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Comment by benchaney | Hacker News Reader

The onus is inherently on the person making the claim to support it with evidence. That is just how burden of proof works.

That aside, people supporting their own claims with evidence provides a whole host of secondary benefits. It makes it more clear makes it more clear who is claiming what, it pushes back somewhat on the problem of "it takes an order of magnitude more effort to produce bullshit than to refute it", and it prevents some obnoxious debate tactics that reduce discussion quality.

To be honest it don't understand why anyone would advocate any other convention on a discussion board. It seems super short sighted to me.

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Because the person doing the claiming is only going to provide links that support their claim. Only a bad debater would make the other person's argument for them. Do your own searching would allow exposure to both sides of an argument.

That someone is likely to provide biased sources when asked for them isn't a reason to just shrug and allow unsourced claims to go unchallenged. It doesn't matter whether or not djanogo could have found the bill on their own (from their edit, it looks like they did read it), the point is that it was irresponsible for the original poster to have made unsourced claims in such an inflamatory tone.

If the sources they provide are biased and therefore suspect, that is a separate concern that can then be addressed. But having some source for your claims is table stakes for an intelligent discussion.

If you're the one making the challenge to an unsubstantiated claim, you're the one that could do the posting of information to proves the claim false. Otherwise, you too are just making unsubstantiated claims. Otherwise, you get this kind of conversation debating who should offer the evidence rather than just offering the evidence one way or the other. It wasn't my thread, but I knew it to be one way, found the evidence and posted that as a counter to the argument. After that, it's kind of case closed unless someone posts a counter link, but nobody has done that. Instead we've gone back and forth on when to post a link.

The person making the claim needs to provide the proof, it's really not that complicated. I could claim an infinite number of complete bullshit claims the burden of proof should not be on anyone but me.

> (1) the person operating the motor vehicle was exercising due care; and

That law clearly states twice that "due care" needs to be taken otherwise it's not applicable. So compare and contrast this with the original claim by the parent commenter:

> legal for car drivers to mow down pedestrian protesters

I call bullshit on that. Thanks for the link.

It's still bullshit, mind you, and OP is probably deliberately misconstruing the law here. The law isn't "mow over protestors, we'll cover you". It's "If the driver was taking proper procedures and wasn't negligent and the person was blocking traffic, the driver will not be liable".

similarly:

>(b) This section does not affect a person's liability for an injury caused by grossly negligent conduct.

That is to say, you're not allowed to just mow them over.

Sources are nice not because they magically add quality to a post, but because you can check them for yourself.

>> legal for car drivers to mow down pedestrian protesters

>I call bullshit on that. Thanks for the link.

Sometimes hyperbole just isn't the right thing, but I seriously doubt the original poster honestly believes laws were created that allowed for mowing down of citizens willy nilly. Pedantic people go nuts and throw out the rest of the conversation on a caveat rather than keeping focus on the discussion. Laws were written that allows for a defense after running people over with your car. There's plenty to be left to the interpretation of lawyers to argue and judges to decide.

That is backwards, because the second person has their own biases, so that person is going to give evidence that is biased against the original claim. The only way to get strong evidence on both sides of the argument is for both participants to supply evidence that supports their own arguments.

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