I am saying that if we got a hundred people who said that and explained to them the alternatives and asked them which they really meant, the large majority would interpret it the way I predict.

The fact that I find this perfectly probable does not change the fact that you have no standing to assert it as fact. :)

Nor would I, for that matter.

Women (and men) claim they were harmed by past sexual activity even if they didn't object at the time

There exist two seperate claims, here.

1. There exist persons who claim this, and...

2. All persons who match this category claim this.

The first is demonstrably true. The second is demonstrably false.

but you claim they are overwhelmingly mistaken.

Links or gtfo.

In response to the objection that I'm telling other people what they think

Umm, you did just try to tell me what I think by telling me what I claim. It's a common difficulty of yours, I believe - though with the search broken, I'd have to link any future instances, not past ones.

So, I claim and think this? Links or gtfo.

(and yes, you did write that in a seperate and unrelated part of the message, just for the record)

And what empirical study can you cite in support of that?

Ummm...

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/18/health/lifeswork-loftus-memory-malleability/

...it's completely established in the field, bro.

One of the reasons I find it so easy to demand links about what I think and claim, here - and in making it a top-level post, i.e., addressed to any poster, you'd have to link to where you claim that to carry your claim about what others think and claim - is that I don't, usually, bother.

Much more interesting is the opposite finding - as noted by Susan Clancy. The majority of people who suffer legitimately unwanted sexual activity do not agree that they were harmed.

This... is just a hell of a lot more interesting than very, very rare paid media spokespeople and the occasional PR firm anonymously astroturfing the web with copypasta. Doubly so since it is verifiable and actually studies the population.

Meanwhile, I find the claim you said I (and you, and everyone else who posts or visits) made to be uninteresting, for a few reasons...

1. It gives paid media spokesperson anecdote too much weight, credit and signifigance.

2. It smacks entirely too much of some of the other astroturf used. If someone testifies that they believe that the earth is a flat octahedron made of a giant crystal of pure caffeine, they're dead wrong, but okay, I guess that's their testimony to their beliefs.

...and more importantly...

3. The methodology is an entirely seperate act (or acts) of abuse, resulting - by their testimony - in harm. Why, exactly, would I want to strengthen the crediting to an event which was unrelated?

Interestingly enough, the preliminary data appears to find that persons abused into complying with a false memory suffer sizeable psychological distress while actual victims of violence do not, though the former dataset appears incomplete (err, possibly not, as an extrapolate of misleadability in general). While exceptions likely exist - and the markers of trauma from violence have been studied - it is, by and large, a diagnostic differentiator.

So, while it's long-established and referencable doctrine in the field - and the coerced testimony of the daycare trials and its eventual aftermath is enough to establish it - it's not interesting enough to bother with a claim of, and appears counterproductive to begin with.

Besides, I prefer it when the weaker, unused position is indefensibly unassaliable. ;)

My conclusion is that Dante's standard of evidence is unreasonable.

If defined as what you have complained about in this post, rather than, say, what Dante says his beliefs of his standard are (cough, cough), then Dante's standard of evidence is... standard.

See also : [citation needed], burden of proof, etc.

It is convenient to hold your opponent to standards of evidence far beyond what you require of yourself, but it is profoundly dishonest.

While I join you in attributing my speculations to other people in doing so, I'm guessing you wrote that entirely just so you could use the word "dishonest" in a sentence. :)

Nonetheless, as much as I hate to appeal to authority, I've been on this board a long time. This is standard fare for the course, and why we're a bunch of uber-hardcores who eat scrap steel for breakfast. You, everyone is wondering about - since you devoted a thread to talking about people bitching about pet peeves about you, mine is when you attribute your unfounded arguments-of-bare-assertion to "everybody" in an "everybody says" - but I will be holding him to the exact same standard he's been (in your allegation) holding you to, and this has been going on for a long, long time).

I'll admit to having split questioning "pro" and "anti" assertions between the board and the chat before - antis are piss-poor debators, we can argue their position better than they can, and hey, I like the edge their errors bring - but not always. We want either to stand strong, and in part because of this, and in part of the need to maintain order while preserving anarchy as a government structure, these boards have been a strange mix of "vigorous scientific debate" and an illegal-pitfighting free-for-all for a long, long time - about half your life, old man.

So, no. He's going to get it later if it comes up - there are no favorites - and in fact being on the recieving end is part of what made him, all of us really, what we are today.

Sorry that siding with "everybody" wasn't that much of a cakewalk. If I diagnose your psychological tendancies correctly, that must have been disappointing. It's also what pretty much always happens - false security is, well, a place of weakness.

Free your mind, and the fists will follow. That's the plan. :) 'n mostly, it needs to be cleared of laziness, not ideas.

We're damn good at this, in the hordes of this rough-and-tumble pit. :)