[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Snowman

You seem to be conflating making assumptions with making predictions. There is a difference between making explicit claims without evidence based on assumptions and making predictions based on observable evidence and logic. There is also a difference in the language Peter used and the language I used above.

Peter made explicit claims about what Kurt did to a card, without evidence, when it wasn't even Kurt's card.

I used qualifiers like, "I don't believe ...", "I could be wrong, but I believe ...", "He probably just ..." to make predictions about what I believed most likely occurred.

Even my third claim, which I phrased as a certainty, was based on observable evidence (a completely trashed card with nearly as many creases as I have responses in this thread). A claim that no reasonable person could possibly disagree with, as I said, "whoever did soak the card clearly didn't do it in an attempt to "scam" some would-be buyer. This was obviously just a science experiment. Someone was just having fun with the most trashed card they could find and wanted to share the results."

If you want to argue that I couldn't possibly know his motives and that it is in fact likely that he was trying to "fix" that Mays in an effort to cash in on a payday, then you're being disingenuous. There's zero chance anyone here actually believes that.

A prediction is something that you think will happen in the future not an explanation for why something happened in the past. Saying you "believe" something is an explanation of why you think someone did something which requires you to make an assumption about their motivation. You can't predict why someone did something after they did it.