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NOTHING_EVER_FITS

                                             September 1, 2021

A common point made during discussions of conspiracy
theories: in any complex, real world situation, there
are often details that don't quite seem to fit the
story: unlike with a jigsaw puzzle, you can't expect
the pieces to join together seamlessly and form a
perfect image.

   That seems reasonable, and yet it strikes me that when
   a conspiracy theorist tells a story, ignoring any
   places where the evidence doesn't fit would
   be taken as a sign of irrational fanaticism.

   So this "nothing's perfect" principle is an axe
   that only cuts in one direction.

        And defining that direction is in itself very
        tricky.  The mainstream, consensus view?  But in
        the case of the JFK assassination, polls show more
        than half of the US goes with "conspiracy".

            The mainstream definition of "mainstream"
            is not "what most people believe".


At the electoral-vote site, Z (aka Christopher Bates,
the historian on the team) introduces this point like
so:

    https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Senate/Maps/Aug31.html#item-6

    "When (Z) was an undergrad, one of his professors pointed out
    that when the Charles Manson case was tried, there were over
    400 pieces of evidence suggesting that he was innocent of all
    charges. However, there were also 1,700 pieces of evidence
    pointing to his guilt. And so, he was sent to the crowbar
    hotel, where he spent the rest of his days. The obvious
    lesson here is that the evidence for something is never, ever
    100% in one direction, even if it's the correct direction."

This sounds impressive at first, but on reflection I
think it's very weak.  What we're talking about here
is "stuff entered by the defense or the prosecution",
and the raw counts of either are, I would expect,
strongly dependent on the styles of the lawyers
involved:

      High counts of pieces of evidence may seem
      impressive to people, so you might follow a policy
      of sub-dividing what you have (within reason) to
      get an inflated count.

      It could be a matter of who's willing to do the
      most paperwork-- or who has the biggest budget
      for para-legals.

   And all pieces of evidence don't have equal
   weight, right?  A bloody knife covered in
   fingerprints might easily be the only one needed,
   with other "pieces" added just for completeness.




   The fact that the defense was able to find hundreds of
   pieces of evidence pointing toward innocence actually raises
   some questions in my mind: might Manson have been partially
   innocent?  There could be crimes attributed to him that he
   really didn't do-- leaving the actual perpetrator breathing
   a sigh of relief that those guys really wanted to throw the
   book at that freak.


   But then, I'm obviously one of those conspiratorially minded
   people who's suspcious of everything.

   We can't all be as Serious as Z and V at e-v.





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