The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[asteckley]

This is a plain strawman; Stolfi does not say it fails because he would do it differently, but instead he points to the absolutely baffling set of choices the supposed forger made and point out your theory doesn't really account for them. (edited because I mixed up who was saying what)

Umm no... Obviously, he did not literally state “I would have done it differently”. The point is that his reasoning effectively relies on that same premise (which is quite different from a strawman argument). His claim about the “baffling choices” of a supposed forger assumes those choices are implausible because they don’t match what he considers logical or expected behavior. He is not alone -- others have put forth a similar argument against the forger hypothesis.

However, that line of reasoning isn’t based on objective evidence—it’s based on personal assumptions about what a forger “should” do. In reality, forgers often deliberately include unexpected or contradictory features precisely to make an artifact seem authentic, or to anticipate and manipulate skepticism. They may intentionally aim for such a strategic double-bluff: the less the object looks like a forgery, the more convincing it becomes.

So while it’s important to evaluate every piece of evidence carefully, dismissing the forgery hypothesis because the artifact doesn’t match one’s own expectations of a forger’s methods is one of the weakest arguments we can make.