[alkonaut]

People do have a right to wonder. And the process should both be transparent to observe, and possible to drag through courts if there are more questions. And with this election it sure was dragged through courts, for years. And there has been no evidence of any substantial irregularities. Changes or not, no one seems to find much to suggest the election wasn't decided fairly.

[yawboakye]

absence of evidence =/= evidence of absence

[awb]

While true, it's also nonsensical to ask people to believe in something without providing evidence of it.

Carl Sagan has a good short story to this effect about a dragon in his garage: http://people.whitman.edu/~herbrawt/classes/110/Sagan.pdf

> Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.

[amalcon]

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

[yawboakye]

sagan makes a good point but he errs in so many ways that he can’t be assumed to be speaking philosophically, and so i don’t know how to respond. apart from this bogus strawman he constructs (himself) and proceeds to vigorously burn down successfully (because after all he’s the manufacturer) he seems to be in a hurry to dismiss whatever knowledge cannot be arrived at scientifically (and even worse with tools available during his time). the problem with ‘knowledge’ is well-known and unsolved.

[awb]

He recommends not rejecting the hypothesis outright, but putting judgement on hold in lieu of evidence. If evidence is presented then be prepared to re-evaluate. He talks about present day tools and measurements as well and the need to re-evaluate in the future should future data be obtained.

I think the problem he’s addressing is when people use beliefs in lieu of evidence. Believing the election was rigged is fine, but without evidence you haven’t given Sagan or other evidence-based evaluators reason to believe your claim.

[alkonaut]

You can almost think Sagan was taking a jab at religion there

[alkonaut]

That's not a very convincing argument if you are trying to make a fantastical claim without evidence. "Yeah I don't have any evidence thing X happened, but that doesn't mean it didn't!" What should people do with that information?

[yawboakye]

if you interpret absence of evidence as ‘i don’t have evidence’ then you’re right. but evidence doesn’t necessarily require possession to exist. worse it could even be perfectly hidden by your interrogator.

[AnimalMuppet]

Absence of evidence in 60 court cases is evidence of absence. If one side had enormous benefit from showing it happened, and they can't show it, then...

[eplawless]

I feel like you might be (intentionally or not) combining these two things:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3...

[amalcon]

Closely scrutinizing something, and noting that the null hypothesis explains those observations, is not absence of evidence. It is evidence of absence. Observation creates evidence, whether the observations were expected or not.