This may be a mistake, and I'm sorry if it turns out to be, but it's coming from a good place.
Say there is a poster whose track record speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes. That doesn't change the fact that the information he shares is still testimony. And that this is by its very nature defeasible, subject to bias, and often unreliable - especially the more people that get involved (ever play the telephone game?), and especially when people might want to malign another's reputation.
Now, say one has no general reason to question a poster's testimony because it is often good, but that a particularly piece of information invites skepticism as to how anyone in that person's position could have acquired it. This would amount to a call for evidence that this particular piece of information is any good, even if you have no reason to doubt that the source is generally reliable. It is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, and the person who offered the information can equally legitimately decline to share anything further.
But once this call for evidence has occurred and been denied, the thing I want to emphasize is that it does no good to talk about the testimony as truth or untruth from that point forward. In fact, it never was, except for the person who heard or saw it first-hand. The information's validity stands on the poster's past reputation and that alone. So it does no good for the skeptic to point out that he is not in possession of the truth, and it does ngood for him to say that it is truth and not testimony.
That said, I am very grateful that some people with more information than the rest of us share that information. And I am only positing this because I could do without practically everything that typically follows in the above situations (especially the lackeys).
Say there is a poster whose track record speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes. That doesn't change the fact that the information he shares is still testimony. And that this is by its very nature defeasible, subject to bias, and often unreliable - especially the more people that get involved (ever play the telephone game?), and especially when people might want to malign another's reputation.
Now, say one has no general reason to question a poster's testimony because it is often good, but that a particularly piece of information invites skepticism as to how anyone in that person's position could have acquired it. This would amount to a call for evidence that this particular piece of information is any good, even if you have no reason to doubt that the source is generally reliable. It is a perfectly legitimate question to ask, and the person who offered the information can equally legitimately decline to share anything further.
But once this call for evidence has occurred and been denied, the thing I want to emphasize is that it does no good to talk about the testimony as truth or untruth from that point forward. In fact, it never was, except for the person who heard or saw it first-hand. The information's validity stands on the poster's past reputation and that alone. So it does no good for the skeptic to point out that he is not in possession of the truth, and it does ngood for him to say that it is truth and not testimony.
That said, I am very grateful that some people with more information than the rest of us share that information. And I am only positing this because I could do without practically everything that typically follows in the above situations (especially the lackeys).