> You can't prove a negative.
Idk why this saying persists. Many, many negatives are easy to prove. For instance, it is very provable that an adult elephant is not sleeping in your bed right now.
Idk why this saying persists. Many, many negatives are easy to prove. For instance, it is very provable that an adult elephant is not sleeping in your bed right now.
Hell, "you can't prove a negative" is itself a negative -- so it's tautologically impossible to prove that you can't prove a negative (either because it's false or because it's true).
Sure in situations where you can see 100% of my beds, but the only meaningful context for that phrase is when you're trying to generalize information to learn about more than one thing in the world. You know... What studies do. The whole point of the scientific method. So what burden of proof would you recommend beyond subsequent observational studies in wolf behavior not showing this phenomena? Or were you just using a deliberately obtuse interpretation of that phrase for pure pedantry?
Also, more appropriately, in the sense of the problem of induction (see Hume). You can't prove that there are no black swans, until you've observed a black swan.
And, no, if you asserted that an adult elephant is sleeping in the OP's bed right now, they wouldn't be able to disprove it to you.
I forget what we were arguing about. Please go ahead and have the last word and thanks for the exchange.
But I'm tired of it, too, by now. Thanks for your engagement as well, even though I took us on a detour!
But another is to actually look at the rest of your comment. And you might also ask why my 'pedantic' reply is the only one your comment got at all, as of time of writing. Let's review:
> The burden of proof is on whoever makes the claim— that wolf packs are led by alpha male wolves– not on everybody else to prove they aren't. One experiment in very unnatural conditions showed these results. They were not observed in subsequent studies that were better designed. Why would someone conduct an expensive study specifically to search for phenomena observed once but never again? Because of people so insecure they need to justify their antisocial, domineering behavior through unrelated research?
There are a few observations about norms in the scientific community, which might be a bit useful and relevant.
But this?
> Why would someone conduct an expensive study specifically to search for phenomena observed once but never again? Because of people so insecure they need to justify their antisocial, domineering behavior through unrelated research?
Fully half your comment was rhetorical questions that serve only to dress another person down— pure ingroup signaling, snark, and moralism. You're unlikely to get the kind of engagement you imagine you deserve with an approach like that, whether from pedants or anyone else.
I can understand finding yourself riled up by this topic. I can't claim that I never indulge in snark. But seriously, I didn't respond to the rest of your comment or even really address you directly in my reply because your post told me that talking to you would be unpleasant and hostile.
You've called me out for pedantry, which is what we call it when someone's corrections seem trivial to us. But the comment I was replying to was all about correcting someone else's thinking, and it was frankly uglier than it was interesting. The same turned out to be true of your subsequent comments in the wider thread as well— not seriously engaging with you was very much the right call for me.
I hope at least some of this has been useful, but either way you won't get another reply from me.
I hope you have a better day tomorrow.
Edit: The text is so short I'll just post it here.
"A pedant (/ˈpɛd.ənt/ PED-ent) is a person who is excessively concerned with formalism, accuracy and precision, or one who makes an ostentatious and arrogant show of learning."