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> Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. I

> Not actually true! A common misconception. Absence of evidence when you'd expect to find it is actually extremely suggestive that a hypothesis is incorrect. It's key to the criterion of falsifiability. Ok, you got me. If you expect to find something and don't, it means your expectations were wrong, the experiment was bad, whatever. It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence. The coin example should clarify your apparent misreading of "If someone believes something without evidence, and you do not believe it because of the lack of evidence, then you are both guilty of the same thing." Rephrasing: the statement "not believe it" means to "believe it to be false." It's a colloquialism. Both stances are choosing to believe something without evidence.

the_af 9y ago
> It proves nothing about the thing for which you have no evidence. It proves something, though by itself it doesn't actually disprove the phenomenon. Maybe your experiment was flawed; maybe you have to adjust an hypothesis. But when it becomes a combination of many flawed experiments, lack of actual experiments, a field dominated by charlatans who don't know and don't practice the scientific method, it starts to indicate something stronger about the alleged phenomenon itself, doesn't it? By the way, people do not "believe" a flipped coin landed head or tails in the same way they believe in psychic energy. The equivocation of colloquial and precise terms isn't helpful here. If we're going to pretend we're considering psychic energy as an actual phenomenon, let's stick to precise terms.