I’m not defending pulling the dog by the tail. I’m just saying it’s a separate issue from the specific claim that he shocked the dog.

What? No it isn't. He's a piece of shit for pulling the dog by the tail, so there stops being a reason to assume good faith as far as his treatment of some other dog. Same as when his explanation changes or contradicts visible evidence (like the model of collar), there stops being a reason to assume he's telling the truth about things that are less cut and dried.

Offering an alternative explanation of events doesn’t meet the standard of proof.

Why does this not apply to Hasan's explanation?

Especially when the tangible evidence we do have, like eye witness accounts

I don't really care what people aligned with Hasan have to say about it. Especially since, like I said, they lose credibility to me when their explanations contradict one another or the visible evidence. "Tangible evidence" to me is what I can see or a factual argument that starts from first principles.

This is something I've noticed MAGA people do, too: They basically outsource their critical thinking to some authority or other, and get uncomfortable with the idea of evaluating factual claims. You're defining "independent investigation" in this no-true-Scotsman type of way, where anything that supports what you want to believe is "an independent investigation" or an "eye witness account," but someone holding up the actual model of collar Hasan is using and making a compelling case on the facts of the matter is "an alternative explanation." And there's no reason why Hasan's explanation contradicting those visible facts would impact his credibility going forward.

It seems like you're actively refusing to evaluate the claims on the merits, instead defaulting back to where Hasan and his supporters are trustworthy even when their explanations change from one day to the next or one supporter to the next, or contradict physical evidence, and anyone who has bad things to say is untrustworthy (I guess simply by reason of having bad things to say about him.)

(I also note that your explanation contradicts Hasan's. He's saying the collar is not a shock collar. You're saying it could be a shock collar, but he just didn't know it had the shock function. That kind of thing is what directs his backers' credibility straight into the garbage as far as I'm concerned.)

(I mean, if Hasan's case was to hold up the collar clearly close to the camera, show all sides of it, and say very specifically "No it is not the ET-300, it is this other model of collar, see they look similar" then that would be a strong counterargument that puts criticism down in that category of "an alternative proposed explanation." But he's stayed far, far, far away from anything factual and clear like that, which is pretty notable to me. I mean, at this point even if he did do that there would be no reason to think he didn't just buy a vibration-only collar in the meantime... what he could easily have done is at any point during the hours of drama that ensued after the initial shock event, he could have walked over to Kaya, grabbed the collar, showed it to the camera holding it close up showing all sides. The whole thing would have been a non issue. To me him refusing to do that when people were saying "SHOW THE COLLAR," and then when he did it the next day it clearly being a modified shocking-capable collar which he claimed was not shock capable, plus various other circumstantial evidence like pulling the dog's tail and hiding the remote from a camera that was placed in a position to show it, adds up to exactly what it seems like it adds up to.)

Anyway, I am more or less done with this conversation. You reacted pretty much exactly like I would expect a Hasan stan to react, I was just sort of surprised to find that on Lemmy, I thought it was more of a Reddit thing. Good talking with you, good times.