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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered that there might be a huge population of people out there who smoked weed and did not develop any problems, thus never coming into your orbit?

And your observation could be easily explained in reverse: "I have witnessed secondhand that people who were susceptible to anxiety, agitation, paranoia, and psychosis due to {trauma|genetics|isolation|etc} and other misfortunes in life were also likely to start consuming higher doses of THC earlier in life, and employ other unhealthy ways to numb their mental anguish".

See my reading of the same facts is just as valid as yours, hence neither can claim to be true.

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At this point, if you ignore all the evidence that points at long term effects on cognition from marihuana consumption, it's more your conscious decision rather than lack of data.

At this point if you ignore all the evidence that these people have anxiety, or were in otherwise shitty environments and states in the first place, whether genetic nature or nurture you might want to just say we're collating and correlating rather than finding causes. Conscious decision my ass.

That’s some faulty logic. Either your reading of the facts is valid or his reading of the facts is valid, but given they are facts it is not necessarily the case that neither of you is valid.

Note that I’m not saying you are wrong, nor am I saying he is wrong - but I am pointing out that your conclusion that neither of you can claim any truth is an unsound argument.

Furthermore, you also cannot conclude that a huge population of people who took marijuana with high THC content do not have a significant percentage of people who experienced adverse health effects from their drug-taking. To know that you would also need to have done an extensive study to conclude anything.

Now it may be you have done such a thing (or have read such a study) but without presenting such a study (or group of studies) then it’s also speculation.

I did not say neither is true, I said neither can claim to be true. The logic here is perfectly sound:

If there was only one possible reading of the facts then that reading could be considered the truth. If there are two equally reasonable readings neither can be deemed to be the truth, and further investigation is required to clarify the matter.

So what you are saying is that one could claim to be true based on future investigation. In actual fact you are saying that you do not know which is true based on the limited information presented, not that neither can claim to be true.

In fact, one could be true based on enough evidence. Your claim of reasonableness is a red herring - it could be that one interpretation may seem reasonable but on further investigation it is not.

I’m merely pointing out you don’t know which proposition is true, not that neither can claim to be true. In fact, if one happens to be true then it can claim to be true, and will actually be true. That’s an important distinction.

There is not enough evidence to know which of the claims is true: either one or neither could be. But both claims are as valid as each other in that the observations are true (but correlation != causation applies: both claims show a correlation, there is not enough evidence of whether either of them show causation)

Which negates the statement “neither can claim to be true”.

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