Dinosaurs, monkeys and the Burden of Proof for the Extraordinary
Last edited Fri Jan 3, 2014, 01:03 AM - Edit history (2)
The burden of proof for extraordinary claims falls on proving the extraordinary. (Anything from "I have bigfoot locked in my garage" to "feathers and bricks fall at the same rate in a vacuum" and "Gravity bends the path of light waves."
This is one of those things that everybody knows, but that we sometimes selectively forget when we have an emotional interest in doing so.
You believe the burden of proof falls on extraordinary claims. You live on that basis. You do. You couldn't have made it this far in life otherwise.
You go outside and find your parked car was dented during the night. No security camera. No neighbors who witnessed it.
Was it dented by another car or a dinosaur? It could have been either one. Dinosaurs did live on Earth so it isn't a violation of any basic law of physics for a dinosaur to exist. And they (at least the bigger ones) could put a dent in a car.
Do we really hold dinosaur and fender-bender to be equal theories simply because we cannot absolutely disprove either one?
So why are exceptions made for other bizarre claims and theories? A dinosaur denting your car is less outlandish than perpetual motion machines or classic homeopathy—the belief that pure distilled water retains chemical properties of molecules that are no longer in the water. A dinosaur denting your car is likelier than a yogi or swami being able to levitate. (There is a real-world mechanism for dinosaurs, since the planet used to be full of them. There is no such mechanism for human levitation.)
Bigfoot and aliens are a bit likelier as car dent explanations, since the universe is surely teeming with intelligent life and the earth was replete with shaggy hominids more recently than it was crawling with dinosaurs. But they are still such far-fetched explanations that there is no reason to "keep an open mind" about them.
An open mind means a willingness to consider extraordinary evidence of the extraordinary, where it exists, and have an open mind about it. It does not mean humoring lies and delusions on the off chance that they may be real, even though the evidence for them is weak and shot-through with fraud, exaggeration and willful omission.
I will make a statement, here...
I am a spider monkey kept as a pet. I am able to reach a computer. I like typing, making arguments on the internet.
Do you believe me? No? Are you calling me a liar?
Do you realize that my monkey story is as plausible as most crackpot bullshit that some people actually believe? There are monkeys, monkeys are pretty bright, some spider monkey somewhere can reach a computer, their little hands are dexterous...
You have not PROVEN that I am not an monkey. (even if it is provable, but you cannot plausibly have done so at this point in time.) You have, however, determined to a very high level of probability (99.9999999% stuff) that I am not an monkey.
You are not even really considering that I am a monkey.
Does that make you a bigot? Close-minded? Sheeple?
What if six DUers make claim to be spider monkeys? What are the odds of six people making such a wild claim? There must be something to it.
Just because there is a better explanation of the "monkey" phenomenon, how can catching one monkey hoaxster prove the other claimed-monkey authors are not real? Wouldn't people trying to keep it secret that the internet is full of monkey-authors find such hoax-exposures awfully convenient?
But you do not, for a moment, gave much weight to my monkey claim, even with this compelling eye-witness testimony: "I just looked in the mirror. It's true. I AM a spider monkey!!!"
That is how we all deal with the burden of proof... sensibly. Except in certain cases where belief offers (for whatever reason) a higher pay-off than skepticism does.
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Sucks that it's true, but it is.
