>You can't prove a negative.

>You can't prove a negative.
Why do people think this? Of course you can. For example: There is not an elephant behind you. Now turn around. No elephant? Just like that, you proved a negative.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    because reddit tier atheistcucks and teenagers like to deny God but spend all there brain power on smooth brain 1 liners

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >[rant] [screech] [autistic tantrum]
      Calm down lol

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >turn around
      >god is not behind me

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        God is everywhere

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          not necessarily, but that is possible

          the two are not simultaneously exclusive, mutually speaking

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >doesn't even manage to disprove Islamic theology with reddit one-liner
        better call r/wicca for backup

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    yeah but did you ever see the clown that hides from gay people

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Maybe there was one before but it ran away right when you turned around, did you check? Maybe it's an invisible elephant. Maybe it's 1000 miles away behind you.

    Anyway, the reason the principle gets invoked is because otherwise you'd have to search forever to prove "there are no bigfoots in North America" or "there are no unicorns anywhere in the world"

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Maybe there was one before but it ran away right when you turned around, did you check?
      You could use these same sorts of arguments to negative positive claims. If I said there IS an elephant behind me, and turned around and saw one, you could always say "well, maybe you're just hallucinating it"
      >Anyway, the reason the principle gets invoked is because otherwise you'd have to search forever to prove "there are no bigfoots in North America"
      Why not just invoke the law of parsimony?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >you could always say "well, maybe you're just hallucinating it"
        That would make it rather difficult to prove anything exists.
        >Why not just invoke the law of parsimony?
        Why would the law of parsimony be relevant here? Are you confused?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >That would make it rather difficult to prove anything exists.
          Therefore you can dismiss the possibility?
          >Why would the law of parsimony be relevant here? Are you confused?
          I think you can dismiss the existence of unicorns through the fact that if they had existed for centuries and centuries we probably would've caught one by now. Of course it's possible that maybe they just miraculously have some extraordinary ability to prevent evidence of themselves from being left behind, but isn't the former a smaller assumption? And, if this argument is valid, is it not a better argument than "You can't prove a negative therefore I am justified in believing a negative"

          >If I said there IS an elephant behind me, and turned around and saw one, you could always say "well, maybe you're just hallucinating it"
          We can test and verify the presence of the elephant

          What if the test is broken?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Therefore you can dismiss the possibility?
            I'm saying that if you won't accept visual/physical proof that something exists, that makes it hard to prove anything.

            >you can dismiss the existence of unicorns through the fact that if they had existed for centuries and centuries we probably would've caught one by now
            The okapi (once called the "African unicorn" appropriately enough) was only known from pygmy tales until the 20th century. The kodomo dragon was only known from rumors of "land crocodiles" until the 20th century. Machu Picchu was discovered (if you can call it that) when some American tourist asked locals if they knew of any cool incan ruins in the area in the 20th century. The Terracotta Army and mausoleum of the first emperor of China was discovered by some farmers digging a well, in the 20th century.

            Granted, the chances of undiscovered cryptids or ancient cities still remaining today is very small, but imagine going back to the early 20th century and explaining to the people who had just discovered the okapi and the komodo dragon that if any cryptids existed we'd have surely found a specimen by now.
            Or consider the kouprey, a sort of water buffalo native to Indochina. It was observed in the wild and some specimens were obtained in the early 20th century, but it hasn't been sighted since the 60s. A dedicated effort to catch it on camera in 2011 failed to find any. So does that mean it's extinct now? Well, that's quite probable, but it's also considered probable enough that there are still some specimens left in the wild (perhaps even dozens) that it's still classified as critically endangered rather than extinct. Because it's almost impossible to conclusively prove a negative. All you need to decisively prove that koupreys still exist is to catch or film one, but if you want to prove they're extinct with the same certainty you'd have to cut down every tree and send fleets of drones and satellites to film every square inch of ground.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >What if the test is broken?
            You do a lot of different tests, many times, and done by several different people
            If they all say there's an elephant, we can assume there's an elephant until someone proves them wrong

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >If I said there IS an elephant behind me, and turned around and saw one, you could always say "well, maybe you're just hallucinating it"
        We can test and verify the presence of the elephant

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Can't prove anything technically

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Keep going far enough behind me and there might be an elephant

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    People don't understand logic, apparently.
    Any positive statement can be reformulated into a negative one.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      nuh uh

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      *ahem*

      A is A

      A is not A

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Nobody says that you can’t prove a negative. The closest you’ll have heard is “I don’t need to prove a negative, you need to prove the positive”

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Much much harder to do frankly quite annoying.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >There is not an elephant behind you. Now turn around. No elephant? Just like that, you proved a negative.
    Just say that the elephant is invisible and completely undetectable by any means available to humans. What now?

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Because it's absurd. A negative has no existence. The absence of something is not something.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The elephant just follows you round, he's still behind you.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      h-he's fast!

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        M-MASAKA

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    evidence of absence =/= absence of evidence

    strictly speaking, you need to prove impossibility in the strong sense of the word to make a strong negative claim

    this can be done somewhat rigorously in mths and lgl matters, and this is the context from which the dilemma retains it's relevancy

    evidence proves some thing, no evidence does not prove any thing one way or the other

    burden of proof is a fantastic rule of thumb

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      so this applies to so called rape then yes?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Prove beyond a reasonable standard

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The elephant is invisible.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The point is not that you can’t prove a negative, but that the burden of proof lies with the one making a positive claim. It’s less about what you can and can’t do and more about whose responsibility it is to provide proof for their claims.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You mean evidence, not proof

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    what if it's an invisible elephant?

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >The Gulf War will not take place
    >The Gulf War is not really taking place
    >The Gulf War did not take place

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