The Burden of Proof: Why People Must Support Their Arguments

> If you think an opinion is incredibly ignorant or utterly depraved you aren’t forced to engage it by feeding the troll. Attempting to kill the bad opinion through lazy evidence requests just contributes an alternate form of trolling.

This holds up in internet discussions, but not in all dialogues. For example, scientists and politicians could do terribly stupid/harmful/wasteful things if they aren't held accountable for demonstrably false statements.

So if you can accurately say of some claim "there is no evidence of that" then the claim is completely refuted. Thus asking for evidence is a polite way of pointing out when something is completely made up.

Sure, if someone makes a claim that is widely established, like climate change or natural selection, then of course some rando on the web asking for yet more evidence is probably trying to derail the conversation.

But if a claim is not widely established, like intelligent design, then a request for evidence is perfectly reasonable. There can be no a-priori convincing counter argument without referring to facts in the real world. Indeed, almost not claim is refutable a-priori without real world facts.

So given an unreasonable and unsupported claim on the internet I suppose we can 1) assume the poster is a troll and ignore them or 2) assume they and the audience are genuine and point out their statement is unsupported and therefore false. Whether one actually wants to go around correcting people being wrong in the Internet is another question. But a guy's gotta procrastinate somehow.

Suppose someone says Beethoven revolutionized music because unlike other composers he wrote kickass songs in C minor.

Suppose I reply that writing music in C minor isn't on its own revolutionary, and many other composers from that period or earlier wrote pieces in C minor.

Suppose that someone then demands I provide them with evidence.

Suppose I give two famous pieces of evidence: Mozart's Fantasia in C minor, K. 475 and Mozart's piano concerto in C minor, K. 491. Perhaps I even put a little icing on the cake and mention that Beethoven reportedly heard a performance of that Mozart concerto and told a colleague, "We'll never be able to write anything like that!"

What possible benefit would there have been if I had refrained from writing that last paragraph? From what I can see the discussion was essentially just noise until I offered up evidence to support a claim. It cost me nearly nothing to write it, while I would have risked a descent into snobbery if I hadn't.

If I say the “moon appears to melt in a manner similar to cheese on earth, so it must be made of cheese” that proposition can be evaluated to determine to what extent it supports the conclusion.

Asking for support of a conclusion or questioning whether a proposition actually supports an inference is totally legitimate in a debate.

Attacking one proposition while ignoring others, pretending that a proposition that clearly supports a conclusion doesn’t; those are invalid.

I agree you can often tell when someone is being ridiculous and adding noise (I like that phrase in this context) or trying to prove a preconceived argument rather than being open to changing in the face of evidence.

Arguing with someone on the internet (while almost always pointless) means I'm talking with someone whose motivations I don't know. Are they being disingenuous, trolling, are they quoting something exactly but missed the context?

On the internet, you don't get the benefit of the doubt -- you need to prove to me that you're making an attempt at having a real conversation, and if you can't provide a source that you presumably have already seen -- but I haven't -- that is nearly the lowest barrier of proof I can set.

There were similar debates pre-enlightenment where mystic revelations were given equal or more weight than the "always deceptive" real world.

Take, for example, the following slogan:

> Facts don't care about your feelings.

To me, that reads as a straw man. The enemy is defined to be in opposition to fact, when a more generous reading might be the inclusion of feelings among the facts. After all, we are being sensitive to our environment, and the internal impact of that environment actually matters. I find it funny to think that a person would design any system that impacts humans without considering the feelings it might engender. Without consideration of feelings, we may as well design systems for lifeless rocks.

The only times feelings/opinion don't matter are if you are making a strictly is/fact based argument/conclusion.

Vast majority of people are utterly incapable of debate (this is not new). What is new is that it became normal not be embarrassed by that, in fact being incapable of debate is considered a plus.

I treasure few friends I have that I can debate things with, so rare.

Perhaps this happens on a larger scale now but I don't think this is anything new, just look at presidential debates, the "winner" is typically the better orator, not the person who cites sources and is factually correct. Go back just a few decades more and "demonstrably true" is a concept largely confined to mathematics.

I'm sorry, I don't see how that's possible. Could you explain please?

> What the fuck? This isn't right.

It's very close to correct; preponderance of the evidence is the dominant civil standard of proof in the US, though it is more accurately summarized as requiring that the trier of fact (jury or judge, depending on whether it is a jury trial or not) must find your claim to be more likely true than not based on the evidence. (“More than half of the evidence” sort of implies that it's just volume of evidence at issue, which is potentially misleading.)

A lot of the controversy about stuff like “sealioning” or when to act on claims of irregular behavior is due to failing to distinguish burden of proof and standard of proof.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Formulating a cohesive statement requires effort, which can include supporting evidence if you are aware of it.

If you make claims and not only fail to support your case but don’t even know yourself if what you’re saying is true, that’s called conjecture. It can be entertaining but is unlikely to be persuasive.

If you intend to persuade your audience, the audience should demand proof and you should have to provide it.

Sure, and if you want people to believe your conclusions, that's why you have the burden of establishing the truth of those conclusions to the audience.

If you just claim something — like that Pi is 3.14 — without supporting it, it’s not an argument. You are free to assert whatever you want — there is no obligation to offer an argument. It is when you undertake to convince — in any context — that you accept a burden of proof. This is the case in logic, law, public policy...in those areas where we are looking for shared agreement and shared understanding.

We can’t ask that others believe us “just because”.