Kendrick

No this is fine Klion. I just wanted to nudge you from your "you can never know a person's motives" position to one where you are forced to judge people by their words and actions. I needed to close this door to the philisophical refuge of epistimological solipsism.

Now we're just haggling about the standards of evidence required. I understand completely that the scientific method encourages multiple hypotheses
and multiple trials, but I'd be uncomfortable with the idea that deciding whether someone is a racist could be determined scientifically.
The principle of falsifiability would be difficult uphold for the example we're talking about, and the idea of numerous independent trials with the same base conditions even more troublesome to arrange. (Michael Richards is unlikely to repeat his outburst after the furore this one caused).

Of course I'd be much more more certain of his racism if I saw more "video's of him slagging off blacks", but some significant weight can be attached to the fact that I've seen at least one video of him being hateful about coloured people (lynching was mentioned for pity's sake, and he shouted "He's a nigger" more times than I care to remember.)

Based on this on video, do I have some doubt in my mind about his purported racism? Of course: some doubt remains. I can never be certain. As I've said, I'm not omniscient. Where we differ though is that I've attached *some* significance to the one video I've seen, whilst you appear to have attached none.

If you will simply concede that you would attach *some* signifance to the vile outbursts in the video clip, rather than rule them completely out of hand, then I feel that some of thevitriol flying your way might lessen.

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