When Do Extraordinary Claims Give Extraordinary Evidence? (2007) [pdf]
mason.gmu.edu
mason.gmu.edu
For example, you would assign a very low prior probability to your friend telling you that she met her 5’2” tall second cousin last Tuesday at 8:47am at 11 feet northwest of the smaller statue in a certain square. Nevertheless, after she made such a claim to you, you would likely place a high probability that the event happened as claimed. On topics like this, most people are fairly reliable.
Its the same as if someone told you they flipped a coin 100 times and got a certain sequence of heads and tails. The probability of that happening is 1/2^100, but it's only extraordinary if you predict it in advance.
That simple. The need for extraordinary evidence seems to just promote orthodoxy. Better to focus on data and methods.
For example, if someone finds a way to create mass/energy, that would be extraordinary. All existing evidence suggests mass/energy is conserved. Even if no one has tried XYZ before, the evidence of XYZ creating energy has to be weighed against the evidence of thousands of (other) processes not doing that. It's possible someone made a mistake, or the results are being interpreted incorrectly.
While there is an ideal, the reality is that "evidence" is of varying types and qualities, and that perfect evidence is not always feasible.
In the US, criminal convictions ("extraordinary" claims) require proof beyond reasonable doubt. But civil convictions ("ordinary" claims) require only a preponderance of the evidence.
So, in other words, evidence that is beyond the ordinary. If only there were a prefix that could be applied here.
But if it means talented or praiseworthy or something similar, then I whole-heatedly agree.
Your claims are mere trolling. Also, a perfect example of baseless beliefs posing as reason and without supporting evidence. Basically what you were accusing me of.
No, it's not. Maybe you should look into psi research if you truly believe that you can believe something based solely on research standards. The problem with psi research is not that the methodology is bad, it's that it's so absurd that experiments better than 99% of all published psychology research still aren't enough proof.
So the question is, if you do not believe in psi, why not? It passes the criteria you have already laid out.
Not sure what's happened in the field since or if anyone else proposed something like I did. Radin & PEAR was only thing I saw then that looked like real science with well-thought methodology. Given high percentage of prior frauds, that not being ruled out in a substantive way in what I read on the topic had me saying "really interesting but who knows" as a result. I'd like to see the experiments re-run by diverse parties w/ conservative views on subject and reliable track record. Also, while mitigating both potential fraud and impact of negativity on test subjects.
My initial response to you came from you picking an extremely controversial field of research rather than examples of widely-held or supported beliefs countered with newer, better evidence that wouldn't be dismissed immediately by readers as psi topic would. I figured, like how those do with "conspiracy theory" labels, you were trying to get my comment dismissed entirely.
Btw, people are apparently calling out for you to respond in this thread about the Bitcoin leak:
And why is Psi so immediately dismissed? It's not because people have knockdown arguments about how sealed radioactive number generators can be easily biased to produce long runs or anything like that. It's dismissed based on priors: psi is just too absurd, contradicts just too much successful physics. And I agree and don't believe in psi in the slightest. Extraordinary claims really do require extraordinary evidence.
I'm all about priors being used to prioritize what verifiers focus on or to justify strong controls in event malice or error rates are a concern. Psi is a good example of both. Nonetheless, it's not "extraordinary evidence" I'm looking for as that's almost always an ill-defined term used for dismissal by groups being challenged. I'm just looking for reliable, repeatable evidence that fits the data better.
Let me give you an example that may or may not fit but feels like it does. A common attack in computers was stack smashing where incoming data flows toward stack pointer that controls execution, overwrites it, and causes rogue execution. Discovered and rediscovered in several ways over decades with 90's forgetting what was learned. Let's pretend that didn't exist & focus on mainstream (90's onward) approach. Their theory was that it was inherent and to be countered with either cheap tactics or expensive checking. Cat and mouse game for defence and attack followed with all believing that was inevitable and different people pushing different sides. That's a widely held belief, model, supporting claims, tests, techniques, and so on over thousands of people for decades.
Now, here's how you show they're all fools without extraordinary evidence or fringe science. :) You dust off a copy of the MULTICS security evaluations from 1970's to illustrate how it reduced risk of stack overflows by making data flow away from stack pointer and into new memory where available. Much better design decision & solves root issue everyone ignores. Other systems, esp hardware, tagged memory where they recognized what a stack was and had checks that turned attacks into mere error conditions. The root cause is simple to explain, the fixes are ordinary checks, the tests that they work are ordinary... everything here is simple, ordinary, and totally defies a whole industry worth of systems programming theory and practice. The "priors"... common wisdom & sociological factors here... prevent acceptance or adoption of this with many other tactics remaining. Although a select few radicals in academia and industry did implement it with effectiveness prior data showed.
That's what I'm talking about. We just do science as usual but with a different perspective, test, model, or whatever. Occasionally, one of these contradicts a lot of accepted beliefs or tests because they inherently biased themselves with narrow view or incorrect assumptions the new experiment doesn't have. So, people might re-run the data, check it, attempt to reject it, confirm it, whatever. And I still haven't found the need to define the concept of extraordinary evidence in any of this: just basic science and evidence.