Quote from: organofcorti on January 13, 2013, 02:10:46 AM

Quote from: elux on January 13, 2013, 01:53:42 AM

Quote from: Inaba on January 12, 2013, 09:26:53 PM

Ok... you do know that I asked for proof right? What you've provided is you restating the same statements you've already made. Proof requires an outside authority qualified to speak on the matter.

Stop. You are wrong. Your logical fallacy is: Appeal to Authority.
.......

Inaba's question could simply be rephrased as a request for external arbitration by an acknowledged expert in a field, who would need to provide provable conclusions. It's not an appeal to authority, which instead would be a statement such as "Well, Stephen Hawking thinks you're wrong".

Would you want medical advice from an engineer, or engineering advice from a circus gymnast? Or an opinion about climate change from a geologist?

That's all. Please do continue.

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You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof

"Modern man is so committed to empirical knowledge, that he sets the standard for evidence higher than either side in his disputes can attain, thus suffering his disputes to be settled by philosophical arguments as to which party must be crushed under the burden of proof."
-- Alan Crowe

There's a story - in accordance with Poe's Law, I have no idea whether it's a joke or it actually happened - about a creationist who was trying to claim a "gap" in the fossil record, two species without an intermediate fossil having been discovered. When an intermediate species was discovered, the creationist responded, "Aha! Now there are two gaps."

[...]

After all - in the absence of your unobtainable particular proof, there may be plenty of other arguments by which you can hope to figure out whether you live in a world where the hypothesis of interest is true, or alternatively false. It takes work to provide you with those arguments. It takes work to provide you with extrapolations of existing knowledge to prior probabilities, and items of evidence with which to update those prior probabilities, to form a prediction about the unseen. Someone who does the work to provide those arguments is doing the best they can by you; throwing the arguments out the window is not just irrational, but logically rude.

And I emphasize this, because it seems to me that the underlying metaphor of demanding particular proof is to say as if, "You are supposed to provide me with a video of apes evolving into humans, I am entitled to see it with my own eyes, and it is your responsibility to make that happen; and if you do not provide me with that particular proof, you are deficient in your duties of argument, and I have no obligation to believe you." And this is, in the first place, bad math as probability theory. And it is, in the second place, an attitude of trying to be defensible rather than accurate, the attitude of someone who wants to be allowed to retain the beliefs they have, and not the attitude of someone who is honestly curious and trying to figure out which possible world they live in, by whatever signs are available. But if these considerations do not move you, then even in terms of the original and flawed metaphor, you are in the wrong: you are entitled to arguments, but not that particular proof.

Ignoring someone's hard work to provide you with the arguments you need - the extrapolations from existing knowledge to make predictions about events not yet observed, the items of evidence that are suggestive even if not definite and that fit some possible worlds better than others - and instead demanding proof they can't possibly give you, proof they couldn't be expected to provide even if they were right - that is logically rude. It is invalid as probability theory, foolish on the face of it, and logically rude.

And of course if you go so far as to act smug about the absence of an unobtainable proof, or chide the other for their credulity, then you have crossed the line into outright ordinary rudeness as well.

It is likewise a madness of decision theory to hold off pending positive proof until it's too late to do anything; the whole point of decision theory is to choose under conditions of uncertainty, and that is not how the expected value of information is likely to work out. Or in terms of plain common sense: There are signs and portents, smoke alarms and hot doorknobs, by which you can hope to determine whether your house is on fire before your face melts off your skull; and to delay leaving the house until after your face melts off, because only this is the positive and particular proof that you demand, is decision-theoretical insanity. It doesn't matter if you cloak your demand for that unobtainable proof under the heading of scientific procedure, saying, "These are the proofs you could not obtain even if you were right, which I know you will not be able to obtain until the time for action has long passed, which surely any scientist would demand before confirming your proposition as a scientific truth." It's still nuts.