Testimony is Evidence

[Ravenshire]

You know, I've grown tired of arguing with our resident brick wall. It's become painfully obvious that his emotional investment in the worth of testimony has overridden common sense. Even the courts are starting to instruct juries in the (un)reliability of testimony evidence, yet RR staunchly defends it as being at least as worthy as physical evidence, citing that that physical evidence can be corrupted, misleading, etc... while ignoring the arguments that physical evidence can be retested with little if any degradation yet testimony only gets less reliable the further you get from the actual events.p

We've had an expert in testimony explain the problems, supported by physical evidence and unwittingly demonstrating exactly what he was explaining. RR dismissed the physical evidence and, ironically, questioned the reliability of the testimony. My own case of conflating the 1998 Goodwill Games with Olympic games, similarly dismissed.

RR, it's obvious you want testimony to be as reliable (or more) as physical evidence. The problem, for you, is that the evidence doesn't bear your wishes out. I can only be left with the belief that your emotional investment in testimony springs from your belief in the unsupported, second-hand (at best) testimonies that inform your faith.

It's actually kinda funny that someone who claims to be skeptical can be so credulous of ancient, unsupported claims yet so disbelieving of the evidence laid out under his nose.

[Astonished]

Look, you are talking about people who think a dead jew came back to life to atone for their fucking sins and then flew up to heaven.  You are not going to get iron-clad logic from them at the best of times of which this surely is not one.

And it's not like any of this shit is what convinced them in the first place. It's because their mommies and daddies told them all day every day from 0 to 14 that it was true and it just stuck. That they can't figure out that they weren't convinced by anything else is just sad.

[Anomalocaris]

I saw an invisible dragon in my garage today when I got home.

Get me some time, I am sure I can find a significant number of people who will support you out of suggestably acquired but very genuine convictions.

[Minimalist]

You still haven't responded to this. There's a point I'm making here.

Ask me again after you've been martyred for seeing an invisible dragon.

Fuck you.

[LadyForCamus]

Found it:





Mr. Fraser not only describes, in detail, what is wrong with witness testimony, he unwittingly demonstrates it. I found the video as linked from this article which points up some of the pros and cons, but seems to miss the biggest con, that witnesses may be mistaken or outright lying.

I'm going to quote myself from nine months ago, from the same thread where I initially posted the above link with it's video for further illustration of the point.

Human memory is too unreliable to trust, by itself, to come to a conclusion. Let me illustrate:
In 1998, I saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee win an Olympic medal at the summer games in New York City. That is, to the best of my knowledge, a statement of fact. It's what I remember. It never happened. New York City has never hosted the Olympic games. There were no summer games in 1998. Yet I clearly remember her winning an Olympic medal, in New York, in 1998.

It happens that it was the Goodwill games, which were indeed held in NYC in 1998. But, I only know that now because I just looked it up and had I been called upon before today to give testimony in a court of law whether Joyner-Kersee won an Olympic medal at the summer Olympic games in New York City, I would have sworn under oath that she did. It's likely that in the future I'll revert to that belief, forgetting once again that there ever were such a thing as the Goodwill games.

Moving beyond the fallibility of human memory, people can give horribly bad testimony even without faulty memories. Is the witness coerced? Is the witness even being honest? Is the witness a friend of the defendant or a foe? Is the witness being paid for their testimony? In short, does the witness have a motive to say what the prosecution (or the defense) wants them to say. These are just some of the things that should bar witness testimony from being the sole evidence to any conclusion.

RR, let's get a clear answer for once. Why is testimony your pet hobby horse? 

Yeah, I think before RR goes any further, he owes anyone still giving him the benefit of the doubt regarding his intentions an answer to the above question.

[RoadRunner79]

I saw an invisible dragon in my garage today when I got home.

You still haven't responded to this. There's a point I'm making here.

You didn't give much to go on. You didn't say what you saw, and that seems to contradict your claim that it is invisible. I wouldn't consider that very good testimony.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and yet you believe in a story that expounds upon a flood that never happened.  That narrates the thoughts of godman as he sits alone in the desert.  

I think that your metrics for evaluating "good testimony" are askew.

[downbeatplumb]

Planting a false memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il0u2s_WGXA

[LadyForCamus]

Found it:





Mr. Fraser not only describes, in detail, what is wrong with witness testimony, he unwittingly demonstrates it. I found the video as linked from this article which points up some of the pros and cons, but seems to miss the biggest con, that witnesses may be mistaken or outright lying.

I'm going to quote myself from nine months ago, from the same thread where I initially posted the above link with it's video for further illustration of the point.

Human memory is too unreliable to trust, by itself, to come to a conclusion. Let me illustrate:
In 1998, I saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee win an Olympic medal at the summer games in New York City. That is, to the best of my knowledge, a statement of fact. It's what I remember. It never happened. New York City has never hosted the Olympic games. There were no summer games in 1998. Yet I clearly remember her winning an Olympic medal, in New York, in 1998.

It happens that it was the Goodwill games, which were indeed held in NYC in 1998. But, I only know that now because I just looked it up and had I been called upon before today to give testimony in a court of law whether Joyner-Kersee won an Olympic medal at the summer Olympic games in New York City, I would have sworn under oath that she did. It's likely that in the future I'll revert to that belief, forgetting once again that there ever were such a thing as the Goodwill games.

Moving beyond the fallibility of human memory, people can give horribly bad testimony even without faulty memories. Is the witness coerced? Is the witness even being honest? Is the witness a friend of the defendant or a foe? Is the witness being paid for their testimony? In short, does the witness have a motive to say what the prosecution (or the defense) wants them to say. These are just some of the things that should bar witness testimony from being the sole evidence to any conclusion.

I have to wonder if RR is simply immune to both testimonial evidence and physical evidence since his position hasn't budged an inch. Then again, I'm not emotionally invested in making testimony appear to be far better evidence than it actually is.

RR, let's get a clear answer for once. Why is testimony your pet hobby horse? You've been shown over and over again that it's unreliable, even from eye-witnesses, yet you cling to it like a drowning man clinging to a bit of flotsam.

Thanks for the interesting and informative video, GB.  I read a study recently on how reconstructive memory plays a role in people forgetting their babies and children in cars.  The human brain has a difficult time deviating from predictable routines.  So when, for example, dad is asked to bring baby to day care in the morning when it's usually mom's task, he may not only forget to perform the task, but his brain can actually create a false memory of completing it when he actually didn't.  So, dad remembers dropping baby off, and is none the wiser until eight or so hours later when the horrific truth is revealed.

I have heard about the WTC false memory from the Mandela Effect folk; of course they outrageously asssert that the fault line lies within reality its self, and not their memories.  Ironically, RR has, on several occasions, dismissed the relevancy of this phenomenon to his pet topic of eyewitness testimony.

[SteveII]

To declare something as evidence takes a whole canopy of references, not just eye-witness accounts. Stuff like repeatable observations/experiments, several independent observers, blind testing and so on.

No, it doesn't. Any eyewitness account is evidence. You are confusing the word evidence with the word proof. Evidence refers to pieces of information or facts that help us establish the truth of something. Proof is a conclusion about the truth of something after analyzing the evidence. Evidence is suggestive of a conclusion. Proof is concrete and conclusive. Proof can also have different thresholds: Anywhere from more likely than not (preponderance of the evidence), to beyond a reasonable doubt, to absolute. These are all arrived at by considering evidence.