Let me further explain: "It is fact until disproved."
That was said in the context of this particular OI discussion and no other context. The other skeptics and yourself, STILL failed to disprove anything in regards to the legend or the physical evidence. Where is the scientific analysis of the the evidence? Where is the eye witness testimony? Interviews? Proof of scams or hoaxes?
I know I know, the proof is on the believers to provide. IMO, we have. it just isn't good enough evidence to feel you need to debunk it. So it isn't worth pursuing anymore.
So from that stand point, I used "It is fact until disproved." because it seems, skeptics would rather speculate than do the foot work.
It seems skeptics here are more interested in the believers than OI mystery.
B, it is absolutely impossible for anyone, anywhere, to
disprove a buried treasure on OI. Can't do it. No matter what individual pieces of evidence are debunked, there will always be more "yeah, but what about...". Your continual asking for disproof ain't gonna change this basic fact: it's never gonna happen. If you think it is possible, then please explain how.
Given that the treasure cannot be disproven, the best we (everyone, skeptics & believers) can do is view the available evidences and judge them on merit. The baseline for this process depends on the viewee. I don't start with the assumption that everything is true; I start with the assumption that everything is questionable, so my baseline is clearly on the skeptical side. Evidences have to rise to a certain threshold before I would consider them even to be interesting. The threshold I use is generally Occam's Razor:
what is the more likely explanation for this piece of evidence? Other people start with the assumption that everything is true. When that's the starting point, it's difficult to move forward because they start with a logical fallacy.
Let's take 2 examples.
The 90ft stone
This is a piece of evidence that even the people who found it thought so little of that they basically discarded it. While a later story came out that the stone had symbols on it that translated to a treasure message, that later story is completely inconsistent with earlier (and even eye-witness) accounts that said there were only scratches on the stone, and those probably from digging tools. The story of the symbols is very highly suspect, and the
most likely explanation is they dug up an unremarkable stone.
If you start out assuming that the stone was real, had the carved symbols on it, and the symbols translated as claimed, then what would it take to convince you that these claims are likely false?
Coconut fibers
This is, perhaps, the only piece of evidence that even interests me. It may very well be true that there are coconut fibers on OI, but so far no one seems to be interested in a proper retrieval & analysis. If they are real, then extending the search to other nearby islands to see if they have similar deposits would answer the question as to whether they are unique to OI. If they are real; if they are unique; if they are old; what then? We would want to postulate why they are there. That might include a buried treasure, but it would also include other theories that might be far more plausible. But right now, there is little to go on except pure speculation. There is nothing to work with, and the people who
should want to know, apparently don't.
You can take every piece of "evidence" and inspect it in a similar way. If you start out with a skeptical view, then (IMO) nothing rises to the level of even interesting, except maybe the coconut fibers. Other skeptics may differ. If you start out believing everything is fact and true, then I'm not sure where you go from there.
But the bottom line is still the bottom line: in 225 years nothing has been found. And that end of the island has been ripped to shreds. That remains the most overwhelming evidence of all.
