Request for Nessie - Primer on these "witness studies"

[HansHill]

Solidarity...

[Nessie]

Back on topic, is the thorny issue, that Archie has run away from, of my Las Vegas mass shooting analogy. If someone who was proven to have been there, gave very inaccurate descriptions about the shooting, over how long it lasted, how many died and how many shots were fired, does that mean they lied and there was no mass shooting?

That is a very easy question to answer.

[HansHill]

Back on topic, is the thorny issue, that Archie has run away from, of my Las Vegas mass shooting analogy. If someone who was proven to have been there, gave very inaccurate descriptions about the shooting, over how long it lasted, how many died and how many shots were fired, does that mean they lied and there was no mass shooting?

That is a very easy question to answer.

Except that's not a good analogy at all. The degree of "mistakes" from Holocaust eyewitnesses are not on the scale you are insinuating. A better example would be this,

Your eyewitnesses (the sonderkommandos at Birkenau for example) mistakenly claim to have swept the pellets off the floor underneath the introduction column. Now imagine if a Las Vegas eyewitness mistakenly claimed to have manually helped the shooter dispose of the murder weapons.

"yeah when the bullets started flying, i ran into his hotel, took the elevator up to his room, starting taking the guns one by one to the elevator to help him dispose of them".

Both speak to an eyewitness' handling the murder weapon in a first person perspective, in ways that are orders of magnitude beyond any sort of reasonable slip of the mind. Nobody would accidentally claim to handle the murder weapon of the shooter and help him dispose of it in the way I have suggested above. If they did, it would render them as an incompetent eyewitness.

That is the degree to which your eyewitnesses are mistaken.

[Nessie]

Back on topic, is the thorny issue, that Archie has run away from, of my Las Vegas mass shooting analogy. If someone who was proven to have been there, gave very inaccurate descriptions about the shooting, over how long it lasted, how many died and how many shots were fired, does that mean they lied and there was no mass shooting?

That is a very easy question to answer.

Except that's not a good analogy at all.

The issue is to what degree mistakes can be made and the answer is, to a very high degree and the witness is not lying and the event they are describing did happen.

The degree of "mistakes" from Holocaust eyewitnesses are not on the scale you are insinuating. A better example would be this,

Your eyewitnesses (the sonderkommandos at Birkenau for example) mistakenly claim to have swept the pellets off the floor underneath the introduction column. Now imagine if a Las Vegas eyewitness mistakenly claimed to have manually helped the shooter dispose of the murder weapons.

"yeah when the bullets started flying, i ran into his hotel, took the elevator up to his room, starting taking the guns one by one to the elevator to help him dispose of them".

Both speak to an eyewitness' handling the murder weapon in a first person perspective, in ways that are orders of magnitude beyond any sort of reasonable slip of the mind. Nobody would accidentally claim to handle the murder weapon of the shooter and help him dispose of it in the way I have suggested above. If they did, it would render them as an incompetent eyewitness.

That is the degree to which your eyewitnesses are mistaken.

OK, let's use that eyewitness who claimed to have run into the hotel etc.

If it is proven he lied, does that mean there was no mass shooting?
If it is proven he grossly exaggerated what he did, does that mean there was no mass shooting?

The answers, which you will not admit to, are, no, his lying or gross exaggerations do not prove there was no mass shooting. In the same way, Sonderkommando claims, many of which are suspect, do not prove there were no mass gassings.

You then have a problem with the far more matter of fact, unemotive, basic descriptions, from the SS camp staff. Your tactic of trying to dismiss their testimony as too outlandish to be believable, does not work. That is why you have to switch to a different tactic, of claiming they were all tortured or coerced into lying. The problem with that is torture and coercion, also do not mean lying. Hoess was subjected to torture, but his claims about the main events, and many details, are corroborated. People can be tortured into telling the truth, but in principle, it does normally make them a very poor witness.

Rendering someone as an incompetent eyewitness, does not therefore mean that the event they claim to have witnessed, did not happen.

[HansHill]

If it is proven he lied, does that mean there was no mass shooting?
If it is proven he grossly exaggerated what he did, does that mean there was no mass shooting?

It means he is unreliable as an eyewitness, rendering his offerings as suspicious, if not outright untenable. If in turn that same eyewitnesses who made things up about handling the weapons, then says that Mr Bean was the shooter, we will reject this claim.

How are you not getting this, dude.

[Nessie]

If it is proven he lied, does that mean there was no mass shooting?
If it is proven he grossly exaggerated what he did, does that mean there was no mass shooting?

It means he is unreliable as an eyewitness, rendering his offerings as suspicious, if not outright untenable. If in turn that same eyewitnesses who made things up about handling the weapons, then says that Mr Bean was the shooter, we will reject this claim.

How are you not getting this, dude.

I am getting it. How does rendering his offerings as untenable, prove that there had been no mass shooting? The answer, you studiously avoid, is that it does not. How are you not getting that?

[Archie]

Back on topic, is the thorny issue, that Archie has run away from, of my Las Vegas mass shooting analogy. If someone who was proven to have been there, gave very inaccurate descriptions about the shooting, over how long it lasted, how many died and how many shots were fired, does that mean they lied and there was no mass shooting?

That is a very easy question to answer.

I already told you I intend to take a break from replying to you as I find you too dishonest.

You say someone at the Las Vegas shooting thinks it lasted six hours. So what? Maybe there was confusion over the wording of the question. Maybe the person was in shock. Maybe the person is in idiot. Whatever the explanation, this person would be an outlier and would make a poor witness. A lawyer, if given a choice, would pick a better witness.

The Las Vegas shooting is abundantly documented. It was reported in real time. Much of it is on video. There was abundant forensic evidence. Unlike the gassings, we know that it happened, independent of witnesses. The witness statements are, contrary to what you imply, probably reasonably coherent, unlike the gas chamber witnesses who are obviously telling/repeating tall tales.

[Archie]

If it is proven he lied, does that mean there was no mass shooting?
If it is proven he grossly exaggerated what he did, does that mean there was no mass shooting?

It means he is unreliable as an eyewitness, rendering his offerings as suspicious, if not outright untenable. If in turn that same eyewitnesses who made things up about handling the weapons, then says that Mr Bean was the shooter, we will reject this claim.

How are you not getting this, dude.

I am getting it. How does rendering his offerings as untenable, prove that there had been no mass shooting? The answer, you studiously avoid, is that it does not. How are you not getting that?

There is lots of proof for the Las Vegas shooting. We don't need to rely on storytellers to know that it happened.

There is no proof for the mass gassings. The only evidence for it is stories. Which are contradictory and don't make sense.

You still don't understand the problem of false positives/false negatives. All of your attempts to explain how you would distinguish true stories from false ones are ultimately circular.

2) It is very prone to Type II error, i.e., the Nessie approach is incapable of detecting false witnesses.* The objective in evaluating witnesses is to accept true witnesses and reject false witnesses. You want to avoid committing errors in both directions. If you grant infinite latitude for errors, this is too skewed toward believing witnesses. It becomes impossible to reject false witnesses and you are setting yourself for lots of type II errors (i.e., believing BS).

[...]

*On this point, I already know what Nessie will say, so let me just go ahead and preempt him. He will say that he uses "corroboration" to determine truthfulness. But in fact he doesn't because if you show him something in a testimony that is demonstrably false (i.e., something that FAILS CORROBORATION under the ordinary meaning of that word) he will say the error is "normal" and so it still passes corroboration! Thus we see that his supposed corroboration/truthfulness test is rigged in favor of accepting the witness (at least whenever it's convenient.)

[Nessie]

It means he is unreliable as an eyewitness, rendering his offerings as suspicious, if not outright untenable. If in turn that same eyewitnesses who made things up about handling the weapons, then says that Mr Bean was the shooter, we will reject this claim.

How are you not getting this, dude.

I am getting it. How does rendering his offerings as untenable, prove that there had been no mass shooting? The answer, you studiously avoid, is that it does not. How are you not getting that?

There is lots of proof for the Las Vegas shooting. We don't need to rely on storytellers to know that it happened.

Which means the answer, you avoid, is no.

There is no proof for the mass gassings. The only evidence for it is stories. Which are contradictory and don't make sense.

This is what more accurately makes you a Holocaust denier, as you claim there is only witness evidence, with no corroborating, supporting physical, documentary, archaeological or circumstantial evidence. You say that, despite regularly engaging with me, to discuss that very evidence!

As for the witnesses, they are nowhere near as contradictory as you suggest. In fact, there is universal agreement amongst them as to what the main event was and how each death camp functioned. They also agree on many of the details.

As for not making sense, that is the prop you use to support your logically flawed argument from incredulity. Just because they do not make sense to you, does not prove there were mass killings inside the death camps.

You still don't understand the problem of false positives/false negatives. All of your attempts to explain how you would distinguish true stories from false ones are ultimately circular.

Corroboration is linear, as is chronology.

2) It is very prone to Type II error, i.e., the Nessie approach is incapable of detecting false witnesses.* The objective in evaluating witnesses is to accept true witnesses and reject false witnesses. You want to avoid committing errors in both directions. If you grant infinite latitude for errors, this is too skewed toward believing witnesses. It becomes impossible to reject false witnesses and you are setting yourself for lots of type II errors (i.e., believing BS).

[...]

*On this point, I already know what Nessie will say, so let me just go ahead and preempt him. He will say that he uses "corroboration" to determine truthfulness. But in fact he doesn't because if you show him something in a testimony that is demonstrably false (i.e., something that FAILS CORROBORATION under the ordinary meaning of that word) he will say the error is "normal" and so it still passes corroboration! Thus we see that his supposed corroboration/truthfulness test is rigged in favor of accepting the witness (at least whenever it's convenient.)

You are getting corroboration mixed up with accuracy. If two eyewitnesses say that there were mass graves at a camp, they corroborate each other. If an archaeological survey finds 11 pits, then the witnesses are corroborated by the archaeology. If one of the eyewitnesses had said there was 10 pits and the other 25, then we know one of them is more accurate than the other. Just because something is demonstrably false, such as the number of graves, that does not mean there were no graves.

I explained that to you in the LV mass shooting analogy. Two eyewitnesses speak to what happened to them, and it proven they were there at the time. One is accurate about duration, shots fired etc and the other is miles out. They still corroborate the main event, that there was a mass shooting. One is more accurate about details than the other.

The death camp workers, Jewish and Nazi, are in 100% agreement, with no contradictions, that people arrived on mass transports, they had to hand over their property and undress, they were gassed, buried and cremated. Like the eyewitnesses who were at the LV mass shooting all agree, there was a mass shooting at a festival they attended. That is the main event. Details, such as how many shots were fired, or how many graves there were, determines the accuracy of the witness.

[pilgrimofdark]

The witness statements are, contrary to what you imply, probably reasonably coherent, unlike the gas chamber witnesses who are obviously telling/repeating tall tales.

There should be a yearly contest to write witness statements in the style of the Holocaust on non-Holocaust events.

Here's my entry.

Spoiler

Three Weeks in Las Vegas

It happened on September 4th, 2016, during the time of the COVID shutdowns.

When we arrived at the festival, the grounds were covered with dead bodies, hundreds of them. Other people were sitting on blankets, starving to death in small groups.

The cruelty of the Ticketmeisters knew no bounds. On the way in, we were beaten with clubs and pipes. Everyone knew they were going to their deaths.

I managed to mingle among a group of workers, selling band T-shirts and CDs. People begged us for water, offering $10 or sometimes $15 for a single bottle of Aquafina.

The Oberticketmeisters had set up booths to fool the concert-goers. There were two lines with fake ticket booths. Some people went to the left, the others to the right. People were forced to turn over their ticket for the fake concert. They entered the grounds, and I never saw any of them again.

Later, a bus pulled up, but 80% of the people were dead. They were shot to death with poison gas bullets by the security guards outside of the venue. The few survivors didn't suspect anything on their way into the concert.

When they handed over their concert ticket, they were given a shirt and a QR code for the band's official website, to trick them to continue on. As they were walking into the concert, the guards beat them mercilessly.

Christmas trees covered in barbed wire lined the path, hiding the death yard. Amidst the shouting and beatings, none suspected that their lives would be over within minutes.

The Jason Aldean orchestra was forced to play songs to drown out the screaming. It didn't work. After each song, they screamed louder as they calmly waited for their turn to die.

During one song, the sound of gunfire rang out. People started panicking. I saw a nude woman carrying a small child. Her eyes were blank. The golden dream of freedom for the caged bird was over.

I saw everything: how our brothers were led to the shooting ground and the terrible trials they endured before their deaths. It weakened some, and revived others.

The sight of everything became commonplace. I grew indifferent.

The worst part was standing naked in the biting November cold, awaiting their turn for a cruel death. However, the gunshots were no less horrific.

There were approximately 3.5 million corpses.

I escaped into the desert, where I hid for 1 year. I have worked through the winter, seen the suffering and death of millions, and have already lived to see the first warm rays of the sun.

Some of the above passages are taken nearly verbatim from the omitted passages of Wiernik's book.

[Stubble]

Sounds just like it was written by a humble carpenter, unfamiliar with the pen.

Also, this contest idea, I approve Sir, although, my entry this year will be late.

[Nessie]

The witness statements are, contrary to what you imply, probably reasonably coherent, unlike the gas chamber witnesses who are obviously telling/repeating tall tales.

There should be a yearly contest to write witness statements in the style of the Holocaust on non-Holocaust events.

...

You spectacularly miss the point. It does not matter how inaccurate a witness is, their inaccuracy does not prove the event they describe did not take place. Someone can describe the LV mass shooting, or events in TII, highly inaccurately, and that is not evidence to prove there was no mass shooting and TII was not a death camp.