Where are the Goalposts?

[bombsaway]

Callafangers, let me put it this way.

If a bunch of revisionists were allowed to freely examine the sites and published their own studies "proving" orthodoxy (in their minds at least) and definitively contradicting your statement here about "possible range" https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=21442#p21442

what would you say? Would the revisionist view of the camps be falsified?

I take it that when you specified "possible range", this was not merely a statement about the orthodox claims not being supported by the evidence, but that the graves had been more or less proven to contain at most 10% of the claimed amount of destroyed bodies.

[Callafangers]

Callafangers, let me put it this way.

If a bunch of revisionists were allowed to freely examine the sites and published their own studies "proving" orthodoxy (in their minds at least) and definitively contradicting your statement here about "possible range" https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=21442#p21442

what would you say? Would the revisionist view of the camps be falsified?

What are you asking here, exactly? If there were comprehensive openness to pertinent severe tests then, yes, even without excavations yet proving millions of corpses at AR camps, the orthodox claims about these camps will have approached falsifiability in-practice, thereby still awaiting such tests to occur but overall removing Popperian objections about illegitimacy due to a lack of practical falsifiability.

I take it that when you specified "possible range", this was not merely a statement about the orthodox claims not being supported by the evidence, but that the graves had been more or less proven to contain at most 10% of the claimed amount of destroyed bodies.

The key phrase there is "at most", but sure. The findings for most camps could just as well support ~1-2% or even less (especially when accounting for a lack of supporting photography, conflicts of interest, etc.), with ~10% being in the upper end of what is possible for Sobibor, but a much lower cap at Treblinka, where even fewer remains were found despite much higher claimed burials.

[Stubble]

The 'extermination area' was a plot that was just shy of 2 acres, right? How the hell do you put the population of Seattle in a 2 acre area? I know Nessie says they had 56 Olympic swimming pools, but, I don't think they were using those for body disposal (I'm still not sure why or exactly where they had said pools) and regardless they wouldn't fit in a 2 acre plot.

Remember, you still have to have room for the kitchen, the barracks, the power generator, the guard tower, and everything else that was on that little patch of dirt.

[bombsaway]

What are you asking here, exactly? If there were comprehensive openness to pertinent severe tests then, yes, even without excavations yet proving millions of corpses at AR camps, the orthodox claims about these camps will have approached falsifiability in-practice, thereby still awaiting such tests to occur but overall removing Popperian objections about illegitimacy due to a lack of practical falsifiability.

Why would you accept this comprehensive openness as legitimate given the relative ease of bringing a few revisionists into the conspiracy, compared to say suppressing all evidence of historical events involving millions of people?

We see that even for Katyn this didn't work https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=426

An event that had a few hundred witnesses , rather than millions (for resettlement in ussr, including jews germans and natives)

Furthermore their findings would contradict your assessment of "impossibility" that graves could contain so many.

Conspiracy is far more logical, given these assumptions

[Stubble]

Katyn didn't work because of the open, independent, international investigation.

You don't have that with the h.

This is false equivalency to a 't'.

[Nessie]

The 'extermination area' was a plot that was just shy of 2 acres, right? How the hell do you put the population of Seattle in a 2 acre area? I know Nessie says they had 56 Olympic swimming pools, but, I don't think they were using those for body disposal (I'm still not sure why or exactly where they had said pools) and regardless they wouldn't fit in a 2 acre plot.

Remember, you still have to have room for the kitchen, the barracks, the power generator, the guard tower, and everything else that was on that little patch of dirt.

The 56 Olympic swimming pools refers to the volume of the 2 hectares, 7m deep (20,000 x 7 = 140,000m3. A pool is 2500m3). Th main mass graves are within that volume, they do not take up the entire volume, as there are gaps between the graves and they were not all to a uniform 7m deep, based on the geophysical findings.

The 2 hectares is in section 3 in this photo/plan. There were also mass graves reported in section 2, the Lazarette, which is where rectangular outlines can be seen and the geophysical survey identified pits.

[Stubble]

Nessie, how many fleas can you balance on the head of a pin? The population of Seattle? Or some smaller number?

Regarding that 'map', that one your favorite? Start a thread about that one, we can talk about it, and only it.

Seems like we might have been over this before though.

[bombsaway]

Katyn didn't work because of the open, independent, international investigation.

You don't have that with the h.

This is false equivalency to a 't'.

The point is they failed to suppress even a few hundred possible witnesses (the NKVD shooters). Callafangers believes Hoax affiliated powers suppressed millions of possible witnesses (German/Italian/Russian/Jewish) across many different countries that would have spoken about resettlement + of course Holocaust "perpetrators", none of whom contradicted orthodoxy on their deathbeds or in private, again in contrast to the NKVD shooters.

Hoax affiliated powers are incredibly strong at this kind of 'control', much stronger than the Soviets. Wrapping a few a revisionists into their scheme (by threatening their families etc) would be child's play in comparison to whatever they've done until now.

[Stubble]

I understand why you continue to misframe this Bombsaway, but, I must interject that you obviously do not understand what Calafangers believes.

I will not put words in his mouth, but I can tell you from here, nobody, literally nobody believes your strawman.

[bombsaway]

I understand why you continue to misframe this Bombsaway, but, I must interject that you obviously do not understand what Calafangers believes.

I will not put words in his mouth, but I can tell you from here, nobody, literally nobody believes your strawman.

Do you think it would be crazy for "Holocaust Protection" (excuse the crude term, use whatever you want) aligned entities to stop publishers/media/individuals from generating public testimonies that contradicted orthodoxy? The biggest cohort here would be the Polish and Soviet Jews who "disappeared" after the ghettos there were liquidated.

Right now, I'm actually trying to be super fair, and maybe even Callafangers will back me up here. Sometimes I joke around and be mean, but this is an attempted steelman.

But if I had to offer meta commentary it would be: I think it's not misframing, what I'm saying seems ridiculous only because what you actually believe in is quite dumb.

[Callafangers]

The point is they failed to suppress even a few hundred possible witnesses (the NKVD shooters). Callafangers believes Hoax affiliated powers suppressed millions of possible witnesses (German/Italian/Russian/Jewish) across many different countries that would have spoken about resettlement + of course Holocaust "perpetrators", none of whom contradicted orthodoxy on their deathbeds or in private, again in contrast to the NKVD shooters.

Stubble is absolutely correct that I have never, ever said this nonsense. You invent desperate strawmen because you can't deal with my actual arguments.

The need to 'suppress millions of possible witnesses' is non-existent. There were never, ever millions nor even thousands of individuals chomping at the bit to tell the tale of resettled Jews. For the most part, even assuming some significant postwar survival of Jews sent East (e.g. that Stalin simply didn't shoot them, that they survived disease/famine/exposure even postwar), no one generally asked nor cared about their travels. If a rogue/rare memoir ever did get published, it didn't make it far, especially behind an Iron Curtain. The victorious powers simply peddled their narratives, using massive resources to do so, and the world followed along. By the time any interest in Eastern evacuations came about in the 80s (with more intensive 'Holocaust' scholarship), most of the potential survivors had died or were too young during the war to remember details anyway, with the Soviet Union and Iron Curtain still in-place. Even then, it has been mainly Jewish organizations asking all the questions, shaping their own history which they benefit from.

bombsaway's delusion is that revisionists require a "big secret of resettlement" having been suppressed somehow. But this is utter nonsense. Jews moving around during the war was regular wartime operations, nothing of particular interest. What happened once the Soviets found them is another question entirely.

[Nessie]

Katyn didn't work because of the open, independent, international investigation.

You don't have that with the h.

This is false equivalency to a 't'.

Katyn failed as a hoax, once the parties in whose interest it was to expose the hoax, gained prominence over the party in whose interest it was to maintain the hoax. It was always suspected to be a hoax, but Soviet influence, especially over Poland, prevented those who wished to expose the hoax from being successful. The maintenance of the Katyn hoax also benefitted from a postwar desire to consign the war to history and move on. The Holocaust was the opposite, and suffered because of that desire to consign the most painful memories to history. The public and governments had no interest in investigating how much cooperation the Nazis had, in identifying, arresting and killing Jews. Journalists and historians knew narratives about collaboration would not sell. The emphasis was on the Nazis, as if they alone were responsible.

That changed, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a new generation of investigators studied what happened to the Jews during WWII. To suggest there has been no open, independent, international investigation of the Holocaust, is utter nonsense. Countries are now wrestling with their national consciences, over how much people collaborated with the Nazis and how much the Holocaust was caused by every country in Europe.

If the Holocaust was a hoax, it would be very much in the national interest of every country, to reveal the whereabouts of their Jewish citizens, to prove that they were not rounded up and killed. Even the British, who had Jewish citizens arrested from the Channel Islands and who prevented many Jews from escaping, carry responsibility. How is it in British national interests to have that shadow cast over them, as a hoax? Its acceptance is only possible, because it is real, evidenced, it happened.

The shadow of Katyn was removed at the first opportunity, with the now defunct Soviet Union taking responsibility and Nazi Germany being cleared of that atrocity. The power shift meant that an open, independent investigation was possible. The history of Katyn, which includes the hoax, is now fully evidenced and explained.

Historians and journalists from all over the world have investigated the Holocaust and none have been able to revise it, so that millions of Jews are evidenced to have survived being arrested. It has been subject to an intense international investigation, by countries with an interest to absolve themselves of any blame for what happened and yet it survives as one of the largest genocides in history.

[SanityCheck]

Oh, I'm getting it quite well, the problem is that the non-existence of The Beatles as a band is not a historical possibility given the sources.

No, you are definitely not getting it, as evident from your first line here.

There is no problem for the principle of falsification in the fact that the non-existence of The Beatles as a band is not a historical possibility. I have already explained this.

If the following claim is false:

The Beatles existed as a band.

Then, it is possible to show it as being false. We could ask our neighbors, friends, families, etc. if they have ever heard of a band called "The Beatles" (they have not). Then, we could seek footage of live shows and news interviews, confirming a lack of such things. Then, we could search libraries of record albums and digital media, seeking anything at all about a band called "The Beatles" (and finding nothing), just to be sure. With these and other practices, we could confirm that The Beatles, therefore, did not exist as a band.

We could do all of this because the claim "The Beatles existed as a band" is falsifiable.

I do not know how to explain this any more clearly.

Popperian falsificationism is deductive logic.

No it is not. The falsification principle relies upon deductive logic that is applied to empirical predictions. Such predictions are made throughout the 'Holocaust' narrative, which are not falsifiable as they cannot be tested (in alignment with definitions I've already shared many times on now two different threads).

The 'falsifiable' is conceptual past a certain point when considering historical claims that become massively attested. In other cases a band could have been exposed as a prank or the work of others, but The Beatles emerged into the full glare of publicity with all four faces known, being filmed playing as a band, associated with recordings matching what was on TV or played at live concerts, so there were innumerable 'tests' within a very short space of time.

This is total nonsense. You're still clueless, here. I have explained this analogy of the The Beatles above. Read it carefully.

LOL at how you reverse-engineered everyday personal and collective experience, everyday inquiry and everyday confirmation to try to save falsification as a principle for the existence of The Beatles. Sorry, you're the one who is in nonsense land.

Now try with the existence of Donald Trump. Many might wish he could be removed from the world with a thought exercise, but that will fail, the asshole will still be there on our screens.

Popper did not clarify how individual events and personalities in the past are verified or falsified. He criticised historicism, the claim that laws of history or law-like theories can be justified, using predictions made by Marxism as one example. To the extent that social science or history aims to make law-like generalisations in its theories, then this is generally accepted - all swans are white compares with all revolutions eat their own children or whatever generalisation is made, and the exceptions to the rule falsify this or force a retreat to very often, probabilism, and other hedges.

Things actually get worse when one considers Popper's views on social science; it has been pointed out that Popper often shifted from falsificationism to 'the logic of situation' when discussing social science. He wasn't consistent within his own writings.
https://www.academia.edu/57122698/The_M ... Prediction

Criticisms of Popper within the philosophy of science and philosophy are fairly deafening by now. I do recommend David Stove, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (Pergamon Press, 1982) for its critique of not just Popper but also Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend; the parodies of their style are hilarious, as is the dissection of how they undermine success-words and how much each resorts to Advanced Inverted Comma Theory.

More pertinently, the extensive literature in the philosophy of history (and other historical disciplines) has generally not applied Popperianism to the questions that vex historians. Invocations of falsif- anything are sparse and tend to be made in relation to overarching theories, sometimes simply summarising Popper's critique of historicism and Marxism, but not then generally discussed in relation to questions of historical evidence and historical verification.


Your Waterloo debacle was highly instructive for how you fail to devise effective tests for 'falsification' of claims about the past, by ignoring how information is so very easily destroyed over time, or does not survive. This means many claims become estimates, best explanations, or are neither verifiable nor falsifiable to a precise number, due to the lack of conclusive information. It also means that some lines of evidence generated by one form of research might be unavailable, and thus cannot be invoked to refute or challenge other lines of evidence.

In the case of Waterloo, the contemporary practice of filching human and animal bones from Napoleonic battlefields for use in factories meant that archaeologists cannot locate sets of human remains sufficient to be able to count them, so any work they might do cannot corroborate, support or contradict the written record of military reports and other sources. That written record is still open to proper source criticism, including knowing what supporting materials there might be (e.g. records of widows' pensions, if such survive).

Now, according to you, all claims must be falsifiable, so here's an excellent opportunity for you to show how a particular written historical record can be considered falsifiable in and of itself. One that is more manageable than showing how the existence of The Beatles or Donald Trump can be considered falsifiable, which caused you to revert to verification with the Beatles. Start with whatever is claimed in Wikipedia about the Waterloo death tolls and demonstrate the tests we must do to falsify (or verify) the claims, and what steps must be taken to ensure the claim is 'falsifiable'.

[SanityCheck]

Jews moving around during the war was regular wartime operations, nothing of particular interest.

Falsified:

After completion of the Aktion against the Jews in Minsk, SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Strauch reported to me this night, with justified indignation, that suddenly, without instructions from the Reichsfuehrer, and without notification to the Generalkommissar, a transport of 1,000 Jews from Warsaw has arrived for the local Luftwaffe Command.

I beg the Reichskommissar (already warned by telegram) to prevent the dispatch of such transports, in his capacity as supreme authority in Ostland. The Polish Jew, exactly like the Russian Jew, is an enemy of the German nation. He represents a politically dangerous element, a danger which far exceeds his value as a skilled worker. Under no circumstances should the army or the Luftwaffe import Jews into an area under civil administration, either from the Government-General or from elsewhere, without the approval of the Reichskommissar, as this endangers the entire political task here and the security of the Generalbezirk. I am in full agreement with the Commander of the SD in Byelorussia that we should liquidate every transport of Jews not arranged, or announced to us, by our superior officers, to prevent further disturbances in Byelorussia.

Kube to Lohse, 31 July 1942, 3428-PS
https://www.yadvashem.org/docs/report-o ... ussia.html

This particular transport didn't come via Treblinka, and is documented in the July 1942 Warsaw Judenrat report plus the corresponding Gouverneur des Distrikts Warschau bimonthly report, together with a transport to Bobruisk, with both coming from the 'Durchgangslager' set up in the ghetto separate to the main run of transports, you know, the ones discussed in the Ganzenmüller-Wolf correspondence as going to Treblinka (among other sources).
http://www.deathcamps.org/reinhard/ganzenmueller.html


Falsified because you made a generalisation "Jews moving around during the war was regular wartime operations" together with an auxiliary claim: "nothing of particular interest" which was in fact a attempted immunising strategy for the vague generalisation - Jews moving around during the war was supposedly so routine that nobody took any notice. Except quite obviously they did for reams and reams of transports noted down in German and other reports.

Maarten Boudry and Johann Braeckman, 'Immunizing Strategies and Epistemic Defense Mechanisms', Philosophia, March 2011, Philosophia 39(1):145-161
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Mechanisms