[throwaway2245]

Is this a thing that is discussed in philosophy, except that Christopher Hitchens recently claimed it to be?

A burden of proof applies to law, by convention, but not to the truth of a situation.

If I say "513x217=111321", it's true whether I prove it to you or not. My statement of it does not obligate me to prove it.

[morlockabove]

If I say there's gold buried at certain coordinates, that's also true independent of whether I prove it. The point is that the quote is a heuristic that works because most of the by the time you hear that claim, most of the statistical work has been done, hidden in the premise in a way that skips your intuitions a bit (the kolgomoroff comolexity of my phrase is a lot higher than yours, even though they're of about the same length, even though the number of bits needed to verify each is about the same).

[throwaway2245]

>that's also true independent of whether I prove it.

This is so different from my point that I'm not sure how it relates.

I am confident there is literal treasure near to where I live, because I've seen very convincing evidence of dredging from multiple sources. In my mind, it is proven. But, I'm not acting on that because I don't find it worthwhile.

On the other hand, if a stranger told me there was a police traffic stop in a particular direction, I'd probably take a detour - even if there was a complete lack of proof.

Proof doesn't guide my action at all - I don't require a burden of proof in order to act.

Burden of proof is a legal concept, not a philosophical one.

[morlockabove]

You're acting based on your priors and new evidence. You have a high prior for police stops existing in general, and a low one for people randomly lying about it, so a stranger saying there's one that way is compelling evidence to you. You have a high prior on the existence of treausure nearvy, but a low one of the existence of treasure worth the effort of finding, so me telling you you could get rich quick isn't compelling evidence to you.

[throwaway2245]

This no longer has anything to do with 'burden of proof', which I continue to reject as a concept (maybe you are agreeing with me?).

[morlockabove]

I'm saying you're taking as if it were some sort of ontological model or normative rule of discourse, when really it's a verbalisation of a heuristic you've already admitted to using. You're using something like 'burden of proof' as an algorithm, even if you consciously reject it as a verbal tool.

[throwaway2245]

That's not a 'burden of proof'.