{"id":4535,"date":"2020-11-28T15:22:46","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T15:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/?p=4535"},"modified":"2020-11-28T15:22:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T15:22:46","slug":"do-extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/2020\/11\/28\/do-extraordinary-claims-require-extraordinary-evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DO EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, absolutely not.<\/p>\n

First, there\u2019s a definitional issue. What\u2019s an \u201cextraordinary claim\u201d and what\u2019s \u201cextraordinary evidence?\u201d Those terms are almost never defined by the proponents of the slogan, which means they\u2019re free to adjust the meaning at anytime and push the burden of proof higher and higher.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Second, if the slogan were true, we could hardly ever have confidence in a whole bevy of extraordinarily improbable events, like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or consider a person winning the lottery, who we\u2019ll call \u201cDon.\u201d Let\u2019s say Don tells you he won the mega million lottery. Is that an extraordinary claim? Yes, certainly from a probability standpoint it\u2019s very unlikely Don won the million dollar lottery. But does that mean you need \u201cextraordinary evidence\u201d to believe that it is likely that Don is telling the truth? No, of course not. Regular evidence, like Don\u2019s winning lottery ticket, would suffice.<\/p>\n

Third, the fatal flaw is that although the slogan is catchy, it fails to appreciate\u00a0all of the factors<\/strong>\u00a0needed to asses the probability that an event occurred. One factor forgotten by the slogan is the likelihood that if the extraordinary event had\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0occurred, what\u2019s the probability that we\u2019d have the evidence that we currently do suggesting the unlikely event\u2019s occurrence?<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s go back to the lottery for a moment. Consider a pick in the Mega Ball Million, for which the odds are 300 million to one. If the slogan were absolutely true, the evidence presented by the nightly news claiming to have the winning number would be swamped by the improbability that the reported pick was in fact the winning number.<\/p>\n

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But in assessing the likelihood that the news reported the winning number correctly, one question to ask is, what\u2019s the likelihood that the news would\u2019ve announced that particular number if it were not in fact the winning t<\/em>icket? If that probability is sufficiently low, it can counterbalance any intrinsic improbability in the reported number itself.<\/p>\n

So the evidence that it takes to counteract the low probability of a reported winning lottery number needn\u2019t be enormous or unusual at all, which is why you\u2019ve probably never questioned the reported lottery pick. Rational thinking tells you it just needs to be more probable given the truth of the hypothesis than its falsehood.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s apply this to the election. One question to ask in assessing the claims of a stolen election is\u00a0what\u2019s the likelihood that in all contested states, there would be dozens of eyewitnesses attesting to fraud and numerous statistical irregularities strongly indicative of fraud, if election fraud (extraordinary event) did not occur?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like with the lottery, if the probability is sufficiently low that we would\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>have dozens of witnesses swearing to fraud and numerous statistical indicators of fraud unless fraud had in fact occurred \u2014 then normal evidence of fraud is sufficient to counteract the intrinsic improbability of a stolen presidential election.<\/p>\n

Recap<\/strong>: the phrase \u201cextraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence\u201d is pithy, but logically problematic. In my experience, it\u2019s often used to deceive people during a debate by allowing the proponent to shift the burden of evidence higher and higher without ever fully considering\u00a0all probabilities involved\u00a0in assessing the truth of the claim based on the known evidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although the slogan is catchy, it fails to appreciate all of the factors needed to asses the probability that an event occurred. Most importantly, the likelihood that if the extraordinary event had not occurred, what\u2019s the probability that we\u2019d have the evidence that we do?<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For example, consider a pick in the lottery, for which the odds are a 300 million to one. If the slogan were true, the evidence presented by the lottery commission announcing the winning pick would be swamped by the improbability that reported pick was in fact the winning number.<\/span><\/div>\n
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But the evidence that it takes to counterbalance the low probability of a person\u2019s winning lottery pick needn\u2019t be enormous or unusual at all. It\u2019s just needs to be more probable given the truth of the hypothesis than its falsehood.<\/p>\n

In the lottery context, what\u2019s the likelihood that the lottery commission would\u2019ve announced a particular number if it weren\u2019t the winning pick?<\/p>\n

If that probability is sufficiently low, it can counterbalance any intrinsic improbability in the number itself.
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\nIn the election context, we ask what\u2019s the likelihood that in all contested states, we\u2019d have dozens of eyewitnesses attesting fraud and numerous statistical regularities strongly indicative of fraud, if election fraud (extraordinary event) did not occur?<\/p>\n

If the probability is sufficiently low that we would not have dozens of witnesses to fraud and numerous statistical indicators of fraud unless fraud had occurred, then evidence of fraud can counterbalance the intrinsic improbability of a stolen election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DO EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE? No, absolutely not. First, there\u2019s a definitional issue. What\u2019s an \u201cextraordinary claim\u201d and what\u2019s \u201cextraordinary evidence?\u201d Those terms are almost never defined by the proponents of the slogan, which means they\u2019re free to adjust the meaning at anytime and push the burden of proof higher and higher. Second, if … Sigue leyendo Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4536,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions\/4536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthcounts.com\/blogtraducciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}