So you added a one word thumbs up to even sven’s points and consider that a post? Here is a hint. This is not Facebook. Even sven is extremely smart and articulate plus she has a long history on this board where she has adjusted some viewpoints over time based on new information. I don’t agree with her on many things as well but I do respect her viewpoints because she is so intelligent and somewhat balanced. You have none of those traits. You may be in the future but a you are poor performer now. Unfortunately, these helpful hints may be like trying to teach a cat algebra.
There IS a compelling argument not to believe them, none of them have any actual proof of what they claim happened other than their words. It is not simply a matter of choosing who to believe, I don’t think Bill Cosby is any more believable than all of the women stacked against him. I just strongly believe that the onus is ENTIRELY on them to prove that what they are saying is true and simply saying it is not enough because that is the way things should be. It’s not a matter of believing men over women or thinking they are all lying sluts, it is the just belief that serious claims of this nature need to be substantiated by more than mere words. If someone claims “this guy raped me 40 years ago” it is going to be incredibly hard to believe them, not because I’m a misogynist who thinks women are lying whores, but because what they are claiming is going to be incredibly difficult to prove.
I don’t know if that is true either. Statements from 90 year olds aren’t usually my go-to source for factual information other than gripping WWII stories. In any case, what were these supposed payments for? Everyone already admitted that BC had lots of affairs and paid for educational and other expenses for at least several young ladies.
With so many women now coming out against him, and a former assistant who said he helped pay them off, I have no doubt of Cosby’s guilt of some inappropriateness. Its entirely rational to think he’s guilty of some illegal sexual assault. The more women come out against him, the more credible the reports.
Rape is one of those crimes where its severely underreported. We hear about the mistakes, the liars, and the extortionists, but the fact remains that a large percentage of people who are sexually assaulted do not come forward for the very same reason the OP is mad about: they are attacked by rape defenders
If anything, Cosby is probably worse than the allegations claim, because I’m sure there are plenty of other women who have not yet come forward
You seem to be saying that since no individual accuser has proven her accusation to some standard, it follows that by that standard it hasn’t been proven that Cosby is a rapist. But this doesn’t follow. Each individual accusation may be insufficient to prove that particular accusation, taken in isolation, while nevertheless the complex of accusations taken as a whole (and the relevant facts about their context etc) might still be sufficient to establish that he’s probably a rapist.
Ok, but let’s do point out that the absence of evidence is due to the nature of the crime, and even if he were the rapiest rapist in Rapesville, there probably wouldn’t be any evidence at this point. It’s not like there should be evidence and these women can’t come up with it.
So we have 16 women’s stories on one side, and one guy’s silence on the other. One way or another, you are choosing one person’s story to believe. Saying “Oh me oh my, I’m not going to choose sides until I see evidence (that does not, cannot and will not exist)” is pretty flimsy cover. If you believe he probably didn’t act like this, own up to it, of at the very least default to “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” That’s respectable.
I didn’t say i was not choosing sides, i said lacking any proof you should choose the side of the accused every single time. The sides are not equal, the onus is entirely on the accusers to prove their claims are valid.
If your wife said some guy groped her on the subway, you wouldn’t demand video evidence. If your mother said a scammer called her, you wouldn’t refuse to believe her unless you had a tape. If your friend said she was raped, you wouldn’t wait for the DNA analysis to comfort her. If your Grandfather for shot in a war, you wouldn’t refuse to listen to him until he could prove it wasn’t self-inflicted. If your buddy said the guy you hired to remodel you kitchen was a thief, you wouldn’t wait until he got caught to take him off the job.
Legal evidence doesn’t exist for most of the bad stuff that happens on this earth. In order to function as human beings, we need to be able to make judgements. And sometime we need to make those judgments based on a relatively uninformed character judgment. If we didn’t do this, we couldn’t keep ourselves sage. We couldn’t keep our kids safe. The entire non-fiction section of the bookstore would disappear. Business would grind to a halt. Crime prevention would end. The world would pretty much fall apart, because few of the assumptions we base our life around are hashed out in court.
There is no “neutral” here except for “I don’t know.” Any other position is believing one story over the other.
If all people are doing is looking at the available evidence and deciding for ourselves, then what’s the need for this:
and this:
It’s clear from your post that you have a viewpoint. You’ve criticized the other viewpoint of bending over backwards to come to their conclusion. You’re not just deciding for yourself and letting others decide for themselves. You’re characterizing negatively those who don’t agree with you.
It’s also a discussion, so if someone says that they believe he’s guilty based on something. Another person may refute that something and say they disagree.
I don’t believe it is a worthless life principle. I don’t believe i am simply choosing between two different stories. They are not just two different stories, one side is accusing the other of a heinous crime. It should never come down to choosing to believe one side over the other, you can see the results of that in the OP. Bill Cosby might be a rapist, and he and many others will probably get away with it. But the alternative is just much much worse.
Something about this was bothering me (and has been since I first saw it in this thread)…
Then I realised what it was.
What option does Cosby really have?
After 30 or more years, can he convincingly refute EVERY allegation? Because once he breaks silence, that’s what he will need to do. If he refutes (for example) 10 out of the 16 with convincing stories of being elsewhere, or timing doesn’t match, or whatever, then by default it is almost as good as admitting to the other 6.
And really - after this amount of time, can he give refutations that are convincing of all the allegations? Even if (which I don’t believe) all are entirely baseless, at least some will be close enough in time and fact, or there will be a big enough gap in his own timeline that he can’t refute them convincingly.
What do your examples have to do with this case? Your examples just show that you trust people you know.
If your husband came home and said that some woman at his workplace was accusing him of sexual assault., and she got three other woman to give similar stories, I’m doubting that you’d believe the women without seeing some evidence.
Since most people in these discussions don’t know Bill Cosby or the women accusing him, that factor doesn’t play into the judgment.
Difficult but not impossible. For example some combination of showing some accusers have a history of false accusation, a record of blackmail attempts, evidence of conspiracy, etc would push me back to thinking he’s probably innocent.
But you’re right it’s hard for him to refute the allegations. It is, indeed, often quite difficult to refute allegations when those allegations are true.
Can’t speak for Even Sven and her husband, but if my bestest dude friend who I think is a morally upstanding individual were accused of sexual assault by four different women (and let’s take out that business about one of them “getting” the other three to give similar stories–that would seem to have nothing to do with the Cosby stuff) then you’re damn right I’d tend to believe them. At best, the onus would be on him to explain the allegations if they are not the product of the described events actually happening.