[9dev]

That’s exactly my point: You present yet another alternative view as facts, which would get debated by the former two groups. There is no authority to establish which of the three views is the canonical truth, regardless of how much you think your own is obviously and objectively true.

[bigstrat2003]

I deliberately tried as hard as possible to phrase the things I said in such a way that either of the groups you proposed would find no objection to my saying those things were true. Perhaps I failed in some way, but I don't think I did. My point is that we can indeed agree upon some facts as to what happened, but that those are not what people argue over. They argue over an interpretation of the facts that tells some story about who is the "good guy" and the "bad guy", but not the facts themselves. And in my experience, that is generally the form of all disputes over "facts": they are very rarely actual disagreements on what events happened, but rather disagreements about why they happened or if it was acceptable for those things to happen.

[9dev]

I see your point, but don’t think it is correct: Opposing groups will absolutely debate whether and which events happened, and will attest to a different timeline. Moreover, I don’t believe you can cleanly tell facts from interpretation. Sometimes there is just no way to know (or verify) what happened, and you have to deduce. This is invariably shaped by your personal lens of opinions, then.

[toolazytologin]

> Sometimes there is just no way to know (or verify) what happened, and you have to deduce.

This ties into my original point. Once you can’t verify what happened and are reporting your deductions, you are invariably introducing your opinions. I would prefer to read “we don’t know what exactly happened, but what we do know is X” rather than “we know X, therefore Y must also be true” without any way to actually verify Y.