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Jussie Smollet Trial

TragicMonkey said:
Have you heard of "irony"? It's a bit like steely and goldy.
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Not that it really matters at this point.

Jussie Smollett turns out to be a lying, race-baiting grifter. The people who suspected his story to begin with had good reason, and were ultimately vindicated. About the only thing that didn't get called from day one was the highly-placed corrupt official who would assist his grift. Maybe you don't care about this kind of thing, but you probably should.
 
theprestige said:
Not that it really matters at this point.

Jussie Smollett turns out to be a lying, race-baiting grifter. The people who suspected his story to begin with had good reason, and were ultimately vindicated. About the only thing that didn't get called from day one was the highly-placed corrupt official who would assist his grift. Maybe you don't care about this kind of thing, but you probably should.
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Meh. Minor actor I never heard of turns out to be a crappy person. Some "highly-placed official" in a place I've been to once (and didn't care for) turns out to be corrupt. Media molehill-of-the-week of yesteryear turns out to not have been a mountain. I just don't have anything invested here. There are enough actually real worse things going on to make this contretemps small enough to be confined to a teapot. It only seemed a big deal because we happened to have a very long thread on it, most likely because it happened in a slow argument period. With the election closer there's so much more to argue about. I bet if the same event happened tomorrow instead of last year a thread wouldn't get past four pages.
 
Tragic Monkey said he didn't care and prophesised this behaviour in the original thread.
 
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Belz... said:
Then what is it exactly that you're saying?
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I thought I said it pretty clearly a couple of times already: this was stupid. Everybody who took a position on whether this event occurred as represented or not was acting on low information, reported selectively, third-hand. Guessing correctly that the attack was fake was not a Sherlock Holmesian triumph of deduction, nor was assuming it was a fake an exercise in good skepticism; simply getting to the right answer isn't the point, it's how you get there that matters. And using hindsight to augment the "reasoning behind" prior guesswork isn't impressive skepticism either. Yes, the people who bought the story were wrong about it. But the people who called it a hoax before any evidence don't deserve gloating rights for their sagacity.

The point of this place (originally) is to use reason properly, not to rush to guess the right answers. It's not a quiz show.

And everything I typed is wasted because the next outrageous sensationalism in the press-- whether it's a noose in someone's cubicle or a remark on a receipt or somebody's Halloween costume-- will immediately inspire the same behavior here and elsewhere: everybody will rush to judgment, take sides, then snipe unpleasantly at each other for weeks until something else distracts. Then if one day actual evidence emerges and the truth is revealed one side will congratulate themselves for their brilliance.

I think we ought to be able to do a little better than that, here. We're better than Facebook and Reddit, surely?
 
TragicMonkey said:
I thought I said it pretty clearly a couple of times already: this was stupid. Everybody who took a position on whether this event occurred as represented or not was acting on low information, reported selectively, third-hand. Guessing correctly that the attack was fake was not a Sherlock Holmesian triumph of deduction, nor was assuming it was a fake an exercise in good skepticism; simply getting to the right answer isn't the point, it's how you get there that matters. And using hindsight to augment the "reasoning behind" prior guesswork isn't impressive skepticism either. Yes, the people who bought the story were wrong about it. But the people who called it a hoax before any evidence don't deserve gloating rights for their sagacity.

The point of this place (originally) is to use reason properly, not to rush to guess the right answers. It's not a quiz show.

And everything I typed is wasted because the next outrageous sensationalism in the press-- whether it's a noose in someone's cubicle or a remark on a receipt or somebody's Halloween costume-- will immediately inspire the same behavior here and elsewhere: everybody will rush to judgment, take sides, then snipe unpleasantly at each other for weeks until something else distracts. Then if one day actual evidence emerges and the truth is revealed one side will congratulate themselves for their brilliance.

I think we ought to be able to do a little better than that, here. We're better than Facebook and Reddit, surely?
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Maybe, but people manage to draw reasonably-accurate conclusions from limited data all the time. I don't know why in this specific instance you find that it was unwarranted, especially since, as others pointed out, the reasons given at the time for the suspicion of hoax turned out to be the very features that made it a hoax.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I thought I said it pretty clearly a couple of times already: this was stupid. Everybody who took a position on whether this event occurred as represented or not was acting on low information, reported selectively, third-hand. Guessing correctly that the attack was fake was not a Sherlock Holmesian triumph of deduction, nor was assuming it was a fake an exercise in good skepticism; simply getting to the right answer isn't the point, it's how you get there that matters. And using hindsight to augment the "reasoning behind" prior guesswork isn't impressive skepticism either. Yes, the people who bought the story were wrong about it. But the people who called it a hoax before any evidence don't deserve gloating rights for their sagacity.

The point of this place (originally) is to use reason properly, not to rush to guess the right answers. It's not a quiz show.

And everything I typed is wasted because the next outrageous sensationalism in the press-- whether it's a noose in someone's cubicle or a remark on a receipt or somebody's Halloween costume-- will immediately inspire the same behavior here and elsewhere: everybody will rush to judgment, take sides, then snipe unpleasantly at each other for weeks until something else distracts. Then if one day actual evidence emerges and the truth is revealed one side will congratulate themselves for their brilliance.

I think we ought to be able to do a little better than that, here. We're better than Facebook and Reddit, surely?
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This amuses me so.

My good Mr Monkey, this is the argument I pose thread after thread, year after year. Trust me, it doesn't go over well.

But in fairness, no one was 'guessing' on this. The story in its first incarnation was ridiculous, and it got worse with every new detail. No guesswork was needed; it was just observation.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I thought I said it pretty clearly a couple of times already: this was stupid. Everybody who took a position on whether this event occurred as represented or not was acting on low information, reported selectively, third-hand. Guessing correctly that the attack was fake was not a Sherlock Holmesian triumph of deduction, nor was assuming it was a fake an exercise in good skepticism; simply getting to the right answer isn't the point, it's how you get there that matters. And using hindsight to augment the "reasoning behind" prior guesswork isn't impressive skepticism either. Yes, the people who bought the story were wrong about it. But the people who called it a hoax before any evidence don't deserve gloating rights for their sagacity.

The point of this place (originally) is to use reason properly, not to rush to guess the right answers. It's not a quiz show.

And everything I typed is wasted because the next outrageous sensationalism in the press-- whether it's a noose in someone's cubicle or a remark on a receipt or somebody's Halloween costume-- will immediately inspire the same behavior here and elsewhere: everybody will rush to judgment, take sides, then snipe unpleasantly at each other for weeks until something else distracts. Then if one day actual evidence emerges and the truth is revealed one side will congratulate themselves for their brilliance.

I think we ought to be able to do a little better than that, here. We're better than Facebook and Reddit, surely?
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Some people actually didn't make any judgement until evidence that not only countered, but excluded, important details of Smollett's claim came out. In the Smollett case it was not unreasonable to say his claim was untrue from an early stage because the details that supported his claim of racism and homophobia were discredited very early in the investigation and that was reported. It was only unreasonable to continue to claim his version was true.

As for the history if the JREF and ISF, it is pretty clear that certain members seem to get almost all these cases right from an early stage while others are hold outs on the wrong side long past the point of it being reasonable. Sitting on the fence until every spec of evidence is out doesn't make one a good skeptic. A good skeptic is able to make accurate assessments of events as soon as enough evidence comes available. In the Smollett, and most of these cases, that evidence was available quite early on.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
There was no highly placed official assisting him from day one.
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I didn't say there was.

Care to bring this back to reality?
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It never left reality. The advent of a highly placed official to assist Smollett was not predicted on day one.

ETA: https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/jussie-smollett-update-kim-foxx-texts-emails/146674/ The most charitable support I can find. Who knows what theprestige actually has in mind.
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I'm trying to figure out how you got from

Kim Foxx getting involved was not predicted at the outset

to

Kim Foxx got involved at the outset but nobody noticed.

What happened there, RY?
 
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qayak said:
Some people actually didn't make any judgement until evidence that not only countered, but excluded, important details of Smollett's claim came out. In the Smollett case it was not unreasonable to say his claim was untrue from an early stage because the details that supported his claim of racism and homophobia were discredited very early in the investigation and that was reported. It was only unreasonable to continue to claim his version was true.
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I maintain that -
- 3AM
- sub-zero weather
- downtown Chicago
- Subway run
- two MAGA-chads
- who recognize Smollett
- as both gay and an actor on Empire
- and attack him in an injury-free scuffle
- leaving behind some rope and traces of bleach

Is an implausible array of facts on its face. Winter weather in the middle of the night in downtown Chicago in midwinter is plausible enough. Choosing that time to go on a Subway run stretches credulity only a little. If the story stopped there I doubt anyone would question it. But after that, the coincidences start piling up too high, too fast, to reasonably accept the story at face value pending further information.
 
theprestige said:
I didn't say there was.
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Huh? Then why fault people for not calling it out? How does your sentence make sense otherwise?

Kim Foxx was involved in the case not the grift. She didn't help him commit the crime. ETA: I see I actually misrepresented you by toning down your claim and that makes my statement wrong because I said merely helping, not helping with the grift. He did have two highly placed officials trying to help. But that "help" was merely getting a better investigative agency involved. Would it have actually worked out better for Smollett if the FBI had taken over the case?
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
Huh? Then why fault people for not calling it out?
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I didn't fault people for not calling it out.

How does your sentence make sense otherwise?
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The only thing reasonable people failed to accurately predict about Smollett's story was the one thing that they couldn't reasonably have predicted.

(Unreasonable people not only missed the unforeseeable advent of Kim Foxx, but also missed the falsity of Smollett's story - both early on when other people were making reasonable predictions, and also later when reasonable people had evidence to validate their predictions.)

Kim Foxx was involved in the case not the grift.
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Her involvement in the case was to perpetuate the grift.

She didn't help him commit the crime.
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She helped him get away with it.

ETA: I see I actually misrepresented you by toning down your claim and that makes my statement wrong because I said merely helping, not helping with the grift. He did have two highly placed officials trying to help. But that "help" was merely getting a better investigative agency involved. Would it have actually worked out better for Smollett if the FBI had taken over the case?
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You're wildly misrepresenting Foxx's involvement.
 
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