Points of View

There are things I keep coming back to, because they have wide applicability, and they seem to keep going wrong. 

When you hear a side of the story from a person you have some positive regard for before you hear the other person's side, the odds are that the other person now has no chance - unless you have trained yourself to ask what the other side is when you hear any version at all. It does seem that there are those who just naturally want to see if they can find some other, more forgiving explanation when they hear about a divorce, or a firing, and I don't know what to tell you about them.  I have met some, and they seem to be different from one another, so I don't wish to generalise. A few just seemed to want to believe the best about everyone. A few seemed naturally contrary, at least in their own minds, so that they seemed to want to be a little bit smarter than everyone by disbelieving everyone.  I am a bit like that myself, and that is not entirely different from being objective. We should hold both doubt and belief lightly at first.

I last wrote about it the extreme versions of it a few years ago, Excess Deaths, Murder Statistics, and Sexual Offenders. 

Yet most of us aren't in that game at that level.  We encounter the stories of our friends and relatives and make our judgements.Sometimes, we come into a situation where we are the accused, but the accuser has already gotten there before us to a mutual acquaintance - or even the HR department, the police, or some other person whose judgement can hurt us, formally or informally, or even just hurt our feelings at being disbelieved.

You usually are dead in the water before you even open your mouth, and will never persuade the other person, who go the other side first, from your opponent who was an old friend, or is a neighbor on the same side of some local controversy, or has some other reason why they just like them. It often occurs that the authority or the person who at least holds your reputation in their hands would find it easier if thy just didn't have to think that hard and puzzle it all out. So much easier to believe that you said something mildly insulting to a vendor, however much you deny it, or that you were drunk at the party, or that you were known in childhood as a bully. 

Here is something I have learned over and over again -

    You will notice that when you learn something "over and over again" it's because you have forgotten it over and over again

- Unless you have some killer piece of hard evidence, such as "there was actually an investigation into this and I can show you the report," you can't fight this in traditional logical ways. You will look defensive if you say something, or you will look like you refuse to contest it if you say nothing.If you have a case that is only mostly good and not absolute it will be mentally downgraded to "probably just excuse-making, " but if you have a very solid case that takes a bit of explaining you will look overtechnical.  If you have more than one argument you will look like you are picking on them, cruelly pounding this nice person into the ground. 

You can try all those good arguments that keep occurring to you, or you can take a less-direct strategy.  You can give the brief explanation that you can't say anything without looking even worse, and ask them to try and imagine on their own what your side might be. You might risk a bit of pointed example, like "Geoff, how likely is it that I went over to her house looking for an argument that night?" but even that may be pushing your luck. Ask them to try and figure out what was going through your mind and run through the possibilities of what might have been said. Only after they have done that, and surprisingly, even if their guesses were completely wrong, will they be able to hear your side.

Attorneys and law enforcement are familiar with these unclear situations that need to be regarded with caution, but alas, sometimes they are the worst offenders. There was a police department in the state that I groaned every time they were the agency involved, because I knew them to make up their minds and be unmovable pretty consistently. Complete bastards, the whole crew of them.

Will it work? Eh, you are in a situation where most likely nothing is going to work.  Even if it goes to some formal hearing and you make the better case, your accusers friend's, and even some people who just stumbled on the situation and have prejudices will make excuses how you were actually guilty anyway.  But it at least gives you a shot.  And sometimes, sometimes it gets them on your side in the next controversy as well.