Memory and witnesses/victims
There are a lot of problems with the Kavanaugh accuser’s story, including the fact that she may be deliberately lying for political reasons.
But even if she’s not purposely lying, there are many problems connected with the phenomenon of memory itself, particularly after all these years.
In other words, even if she truly believes it happened just the way she says it did:
It may not have happened at all.
It may not have happened in that particular way.
It may have happened, but the perpetrator was someone else.
Juries set great store by eyewitness testimony of all kinds, and in particular by that of victims. But victims—bona fide victims—can be very wrong, and in sex crimes there have been many imprisoned men convicted by witness/victim testimony who have later been exonerated by DNA testing. It is very troubling indeed.
Research tells us about it [emphasis mine]:
The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.” Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.
Many researchers have created false memories in normal individuals; what is more, many of these subjects are certain that the memories are real. In one well-known study, Loftus and her colleague Jacqueline Pickrell gave subjects written accounts of four events, three of which they had actually experienced. The fourth story was fiction; it centered on the subject being lost in a mall or another public place when he or she was between four and six years old. A relative provided realistic details for the false story, such as a description of the mall at which the subject’s parents shopped. After reading each story, subjects were asked to write down what else they remembered about the incident or to indicate that they did not remember it at all. Remarkably about one third of the subjects reported partially or fully remembering the false event. In two follow-up interviews, 25 percent still claimed that they remembered the untrue story, a figure consistent with the findings of similar studies.
More here [emphasis mine]:
The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. Furthermore, witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers. Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener; we would not expect someone to listen to every detail of our morning commute, so we edit out extraneous material. The act of telling a story adds another layer of distortion, which in turn affects the underlying memory of the event. This is why a fish story, which grows with each retelling, can eventually lead the teller to believe it.
I will add here that many of us “tell” stories of our memories over and over to ourselves, and that affects the story as well.
Continued [emphasis mine]:
Once witnesses state facts in a particular way or identify a particular person as the perpetrator, they are unwilling or even unable—due to the reconstruction of their memory—to reconsider their initial understanding. When a witness identifies a person in a line-up, he is likely to identify that same person in later line-ups, even when the person identified is not the perpetrator. Although juries and decision-makers place great reliance on eyewitness identification, they are often unaware of the danger of false memories…
Bias creeps into memory without our knowledge, without our awareness. While confidence and accuracy are generally correlated, when misleading information is given, witness confidence is often higher for the incorrect information than for the correct information. This leads many to question the competence of the average person to determine credibility issues. Juries are the fact-finders, and credibility issues are to be determined by juries. The issue then arises whether juries are equipped to make these determinations.
At least in a court of law there are various protections built in to help the defendant. The Kavanaugh accuser’s story—as it stands now, without important details, and of such antiquity—could not stand in a court of law even if a statute of limitations weren’t operating and it could be brought to trial. But even if, between now and some hypothetical trial, the accuser managed to flesh out more of those details (in the law biz it’s called having your memory “refreshed”), she would be harshly criticized by a defense attorney for having suddenly “remembered” the details she couldn’t come up with years ago or even a few months ago. That would be highly suspect.
However, in testimony before Congress, there are no such protections for the accused, and people tend to see what they want to see. The standard of proof and the burden of proof is very different than the legal standards, and are more likely to favor the accuser. That’s one of many reasons why this particular situation is so pernicious.
As for false memories that emerge in therapy:
Some memory errors are so “large” that they almost belong in a class of their own: false memories. Back in the early 1990s a pattern emerged whereby people would go into therapy for depression and other everyday problems, but over the course of the therapy develop memories for violent and horrible victimhood (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994). These patients’ therapists claimed that the patients were recovering genuine memories of real childhood abuse, buried deep in their minds for years or even decades. But some experimental psychologists believed that the memories were instead likely to be false—created in therapy. These researchers then set out to see whether it would indeed be possible for wholly false memories to be created by procedures similar to those used in these patients’ therapy.
In early false memory studies, undergraduate subjects’ family members were recruited to provide events from the students’ lives. The student subjects were told that the researchers had talked to their family members and learned about four different events from their childhoods. The researchers asked if the now undergraduate students remembered each of these four events—introduced via short hints. The subjects were asked to write about each of the four events in a booklet and then were interviewed two separate times. The trick was that one of the events came from the researchers rather than the family (and the family had actually assured the researchers that this event had not happened to the subject). In the first such study, this researcher-introduced event was a story about being lost in a shopping mall and rescued by an older adult. In this study, after just being asked whether they remembered these events occurring on three separate occasions, a quarter of subjects came to believe that they had indeed been lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). In subsequent studies, similar procedures were used to get subjects to believe that they nearly drowned and had been rescued by a lifeguard, or that they had spilled punch on the bride’s parents at a family wedding, or that they had been attacked by a vicious animal as a child, among other events (Heaps & Nash, 1999; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999).
More recent false memory studies have used a variety of different manipulations to produce false memories in substantial minorities and even occasional majorities of manipulated subjects…
Some people resist false memories, but a “substantial minority” are vulnerable to them. It’s a very troublesome phenomenon. And a substantial number of that substantial number emerge in the context of therapy. In order to judge the likelihood of a memory of trauma being a false memory, one would have to know many details of the therapeutic sessions to see how much leading was done by the therapist, how the story emerged, and in what initial detail. It is literally impossible to judge the veracity of any story that comes out in a therapeutic session unless there’s a lot of independent corroboration.
The Kavanaugh accuser’s story came out in marital therapy. We know nothing about the dynamics of the revelation and no details whatsoever, except that the therapist’s notes did not include any names of the alleged perpetrators, and differed from the accuser’s current story as to the numbers.
This is telling, and suggests at the very least a mutable, changeable memory.
Is a Congressional hearing any way to discuss these very important and very troubling issues? I can’t imagine that it would be. For one thing, questioning the veracity of the memory opens the questioners up to the charge of “disbelieving and re-traumatizing the victim.” But alleged victims lie—sometimes without even knowing it.
And lie detector tests don’t do a particle of good. They are notoriously unreliable. And furthermore, if a person believes a false memory is true, that person would be likely to pass a lie detector test with flying colors.
neo: Well said.
Most people who know me would say I have an excellent memory. From what I can tell, I do — relative to most people.
However, I kept journals for over thirty years and when I later reread them I discovered how often my memories diverged, sometimes in important ways, from what I originally wrote.
Ah, the well-known Mandela Effect – “Nelson Mandela groped me in high school”. 🙂
I again say…the accuser is a professor who now lives in California…even from the Bay Area…which is a notorious liberal stronghold. She has donated to the Democrat party and to various liberal causes. And she doesn’t remember the location and time of the incident? How convenient for her (no one can check her “memory” of when and where “it happened”). And I’ve heard that it caused problems with her marriage…seems like she COULD have remembered “the incident” if it was that important to her.
She’s lying for political purposes.
As a clinical psych expert, she would have more knowledge than most as to how best beat a polygraph test.
Yes: the second item seems to me to be a particularly relevant and rational possibility; seeing as how extremely contorted her relation of the supposed event became in order to imply the greatest possible damage; and, how wildly subjective was her emphasis on the presumed trajectory of this putative event.
Given the turgid, and overwrought language which she used to imply a type of violation not in evidence even on her own accounting, it seems likely that if some kind of encounter did take place, it amounted to less than meets even a dispassionately reading eye.
Or she could have dreamed most of it.
Mandela Effect…
Mandela hung flaming necklaces with care. Or perhaps a related or sympathetic subordinate.
Believing the dream.
I think I have mentioned a morally innocuous dream/reality confusion I witnessed once before. I’ll relate it again as best I can recollect it, as it may be relevant.
An older business friend of mine, financially successful sales engineer, electronics hobbyist, father of 5 and an Army Air Corps fighter pilot (Thunderbolts) commissioned too late to be sent overseas; had this to say to me one day, when we were talking about nothing in particular.
He remarked that when he went to school they had terrazzo floors and staircases, and that the square brown tiles on the stairs became somewhat slick when cleaned and waxed.
I told him that 30 and more years later the floors in my school were just like that, on the staircases at least. The stairs being broad and wide and relatively shallow.
He said, “You know what I did? I figured out how that if I got a head start, I could skid down those shallow stairs almost like I was skiing down a slope”
I said, “Oh you could? Well no you didn’t. Because I have that memory too”
He said “You could do it too?” and I said “No, I don’t think so, but I seemed to until recently”
He said, “What do you mean”? and I told him that on reflection, I didn’t think it was really possible (kind of like a seaman sailing down a ladder between decks face forward, but feet skimming and no hands sliding along the chains) because your shoe heels would get in the way, and the stairs could not be both steep and shallow enough at the same moment, in order to accomplish it. And, for another reason too.”
“What’s that?”
“I just woke up from having that same type of dream a couple weeks ago, and it startled me that I was dreaming something that seemed a kind of memory of my schooldays. And unless my junior high school really did have stairs so incredibly made, it must have been a dream all along.”
And, as we tried to carefully think through the mechanics of this bit of juvenile athleticism, it came to seem to us both, that it must have originated in a dream.
Probably.
I was thinking of this last night and had a few conjectures that I want to put out before I read anything today, because part of the fun of internet commenting is (a) finding out other people agree with you (or not); and (b) maybe you thought of it first.
I love murder mysteries, especially complex ones, and I started thinking about why Feinlein waited so long and revealed her story so piece-meal, and now have a hypothesis that could serve as the basis of a TV detective flick.
Let’s first stipulate that Ford told her story in 2012 as a prophylactic against Romney nominating Kavanaugh, then didn’t need it; after that, it was shelved because Hillary was going to be Obama’s third term.
Let’s also assume that Ford really, really wants to eliminate Kavanaugh from the Supreme court, and doesn’t mind risking her reputation to do so.
Let’s even allow that something happened that Ford remembers as involving Kavanaugh — although there are multiple ways to conflate and confuse memories that old, let’s give her some benefit of sincerity.
Trump announces Kavanaugh’s nomination July 9. Even though his name was on the short list, nothing was definite until then.
Ford needs to connect with the Dems to accomplish her goal, and the media has always been a good route, so she shops her story to the Washington Post in early July (no date that I’ve seen) but they don’t bite (I wonder why, given the things the MSM has printed with as little corroboration — probably libel concerns). Next best, she goes through the now-known channels to reach Feinstein in late July.
The Dems are sure they can use the story, but how to get maximum value from it?
(Does anyone seriously believe Feinstein didn’t share this juicy plum with anyone at all? She had a team on it from the beginning, guaranteed.)
Now, however, the story is stale. It has to be refurbished. They need time to do that, so the Dems stall the hearings with complaints about documents that they don’t need, and no one else ever asked for.
We don’t have the timeline for these actions, but it all takes place sometime before last Wednesday, Sept 12; possibly before she makes that first phone call.
Ford gets a lawyer, obtains her therapist’s notes, takes the polygraph test (not in an official legal setting, so the ex-FBI-agent is just an “expert witness” like any other specialist), prepares her testimony.
Now, how to handle the reveal?
Not in Committee – not public enough (they need the Media to do the grunt work on dissemination, and although the Post would gladly print the story with that hook – just as with the dossier – it would still take time to set up the leaks, because — contra Spartacus — it could not be openly produced without real repercussions).
Not in the televised hearings – sandbagging Kavanaugh was probably tempting, but (a) people are already tired of the circus chaos; (b) Feinstein would have to answer questions she couldn’t control; (c) he would have too much opportunity to rebut the accusations, and he is very competent and credible.
Not via a law enforcement agency that would properly handle it, such as in the jurisdiction where the “assault” allegedly happened; too slow, too uncertain, especially if the account is highly embellished or outright fabricated.
(The police in general are doing a pretty good job of exposing fake hate crimes, but a cold case is a dice roll for all sides.)
Time is wasting and the vote is coming up; it has to come out NOW or it’s no good at all.
So Feinlein does the “teaser” with the anonymous, redacted letter. She handles it oh-so-sensitively, but responsibly, pushing it to the “authorities” to deal with.
(The FBI doesn’t have any mandate for this kind of crime, and properly didn’t investigate, but they get virtue points for handing it over and none of the negative consequences of a genuine, probably exonerating, investigation.)
Why not just publish the full letter, with the name of the accuser redacted? It’s a shocking story, after all, and that’s what’s needed to seal the deal.
BUT they have learned from the past, so let’s review some prior cases. (I omit Bill Clinton, because his story is too dissimilar, too “locked in” to partisan narratives, and too idiosyncratic.)
In 1991, they tried to eliminate Clarence Thomas with allegations of sexual misconduct, and it didn’t work.
Problems: Hill was not very credible, because of the delay and her own behavior; the alleged incidents, mostly verbal, were not shocking; her sole witness was not believed; Thomas had too many supporters; the partisan gridlock was not too strong; and the charges (most probably) were false to start with.
But, in 2017, they set out to eliminate Roy Moore the same way, and it DID work. These were the differences: the original accuser was reasonably credible (despite the forgery in the yearbook); the age difference made the accusations (still well short of assault or rape) more shocking; there were additional accusers and some witnesses, so it was believable that Moore dated younger women, possibly with minor physical contact; he had essentially NO supporters on his own side (none with any clout; blog pundits don’t count, sad to say, even the most rational and principled of them); the partisan split after 2016 was much more divisive, and cut across actual party lines because of Trump; and he actually did date younger women before marriage (although no complaints post-date the wedding).
So, Ford’s story (true or not) is their ace in the hole, not their first card: they don’t want to start with it, or have it be the sole complaint because it’s too vulnerable to rebuttal. They need more accusers and witnesses, but they can’t exactly put an ad in the paper (heh) – so they do the next best thing.
Feinstein leaks the letter with no detail, or names because she wants to see what other people come up with: they want speculation to start about other parties, other girls, other accusations that might have swirled around in the community, but never come to the surface.
(Remember they know that Kavanaugh has been a public figure for decades, has passed FBI background and security checks, has plenty of political enemies, and yet no accusations have ever surfaced, so any stories are going to be old, unprovable, and — up to now — not something the “victims” want to be associated with.)
Now, however, the Dems also have the #MeToo lesson to work from: accusations add up, especially when they are true – or at least probable. People pile on once a celebrity loses the initial battle, and they are confident that they won’t suffer from coming forward. You just have to get the ball rolling.
Ford’s story is going to be the bait, and they use what they get by trolling a net for more. So, what do they get in their net?
(Yeah, I’m mixing my metaphors; so sue me.)
One story about Kavanaugh and a friend locking a girl in a room, from which she escapes – a prank that NO ONE bought into as the substance of a letter so important that Feinstein had to send it to the FBI (two months late, but whatever).
NOBODY is coming out with a bombshell story. No one is going to roll the snowball for them.
So, they have to release the entire letter with its shocking account of drunken, rough groping and (possibly) attempted rape, with all the deficiencies that have been noted so far.*
(Okay, that sounds cynical, but I’m writing a mystery here, not an Atlantic essay.)**
Still no one bites. Instead, they get a letters and articles from nearly 200 women putting their names out as positive character witnesses — not “Me Too” stories at all.
Their own counter-letter, from the anonymous 200 women who didn’t even know Kavanaugh but just attended Ford’s school sometime in the last twenty years, doesn’t budge the needle.
They need more time, so Feinstein wants to delay the vote, delay hearing from Ford and Kavanaugh, anything to allow them to locate someone who will start the ball rolling.***
But I predict they won’t find another story — because nothing ever happened to create one. Kavanaugh didn’t ever do anything to anyone, and all his friends can testify to that (and have).
Now we will see if they make one up.
!! Stay tuned for the next installment of this gripping detective serial !!
* * *
*It is possible that Ford didn’t remember how she got to the party or how she got home because it occurred (if at all) in her own house.
**Let me insert the obligatory “no offense to real victims, rape is heinous and must be treated sensitively, sorry if you are offended” caveat, which I sincerely believe,— but Ford is responsible for the way she told the story, and she knows enough psychology to know what readers will respond to.
***I still want to know how Ronan Farrow so quickly got the names for Ford and Judge that, supposedly, even the FBI didn’t have.
On the other hand: Memories seemingly like a dream, but true.
I did show up for an economics final after missing probably the last third of the course, only to have the professor stare at me in disbelief. Offered to give me a “B” if I got a B. I think 90-92 was still only a B. What did I expect, an “A”?
Also, with working at the same time, had such a fractured class schedule (mornings, afternoons and evenings) that half comatose I suppose, I walked into the right classroom, at the right time, on the wrong day, early on in the semester to find some strange professor lecturing away. Happened at least twice.
Kind of nightmare too, but it was real.
PS Wikipedia says — at this moment in time — that “During the confirmation process, Kavanaugh was accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford while they were both in high school. ”
NOT that the letter was first mentioned AFTER the hearings concluded.
Technically true, but certainly misleading and incomplete.
Typical spin.
DNW, are you channelling me?
I once showed up at an 8 am class and sat through half of it wondering why we had a sub that day, and then why so many new people were in the room, until I realized there were two sections of the same course, in identically-situated rooms, but on different floors.
And I often dreamed (and knew it was a dream) of showing up in a class on exam day after never having been there before.
And other assorted “archetypes” I’m sure; someone would have to get out the Dream Books for the rest of them.
huxley on September 18, 2018 at 1:26 pm at 1:26 pm said:
…
However, I kept journals for over thirty years and when I later reread them I discovered how often my memories diverged, sometimes in important ways, from what I originally wrote.
* * *
I heard or read a story by Isaac Asimov (IIRC – heh) relating that he had told the story of meeting his second wife for thirty years, but when writing his autobiography, he checked his journals – and he had been telling it wrong the whole time.
And don’t get me started on Granny and the Aunts arguing about when and what was done by who – totally repetitive disputes that were never resolved in my lifetime.
Reading about the frequently inaccuracy of memory reminded me of this article; “Judge Kavanaugh and the left’s revenge”
Specifically;
Reportedly, even recent eyewitness accounts are unreliable.
What a master was Hitchcock, his equal has yet to appear.
Two important articles by J E Dyer – relaying and analyzing info on several fronts.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/09/16/they-had-you-at-roy-moore/
https://libertyunyielding.com/2018/09/18/kavanaugh-accusers-lawyer-is-with-soros-funded-activist-group/
Townhall has almost nothing on their pages except Kavanaugh, so you can check it out yourself, but Chairman Grassley makes this important point —
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2018/09/18/brett-kavanaughs-accuser-isnt-answering-phone-calls-from-chuck-grassley-to-testify-about-her-accusations-n2520092?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2
“We still haven’t heard from Dr. Ford, so do they want to have the hearing or not?” Grassley said during an interview with Salem Radio host Hugh Hewitt Tuesday morning. “We have reached out to her in the last 36 hours, three or four times by email and we have not heard from them. It kind of raises the question do they want to come to the public hearing or not? The reason we’re having the public hearing is obviously, well number one, accusations like this deserve consideration and looking into and that’s what the purpose of the hearing is. We wouldn’t be having the hearing if Dr. Ford told the Washington Post and other people publicly she wanted to testify.”
“We’re delaying the vote strictly to get all the facts out on the table,” he continued.
Specifically on topic for this post
(Guy links to David BTW)
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/09/18/no-one-accusers-uncorroborated-memory-is-not-sufficient-to-derail-a-supreme-court-nomination-n2519834?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brett-kavanaugh-accuser-corroboration-necessary-memory-unreliable/
* * *
Prager’s bolded statement is now questionable, although many people recite it in other places, but his main contention is the discrepancy between the charge and the totality of Kavanaugh’s life.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2018/09/18/the-charges-against-judge-kavanaugh-should-be-ignored-n2519986?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky1
“In sum, I am not interested in whether Mrs. Ford, an anti-Trump activist, is telling the truth. Because even if true, what happened to her was clearly wrong, but it tells us nothing about Brett Kavanaugh since the age of 17. But for the record, I don’t believe her story. Aside from too many missing details — most women remember virtually everything about the circumstances of a sexual assault no matter how long ago — few men do what she charges Kavanaugh with having done only one time. And no other woman has ever charged him with any sexual misconduct.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-sexual-assault-allegations/
“The Huffington Post wrote an article on a group of alumnae of Ford’s high school — Holton-Arms, a private girls’ school in Bethesda — who are circulating a letter in support of Ford. They do not corroborate Ford’s story about Kavanaugh, but they say they believe her, writing that her story was “all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton.”
That things like what is described in Ford’s letter “happened all the time” is, I’m sure, true. That it’s “all too consistent with stories” that people heard and their lived experience is also, I’m sure, true. But the questions is whether Brett Kavanaugh did something like this. Evidence that stuff like what he’s accused of happened to many people, or that prep-school guys like him always get away with things like this, is not evidence against Brett Kavanaugh. It is more like a cultural script in search of players to be cast in their respective roles later.
…
Evidence may yet be presented that incriminates Kavanaugh, and it may shift this conversation away from people generalizing from their own experiences. But until then, it is a dangerous thing to proceed toward a judgment, even a political judgment, based on prejudices such as “this thing happens all the time” and “it’s consistent with stories we know.” The sensation of finding archetypal victimizers and victims is what made false stories about Duke’s lacrosse players and the University of Virginia’s fraternity brothers go viral across the culture.”
* * *
And the continuation of FAKE rape stories will make prosecuting REAL ones much, much harder.
Glad i mention this in the OTHER thread…
No mention? hat tip?
povre moi and Nikolai Yezhov
erased by higher powers
which is why i dont bother
its like telling the boss this great idea
they forget
then have the same idea and get credit
at least when the boss does it, your still getting paid…
Artfldgr on September 17, 2018 at 7:26 pm at 7:26 pm said:
If he is not guilty, then its outright lying, or its either a conflated memory or a manufactured memory.
There is GREAT pressure in our country in the generations after mine, to somehow NOT come from a decent family, or not have some abuse on you as most others claim and so, have no connection to contemporaries… To sit around while others told their tales and punching their ticket to sing the blues, and have decent parents, never be molested, etc… is a horror unexplored in film (yet)
Artfldgr on September 17, 2018 at 10:51 pm at 10:51 pm said:
And a Hatch spokesperson told ABC News of Kavanaugh: ‘He told Senator Hatch he was not at a party like the one she describes, and that Dr. Ford, who acknowledged to the Washington Post that she ‘did not remember some key details of the incident,’ may be mistaking him for someone else.’ Daily Mail
you can go back many years and i have talked already about false memories, specifically using the day care case… which by the time they were done, made the salem witch trials seem pale (except for the deaths which are technically not part of the trial, but the result of the trial)…
but the point isnt so much that this is a false memory
the point is that if this is a false memory
how did they change kavenaughs legal thinking going forwards
wasted my time posting
when i do, its time for the thread to end and new posts
that way my stuff doesnt get read
all you ahve to do is right down the times of my posts
and run them agains the times of the newbies
after 10 years… well..
easy peasy
bye
Artfldgr:
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Although I attempt to read many of your comments, I certainly don’t read all of them.
Also, I wrote most of this post last night, and have talked about the theme of false testimony and/or mistaken witness testimony many times before, for example here.
Artfldgr:
Having now seen your second comment on the matter, I still have no idea why you would think that, because you state an idea, other people have read your statement and used it to formulate their own ideas. It is simply not true and not logical to think that.
I have written about the topic of the day care allegations many times as well. For example, I was writing about the situation as far back as 2010. And, as someone who also has experience in doing research in that field, I’ve been aware of the problem long long before I ever started a blog.
Rest assured that I did NOT get any of my ideas on the subject from you.
I allow you to continue to comment here despite your periodically insulting me, and insulting me with false accusations. I have asked you many times to cease and desist. I have a lot of patience, but not endless patience. I think you contribute some interesting thoughts and information to this blog, but your gratuitous insults are not a good idea.
https://spectator.org/on-spartacus-and-crucifixion-democrats-and-kavanaugh-and-rosh-hashanah-and-yom-kippur/
Excellent article, too personal and too intricately argued to excerpt.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/09/the-wall-street-journal-nails-it.php
Summary of the arguments in Kavanaugh’s favor, exceptionally well-written.
If false rape accusations truly only account for 2% to 8% of all accusations, can liberals explain to me why the conviction rate for all sexual assaults is only 13% besides blaming everything on patriarch, the number simply doesn’t add up. If 2% to 8% is the number of false allegations that got caught before an indictment then how many allegations that did result in indictments were in fact false accusation got pushed forward simply because there were probable cause.
Dave:
I once wrote this article on the subject of the prevalence of false rape accusations.
By the way, that article was written before “Jackie’s” story was definitely proven to be false, but after it was clear that it was probably false. But it’s the statistics part I want to draw your attention to.
http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-truman-show-world.html
“A letter from 65 women who knew Brett Kavanaugh when he was young, asserting that he was an unfailing gentleman, is minor evidence that his character is inconsistent with this action. A similar letter from the opposite POV, asserting that Brett was a known problem when he had a few drinks in him would likewise be minor evidence that such things were possible. Neither would be proof, but they have some value. The letter signed by 200 women who went to this woman’s school, spanning years both before and after the alleged incident in question and noting that it feels like their experience, is not in the same category. It is worse than useless, because it stirs up people into thinking that this is germane. The question before the Senate, and thus before the country, is not a referendum on whether men in general are likely to do these things or women in general are likely to misrepresent them. The same would be true of a counter-letter signed by 200 males from Kavanaugh’s school asserting that Holton girls have been making false accusations for years and they’re sick of it. In both cases it’s irrelevant, even if true. Even if all 200 women had bad experiences, even if all 200 men had been falsely accused, it tells us nothing about this case.
Why, then, are we so quick to make real individual events into abstracts, into referenda whether our particular prejudices are the true ones and those other people’s prejudices untrue? My suggestion is that everyone who does this should be ineligible from participating in further discussion. This is not occasional. It seems to occur even in everyday conversation. “
Great minds and all of that.
By the way it’s possible after all. If it’s not a fake. Even has the same one foot forward posture I recall and a clicking noise that came with the leather soled loafers. Approximately the same kind of stairs too. He’s not even a jock type.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VadMhce7dd0
Ah my poor old friend. Had him convinced we both were just dreaming. Or maybe I was. Wonder if the old school is still standing.
This is why the testimony of two witnesses is required for conviction under God’s law. They at least have to get their stories straight, that way.
Here’s a fun exercise!
Think of something familiar; maybe some scene you encounter daily, in some non-emotional context. Got it?
OK, so now remember details. You see it all the time; surely there’s plenty of detail you’ve absorbed. Yes! You can remember every leaf on a tree, and every brush stroke on a painting!
Write down several of these details, at various levels. Maybe include some sketches.
Now! Take your notes, return to the scene, and compare your recorded recollections to objective reality. You’ll be amazed.
When I tried this, I found that the large oak tree I remembered in such detail, that I passed nearly every morning, didn’t actually exist. It was a conflation of several lesser trees with the stump of a large eucalyptus that had been removed at least a decade earlier.
And it’s not like I had any incentive to conjure forth a spurious tree; I was merely attempting to recall an everyday scene in detail.
Thank you, Eric, but you don’t have to be my reference anymore.
Half a century ago, my parents hired a policeman to teach me to drive (it was a standard practice in that place and time), and one of the things he taught me was that if I were ever in a traffic accident, that I should never discuss it with anyone else involved in the accident. In his experience, if people discussed it, their stories would start to agree, and unless there was physical evidence to the contrary, as far as the law would be able to determine, that would be what had happened. And you can be certain that someone who was at fault would try to steer the discussion to make himself seem less culpable. I actually experienced this, years later, when I was involved in a multi-car accident on I-285; I had successfully stopped before hitting the car in front of me, but the car behind me hit me and pushed me into the car in front. I did not discuss anything with the other drivers, but I saw the driver of the car that hit me do so, with lots of gestures. In the end, since there was no physical evidence that I had NOT impacted the car in front of me, I got cited for “Following Too Close” and got 3 points on my driving record, while he took a Nolo plea and paid a fine with no points. You probably get the impression I am still a bit bitter about it…
Last fall I broke my ankle while hiking. Of course, the first question everyone asked me, because it is the perfectly natural question, is “How did it happen?”
And I can’t really give a good answer. I couldn’t days after the accident.
What I remember is going down and my foot being stuck in decomposed granite, which held it fast while the rest of me kept going. This twisted my foot way, way to the outside. I don’t remember how I started falling or exactly how my foot got stuck. I *think* I remember that I may have actually dug my foot in in a vain attempt to keep from falling.
But the details of this recent, traumatic event, which occurred when I was perfectly sober, just didn’t stick in my memory. *Because my mind was elsewhere when I first started going down; that’s probably why I went down in the first place.*
Yes. Memory is a distressingly fickle and unreliable thing.
Eric Wilner:
Well I guess you’re no Funes the Memorious 🙂 .
See this.
Kent G. Budge on September 19, 2018 at 10:51 am at 10:51 am said:
Last fall I broke my ankle while hiking. Of course, the first question everyone asked me, because it is the perfectly natural question, is “How did it happen?”
* * *
A friend of ours recently suffered a tremendous accident while camping: literally, a tree fell on him.
He doesn’t remember anything immediately before, during, or shortly after the impact – all he knows is what people have told him.
Similarly, a friend in HS was jumped by the former boyfriend of a girl he was dating: literally, the boy jumped on our friend’s back and started pounding his head. At the hospital, the victim couldn’t remember the before-during-after, and still doesn’t.
During a therapy session Ford recalled this incident. It seems to me that she was grasping for some way to explain some aspect of her behavior that was damaging her marriage, and something traumatic fit the bill. A vague memory of a party then became an assault.