Remarks on "Skeptic" Forum

This is what I actually said:




www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=33312&start=240



Gibson said:


Gibson, the issue isn’t that people haven’t written books debunking denial or articles debunking denial. The issue is you simply refuse to accept them.

Again, you fail to understand. It is of course possible that your side has had all of the necessary evidence for 50+ years but nobody has ever bothered to write it up properly. Possible. But this is not likely.
If the evidence were truly overwhelming, then it should be EASY to produce a definitive debunking of revisionism/argument for the holocaust. And without question there would be an incentive to produce such a thing given all the hand-wringing over "holocaust denial." The far more likely explanation for this failure is simply that you are bluffing about the strength of your case and you know that any attempt to lay out the case rigorously and at length would simply expose you.

Go look at any book on persuasive writing, formulating arguments, rhetoric, etc. Spamming people with huge volumes of raw data is literally the opposite of what all of these recommend. You should develop a tight, coherent argument and you should support it with the most important evidence and you should make it clear why what you are sharing is significant. All writing and style guides say to be CONCISE. If you merely insinuate that the evidence is hiding in huge stack of documents or books, people have no reason to believe you. You need to actually make the arguments, cite the crucial evidence, explain why it matters, etc.

So, let me make sure that I have this right.

Gibson wants a book, books or articles debunking Holocaust denial.

But when given them he complains it’s a just a data dump or spamming. He is also complaining about hostile attitudes plus getting into the weeds by referring to “obscure” topics like the Einsatzgruppen or Chelmno. Oh and by referring to books.

I’m not sure why all these things are an issue. After all, the Einsatzgruppen (and related) mass shootings occurred first. Then chronologically we have Chelmno opening as the first fixed extermination camp. Then the Aktion Reinhard camps and finally the Hungarian Aktion at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is all part of the history. One doesn’t work without the other.

Then we have Hoess. He’s an important witness by any measure. Yet any discussion of a witness will include another. It’s like the gas mask thing. Hoess said that the SK’s had them but didn’t need them. But we have SK’s who said they used them. So does that mean someone lied? Not really. Hoess didn’t attend every gassing so he may have been present when they weren’t needed. But the SK’s were an important part of the process who (unless they died or transferred) worked during each gassing. So they were in a better position to discuss gas mask usage.

As for hostility, well, Gibson, deniers have displayed hostile attitudes towards me. I don’t let it bother me.

You seem to struggle with hypotheticals, abstraction, conditionals, etc.  This doesn't have much to do with me and my personal fancies.    

Here is what I'm saying:  If your case were strong, then such books/articles/etc would almost certainly exist.  Such books do not exist, and that suggests to me that your case is very weak.  If your case is in fact strong but you guys have been holding out on us for some inexplicable reason, it would behoove you to remedy this situation ASAP.  

If you think such books do exist, then go ahead and name them, and I will explain why they are lacking (which I have already done many times).  As mentioned, I think the Shermer book is the closest to the right idea (it actually tries to prove the holocaust, if unsuccessfully).  

The first statement is of the form If A, Then B.  
A) If your case were strong
B) Then such books/articles/etc would almost certainly exist

The second statement is simply a restatement of the first.  If Not B, then Not A.  The two statements are logically equivalent.  

There are two main challenges you could make to what I said.
1) You could say that nobody has bothered to write anything because revisionism has failed to generate sufficient attention or controversy and/or that the points raised are too trivial or ridiculous to respond to.  Go ahead and argue this dumb position if you want (which is refuted by your own obsession with the topic).  
2) You could argue that the books do exist.  I anticipated this and said "If you think such books do exist, then go ahead and name them."  

Wikipedia, lmao.  That's why you are losing this intellectually and you've had to turn to outright authoritarian methods to keep revisionism contained.  

You would be much better off just relying on your intuition to make arguments rather than repetitively invoking logical terms (which you misuse more often than not).  

Non-sequitur applies only to purely deductive statements.  My statement was probabilistic/heuristic ("would almost certainly"), so it isn't a non-sequitur.  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_reasoning

Reasons why my statement might not hold would be along the lines of what I mentioned in #1 above.  This is more or less the position of the Lipstadt types, but you would look rather silly arguing that given the amount of time you spend arguing about revisionism.  

Regarding whether such books exist, perhaps it would be useful to introduce some clear criteria by which we can judge this.  For example,

1) States a clear thesis (e.g. "the Germans had a formal extermination program during WWII in which six million Jews died between 1941-1945") and attempts to prove that thesis.  
2) Explains when and how the extermination program was started, how it developed, under whose orders, and how it was carried out, preferably with hard documentation.
3) Demonstrates how successful the extermination program was in practice, the scale of killing that was achieved, and by what technical means this mass killing was accomplished, supported by proof.  
4) Anticipates objections and counterarguments and attempts to address these.  For example, overreliance on postwar testimony, reliance on weak testimony/propaganda, technical problems with the gas chambers and body disposal, alternative interpretations of documents.  

The mainstream literature strictly speaking fails all of these.  You could give them partial credit for 1-3 because they do provide a narrative and some sources but they treat the core claims as pretty much axiomatic.  On #2, the narratives favored by various authors contain major disagreements and they have admitted to a lack of documentation.  The mainstream literature ignores revisionist critiques and generally shows no interest in technical matters. 

Something like hdot is pretty much purely #4.  They try to give quick replies to specific revisionist points in isolation (they are much more concise than HC).  There's no comprehensive treatment of the overall subject (1-3).