"No" Evidence

[Elliot]

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://curi.us/2589-no-evidence

[Neo]

I remember a YouTube video you did almost three years ago where you criticized how people say there’s “no evidence”. It was eye opening. So is this article. Thanks!

[Dface]

@Elliot

And evidence is broadly overrated anyway. Lots of issues should be considered with conceptual thinking, logical reasoning, explanations, and critical arguments.

Oh evidence is broadly overrated? Havent heard of that one before. Evidence isnt the only tool one could use to think of an issue. They can use the other tools you listed too.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

In our culture, saying “all the evidence supports my side” is a great appeal to authority; if people believe your assertion is true, they’ll be really impressed. But if you say “all the arguments support my side” people aren’t as impressed. It doesn’t work as well. People seem to think that confusion about arguments is common – arguments are fallible – but evidence is more safe, reliable, trustworthy. Of course, sometimes they’re wrong, at which point they may say “the evidence changed, and I changed my mind with it” or similar. They do know the current state of the evidence can change, just as the current state of the arguments can.

Hmm. Yeah. Something that came to mind when reading this was courtrooms and evidence. Saying someone is guilty/innocent because of evidence seems good to me. Saying someone is guilty/innocent over an argument sounds bad to me. Or put another way: it sounds fine to me to put someone in jail because there was evidence. Saying they should go to jail over a good argument sounds bad.

[ActiveMind]

It seems to me you always have to use evidence in court because you’re making claims about what happened. But you would then have to use arguments to interpret the evidence and make arguments for what happened in between the evidence. Like: what secondary thing does the evidence imply even though we don’t have “direct evidence” for that specific thing? Maybe like arguing for what the defendant must have been thinking or must have known.

Also you can use arguments for why something should be considered unlawful. Maybe the events are clear but there’s arguments as to why it was justified or not.

So I would say evidence plays a larger role in establishing the events of a case and arguments can be used both for establishing the event and in determining whether the events should be deemed unlawful/unjustified.

[Elliot]

@Eternity

Or put another way: it sounds fine to me to put someone in jail because there was evidence. Saying they should go to jail over a good argument sounds bad.

Some evidence is necessary in court because you’re dealing with empirical reality and trying to say that certain events happened. But evidence always requires some interpretation and argument to figure out what it means (and to relate it to laws). Often, the arguments and interpretations are the harder, more complicated part.

[Eternity]

@Elliot

But evidence always requires some interpretation and argument to figure out what it means (and to relate it to laws). Often, the arguments and interpretations are the harder, more complicated part.

Hmm. That makes sense. If you have DNA left at a crime scene matching the defendant, the defense and prosecutions usually come up with arguments of why it’s there.

[LMD]

Yeah each side is arguing about which story best explains the evidence that has been found, right? They come up with arguments that their story makes more sense, and they try to bring in evidence that the other side can’t explain as well as they can. It’s the story, the concept of what actually happened (which incorporates the evidence) or can be reasonably argued happened, that the trial is trying to figure out and make a judgement on. (?)

[Neo]

Yeah, there are two options in a criminal court case: either the suspect is guilty or not guilty. The defense will present arguments (explanations) to show why their client is innocent. Evidence will be part of those arguments. The prosecutor will criticize those. The prosecutor will make arguments as to why the suspect is guilty. The defense will criticize those. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” refers to reasoning whether or not the prosecutor’s claim has been refuted, or at least that’s how it should be.

[Eternity]

@Neo

“Beyond a reasonable doubt” refers to reasoning whether or not the prosecutor’s claim has been refuted, or at least that’s how it should be.

? Maybe its just how you wrote it or maybe my reading is off but this sounds like “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is saying that the prosecutions case is refuted? from what i know beyond a reasonable doubt refers to the prosecutions case being so strong that there can be no reasonable doubt.

[Neo]

@Eternity

? Maybe its just how you wrote it or maybe my reading is off but this sounds like “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is saying that the prosecutions case is refuted?

To clarify, I’m trying to apply CF to criminal court cases. I think “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” should be changed to “guilty because the prosecution’s explanation hasn’t been refuted.”

@Eternity

from what i know beyond a reasonable doubt refers to the prosecutions case being so strong that there can be no reasonable doubt.

I looked up what “beyond a reasonable doubt” means. A lot of the interpretations focus on being almost “certain,” or they take a probabilistic approach—like needing to be 90% certain.

I won’t go into why those approaches are wrong, though—there are already plenty of posts on this forum that explain that.

I used to think that even with these issues, juries still get it right most of the time. Now, I’m not so sure.

[ActiveMind]

@Neo

I looked up what “beyond a reasonable doubt” means. A lot of the interpretations focus on being almost “certain,” or they take a probabilistic approach—like needing to be 90% certain.

Given justificiationism is the standard epistemology I would guess that is what they have in mind. But we could interpret unreasonable doubt as arbitrary claims like “the aliens did it” and reasonable doubt as actually known non-refuted criticism. Although “beyond” implies degrees so “without” would be better.

[ActiveMind]

The concept of looking for evidence for (or against) one idea is wrong. The only way that can work is if you find evidence directly contradicting the idea, in which case you can rule the idea out. Other than that, searching for evidence about one idea doesn’t make sense. Which evidence should you look for? Why that? There are no good answers.

So the case in which it makes sense is when you have only one idea and you think it’ll work, but it’s risky so you look for evidence before you use it.

[Elliot]

Why would you only have one idea? And if you think it’s risky you have multiple ideas. Risk is relative to alternatives like inaction which are themselves other ideas. If you don’t conceive of any alternatives, if you view something as the one and only way, then you won’t view it as risky since any downsides are unavoidable or inevitable from your point of view. It’s only if you at least begin to conceptualize that there may be alternatives that you’ll see something as risky. The idea of stopping to look for evidence to check something only makes sense if there is any alternative to doing it. And even delaying doing it to look for evidence is an alternative: it means you can do it at multiple different times so you do have multiple competing ideas.

[ActiveMind]

That makes sense.

And for abstract ideas saying “I don’t know” would be like inaction. Although we would know more if we found evidence that contradicted the idea, since we would know that that hypothesis was wrong.