Where are the Goalposts?

[Stubble]

After reading Archie's steelman, it is painfully obvious that the argument at this point hinges on 'where'd they goed' and that the orthodox perspective must be taken on faith, as it is not borne out by direct, quantifiable, physical evidence.

[bombsaway]

After reading Archie's steelman, it is painfully obvious that the argument at this point hinges on 'where'd they goed' and that the orthodox perspective must be taken on faith, as it is not borne out by direct, quantifiable, physical evidence.

The point of the 'where'd they go' argument is to show that if we're evaluating the evidentiary case for both narratives, revisionism gets blown away. The evidentiary case for resettled Jews being maintained in the Soviet Union is nil, even the Korherr report doesn't help you here. Yet you happily believe in it, because you assume historical fact based on your interpretation of the science.

Even here, at most, all you can really argue is the killing isn't evidenced. You can't argue killing was impossible or even deeply unlikely based on the evidence (eg the lack of low HCN concentration in the crema remains can be explained by the Nazis putting special paint on the walls)

[Callafangers]

The point of the 'where'd they go' argument is to show that if we're evaluating the evidentiary case for both narratives, revisionism gets blown away.

Do you include any science in your "evidentiary case"?

[bombsaway]

The point of the 'where'd they go' argument is to show that if we're evaluating the evidentiary case for both narratives, revisionism gets blown away.

Do you include any science in your "evidentiary case"?

I don't think there's a scientific argument that proves such and such happened. I think from the physical evidence you could say things are unclear, though everyone seems to agree that mass body destruction did occur (5000 bodies destroyed?).

On the other hand I think I can make science based arguments about why you haven't proven 'impossibility' or anything near that. Eg in the kremas they could have used a special paint like the kind Rudolf says was used on the walls of the Dachau delousing chambers. This hasn't been directly evidenced, but is scientifically possible.

[Stubble]

After reading Archie's steelman, it is painfully obvious that the argument at this point hinges on 'where'd they goed' and that the orthodox perspective must be taken on faith, as it is not borne out by direct, quantifiable, physical evidence.

The point of the 'where'd they go' argument is to show that if we're evaluating the evidentiary case for both narratives, revisionism gets blown away. The evidentiary case for resettled Jews being maintained in the Soviet Union is nil, even the Korherr report doesn't help you here. Yet you happily believe in it, because you assume historical fact based on your interpretation of the science.

Even here, at most, all you can really argue is the killing isn't evidenced. You can't argue killing was impossible or even deeply unlikely based on the evidence (eg the lack of low HCN concentration in the crema remains can be explained by the Nazis putting special paint on the walls)

Dude, you can't even tell me who is missing! 80+ years after the fact!

All you have is nebulous statistical cohorts based off of revised population estimates from the interwar and post war periods.

You haven't got shit either. You have no grave space, no bodies, no murder weapon, no order, nothing, zilch, zero, nada, fuck all.

You just take it on faith.

[bombsaway]

After reading Archie's steelman, it is painfully obvious that the argument at this point hinges on 'where'd they goed' and that the orthodox perspective must be taken on faith, as it is not borne out by direct, quantifiable, physical evidence.

The point of the 'where'd they go' argument is to show that if we're evaluating the evidentiary case for both narratives, revisionism gets blown away. The evidentiary case for resettled Jews being maintained in the Soviet Union is nil, even the Korherr report doesn't help you here. Yet you happily believe in it, because you assume historical fact based on your interpretation of the science.

Even here, at most, all you can really argue is the killing isn't evidenced. You can't argue killing was impossible or even deeply unlikely based on the evidence (eg the lack of low HCN concentration in the crema remains can be explained by the Nazis putting special paint on the walls)

Dude, you can't even tell me who is missing! 80+ years after the fact!

All you have is nebulous statistical cohorts based off of revised population estimates from the interwar and post war periods.

You haven't got shit either. You have no grave space, no bodies, no murder weapon, no order, nothing, zilch, zero, nada, fuck all.

You just take it on faith.

Even you guys will admit there are a lot of destroyed bodies in the ground at these camps. Maybe you say it's 500.

That's 500 more Jews then are evidenced to have been maintained by Nazi Germany in the USSR.

There is no evidence of Jews maintained in this region, only mass killed or put to hard labor. Yet you believe, following revisionist orthodoxy, that millions of non-working Jews were maintained there. In terms of the labor situation, all evidence shows that employment was dropping and it was their intention to replace Jewish labor in all territories where it was happening.

The give me names thing is a distraction (the above is your real problem) though of course many names can be provided.

[Stubble]

There, is. You simply refuse to acknowledge that 'those jews' are 'the jews'.

80+ years after the fact and you have revised nameless nebulous blobs you expect me to believe self immolated and vanished into the atmosphere.

Not only do you have no evidence, you also have no plausible method of disposal, primary grave space (the original hole didn't vanish), no murder weapon, no order, nothing.

You have the 13 apostles of treblinka saying 'no mass graves were found'. Oh, and pictures of what, a dozen bones?

[bombsaway]

There, is. You simply refuse to acknowledge that 'those jews' are 'the jews'.

80+ years after the fact and you have revised nameless nebulous blobs you expect me to believe self immolated and vanished into the atmosphere.

Not only do you have no evidence, you also have no plausible method of disposal, primary grave space (the original hole didn't vanish), no murder weapon, no order, nothing.

You have the 13 apostles of treblinka saying 'no mass graves were found'. Oh, and pictures of what, a dozen bones?

By criticizing the Holocaust evidence, you merely further plummet the evidentiary case for you what you believe in, because objectively your side is much worse here. Again, you have no evidence that resettlement was the plan in USSR, beyond a certain date, not even rumors. The Jews brought in from Austria and Germany were killed, not resettled, following the closure of the ghettos there. In terms of the labor situation, this is how it was described to the army

No commitment can be given to leave the Jews working for the Wehrmacht until
the end of the war. According to the opinion of the Reichsmarschall, the idea that
the Jews are irreplaceable should be got away from. Neither the Armaments
Inspectorate nor the other departments will keep their Jews until the end of the
war. The orders are clear and hard. They were valid not only for the
Generalgouvernement, but for all occupied territories.

[Callafangers]

I don't think there's a scientific argument that proves such and such happened. I think from the physical evidence you could say things are unclear, though everyone seems to agree that mass body destruction did occur (5000 bodies destroyed?).

On the other hand I think I can make science based arguments about why you haven't proven 'impossibility' or anything near that. Eg in the kremas they could have used a special paint like the kind Rudolf says was used on the walls of the Dachau delousing chambers. This hasn't been directly evidenced, but is scientifically possible.

What is this? It isn't just your lack of direct 'special paint' evidence. It's your lack of direct wood/fuel evidence, your lack of corpses, lack of proportionate witness testimony, conflicts of interest in postwar power-grabs, and much more. At the very least, you need a viable crime scene reflecting the scale and nature of what you claim. You do not have even one such crime scene. None of the sites examined reflect the claims alleged to have occurred there. This is true in every instance where such examination has occurred.

[bombsaway]

I don't think there's a scientific argument that proves such and such happened. I think from the physical evidence you could say things are unclear, though everyone seems to agree that mass body destruction did occur (5000 bodies destroyed?).

On the other hand I think I can make science based arguments about why you haven't proven 'impossibility' or anything near that. Eg in the kremas they could have used a special paint like the kind Rudolf says was used on the walls of the Dachau delousing chambers. This hasn't been directly evidenced, but is scientifically possible.

What is this? It isn't just your lack of direct 'special paint' evidence. It's your lack of direct wood/fuel evidence, your lack of corpses, lack of proportionate witness testimony, conflicts of interest in postwar power-grabs, and much more. At the very least, you need a viable crime scene reflecting the scale and nature of what you claim. You do not have even one such crime scene. None of the sites examined reflect the claims alleged to have occurred there. This is true in every instance where such examination has occurred.

The sites don't reflect that the claims didn't happen though, even if we can't determine numbers from the remains found there.

Viewed in terms of a feature set, almost all of its features are evidence, like the various mechanisms of killing, and in certain areas, like fuel delivery, it is lacking. Your narrative of resettlement is lacking in every area, because there is no direct evidence it actually happened.

[Callafangers]

What is this? It isn't just your lack of direct 'special paint' evidence. It's your lack of direct wood/fuel evidence, your lack of corpses, lack of proportionate witness testimony, conflicts of interest in postwar power-grabs, and much more. At the very least, you need a viable crime scene reflecting the scale and nature of what you claim. You do not have even one such crime scene. None of the sites examined reflect the claims alleged to have occurred there. This is true in every instance where such examination has occurred.

The sites don't reflect that the claims didn't happen though, even if we can't determine numbers from the remains found there.

Viewed in terms of a feature set, almost all of its features are evidence, like the various mechanisms of killing, and in certain areas, like fuel delivery, it is lacking. Your narrative of resettlement is lacking in every area, because there is no direct evidence it actually happened.

But this is not accurate. We can determine a reasonable, plausible, or even possible range at most of these alleged mega mass grave sites. There is no interpretation which can support even 10% of the corpses allegedly there at any of the AR camps, despite numerous excavations which have aligned time-after-time with revisionist interpretations of only scattered remains.

There is a reason why Muehlenkamp clocked out and why no exterminationist has since been able to even feign a compelling presentation. Time and time again, exterminationists fall flat on their faces on all matters of scientific interpretation.

[Stubble]

Attrition, 14f13 and execution of partisans winnowed from the population would readily explain the handful of corpses at these sites in question.

Honestly, simple attrition would explain it. However 14f13 and 14f14 codes exist and I'm inclined to believe they were used for disposition of some people during the war, perhaps even at the sites in question.

What I do not accept is the idea of a mass extermination campaign against 'the jews'.

[SanityCheck]

This is a bad example, since you advanced a purported "historical hypothesis" while apparently ignorant of what happened to the dead from Napoleonic battlefields and in particular, the Battle of Waterloo. [...continues with a huge essay on Waterloo...]

Amazing -- seven paragraphs on the Battle of Waterloo which I only threw in as a generic example.

And yet, those paragraphs showed that your hypothetical example wouldn't easily work as a case of 'falsification', due to the literal shifting of the remains, when they were scavenged two hundred or so years ago.

The passage of time is an information-destroying process, in very uneven ways, which also includes physical evidence. Human and animal bones literally dissolve in acidic soil in decades, in neutral soil this can take centuries, alkaline environments preserve them best, with forms of fossilisation.
https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/ ... 9-20231206
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletonization

There is significantly more historical information on the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo from contemporary written sources than there is for ancient battlefields, which can be harder to locate for that reason, as you noted with the case of Cannae. The battle of the Teutoburger Wald in 9 AD is now thought to have taken place, based on archaeology, somewhere other than the Hermannsdenkmal which was erected to commemorate this ancient Germanic victory over the Roman legions.

Bones and bodies may have decayed, but the soil is full of phosphates, the chemical traces of the dead, and if you strike the ground with a shovel, he says, there is “a fountain of finds”.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... eum-legion

Try as you might, it is inescapable that a theory or claim must be subjected to falsification in order to retain its claim to validity.

I think you've tied yourself in knots confusing many things. Popper identified falsifiability as a criterion for scientific theories, and extended this to social scientific theories making law-like claims or predictions (as you paraphrased him about Marxism.

Historical claims are not predictions. The past cannot be re-run as a scientific experiment, and as noted, the passage of time is an information-destroying process. The philosophy of science hasn't always recognised the differences between trying to observe things in the present and trying to make inferences based on past traces. Natural and human actions have caused massive destruction to the sum total of information about the past which survives in the present, in a highly uneven way.

You've further confused falsifiability with 're-verifying' the past, while sidestepping the questions about how we could in principle 'falsify' well-attested events - or organisations, nation-states, personalities, cultural artefacts.

If the principle of falsifiability is as 'inescapable' as you claim, then it should be demonstrable for things like:
- The Beatles
- the existence of the United States of America from the late 18th Century to the present day
- all 47 US Presidencies from George Washington to Donald Trump

The historicity of The Beatles, the United States, the 47 presidencies over US history, are all massively attested to an entirely overwhelming level. There are innumerable sources confirming that Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in 1974 and was President until January 1977. Aspects of his presidency, or of the career of The Beatles, might be less well attested. But that doesn't automatically make them 'falsifiable'; the detail might be simply too obscure and thus unsourced, making claims about the detail uncertain. Other aspects can be revised and corrected with new information and thus appear 'falsifiable'.

Falsifiability isn't restricted to controversial claims. Popper was claiming this was a criterion for all scientific theories, without actually having demonstrated that this extended to historical claims - he had plenty of examples of major personalities and big events in his own era he could have used to do this, but he didn't.

Claims about the past exist on a manifest continuum, from over-attested (such as the sheer volume of sources that exist for the career and legacy of The Beatles), to found only in a single source.

Without these predictions being thoroughly testable (i.e. falsifiable) by all available means, there is no reasonable claim to validity, period.

So you need to demonstrate how that works with massively attested cases like The Beatles or a US Presidency as a whole, how these could be 'falsified' or 'tested', as well as how this would work with specific events which are not necessarily violent or which would not necessarily leave physical or visual evidence, but which could be documented in other ways.

Once you've shown how 'falsifiability' applies in general to the past, and thus whether the historicity of The Beatles or the Ford Presidency is or isn't a falsifiable scientific theory or is instead a well documented episode in recent history, then we can move on to the more contentious issues.

It seems more reasonable to stick with the actual historical method of accumulating sources, cross-checking them, corroborating them, eliminating the genuinely batshit and false sources, etc.

As a mid-range example, I'll add in the British Union of Fascists and Oswald Mosley to the pile. One can find many reports in British newspapers preserved and digitised in Gale Primary Sources about Mosley and the BUF, Fascists or 'blackshirts' for the 1930s. One such story was a report from the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette from Friday December 22, 1933, on p.13, entitled 'Blackshirts at Exeter. Sir Oswald Mosley and Hecklers'. Mosley spoke at the Civic Hall and the report mentions him attacking the 'Reds' but there was no mention of the Jews.

How do you 'falsify' this newspaper story? Is it a 'scientific theory' that Oswald Mosley spoke at a public meeting in Exeter in December 1933? Or is it just a historical event, an episode in the life of Mosley and the existence of the BUF in public life from 1932-1940? It is certainly documented in this newspaper.

It's true that newspapers can run false stories for a variety of reasons, which are usually exposed by subsequent reports, relegated to false rumour status, etc. Some stories turn out to be one-offs in newspapers but might be better documented in private and state records, e.g. court cases. Working with these texts, historians can note degrees of sympathy, antipathy and perhaps patterns of bias pro and con a political party like the BUF in 1930s Britain, the extent to which the BUF were involved in physical altercations with political opponents (and potentially who started them, going by the court cases and reporting of them), and much else. The pattern connecting multiple sources together to present an account is what matters when writing most forms of history.

There may well be other sources on Mosley's visit to Exeter in 1933, going by a google search which reveals books on the BUF in Devon (Todd Gray, 2006, being one example). Looking for other sources would be searching for corroboration and thus verification - but is that always a necessary step whenever one encounters a single source?

One can add: how do you 'falsify' a trial record in Old Bailey Online? In what ways is such a historical source 'falsifiable'? One can read the trial record and make judgements about the reliability of the human verdict, the biases around social standing, class, religion and gender, the fairness or unfairness of the case, and maybe identify personal or political motives for accusations, witness claims and so on. None of that is 'falsification'. The historical fact of the trial is attested by the record, whatever we might now judge about the verdict or observe in the patterns of trials regarding 18th Century standards of evidence as well as the harshness or mildness of verdicts. Our contemporary legal and ethical standards are different, so we don't now punish theft with the death penalty, and have better evidence-gathering techniques, but still contend with how to prosecute murder, infanticide, fraud and theft among other behaviours long deemed criminal offences. Applying 21st Century standards and values to 18th Century court cases wouldn't 'falsify' the case or change the recorded verdict.

The study of such cases can approach a geschichtswissenschaftlich level by gathering and analysing data about the patterns of the cases. The 'scientific' claims are generally about the pattern. There may not be a complete set of such records, as is often the case for past records, one might find some have been lost or destroyed, and then find newspaper reports about them minus an actual trial record, or find nothing and be aware that the survival of such legal records and reporting of such cases is incomplete. It's certainly possible that when surveying all such trial records across early modern and modern societies, we find cases that turn out to be entirely made up for some weird reason, but generally speaking there isn't much mileage in fabricating an official court record from whole cloth to accuse a nonexistent defendant. Whereas cases of mistaken identity would be more common. But does that mean going into paroxysms of doubt every time one reads through such a trial record or reads a story about a court case in an early modern or modern newspaper?

[Stubble]

And yet, none of that erases gravespace.

The space is insufficient for the claim. Even if we assume total destruction of the remains, the holes in the dirt would not accommodate the claim as a liquid.

[bombsaway]

I understand that you guys think the science is virtually settled, therefore the glaring problems with the revisionist narrative (like the 0 evidence emerging for an event that would have involved millions of people - resettlement in USSR) are a matter of bad optics. I say your judgement about the science is off. Flat earthers also think the science is settled on their side, counter to the unanimous perspective of the scientific community. Humans are prone to such errors.