
The Burden of Proof: Why People Must Support Their Arguments - EndXA
https://effectiviology.com/burden-of-proof/
======
austincheney
Burden of proof fallacy occurs as a form of red herring, an attempt to kill an
argument by distraction through evidence requests.

People form all kinds of biased or disagreeable opinions for manners of
reasons. If you think evidence is lacking in an opinion do your own research
and provide a superior counter argument. Lazy people asking for sources
without any contribution to a conversation or effort to find sources of their
own is something I blanket downvote.

If you think an opinion is incredibly ignorant or utterly depraved you aren’t
forced to engage it by feeding the troll. Attempting to kill the bad opinion
through lazy evidence requests just contributes an alternate form of trolling.

Ultimately it comes down to motive. You can generally tell when someone is
trying to move a conversation forward or simply adding noise.

~~~
jancsika
I'm having a hard time understanding how an evidence request could kill an
argument.

Suppose someone says Beethoven revolutionized music because unlike other
composers he wrote kickass songs in C minor.

Suppose I reply that writing music in C minor isn't on its own revolutionary,
and many other composers from that period or earlier wrote pieces in C minor.

Suppose that someone then demands I provide them with evidence.

Suppose I give two famous pieces of evidence: Mozart's Fantasia in C minor, K.
475 and Mozart's piano concerto in C minor, K. 491. Perhaps I even put a
little icing on the cake and mention that Beethoven reportedly heard a
performance of that Mozart concerto and told a colleague, "We'll never be able
to write anything like that!"

What possible benefit would there have been if I had refrained from writing
that last paragraph? From what I can see the discussion was essentially just
noise _until_ I offered up evidence to support a claim. It cost me nearly
nothing to write it, while I would have risked a descent into snobbery if I
hadn't.

~~~
austincheney
> Suppose I reply that

Then you have a difference of opinion. The other person is free to accept or
deny your opinion.

~~~
kolektiv
It's not really a difference of opinion though is it? Whether the day is nice
or not is a matter of opinion. Whether this is a tasty meal is a matter of
opinion. Whether anyone else wrote works in C minor is a matter of fact - or
not, and he's provided evidence that shows that other people did - fact
established.

This is the whole problem occurring these days - too many things are seen as
"well, it's a valid opinion". No, if it's claiming something which can be
falsified, it's not an opinion it's a mistake (charitably - if it's done with
less than wholesome intention it's something else - a lie).

~~~
austincheney
> Whether anyone else wrote works in C minor is a matter of fact - or not

Not exactly. That is likely a statement of fact, which is a conclusion
expressed in a factual manner, but conclusions are still opinions. Facts are
atomic data unhinged from description. Journalism is a good example of
presenting facts in commentary. You will see language like: "according to the
memo, person x wrote song y". Journalism is careful to differ to facts as a
point of deflection from invention, because when they are fail at such they
tend to get sued and lose.

Also, facts are never true or false. Facts are either valid or invalid
according to other facts. Something that is not falsifiable is probably an ill
formed assumption upon logic.

~~~
kolektiv
I... get where you're coming from here, but I'm not sure I'm going to agree.
Sure, yes, to some extent you can go all the way to Descartes and believe
nothing but your own existence. But back to those works in C minor - there's a
lot of evidence of them. Recordings. Sheet music. Orchestras who claim to have
performed them, and so on. Now sure, you can say that all of those things are
also assertions and not facts but at some point the onus flips, and it's going
to be on you to provide some reason for why those things should be
disregarded.

If you're not going to operate on a basis of "reasonable doubt until falsified
by a better theory" then you're where? In an entirely post-fact state, where
sure, everything's an opinion. And sure, if you want to be there, nobody has a
right to stop you but it's not a very productive state.

Yes, journalists tend to be pretty careful with claims around things where
there is reasonable doubt. But there is a reason journalists are not still
writing about Mozart and using careful phrasing like "and it is also believed
by some sources that other composers may have composed comparable works in the
same key". For humanity to work we have to go with "fact until shown not to
be" otherwise we wouldn't make it through a day.

------
nilskidoo
This is unbelievably pertinent. We've grown so accustomed in this virtual
world of having avatars and proxies to hide behind, like books judged by their
covers with studies showing most folks do not even read beyond headlines, that
we want that face value BS to transfer to IRL, thus giving us identity
politics and the like. We _want_ to be judged (and judged positively at that)
for our packaging and Halloween costumes we present to the world, instead of
provable merits. What we'd like rather than who we truly are. And as a one-two
punch, the general response is that not enough persons put their proverbial or
literal money where their mouths are but where they want their mouths to be.

------
CptFribble
This sort of thing plays well on HN, where we're all engineers and
programmers, but it assumes the reader is rational.

People do not make decisions rationally. We think and act emotionally, up to
and including ideas and assumptions about each other, what constitutes
acceptable behavior, and basic facts about the universe.

Ordinary people don't know or care about the rules of "reasoned discourse."

You're not wrong, though.

------
davesque
I'm pretty surprised by some of the reactions I'm seeing to this. To me, this
article reads just like a logic or debate text book and there's nothing really
controversial here.

~~~
TomMckenny
It is exactly that, no more controversial than a logic text book. But post-
truth views seem to be getting slowly internalized where opinion is considered
another kind of fact.

There were similar debates pre-enlightenment where mystic revelations were
given equal or more weight than the "always deceptive" real world.

------
babyslothzoo
Sure, but how does this work in todays era where feelings/opinion are
considered by many to be the same as fact or at least valid support for an
argument?

~~~
rexpop
Is that really what's happening "in today's era"? I think this is a smear
tactic--an ad-hominem, if you will--employed by some parties to discredit
others.

Take, for example, the following slogan:

> Facts don't care about your feelings.

To me, that reads as a straw man. The enemy is defined to be in opposition to
fact, when a more generous reading might be the inclusion of feelings among
the facts. After all, we are being sensitive to our environment, and the
internal impact of that environment actually matters. I find it funny to think
that a person would design any system that impacts humans without considering
the _feelings_ it might engender. Without consideration of feelings, we may as
well design systems for lifeless rocks.

~~~
NegatioN
Whether or not feelings should be included as proof for something depends a
whole lot on: are the feelings of this person relevant to the argument at
hand.

1\. Global warming is not untrue because someone feels a certain way about it.
2\. I might have offended someone based on how they feel. Or a system might be
oppressive based on how someone feels

That's as far as I'm willing to let feelings serve as proof anyhow.

~~~
mistermann
This can get tricky though, and there's lots of "feelings" all over the place
these days. There are a lot of somewhat vague "truths", some necessarily so,
that have become largely considered as _all encompassing, final, beyond
debate_ truths, even though they may not necessarily be so. This seems a bit
problematic to me.

------
MrTonyD
Knowledge can be gain through proven datapoints and unproven datapoints.
Insisting on proof reflects a particular type of ignorance -- the ignorance of
someone who hasn't deeply reflected on the history of the advancement of
knowledge.

~~~
Bendingo
> Knowledge can be gain through [...] unproven datapoints

I'm sorry, I don't see how that's possible. Could you explain please?

------
ABCLAW
>In such cases, it can be valuable to shift the burden of proof back to your
opponent in order to get them to at least justify their line of questioning
before answering those questions.

This article skates around with this idea of 'shifting the burden of proof'.
It does so to avoid actually discussing the fact that some people in
discussions are not there in good faith.

There's nothing to prove in a question, so how do you shift a burden of proof
in respect of a line of questioning? The article attempts to equate
questioning the motives or intentions behind a line of inquiry and the burden
of proof. These are not the same thing.

>whereas in civil cases the plaintiff might have a more lenient burden of
proof, such as the standard of “preponderance of the evidence”, which is the
requirement that more than half of the evidence that is presented will support
your case.

What the fuck? This isn't right.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > whereas in civil cases the plaintiff might have a more lenient burden of
> proof, such as the standard of “preponderance of the evidence”, which is the
> requirement that more than half of the evidence that is presented will
> support your case.

> What the fuck? This isn't right.

It's very close to correct; preponderance of the evidence is the dominant
civil standard of proof in the US, though it is more accurately summarized as
requiring that the trier of fact (jury or judge, depending on whether it is a
jury trial or not) must find your claim to be more likely true than not based
on the evidence. (“More than half of the evidence” sort of implies that it's
just volume of evidence at issue, which is potentially misleading.)

~~~
ABCLAW
It's not close to correct. It is wrong. The article literally links to the
correct test, but the author's language cobbles together of a few sub-links
worth of half-digested material that the author doesn't understand to avoid
plagiarizing the legal dictionary.

There is no quantitative assessment of how much evidence supports one side or
the other in the test at all.

Ignoring how ironic it is to make a mistake of this type, it's particularly
grating because adding more evidence to one side of a dispute doesn't
necessarily add to how much we believe their position, yet most of the
article's statements regarding proof are made with that assumption. He equates
evidence with proof (or at least an element in approaching proof), but fails
to address the connection between evidence, pre-existing belief and
interpretation.

This is why people talk past each other. This is why different news orgs can
'spin' the same facts in opposite directions. Ignoring that complexity leads
to mistakes.

This error is consistent and the top parent comment in this comments section
notes a particularly glaring weakness in the non-bayesian approach.

------
revskill
So, is burden of proof a good thing ?

It's fine for me to listen to an argument without proof. If i'm interested, i
could discover myself in many cases.

Providing a proof is not free knowledge. Providing an argument is free.

I can relate me in today's conversations. Sometimes i provide an argument for
the topic. Maybe i'm not interested into the details of the why, i just leave
it for viewer to know the "what", not the "why", and i'm fine with it.

~~~
zaroth
> _Providing a proof is not free knowledge. Providing an argument is free._

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Formulating a cohesive statement
requires effort, which can include supporting evidence if you are aware of it.

If you make claims and not only fail to support your case but don’t even know
yourself if what you’re saying is true, that’s called conjecture. It can be
entertaining but is unlikely to be persuasive.

If you intend to persuade your audience, the audience should demand proof and
you should have to provide it.

~~~
technothrasher
Or more concisely, Hitchens' Razor: that which is presented without evidence
can be dismissed without evidence.

~~~
revskill
My point is more like this:

If i know the one who make argument could prove it, i'd love to pay it. It's
not free to me in this case.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If i know the one who make argument could prove it,

Unless they do, you don't know they can.

------
threatofrain
There's burden of proof when people agree there is, not merely when an
argument is issued. I operate on the idea that if you want something, it is
that desire which convicts you with a burden to actualize it. If I say Pi is
3.14 (a false but useful statement), I feel it's the burden of those who want
the knowledge to prove it to themselves what's real.

It's different, of course, if we're talking about special contexts like law.
Then the burden of proof is formal because society has agreed upon it.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I operate on the idea that if you want something, it is that desire which
> convicts you with a burden to actualize it.

Sure, and if you want people to believe your conclusions, that's why you have
the burden of establishing the truth of those conclusions to the audience.

~~~
threatofrain
Yes so if people want things from each other they should ask what’s sufficient
motivation for the other party to continue dealing with you.

The negotiation or balance of interests will produce a sort of equilibrium.

Proof is just a good in a negotiation, and it’s pretty costly, as opposed to
conjecture.

WSJ wants to be heard but not for free. The market finds the intermediate
price to read their analysis. The burden is on both WSJ and the audience to
satisfy their interests.

~~~
dsjoerg
I like your way of thinking about it. Proof is just a good in a negotiation.
To put your point another way, there is one set of rules, considerations and
motives for the speaker, and another for the listener. Depending on the
context, either the speaker or the listener may be interested in doing the
work of assembling evidence for or against what is being said.

OP describes the specific rules pertaining to when a rational speaker is
desperate to convince a rational listener of the truth of their arguments. But
in real life, and in general, there are many more types of situations.

