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Comment by totalZero | Hacker News Reader

That's a very different argument from "this feels false," which is just some subjective bullshit. However, your argument is little better.

You're saying "it stands to reason that a widely used product would have already hit this corner case by now." The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway.

That's why it's useless to say "this feels wrong" or even "surely we would know by now." The guy who wrote the tweet has already said here in HN comments that he will substantiate what he wrote, so it seems unnecessary to dogpile the skepticism and "feelings" in the interim.

You don't have to accept a logical proposition in order to consider/entertain it.

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>The problem with your argument is that it's a tautology. If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway

No its not; it's defining a probability. This report is most likely false, because it would be unlikely for this to be the first instance of it. It's not defining a logical proposition -- that's just you extracting more gaurantees from the statement than what was actually specified. It's not if this then that, it's if probably this, then probably that.

And it's valid to state it "feels false", if only because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence -- the same way it's valid to not significantly consider the claim "I saw an alien" stated on its own. Yes, there is a possibility it's true, and yes, its not valid to declare it false only on the basis that aliens are involved, but it would be unreasonable to assume that possibility it is true is significant based on the claim alone.

It is perfectly valid to assume it's false, because the likelihood of the alternative is low. It is not valid to declare it false for the same reasoning; but no one in this chain did such a thing.

You're conflating two different parent comments; I'll take them separately.

If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

>it's defining a probability.

This is not true. It's classifying the first instance as false.

>If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

That's true, but an extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence is also not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

and from the original post...

>I consider it worrying that a claim wholly lacking evidence is getting so much attention.

That is, the conclusion reached by twitter is not well-reasoned, which gives kevindong the well-reasoned conclusion: it's probably false.

>It's classifying the first instance as false.

>This *FEELS* (not saying it is) like a false claim.

I'm not clear how you can read this as anything other than a probability. It says nothing about the premise, and it clearly specifies that the conclusion has not been [definitively] classified.

Otherwise, if that ain't the money-quote, I don't know what you're reading but it's not what I'm reading.

> If you think something "feels false" but you have no evidence for it, that's not a particularly strong basis for reasoning.

We can’t determine that.

Whether it is a strong basis for reasoning depends on the person’s priors, which may be very strong.

Until we ask them about their priors, we simply don’t know.

> If in fact the statement by dcurtis is the first efflorescence of the problem, your line of thinking would reject it anyway.

This is true, but we have to take it in context. How likely is it that this is the policy, and we’ve never heard about it before now?

The card has been our for a couple of years. Millions of people are using it. This implies 10s of millions of payments. At a conservative estimate this would mean there must have been thousands of missed payments, and therefore thousands of locked Apple accounts.

It therefore seems unlikely we wouldn’t have heard about it. I could of course be wrong as could the GP, because this is just a probability estimate. But that’s all the GP is saying.

Thanks, and I agree with you. But policies can change, so it's a fair conversation to have if in fact the stated thing happened. People seem to think that "is there evidence for what you said" is some kind of abusive reply but that should be table stakes for most claims. The guy in the tweet already said he'd write something up, but the people who said he is probably stating falsehoods just came up with that based on a gut feeling.

Me personally, Apple repeatedly locked (not disabled) my account earlier this year when they weren't able to process a payment. PayPal had authorized but not charged an M1 laptop I had ordered with a non-English keyboard, and somehow the order hung. My bank and PayPal showed the authorization, but Apple showed it as "hold" due to unsuccessful payment. Customer service wasn't able to push the order through without taking credit card information directly, and I ended up canceling the order, which means I lose my place in the order queue.

Based on my recent experience, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had some issues with payment processing. The reason that I care about this particular topic is that I'm considering doing the re-order of the M1 laptop with Apple Card financing. That's why chaff like "it feels false lol" is not useful information for me.

> But policies can change, so it's a fair conversation to have if in fact the stated thing happened.

Yes, but it’s a not a fair conversation to start by spreading a false statement.

If we’re just speculating about the policies, headlines like the one on this post are simply not true.

Right now, that may be exactly what has happened. We don’t know yet but we do know it’s not as simple as the tweet and headline claim.

Not sure if you're referring to me but I haven't spread any false statements. I have neither argued that the tweet is true nor that it is false. What I did was ask if the guy making the comment had any evidence for what he was saying. Others had already asked dcurtis the same and he said he would write more about it later.

I wanted to know if the comment was just a pontification or if there was actually a reason to dismiss what dcurtis said. As I explained earlier, I have a direct reason (a purchase) to care,

If you actually think I speculated about anything, please quote where I did so.

I’m not accusing you of anything.

There is clearly reason to doubt what Dcurtis said, as you have agreed.

I’m referring to this overall conversation which is a discussion of a statement by Dcurtis, which we already know is not what it originally sounded like, and may turn out to be false.

Doubting something and dismissing it are two different animals in the same zoo.

https://dcurt.is/apple-card-can-disable-your-icloud-account

Turns out his issue is also related to an M1 purchase. Go figure.

This discussion wasn’t dismissing anything.

They were just saying that it was highly unlikely to be true.

This is his original statement:

> If you miss an Apple Card payment, Apple disables all your Apple accounts

It turns out that as writing it is complete and utter bullshit.

Also, Apple Card provides a lot of notifications of due payments if you don’t have autopay.

Somehow he doesn’t mention those.

The fact that he made a bullshit statement thar would have been cause for great concern if true, to a much more complicated story of compounded errors that would affect very few people and doesn’t explain how he missed the warnings, undermines his credibility.

Seems like he screwed up and is just trying to save face.

The comment thread on the more accurate blog post he wrote later seems like a very reasonable discussion of the issue itself.

This comment thread is a reasonable discussion about how it seemed like he made a false statement, because that’s what he did.

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