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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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"Where there's smoke there's fire" is really interesting when the courts operate on the basis of "innocent until proven guilty".
Anyone who says "where there's smoke there's fire" never did chemistry class at school. Probably the second worst idiom one can say.
Funny, because I'm a decade long chemical analyst, with a solid half of that time doing smoke taint research....
I know creosol compounds better than 99.9% of the population. I live in an area that's known for burning down... The way I identify fire each and every time is by it's smoke.
There are ways to impart the essence of smoke, but more often than not people are trying to hide the fact that there is or was smoke.
So please tell me, a chemist, how if there's smoke there's fire, is one of the worst idioms of all time? Exothermic chain reactions with organic matter produce carbon rings that get carried away from the site of the reaction is a perfectly valid statement.
Because the idiom is simply not always true, that's why.
Special effects producers take advantage of this as well.
I'm not sure if you read the couching of my statement that there are smoke machines.
Or that, you know, I'm an analytical chemist for smoke.... And there may be smoke without fires (as I eluded to in the original post), but where there is a fire there is absolutely smoke. And I believe I've taken at least a chemistry course to get where I am today... But who says the universe wasn't created last Thursday...
Also there are some idioms that are never true, how are they not worse than an idiom that "isn't always true"? I think your scale on idioms are off as much as your judgement of people's chemistry backgrounds.
Because I was thinking mainly of idioms in this kind of context. Many idioms wouldn't be said in this context. Other idioms that have even more negative potential include but are not limited to...
"Spare the rod, spoil the child."
"One bad apple ruins the whole bunch."
"Fight fire with fire." (why the Hell would someone fight fire with fire)
"Flies are attracted more by honey than vinegar."
"Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are."
The idiom in question is "where there's smoke there's fire" and it alludes to the idea that "much ado" is never about nothing, that commotion is never born in a vacuum. This is neither true literally or figuratively (people do not operate in the same way as smoke and fire, people seem more analogous to snow avalanching down a mountain if we are to update the idiom), but the fact it's not even true literally spells out a glaring problem with even invoking the idiom. The reverse statement, "where there's fire there's smoke", isn't true either.
There’s a difference between the courts and a person. If I had to decide if someone or something is safe, I have a much lower standard than “beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
If my Uber driver is slurring and smells like cheap brandy, I’m not getting in the car, but that’s not enough to charge them with a DUI, thankfully.
That's an interesting example. Here in my city there was a case of a transport officer crashing his car into someone. He smelled of alcohol and was slurring and it was in the news cycle with great outrage and irony.
A few days later news broke that he had died of diabetes-related complications. Apparently the smell was not alcohol, it was ketones from him being hyperglycemic.
Going back to your "standards" statement, for an individual it would make sense not to get into a car this person drives. At the same time it makes sense for the court not to convict him until he is proven guilty. Both standards have their place and rightfully so.
This is a slogan, a hypothetical that applies to a spherical defendant in a vacuum. In over 90% of all US criminal convictions, the prosecution has no burden of proof.