Witness Evidence

[bennyboy]

Now who is confusing a conclusion for testimony?  

And I wouldn't fire people for a mistake.  Everyone gets stuck in a pattern of thinking sometimes (even some who I consider to be very good).  Also there have been times, where I check things out, and come to the same conclusion that the component still is bad.  In this case, I am very thorough, but I have had people wait for another component to come in based on my testimony.  

There are also a number of times, where I have to rely mostly on testimony.  Either the problem is intermittent and non-repeatable, may risk harm to the person (or thousands of dollars of damage to the machine).  In such an instance, I'm not going to have to see it to believe it.  However if I can check it easily for myself, then I normally do.

Here's this whole thread: you keep talking about communication, or about evidence, and calling it "testimony." It's not, and nobody uses that word about those things except you. And the reason you do it is obvious: if I say your workplace communication is "testimony," then you will say, "See? We use testimony all the time, and it's a perfectly natural and important way to collect information about reality. . . therefore please consider my testimony about Jeebus." But people here know how words work, and it's pretty obvious how you are going about trying to set up an equivocation on the term.

Here's the difference, and then we're done methinks.
-Testimony uses the ideas of people to hold up "facts."
-Evidence uses facts to hold up (or demolish) the ideas held by people.

The former is weak, as people have all kinds of shitty ideas. The latter is strong, as sufficient evidence will reveal its truth, whether an observer is critical or not.