Creative stock photo, shadow self-portrait, sitting up in a turret with my shadow on a Hesco barrier at Forward Operating Base Gardez, Afghanistan, blog post by John Hoff
It happened again, like it happens so often. A discussion was taking place on the internet about a hot topic, in this case, the background of 13-year-old murder victim Rayjon Gomez.
The topic is hot, lately, because after a delay of several months,
a suspect has finally been arrested in the shooting of Gomez.
On a blog posting about Gomez, an anonymous commenter made some remarks. What the remarks were is hardly important. What's more important, for purposes of this discussion, is whether the remarks could be objectively proven to be true and whether it is possible, from the example of this one discussion, to create a useful hypothesis about all anonymous internet discussions where unprovable facts and alleged subject matter expertise are anonymously cited in support of a rhetorical point...
Trying (for what seems the umpteenth time) to put into words why anonymous internet remarks are not credible when citing unproven expertise or facts known only to the anonymous poster, and inspired by a recent reading of Godwin's Law, I created...
(Drum roll, please)
Northside's Law!
Which is as follows...
WHEN anonymous commenters cite facts known only to themselves to prove a point and these cited facts are not provable by linking to some source on the internet, OR WHEN anonymous commenters claim to be experts or professionals in a certain subject as proof of what they are saying but they can't, when challenged, provide convincing proof they are actually experts or professionals in that subject, THEN the odds what they are saying is actually true becomes less than 50 percent.
This law is true because believable, credible people realize credible, factual statements can be proven to be true, and worthless factual statements can't be proven to be true, and so they make an effort to make only credible statements and refrain from worthless statements. Unbelievable people don't do this.
There may, however, be exceptions. SOMETIMES people really ARE an expert in a subject and carelessly cite to their expertise, not thinking ahead and asking themselves, "Well, if somebody in this internet forum challenges whether I am really a doctor, how will I prove it without revealing my identity?"
SOMETIMES people really do throw anonymous, unproven facts on the internet that are, in fact, true and known only to the anonymous poster.
SOMETIMES these things happen but not MOST of the time.
That is why we can safely assume such statements about unproven facts or unproven expertise are true less than half the time, i.e. less than 50 percent of the time.
THEREFORE...
Please conduct your internet discussions accordingly and when somebody anonymous cites facts known only to themselves, or subject matter expertise absent of proof of such expertise, provide a link to this blog post and cite NORTHSIDE'S LAW to force a more productive internet discussion about a particular topic.
