this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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Does me using the wrong word ("article" instead of "tweet") alter the point that the previous poster's absolute statement "they absolutely don’t reward these dogs for mistakes" is just an opionated statement with no backing meant only to contradict the event related in that tweet?
In the face of two statements unsupported by evidence (the tweet and that post I replied to), what's more believable:
It does, because a random person being humorous on twitter carries no presumption of truth. An "article" kinda implies that, unless it's satire.
Naturally being an "article" carries some implied authoritativeness compared to "random social media post".
However my point is about the believability of the content itself on two "random social media posts" (the tweet and the one I replied to), which carry the same level of authoritativeness ("random person on the internet says")
As I wrote somewhere else, statements about things always or never happening, unless backed by evidence are generally false, if only because statistically there are very few things which are absolutelly so all the time and everywhere and this one is about a kind of human interaction, which is far from the kind of thing likely to be absolute.
So based on the content and assuming nothing about truthfulness of falsehood of the sources, I personally find a story about a working dog handler rewarding a dog for doing something silly but endearing is more likely to be true than a statement from somebody saying that they never do such a thing, if only because it's unlikely that it never ever happens and if it does happen somebody might spot in and because it makes for a nice store, share the story.
Mind you, by the same rule I also think that the statement from the poster before the one I replied to about "them training the dogs to bark on command to get probable cause" is not believable on itself and without further evidence and does not logically follow from somebody noticing once a dog handler rewarding a working dog for doing somebody which is a work mistake but also is silly and enderaring
(Had I been in the same position as that handler, even knowing I would be reinforcing a mistake, I would be sorely tempted to reward the dog for the silly "detect pizza" behaviour if only because it's funny and lovable).
I just think the poster I was replying to criticized the previous post in just as much an "opinion about everything everywhere unbacked by evident and stated as fact" way as the post they were criticizing.