There’s an ongoing battle in online debate circles. I’m not entirely sure how it started, but people who are seemingly allies—ideologically speaking—have begun turning on each other, making videos pointing out flawed thinking.
Putting aside the performative element (which isn’t exactly a secret), I’ll admit it’s starting to feel more annoying than entertaining. At least to me. The hair-splitting feels far removed from anything productive.
The hot topic right now is testimonial evidence—something most of us understand fairly well, but clearly weigh differently depending on context.
It shouldn’t be controversial to say that testimony is evidence. It’s used, after all, in legal systems. If it’s good enough to help litigate crimes, it seems dishonest to claim it holds no value at all. That said, not all testimony is equally reliable—but even that is something most people already accept.
If I tell you I saw my brother eat pizza last night, that claim is my testimony. He’s dieting, so maybe that’s a “crime” in our little example. I could be lying, sure—but I’m also describing something entirely plausible. He likes pizza, like most of us do.
Now, everything changes if I make a more extraordinary claim. If I tell you I saw my brother levitate five feet above his bed while sleeping, there’s virtually no chance you’d believe me. And you’d be justified. I’m still the witness—but the claim clashes with our understanding of reality.
So testimony has to be analyzed carefully—contextualized and compared against what we know about the world. A judge wouldn’t accept a witness claiming the killer in a homicide was the chupacabra. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the witness is lying.
They could simply be wrong.
People misremember. They get confused. Sometimes they’re not even firsthand witnesses, and the “resolution” of the story degrades as it passes along.
As kids, we played a game called Telephone. You’d sit in a circle and pass a message along. By the time it reached the last person, it was almost always hilariously distorted. A message like, “Joe has three skateboards, and two of them are blue,” might turn into, “Joe and Kate hate boards, and one of them is due.” The final person isn’t lying—but their version is practically false.
Christopher Hitchens once said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. These days, people love to dunk on that as an oversimplification—and sure, he’s not around to refine it—but most of us understand the spirit of the idea.
Claims carry different weights. If you want people to believe something incredibly rare—or something that’s never been observed—then it’s reasonable to expect more than just word of mouth.
So yes, testimony can be evidence. A claim can be enough—but only if we apply nuance.
In reality, this whole issue exists on a spectrum, yet we keep trying to force it into a binary.
And honestly, it seems like the people arguing about this are mostly splitting hairs. If you put them in a room with pen and paper and asked them to clearly define their positions, they’d probably end up agreeing. Maybe they’d argue over definitions—but the core ideas would align.
But then again, agreement doesn’t make for great content.
—MenO