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Comment by Helianthus16 | Hacker News Reader

However, anecdotal evidence can point to a line of inquiry that might uncover important statistical evidence. It presents categories: "Crimes not addressed" as a cause of low incarceration.

Truly, to combat his assertion, you should find statistical evidence to show that his anecdotes are actually contrary to the trend.

Anecdotal evidence _is_ evidence. It is just not strong statistical evidence.

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>Truly, to combat his assertion, you should find statistical evidence to show that his anecdotes are actually contrary to the trend.

It is never my responsibility to disprove any assertion, as that is fundamentally impossible. It is the responsibility of the person making the assertion to provide a sufficient quantity of relevant evidence.

If you consider that the original premise - based on one anectode, BTW - is that a corrupt law-enforcement/judiciary/correctional system is the sole responsible for a high incarcerated population, all I need to provide is evidence that other factors may be at play.

Interestingly this is actually untrue in a statistical sense. Purely statistically, we never prove an assertion, we merely find that we cannot disprove it for a certain strength of disproof.

The old adage that 'you can't disprove a negative' is more specific in scope than your allusion to it here.

Mostly, however, the nature of collaborative argument is such that yes, we are disproving and attempting to disprove each other all the time.

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