> he yelled 'a series of racial and antisemitic slurs' into the camera and we don't know he's a jew-hating racist because we lack context?
Yes, exactly. It appears you disagree, but I think your thinking is sloppy on that point. There's a reasonably large chance he doesn't actually hate Jews and that he was just being tastelessly edgy and transgressive.
So your new formulation of Occam's Razor is that the most probable thing is likely true, unless that thing is the possibility that a tastelessly edgy 21 year old 4chan gun nut who yells racist and antisemitic slurs and a military security clearance just so happens to have uncovered a massive FBI (note: not military) conspiracy to murder blacks in order to increase their funding, in which case we should hear them out and not use hurtful language like 'baseless'. I see. Are you sure I'm the one with the sloppy thinking on this point?
Come on, dude. Quit being so needlessly confrontational.
My only point was "baseless" was too strong a word, because of all the unknowns. The allegation is almost certainly untrue or distorted, but "baseless" is certainly-level 10/10, and the unknowns just don't let you reasonably get to that level (only, say, to level 9/10). Baseless is for nonsense that couldn't possible even tough the ground, like Q-Anon level garbage (e.g. some dude who never leaves his basement alleging he's discovered that Hillary Clinton drinks children's blood to live forever).
> in which case we should hear them out and not use hurtful language like 'baseless'.
No. The reporters should have asked the government for a statement and reported the denial, so "a notion the government says is baseless," instead "a baseless notion." Alternatively, they could have exposed their thinking and said "a notion that we know is baseless because we trust the government to never do such a dastardly thing."
