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Author Topic: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof  (Read 11810 times)

SirQuiamus

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #60 on: September 20, 2015, 03:29:55 pm »

You don't need to believe in dinosaurs to know that they exist. One of them will shit on your head in the park some day, and that's called "learning it the hard way."
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #61 on: September 20, 2015, 03:30:35 pm »

It does matter though. It matters when the people who've seen evidence aren't a tiny minority, it effectively rules out the possibility of fossils being a conspiracy. In general if common knowledge isn't true, it's either a lie or just mistakenly wrong. I seriously doubt that those scientists could manage to keep millions of people on the quiet, so you're left with everyone who thinks they've seen a fossil just being wrong.
Is that possible? No doubt. But it's pretty unlikely.

I feel like you're evading the issue.

LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #62 on: September 20, 2015, 03:34:48 pm »

I have a fossil, so I am the 500

I've personally dug up a fossil, actually. The others at the dig were all excited that I discovered a...whatever it was. Some kind of shelled sea creature I think.

Flying Dice

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #63 on: September 20, 2015, 03:38:50 pm »

It does matter though. It matters when the people who've seen evidence aren't a tiny minority, it effectively rules out the possibility of fossils being a conspiracy. In general if common knowledge isn't true, it's either a lie or just mistakenly wrong. I seriously doubt that those scientists could manage to keep millions of people on the quiet, so you're left with everyone who thinks they've seen a fossil just being wrong.
Is that possible? No doubt. But it's pretty unlikely.

I feel like you're evading the issue.

You avoided the point he made and swapped to a vague generalization. How many people have seen in person or physically touched a fossil? Probably not every living human being, but a substantial portion can, and just about anyone could if they exerted themselves (barring those who are imprisoned &c.). More than enough to, as Graknorke said, make any potential conspiracy regarding the existence of dinosaurs laughably easy to disprove. You're continuing to evade the issue yourself: rather than addressing this point, you made a vague statement trying to shift focus onto him without giving a meaningful answer.

How many people have physically seen or touched a deity in a way that is testable and falsifiable?
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Graknorke

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #64 on: September 20, 2015, 03:39:13 pm »

Could you explain how then?
If the overwhelming volume of what you're being told matches up, for it to be wrong it's got to either be a mass lie or they're wrong. If it's a lie then it's a really well-constructed lie, and if they're wrong then it's probably complex enough for so many people to be mistaken about. And when the issue is something as simple as having seen a fossil, it's hard to imagine that they're all wrong about it. As a result there's no particularly compelling reason to think you shouldn't believe them.

EDIT: And ninjad by FD who said things like I did but better.
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #65 on: September 20, 2015, 04:56:25 pm »

You avoided the point he made and swapped to a vague generalization.

No, he picked a stylistic writing gimmick out of one sentence to object to and ignored the content of the post.

Here is my post. Here is his response.

I've already edited out the number. I've already stated it was arbitrary. Arguing over the number of people is completely missing the point.

Analogy:

Statement:
"Climbing into the mouth of a shark and whapping it on the nose with a baseball bat while daring it to bite you is probably a bad idea. Sharks have pointy teeth. They have a strong bite. It would probably hurt. You might die. As the thousands of people who've been bitten by sharks can attest to, it's probably a bad idea."

Reponse:
"I don't think there have been thousands of shark attack victims."

Do you see how that's completely missing the point? That's what happened here.



Could you explain how then?

1) Remove the entire paragraph containing the sentence with the irrelevant number you're nitpicking over, and the concept still stands:

But...you believe that you can casually go and confirm this thing, because you already believe in it.

Hey, maybe you're right. Maybe you can. But, you don't believe it because you've done it. You believe it because you believe it. It's entirely circular. Your faith that you can go and verify dinosaurs fossils is because you believe in dinosaur fossils. Not because you've verified dinosaur fossils. Maybe fossils are real. But that's not why you believe in them.

2) Let's sat there's only one person on the entire planet who is believing a thing without any evidence for that thing. That one person is believing something without evidence.

Right?

Debating over the number of people in that situation doesn't change the fact for the ones in that situation.

Quote
It matters when the people who've seen evidence aren't a tiny minority, it effectively rules out the possibility of fossils being a conspiracy. In general if common knowledge isn't true, it's either a lie or just mistakenly wrong. I seriously doubt that those scientists could manage to keep millions of people on the quiet, so you're left with everyone who thinks they've seen a fossil just being wrong.
Is that possible? No doubt. But it's pretty unlikely.

"People around me believe X" is not a logically valid reason to believe X.  "Lots of people believe it" isn't either. There's even a formal, named logical fallcy for it.

I'm sure without any prompting from me you can think of times and places in history where "lots of people" believed things that you would agree were false. Do you need me to give you examples? What about, say...medical leeches? At one time, it was general consensus belief that using leeches to drain blood from the wounded was an effective solution.

You're basically saying that, if all these people believe X, it seems improbable that there'd be a conspiracy involving that many people, so the only other possibility that makes sense is that maybe all those people are just wrong, and tat's just unlikely...because how could so many people be wrong?

Well, lots of people being wrong has happened a lot of times. Saying that it "seems unlikely" that so many people would be wrong doesn't make a lot sense when it's so easy to give examples of lots of people being wrong. Medical leeches. Piltdown man. That Christopher Columbus discovered america. If you want to get political, in various times and places lots of people have believed in slavery, oppressing women, invading your neighbors and sacrificing captives to their god. Are you seriously going to stand behind the "lots of people believe in this, so it's probably right" thinking?

Lots of people believing incorrect things is very common. Google it and you'll get entertaining long lists. Or think about religion. There are billions of people who very strongly believe things that are mutuyally exclusive with what billions of other people very strongly believe. So, is that a conpiracy? Or are lots of people just wrong?

Either way, your suggestion that "wow, lots of people believe it and it seem unlikely they'd all be wrong or conspiring to deceive me" is very obviously not a very well thought out response. I'm kind of amazed that you even went there.

Now, are you going to continue with that line of thinking, or are you going to go back and address the post that you ignored to instead focus on a completely irrelevant phrasing gimmick?

Graknorke

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #66 on: September 20, 2015, 05:02:20 pm »

You're basically saying that, if all these people believe X, it seems improbable that there'd be a conspiracy involving that many people, so the only other possibility that makes sense is that maybe all those people are just wrong, and tat's just unlikely...because how could so many people be wrong?
So are we going in general terms now or specific to the dinosaur scenario? Because I said that you can assume they aren't wrong because of how hard it would be to be wrong about seeing a fossil. The other things you listed are things people have far less of a clue about. But I also mentioned that before. I never said that lots of people can't be wrong, I said that lots of people probably aren't wrong about something it's so difficult to be wrong about.

Looks like you're trying to misrepresent what I said for the purpose of being a dick about it. Which come to think of it is pretty funny given that you're going off at me for not addressing the point.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2015, 05:08:05 pm by Graknorke »
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #67 on: September 20, 2015, 05:09:42 pm »

are you going to go back and address the post that you ignored to instead focus on a completely irrelevant phrasing gimmick?

Graknorke

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #68 on: September 20, 2015, 05:11:57 pm »

But it's not a phrasing gimmick. It's the entire thrust of the thing you're saying.

"I think that people can be trusted to be pretty accurate on whether they've seen a thing or not"
"You shouldn't believe things just because other people do!"
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Bohandas

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #69 on: September 20, 2015, 06:25:26 pm »

You're basically saying that, if all these people believe X, it seems improbable that there'd be a conspiracy involving that many people, so the only other possibility that makes sense is that maybe all those people are just wrong, and tat's just unlikely...because how could so many people be wrong?

Well, lots of people being wrong has happened a lot of times. Saying that it "seems unlikely" that so many people would be wrong doesn't make a lot sense when it's so easy to give examples of lots of people being wrong. Medical leeches. Piltdown man. That Christopher Columbus discovered america. If you want to get political, in various times and places lots of people have believed in slavery, oppressing women, invading your neighbors and sacrificing captives to their god. Are you seriously going to stand behind the "lots of people believe in this, so it's probably right" thinking?

This is a strawman. There's a difference between being wrong and a deliberate misinformation conspiracy.

(Furthermore the Columbus issue is a technicality. Discovered vs. rediscovered isn't that significant a difference.)

Edit:
On rereading it may not be a strawman - I think I mossed a few sentences - but the point about Columbus still stands

Additionally, the current interpretation is the least outrageous interpretation we have so far. If it's going to be displaced it will either be by an explanation that nobody's ever thought of yet or by the discovery of a truly overwhelming amount of newly discovered evidence.
« Last Edit: September 20, 2015, 06:34:33 pm by Bohandas »
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #70 on: September 20, 2015, 06:40:33 pm »

This is a strawman.

How so?

EDIT:
Ok, if you're now saying in your edit that its' not, that's fine too.

Quote
There's a difference between being wrong and a deliberate misinformation conspiracy.

Why is that relevant? He suggested both options. That's fine. Error and conspiracy both exist. Which might or might not be the case here is irrelevant. His logical process is flawed. Even if his conclusions are right, the process he's using to get there is invalid.

Example:
"Apples are fruit. Apples grow on trees. Oranges are fruit. Therefore oranges grow on trees."

That doesn't work. That's incorrect. Yes, oranges grow on trees, but the thinking that led to that conclusion is not valid. It's not a strawman for me to point that out. The process that people use to conclude that dinosaurs were real is not logically sound

Quote
Furthermore the Columbus issue is a technicality.

So, shall I assume that since you dismissed that one example, you agree with all the others? It's trivial to give examples of situations where lots of people believe things that are wrong.


@FlyingDice: You accused me of evading the point that Graknorke made after he evaded mine. I attempted to respond to it in the second half of this post. Do you find that response sufficient to retract your accusation?
« Last Edit: September 20, 2015, 06:42:27 pm by LordBucket »
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Bohandas

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #71 on: September 20, 2015, 08:37:00 pm »

This is a strawman.

How so?

EDIT:
Ok, if you're now saying in your edit that its' not, that's fine too.

Quote
There's a difference between being wrong and a deliberate misinformation conspiracy.

Why is that relevant? He suggested both options. That's fine. Error and conspiracy both exist. Which might or might not be the case here is irrelevant. His logical process is flawed. Even if his conclusions are right, the process he's using to get there is invalid.

I originally missed the sentence where he transitiomed from the one idea to the other so it looked to me like his conclusions regarding the one derived from the premise for the other
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Urist McScoopbeard

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #72 on: September 21, 2015, 12:32:51 am »

Statement A: something

Statement B: something

Statement C: something

Well... uh, I guess something is probably true? Right?

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IronyOwl

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #73 on: September 21, 2015, 02:10:34 am »

My position is that for most people, "religious fervor," as you put it, is their mechanism of belief, whether or not their specific beliefs are what would generally be described as religious. Belief in dinosaurs is merely a good example of this. The typical person has no evidence for the existence of dinosaurs for which there is not a typical religious belief equivalent. ("A teacher told me"/"A priest told me") ("I read about dinosaurs in a book"/"I read about god in a  book.") ("There are dinosaur museums, why would they lie?"/"There are religious museums, why would they lie?")
I'm not sure where the proper entry point for this conversation is, but it seems to me that you're paying attention to the principle but throwing out all the numbers. Having faith that one's shoes are still where one left them and having faith that Klingons are real, on Mars, and secretly controlling Hollywood are both expressions of faith, but on nowhere near the same scale or involving the same issues. The fact that any shoe-confirming or Marhollygon-disparaging evidence is ultimately subject to the same problems doesn't mean they're both equally valid and likely notions, it just means reality is a dick and there's this weird universal complication around, usually only showing up with fairly advanced concepts or as pyschological issues.

Similarly, asking "and how do you know that?" repeatedly tends to result in earlier, more numerous, and more serious problems along the priest chain than the scientist chain. "Everyone assures me there are fossils" is not ironclad proof by itself, but it's still arguably better than "Everyone assures me there's a God," and tends to hold up a lot deeper. Believing scientists and believing priests is not (or at least doesn't have to be) the same thing, because the former's web of assumptions is much more firmly anchored.


If you raise a child to believe X, it's generally unlikely that they'll go seeking verification, and even if they do, the burden of proof they require will tend to much less for confirmation of things they already believe. It doesn't matter what the X is.

Yes, sometimes it happens that people seek to verify and sometimes change their beliefs. It does happen sometimes. Most of the time it doesn't. At least not without significant emotional incentive. Logic and evidence are generally ineffective means of inducing belief.
I'd similarly contest this, or at least part of this, on two, maybe three levels.

One, people tend not to "seek verification" for much of anything, so saying people don't do it when they've been raised to believe X is, to me, overstating the importance of raising people to believe X. Inertia is powerful and most people don't care about most things, but it's hard to tell how potent X-raising is when any default tends to stick around until dislodged.

Two, in my experience people are really only stubborn about things they care about- so usually instinctive and/or cultural things. Tell somebody their god is stupid and made up, and they'll get mad. Tell somebody that glass is not, in fact, a slow-flowing liquid, and they'll be skeptical but not angry, just dubious. Until, of course, you make it about something they care about- if you're a jackass about telling them what an idiot they are, they're likely to respond that you're the idiot for not even knowing something so obviously true. But at that point, it's just tribal bullshit, not directly related to the truth or falseness of the actual statement.

Three... honestly? In my experience, even when people do care, it often feels like they know the thing itself isn't the actual issue half the time. Religion is a big offender here- I mean, really? You want to tell me, with a straight face, that there's an entity powerful enough to create the entire world, who is deeply interested in your personal actions, and you're not learning original Hebrew and ancient Jewish culture to better understand what this terribly sky terror wants and is like? But even with social issues and the like, it often feels like the issue isn't that they genuinely believe that every scientific study that contradicts them is irrelevant or fraudulent, it feels like they just don't care because that's not the real issue. At a bare minimum, I'd wager a lot of people aren't nearly as convinced of their own arguments as they are concerned about what would happen if the other guys won.

Sports team favoritism or friendly trash talk would of course be the poster children for this concept, since they know and admit it most of the time, but still often look pretty identical to people arguing deeply held beliefs. I can't swear they're the same or at what frequency they're the same, but it seems to me that it's a lot more often than you'd think.


TL;DR: I think religious fervor and similar-looking convictions are often tribal chants more than literal statements of genuine belief.
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Antioch

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #74 on: September 21, 2015, 06:57:13 am »

When I was younger I once asked my mom if she had any sources of scientific evidence that showed that cow's milk (which I always hated) is good for you. She almost completely freaked out and reacted among the lines of "how dare you question something that is so obviously true".

Turned out I am lactose intolerant.
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