The Deceptive Mechanisms

[The Grand Nudger]

I laughed reading this. Good one. But really, barometers, cups of water and computer data are still traces. We know there was a rise in pressure, but the time and date escape us. The water could come from anywhere. People can still manipulate computer data. I think our definitions of "event" are just not meeting. I look for evidence of the event, you give me evidence that indicates there may have been an event. In any case, for the "weather station" method to work, you must anticipate an event--time, place, material and all. Weather is predictable, people are not. I guess I'd say any event having to do with people should not be expected to to have unfalsifiable evidence. That basically includes any history worth knowing.

Those things may have escaped you, but here we have a little thing known as a clock. Sure, the water could come from anywhere, and if some asshole was running around multiple counties spoofing every weather station along the route (and our claimant just happened to be situated somewhere along that route or was the spoofer) we might have a problem. People might manipulate data but to make that one stick in this example you'd have to show that -I- was manipulating data. I don't have to predict anything - it was a claim of a past event. In my example we're just lucky that the event occurred at a point in time when adequate instrumentation existed. You think we shouldn't expect unfalsifiable evidence about any event that involves people? That's absurd. It's more likely that you -wish- for it to be true so that you might excuse some other concept you're about to pitch which suffers from an unfortunate lack of evidence.