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12/06/2016 10:01 am  #1


The Burden of Proof

After the recent election Donald Trump stated this:

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

There is no evidence to support Trump’s claim.
So, in the face of a rather extraordinary claim which is NOT supported by fact, how did our leaders react?

 Reince Priebus, currently the chairman of the Republican National Committee and Mr. Trump’s pick for chief of staff, told CBS’s John Dickerson that “no one really knows” if millions of people voted illegally. “It’s possible.”

Paul Ryan, speaker of the House, told CBS’s “60 Minutes,” “I have no knowledge of such things,”

On Sunday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that it was Mr. Trump’s “right to express his opinion as president-elect.” When pushed to admit that the illegal-voting claim was not true, Mr. Pence shifted the burden of proof away from Mr. Trump, even though Mr. Trump has accused millions of Americans of committing a crime. “Look,” Mr. Pence said, “I don’t know that that’s a false statement, George, and neither do you.”

Troubling.
We seem to have crossed the Rubicon in American politics and embraced the defective logic of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. A world where one can say anything, and demand that you treat the idea as credible unless the doubter can disprove it.

This is dangerously illogical.

Some people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove assertions rather than of presenter to prove them, as if we were not justified in rejecting a statement unless we can prove it false.  This is, of course, a mistake. The burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter.... If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. *


The Burden of proof lies upon a person making claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others. There is no burden on anyone to disprove assertions. 

This is more than just some arcane conversational nicety. It is the basis for logical, reasoned argument. Without it, we would live in the warped world of the conspiracy theorist.

Reasoned discussion would cease as we all advanced fanciful ideas and demanded that they were all treated as equally credible.

I could assert that Putin has a machine that controls Donald Trump’s thoughts, and challenge the reader To “prove that he doesn’t”.

Why stop there. I could assert that my dog is telepathically linked to the Pope.
Silly, you say. Well, prove that he isn’t.

Or this. On a certain planet revolving around Sirius there is a race of donkeys who speak the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics. You could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? 

What a mess it would be.


* See Russell's Teapot

Last edited by Goose (12/06/2016 10:32 am)


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

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