20th November 2008, 12:10 PM
Explain. How is "guilt" the default claim? Most people did NOT commit the crime in question, therefor innocense is the default null claim. The other must be established.
By saying that this document must be true until shown otherwise, you are saying it's "guilty" until proven "innocent". That's just not how science works. Science can't work from a framework of thinking every single claim is simultaneously true until something's falsified. In fact how could you falsify things in that sort of framework? No, they come up with a hypothesis and then attempt to find evidence to support it. An absence of evidence, where one would expect to find said evidence, IS evidence of absence.
By saying that this document must be true until shown otherwise, you are saying it's "guilty" until proven "innocent". That's just not how science works. Science can't work from a framework of thinking every single claim is simultaneously true until something's falsified. In fact how could you falsify things in that sort of framework? No, they come up with a hypothesis and then attempt to find evidence to support it. An absence of evidence, where one would expect to find said evidence, IS evidence of absence.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)