AgitoZ wrote: ↑Sat Apr 20, 2019 9:08 pmThere is a whole bunch of possibilities. Mignogna could have sexually harassed someone. I have yet to say it's impossible merely that so far I do not see any evidence to support that claim. Maybe parties involved misremembered things. Maybe the allegations have been embellished. Who knows, there could be more possibilities, there could be less. I would prefer to have more info before making any definitive claims about the whole situation.
You don't have to make a "definitive claim" to make an educated guess or to make an inference to the best explanation. Educated guesses and inferences to the best explanation can turn out to be wrong, and we can make new guesses and inferences in light of the new information. You can and should revise your best guess each time more information comes out. There's no reason to dig in your heels and say "I'm not going to make even a tentative guess", unless you don't trust yourself to reconsider your inference if and when new evidence comes out.
Saying that the mountain of allegations don't collectively count as
any evidence whatsoever
suggests that you're more inclined to believe that the inference to the best explanation is that
every single one of the accusations is misremembered, embellished, false, or some combination of those, rather than that
one of them
might be true.
Nobody posting in this thread is in a position to
know if he did it. But we have more than enough information (ie: the fact that a lot of allegations have piled up, the facts surrounding how sexual assault and sexual assault reporting tend to play out in our culture, the facts surrounding how power dynamics tend to work in general) to determine whether his guilt or his innocence is more
plausible.
And the only way that his innocence is more plausible than his guilt, based on what we do know, is if every single account is conveniently coincidentally misremembered and exaggerated and twisted, or if every single account is part of a deep plot to take this guy down. I know, I know, there are many possibilities! Maybe this one was deliberately fabricated, this one's misremembering, this one's embellished, this one was a misunderstanding, this one's misremembered
and embellished, and so on and so on, so that
not a single one of them is accurate and true. That's one hell of a coincidence, and when you say "there's
no evidence for
any of it", that's what it sounds like you're implying.
When the inference to the best explanation is "yeah, it's not looking too good, he probably did enough of that shit that it's a problem", it makes sense for private entities, such as businesses and conventions, to decide "we're not gonna take the chance". What all of the "bUt WhErEs ThE eViDeNcE" peeps are fishing for is the kind of stuff that would actually get him convicted and put in jail. Which, hey, if it exists, that's cool, and we can proceed with that. If we don't see that kind of evidence? Welp, shit looks pretty bad based on what we do know, and it makes sense that the businesses and conventions are doing as they're doing.
