument is not valid, this is widely accepted.

You don’t know what occurred during that missing period.

I don’t know what occurred during that missing period.

Yet you keep claiming that she wouldn’t have eaten. It’s very simple. You don’t need Latin. Just a smidgeon of reason. Try it.

[Herlock Sholmes]

We don't.

We have witness statements. That which they recollected, as opposed to what actually happened.

Two of those witnesses who you use to prop up the 'later TOD argument', are at odds with one another and so your own argument falls down by virtue of this contradiction.

Untrue…but par for the course.

I don't need to provide an opposing argument. Within your own argument you've exposed an inherent flaw.

Perhaps Abby was just hoping that one sunny day you my provide something apart from pointless generalities, inventions and bits of Latin .

The way you get around this, is to claim: 'all of the clocks were wrong, but as luck would have it, they were all wrong in a fashion that suits my argument; and I don't need to explain how this happened, I simply need to say I'm right'.

Saying “in a fashion,” is just one of the weirdest most embarrassingly clueless and nonsensical things I’ve heard. That clocks can be out by 5 minutes is called normality. To suggest it’s not is call dishonesty.

All serial killers murder in risky settings. You cannot eradicate risk. There are degrees of risk. Serial killers usually do not kill in that setting at that time of the day because the risk is tipped too far against them. That is demonstrable by virtue of the experience of serial killers and the empirical data associated with them.

And killing in that yard wasn’t a massive risk. All that you can do is to repeatedly to try tipping the balance by making things up.

A later ToD is favoured by the evidence. You disagree. It matters no more than some yokel telling me that the earth is 6ooo years old.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Feel free to post the study that says “no witnesses can be relied upon. Simply dismiss them all…especially the inconvenient ones.” I’m sure it’s a fascinating read.

Straw Man fallacy: refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion. Nobody said: "no witness can be relied upon".

The stupidity of this, is that when all of your logical fallacies are pointed out, which you post ad nauseam; you simply continue to post these logical fallacies.

A fallacious argument is not valid, this is widely accepted.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Ad hominem and ad misericordiam.

You could simply have said “I can’t answer that point Herlock.”

[Herlock Sholmes]

And he was not heading for Blackheath (Druitt) or Bethnal Green (Lechmere) or the West End (Gull) or Whitechapel (Kosminski) but Spitalfields.

And that is yet another clue.

Where was he going then? Please tell us.

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I would say that where it was deposited makes it more likely that the killer wrote it, but far from guarantees it. But what it definitely tells us is the direction that the killer went in after the murder.

And he was not heading for Blackheath (Druitt) or Bethnal Green (Lechmere) or the West End (Gull) or Whitechapel (Kosminski) but Spitalfields.

And that is yet another clue.

[Fleetwood Mac]

How can anyone ‘think’ like this?

Ad hominem and ad misericordiam.

[Fleetwood Mac]

except we have three independent witnesses that says that your wrong

We don't.

We have witness statements. That which they recollected, as opposed to what actually happened.

Two of those witnesses who you use to prop up the 'later TOD argument', are at odds with one another and so your own argument falls down by virtue of this contradiction.

I don't need to provide an opposing argument. Within your own argument you've exposed an inherent flaw.

The way you get around this, is to claim: 'all of the clocks were wrong, but as luck would have it, they were all wrong in a fashion that suits my argument; and I don't need to explain how this happened, I simply need to say I'm right'.

and a serial killer with a history of killing in risky settings.

All serial killers murder in risky settings. You cannot eradicate risk. There are degrees of risk. Serial killers usually do not kill in that setting at that time of the day because the risk is tipped too far against them. That is demonstrable by virtue of the experience of serial killers and the empirical data associated with them.

[Herlock Sholmes]

It's a large company. I've heard of it. Not that it really matters whether the company that a person works for is famous.

Huge……only been around for 142 years though…..so not many will have heard of it.