Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

At this point, he's definitely a highly interesting case for a psychologist.

Methinks that Flatty is getting here the best treatment he can get. Not even a paid psychologist would have this kind of patience to talk to him this long and thoroughly as some people on this forum.

If only I had the training and authority to prescribe something for him...

Boru

[FlatAssembler]

If it was really a prison, we would expect that, at the visitor time, there come people to visit the inmates. The fact that there was nobody there at the visitor time suggests that it's not really a prison.

Did you investigate? You know, call the prison to find out why no one was there? Did you return to the prison on another day? Did you contact a government agency in charge of prisons to determine of the prison was closed or undergoing renovation?

 Drawing a conclusion from one piece of questionable data doesn't sound very scientific.

Boru

But testing obvious ad-hoc hypotheses is also unscientific. The hypothesis that prison was undergoing renovation is an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis, it's inventing the reasons why an experiment wouldn't work.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Did you investigate? You know, call the prison to find out why no one was there? Did you return to the prison on another day? Did you contact a government agency in charge of prisons to determine of the prison was closed or undergoing renovation?

 Drawing a conclusion from one piece of questionable data doesn't sound very scientific.

Boru

But testing obvious ad-hoc hypotheses is also unscientific. The hypothesis that prison was undergoing renovation is an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis, it's inventing the reasons why an experiment wouldn't work.

The renovation suggestion isn’t ad hoc - it isn’t even a hypothesis (and you didn’t conduct an ‘experiment’, strictly speaking).

If you suspect prisons may not exist, visiting one prison on one day is not a valid test of your hypothesis - it’s far too small a data set. All you demonstrated (assuming you went to the right building) is that that particular prison was empty on that particular day. Concluding from that alone that ‘prisons do not exist’ is an unjustified assumption. There are plenty of reasons why no one was at that building on the day you went (outlined previously).

Did you make any attempt to determine why no one was there? Did you visit any other prisons to see if they were empty? Did you contact the Bureau of Prisons (or whatever the Croatian equivalent is) for an explanation? Did you attempt to talk with people who claim to have been incarcerated to evaluate their testimony?

No. By your own admission, you made a sweeping generalization (‘prisons probably don’t exist’) based on one un-investigated datum (‘I visited a prison and no one was there’).

Helluva way to run a railroad.

Boru

[The Architect Of Fate]

But testing obvious ad-hoc hypotheses is also unscientific. The hypothesis that prison was undergoing renovation is an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis, it's inventing the reasons why an experiment wouldn't work.

It's not ad hoc it's a perfectly reasonable explanation of why prison wasn't open when you went there. By contrast what you did was visit one prison at one time and then jumped to a massive conclusion on limited evidence and ignored any other explanation.

I mean here's the phone number of the very prison you visited. Freaking call them.

+385 31 201 199

[arewethereyet]

If you go to the zoo and go to the elephant enclosure and don't see the elephant because it is inside being cared for by the zookeepers, you can safely assume that elephants don't exist. It doesn't matter that there a place for one, that there's a picture of it, that there are piles of dung...you don't see it so none of them exist.

Simply amazing logic.

[Angrboda]

[The Grand Nudger]

If all your prisons are empty...you either don't need a gun for any reason, or you simply must have one for every thing. Not much middle ground on that one.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If you go to the zoo and go to the elephant enclosure and don't see the elephant because it is inside being cared for by the zookeepers, you can safely assume that elephants don't exist.  It doesn't matter that there a place for one, that there's a picture of it, that there are piles of dung...you don't see it so none of them exist.

Simply amazing logic.

Actually, he’d make the assumption that zoos don’t exist.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

The best parts probably getting lost in the sauce. Hey...Flat, why'd you go to osijek prison?

[FlatAssembler]

The best parts probably getting lost in the sauce.  Hey...Flat, why'd you go to osijek prison?

Well, I was living in Osijek back then, so it was by far the nearest prison. Besides, it was a lockdown, police were not allowing anybody to leave the city without explicit permission, so I could not reach other prisons even if I wanted to.