| It's really time now for you to stop posting like this. It's past tedious, and destructive of the community. I'm not sure if you read it, but the recent "Who Buried Paul" is a wonderful exposition of how a plethora of weak evidence can lead to a false conclusion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13902012. What's wonderful about it is that it's written about a politically noncontroversial topic, and thus (hopefully) allows for more reasonable conversation. Might be a great candidate for recycling. More controversially (and thus less appropriate for direct HN discussion) Scott Adams has a nice piece on confirmation bias, using Pizzagate as the example: So let me tell you what a mountain of evidence is worth. Mountain of Evidence Value = zero. In the normal two-dimensional world in which we imagine we live, a mountain of evidence usually means something is true. So why am I looking at the same mountain of evidence as the believers in pizzagate and coming to an opposite conclusion? The difference is that I understand what confirmation bias is and how powerful it can be. If you don’t have the same level of appreciation for the power of confirmation bias, a mountain of evidence looks like proof. Here’s what I know that most of you do not: Confirmation bias looks EXACTLY LIKE a mountain of real evidence. And let me be super-clear here. When I say it looks exactly the same, I am not exaggerating. I mean there is no way to tell the difference. http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153821538056/about-pizzagate. |