{"id":15244,"date":"2020-07-13T15:06:29","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T15:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=15244"},"modified":"2020-07-13T15:06:29","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T15:06:29","slug":"new-comment-on-reddit-1495","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=15244","title":{"rendered":"New comment on reddit"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"md\">\n<p>Most often, the example case given is something like, &quot;there is no gold in Romania&quot; (how I first heard it)<\/p>\n<p>You cannot prove a <em>negative<\/em>, because you don&#39;t have perfect knowledge &#8211; you could survey <em>every<\/em> Romanian in Romania, determine they have no gold, and make the statement &#8211; but you have to assume:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>they are not lying<\/li>\n<li>no one acquired\/accumulated gold after you asked<\/li>\n<li>there isn&#39;t some hidden reserve no one knows about<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another example is, &quot;there is no intelligent life in the universe (except on Earth)&quot;<\/p>\n<p>How could you <em>possibly<\/em> &quot;prove&quot; that statement? Do you <strong><em>know<\/em><\/strong> the status of <em>every<\/em> possible form of &quot;life&quot; that could <em>possibly<\/em> exist? Do you <strong><em>know<\/em><\/strong> the current status of <em>every<\/em> planet\/asteroid\/meteor\/star\/whathaveyounot that exists?<\/p>\n<p>The answer to both of those is clearly &quot;no&quot; &#8211; because you (and I) are finite creatures bound by time<\/p>\n<p>If you were a transcendent being (eg the Judeo-Christian view of God), you could definitively state (without &quot;proof&quot;, because you were omniscient) something and &quot;know&quot; it was true<\/p>\n<p>But you&#39;re not God (or, if you are, you and me need to chat!)<\/p>\n<p>All you need is to introduce (or prove) the possibility of imperfect knowledge, and you can &quot;prove that you can&#39;t prove something&quot;<\/p>\n<p>FWIW &#8211; this is how the American legal system is <em>supposed<\/em> to work: when an accused person is convicted of a crime, it is <em>supposed<\/em> to be &quot;beyond reasonable doubt&quot;. The prosecution is <em>not<\/em> <strong><em>required<\/em><\/strong> to &quot;prove&quot; guilt. The defense is <em>not<\/em> <strong><em>required<\/em><\/strong> to &quot;prove&quot; innocence. I once sat on a murder trial jury where we <strong><em>wanted<\/em><\/strong> the accused to be &quot;not guilty&quot;. We <strong><em>wanted<\/em><\/strong> someone else to be guilty. But the defense was unable to introduce &quot;reasonable doubt&quot; to the case. Was the defendant <em>proved<\/em> to be guilty? No. Not <em>directly<\/em> &#8211; the prosecution didn&#39;t have the defendant on video, no &quot;full&quot; eye-witnesses, no &quot;perfect&quot; <em>singular<\/em> evidence was presented. But <em>all<\/em> of the circumstantial evidence added up to, &quot;the defendant is guilty&quot;.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>July 13, 2020 at 10:56AM<br \/>\nvia reddit https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/explainlikeimfive\/comments\/hq8gbn\/eli5_how_can_you_prove_that_you_cant_prove\/fxxna8r?utm_source=ifttt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most often, the example case given is something like, &quot;there is no gold in Romania&quot; (how I first heard it) You cannot prove a negative, because you don&#39;t have perfect knowledge &#8211; you could survey every Romanian in Romania, determine they have no gold, and make the statement &#8211; but you have to assume: they &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=15244\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">New comment on reddit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[972],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-15244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blih","tag-reddit"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15245,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15244\/revisions\/15245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15244"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=15244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}