Re: Historical evidence

I do not think we have yet come to the point where we can accurately verify all or even most historical records, particularly human written records.

Then you are asking for an impossible standard.

Even in natural science, you can repeat an experiment, but you cannot replay it.

And worse yet, historical evidence tends to disappear, both intentionally and through natural erosion or the wear of use. You can't defeat this tendency.

Likewise, unless we know for sure the mindset of "independent" writers we will not know if they were trying to corroborate evidence rather than writing impartially.

You never know the intentions; that's why you try to deduce them from social contexts. But ultimately your deduction is itself speculative.

There is much controversy (in the minds of some) concerning events such as the Moon Landings and The Twin Towers,

Well, let's apply your own standards:

(1) Al Qaeda took years to recognize 9/11.
(2) Both the Moon videos and any Osama video could plausibly be fabricated.
(6)(7) The NASA and the US government had an incentive for staging a moon landing; A LOT of people had an incentive for staging a large terrorist attack on US soil.

For the record, I do think the Moon landings happened, and I do think 9/11 officialdom is closer to the truth than the alternative theories.

Your ability to be impartial is in question since you appear to be unable to believe the extent of CP simply because you haven't seen any, and all the evidence cited comes from "suspicious" sources i.e. those who apparently would be opposed to paedophiles

It's not just that they are opposed; it's that they, by themselves, receive a personal gain from exaggerating the quantity, abusiveness and economical exchange value of KP. They don't need to hate us to gain from exaggerating or outright lying about KP. And they certainly don't need to hate us to gain from the concealment of any information that doesn't come from them. This is such a basic media and discourse control tactic they don't even teach it. Who needs spin when you have censorship? On KP, the whole world is a North Korea.

And in a way it's worse that they are self-interested than hateful. A hateful person will sometime commit a mistake brought about by his hate, much the way racist cops eventually surface by themselves. A self-interested person does not, because they evaluate the situation coldly, without attachment, before acting.

And what's baffling is that you can see the product of bias in many other things, but cannot see it here.

I couldn't give a flying F about adult porn so don't expect me to bother answering any of the comments related to that.

1. You brought the subject up.
2. All I said here was that Sade and Sacher-Masoch were already writing things like you seem to believe are the product of a recent porn "escalation" more than 150 years ago. So disproving there is any escalation - unless you deny the dating and maybe they really lived in 1970s San Francisco and not Ancien Régime France and Imperial Austria.

I've sometimes thought there was cadre of "guard dogs" here at GC whose main purpose was to rubbish those coming to the site with opposing views to the "consensus"

Do you ask for the same standard of not "rubbish those coming to the site with opposing views" at anti places? Or only here? Do you think that we live in some sort of bubble where we are not exposed to "opposing views" everywhere but here?

I am rough. I've never denied being rough. I cannot help being rough. I've been a hard debater for far too long. Longer even, than I have been a self-aware GLer. So, sorry, I spot holes too easy, and I make tiny holes into big ones. That's who I am. If you feel the need to ignore me because of that, well, so be it. If I could survive my heartbreaks, I can survive this.