Do extrordinary events require extrordinary evidence?

[Betterave]

I am getting the point perfectly, the problem is that is it irrelevant. Of course all numbers are equally improbable. It remains true that any number drawn will be an extraordinarily improbable event, yet I do not require extraordinary evidence to rationally believe it.

Yes, but this is true because antecedently any number could be drawn, while after the fact some number has been drawn and there is nothing improbable about it being any particular one. So whichever number is reported is likely to be the number drawn. The antecedent probability is irrelevant.

I am watching the news. the news reports that today’s winning lotto number is 345348939458. This [number being drawn] is [antecedently] an extraordinarily improbable event, since it was extraordinarily improbable that that number should be drawn. Yet I believe in it only on the testimony of the news media.

The question then is solely about the reliability of the media in such cases. The antecedent improbability that a particular number should have been drawn is irrelevant…

Now if in deciding to believe I weigh the odds of the event itself, versus the odds that the media are lying, then I should never believe them when the report any number is drawn. Why? Because it will always be more probable that they are lying, than that specific number be drawn. This shows EEREE is a failed argument.

…therefore, the antecedent odds of “the event itself” are irrelevant to the antecedent probability of the media lying (or, more likely, being mistaken) about the actual event that has occurred.

The problem is that people are confusing two event claims:
Event A: a number is drawn.
Event B: the numeber 345489734 is drawn on march 31 2011.

I think you’re failing to distinguish “the number 343422566 will be drawn today” from “this number has been drawn.” It’s like a psychic saying “Bill will trip walking to the bus today” vs. Bill’s mother saying “Bill tripped walking to the bus today.” Does that make sense?

 

[Betterave]

The preservation of matter/energy/momentum definitely contradicts the miracle of feeding a multitude of people with one loaf of bread and one fish. Also having a human walk on water contradicts the laws of physics. A decay of a three-day old corpse is ensured by the irreversible laws governing entropy. A shattered vase will not magically assemble itself, even though the direction of time could be reversed - theoretically… etc… etc…

Of course arguing is futile. Just pray to God to perform a few miracles in front of a bunch of skeptics (stage magicians would do just fine, since they are trained to detect hoaxes), and then we shall be convinced. Acts speak louder than words.

Read what I wrote again, Keeler: you are again just contradicting the known laws of physics, which are all empirical laws. The real laws of physics are known not to be laws governing absolute possibilities; they are empirically derived models which are often useful for describing the ordinary course of nature - that is all. As such, they are known not to entail their own absolute necessity.

My arguing this point will only be futile if you continue to ignore it.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

You do, every time when you misquote what empiricism is. You also show your ignorance in your thread: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=546138 where you explicitly misdefine empiricism. It is easy to create a strawman and burn it to the ground.

Please post where I said logical positivism, not your opinion but where it actually is. Please post what you think the definition of empiricism is.

God is part of the external reality, therefore the answer is “yes”.

Then how are you not making the logically contradictory empirical statement? Further, what is “external reality”? External to what? There is no such thing that i have heard of, do you mean your subjective experience of reality?

Only according to your delusions. The logical positivists said that “any statement which cannot be verified empirically cannot be considered true”. Which part of “any” (the universal operator) don’t you understand?

Now you are implying the weak empirical statement. “some statements can only be proven true with empirical evidence” That one failed because there is no mechanism by which one can identify which statements require empirical evidence. Of course maybe everyone else is wrong about that, and your towering intellect sees above all us mere mortals to the answer. You got one, or did you just Google without understanding the arguments or the history? I mean “phase space” instead of “domain” or “probability space”? Really? is a 55 ball system of such a complicated nature that one has to account for the motion of the balls across time and space? Elephant gun to kill a mouse that one.

I already quoted the empiricist’s stance, which is completely different, but you are unable or unwilling to understand it.

What post number? I haven’t seen you state philosophical empiricism anywhere. I have seen you confuse it with the empirical method like most atheists do, as though they don’t realize the title of the forum is the “philosophy forum”. That wouldn’t be a strawman would it?

 

[Betterave]

1. More importantly, as the video shows, the claims that "extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence is demonstrably false.

• example. I buy a lottery ticket on the way home from work. The next day I hear my number reported on the news as the winning number of 20 million dollars, 10, 18, 59, 35, 22, 23. I get excited. Visions of sugarplums and excessive wealth dance in my head. But then I calm down. I realize that “extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence.” I realize that that number being called is extraordinarily improbable, that me winning 20 million dollars is extraordinarily improbable . So I tear up my ticket and throw it in the trash.

danserr,
Can you at least see that you got this part wrong? Tearing up the ticket is not at all entailed by EEREE (or ECREE, which I would prefer), and this isn’t just because of the fact that the actual occurrence of a merely statistically improbable chance occurrence isn’t really ‘extraordinary’ in any relevant sense. (And the relevant sense is: ‘contrary to what we would expect’; not just ‘statistically improbable and so not foreseeable.’) Even if “extraordinary evidence” were required, one would not be justified in dismissing “ordinary evidence.”

 

[danserr]

Yes, but this is true because antecedently any number could be drawn, while after the fact some number has been drawn and there is nothing improbable about it being any particular one. So whichever number is reported is likely to be the number drawn. The antecedent probability is irrelevant.

“Whichever number is reported is likely to be the number drawn.”

We agree precisely. But it still remains true that that number being drawn was an extraordinarily improbable event. I don’t believe it because I have extraordinary evidence for it, but because it would probable not be reported as the winning number unless it actually were. This is exactly what I mean when I say that we consider not only the probability of the event in isolation, but that probability that the evidence would be what it is, if the event did not occur.

The event we are assessing is not the event of the number being reported, but the event of the number being drawn. They are two separate events. The odds that that number would be drawn do not change simply because the event has ended. The fact that it was drawn does not make it more probable that that number would have been drawn.

Think about it another way. I am put before a firing squad of 100 trained marksman. They aim at me, shoot, and then, they all miss. Now obviously this is an extraordinarily improbable event. I don’t say "well, before they fired, it was obviously improbable that they would miss me before the fact, but now that they have fired and I still still alive, there was nothing improbable at that at all. Actually, it was probable that they would miss.

 

[danserr]

danserr,
Can you at least see that you got this part wrong? Tearing up the ticket is not at all entailed by EEREE (or ECREE, which I would prefer), and this isn’t just because of the fact that the actual occurrence of a merely statistically improbable chance occurrence isn’t really ‘extraordinary’ in any relevant sense. (And the relevant sense is: ‘contrary to what we would expect’; not just ‘statistically improbable and so not foreseeable.’) Even if “extraordinary evidence” were required, one would not be justified in dismissing “ordinary evidence.”

I was being descriptive by talking about tearing up the ticket, it began to confuse people, so I drop it from my claim. I do not concede that I was mistaken, but please consider that part of the post dropped.

People are waffling over the use of extraordinarily. I am using it in the sense that Hume and skeptics today like Ehrman use it, “extraordinarily improbable.” You are using it in a vaguer way, which makes it more difficult to assess.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

The preservation of matter/energy/momentum definitely contradicts the miracle of feeding a multitude of people with one loaf of bread and one fish

. Fallacy of Incredulity

Also having a human walk on water contradicts the laws of physics.

Fallacy of Incredulity

A decay of a three-day old corpse is ensured by the irreversible laws governing entropy

Fallacy of Incredulity

Of course arguing is futile.

We know, fallacious reasoning is the only thing that supports the atheists claims. All you did here was tell us that since your towering intellect doesn’t know how something was done, it is impossible.

Just pray to God to perform a few miracles in front of a bunch of skeptics (stage magicians would do just fine, since they are trained to detect hoaxes), and then we shall be convinced. Acts speak louder than words.

Verification - yet another logical contradiction. Awesome. 3 logical fallacies, and 1 logical contradiction in post all rolled together into a big irrational burrito

 

[Betterave]

. Fallacy of Incredulity
Fallacy of Incredulity
Fallacy of Incredulity

No, Keeler was just making false statements. He was not committing the fallacy you refer to. Again, I very much like Warrenton’s quotation:

But something caught my attention in a Tom Stoppard play, of all places. It was a chance quotation, to the effect that people will reduce anything you say to the common denominator of what they wish to understand.

 

[CatSci]

Don’t expect an answer. Wsp has this delusion that “empiricism” equals “logical positivism” and no matter how many times we explain him the difference, he does not understand it. A waste of time to read his blabberings.

Whew, so its not just me…

I’m beginning to think that he’s just trolling.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…what they wish to understand.

That says it all.

 

[Betterave]

We agree precisely. But it still remains true that that number being drawn was an extraordinarily improbable event. I don’t believe it because I have extraordinary evidence for it, but because it would probable not be reported as the winning number unless it actually were. This is exactly what I mean when I say that we consider not only the probability of the event in isolation, but that probability that the evidence would be what it is, if the event did not occur.

You still seem to be failing to make the distinction I recommended. The drawing of the numbers was not extraordinary. That the numbers were yours was naturally unexpected, unforeseeable, but not extraordinary in any relevant sense of the word. “Some guy won the lottery today” is a perfectly mundane statement. “That guy happened to be danserr” is still a perfectly mundane statement.

The event we are assessing is not the event of the number being reported, but the event of the number being drawn. They are two separate events. The odds that that number would be drawn do not change simply because the event has ended. The fact that it was drawn does not make it more probable that that number would have been drawn.

But I think you are mistaken here again. First, you are failing to see that “the event of the number being drawn” should be “the event of the number’s having been drawn.” That’s the kind of situation we are facing: not “will some event happen?”; but “did some event happen?” This is an historical question. An assessment of the reporting of the event is necessarily implicated in an assessment of the latter.

Second, the fact that Jesus rose from the dead does make it more ‘probable’ that he would have rose from the dead, doesn’t it? We are not dealing with statistical probabilities in this case, so the lottery example is in fact mundane and irrelevant, not extraordinary and analogous. ‘X is the case’ proves that ‘X is possible’ and if we know that ‘X is possible,’ that gives us reason to credit a certain amount of ‘probability’ to reports that ‘X is the case’ (this is commonly called ‘induction’).

Think about it another way. I am put before a firing squad of 100 trained marksman. They aim at me, shoot, and then, they all miss. Now obviously this is an extraordinarily improbable event. I don’t say "well, before they fired, it was obviously improbable that they would miss me before the fact, but now that they have fired and I still still alive, there was nothing improbable at that at all. Actually, it was probable that they would miss.

Of course it wasn’t probable that they would miss. But that is irrelevant. Nobody at this point in history is trying to assess the antecedent probability of Jesus rising from the dead. That’s simply nonsensical - it has already happened. But we can and do do that with the lottery. Doing so is mundane and simple. So doesn’t the analogy break down? The kinds of arguments we must bring to bear in the two cases are simply not analogous, it seems to me.

 

[Betterave]

Whew, so its not just me…

I’m beginning to think that he’s just trolling.

I think you and wsp should wipe the slate and resolve to treat each other with respect from this point forward. What do you say, fellas?

 

[CatSci]

I think you and wsp should wipe the slate and resolve to treat each other with respect from this point forward. What do you say, fellas?

I say he started it

 

[danserr]

You still seem to be failing to make the distinction I recommended. The drawing of the numbers was not extraordinary.

I do not see that your distinction is relevant. You say those numbers were extraordinary in any relevant sense of the word. But they were, :extraordinarily improbable.
The issue is not that some number being drawn as people keep trying to make it, but a specific number being drawn.

irst, you are failing to see that “the event of the number being drawn” should be “the event of the number’s having been drawn.” That’s the kind of situation we are facing: not “will some event happen?”; but “did some event happen?” An assessment of the reporting of the event is necessarily implicated in an assessment of the latter.

I do not agree that the fact that an event has happened, makes it probable that that event would have happened. The event simply remains an improbable event that happened. I think this is the central point you and I disagree on

Of course it wasn’t probable that they would miss. But that is irrelevant. Nobody at this point in history is trying to assess the antecedent probability of Jesus rising from the dead.

but that is what the skeptic is trying to do with his claim EEREE, which I am attacking.

Sorry, I know this is brief I need to get to bed, thanks for the thoughts.

 

[Betterave]

I was being descriptive by talking about tearing up the ticket, it began to confuse people, so I drop it from my claim. I do not concede that I was mistaken, but please consider that part of the post dropped.

People are waffling over the use of extraordinarily. I am using it in the sense that Hume and skeptics today like Ehrman use it, “extraordinarily improbable.” You are using it in a vaguer way, which makes it more difficult to assess.

But Hume and Ehrmann are using it as I am. They are not using it to refer to mundane, merely statistically improbable events such as winning the lottery.

 

[Betterave]

I do not see that your distinction is relevant. You say those numbers were extraordinary in any relevant sense of the word. But they were, :extraordinarily improbable.
The issue is not that some number being drawn as people keep trying to make it, but a specific number being drawn.

Again: “being drawn” remains ambiguous between “will be drawn” and “has been drawn.” The appropriate criteria for assessing these different claims are very different. Can you see that?

I do not agree that the fact that an event has happened, makes it probable that that event would have happened. The event simply remains an improbable event that happened. I think this is the central point you and I disagree on

So if you see a black swan for the first time, to use the old example, you don’t think it becomes more probable that you will see a black swan again? If your hundred marksmen miss once, doesn’t it become more antecedently likely that they could miss again?

If we see Jesus rise from the dead, doesn’t it become more likely that we might someday do the same? This claim seems like one of the foundational propositions of our faith.

And one more thing to think about: didn’t Jesus make extraordinary claims, and hasn’t he provided extraordinary evidence in support of those claims? I think he did and he has.

 

[honestquestions]

The reason a Catholic/Muslim/Jew would not pray to your aliens is because of the first commandment.

The book of the aliens says that you shall pray to gods before them, especially the large false one which would take over most of the world.

 

[honestquestions]

It remains true that any number drawn will be an extraordinarily improbable event, yet I do not require extraordinary evidence to rationally believe it.

That’s because you’re gullible and do not hold high standards of evidence. Losing every day is exactly what you expect, and when you win, it’s exactly what you don’t expect. I already have proven that a prank is much more likely than actually winning.

Yet I believe in it only on the testimony of the news media.

Don’t believe everything you hear.

Rather it is extraordinarily improbable that that number should be called on the day. But when I watch the evening news and the media reports it as the winning number I believe it.

Because it is extraordinarily improbable you shouldn’t believe it without further evidence.

 

[honestquestions]

The fallacy itself is a lack of imagination. That lack of imagination is not justified because you think you have a really good reason, such as a claim that violates the known physical laws. I can easily imagine how any claim can be true regardless of any physical laws.

I believe we are commanded by four aliens to pray to them every day. You should believe it to. If you do not believe it, it is because you are committing the incredulity fallacy!
hah!

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…You should believe it to. If you do not believe it, it is because you are committing the incredulity fallacy!
hah!

Ahhhh…the rarely seen Tu quoque Fallacy. Also known as the “you too”. See, its fallacious because no matter what position I take, it doesn’t fix the problems in your position. Surely you are not going to admit to a fallacy like that. It would be nothing less than admitting that you only really believe what you want to believe regardless of the flaws shown in your position. I already suspect that, but actually admitting it publicly is another matter. So are you admitting that or that you accept fallacious arguments as true? As you didn’t adress the rest of the post is it safe to assume that you refuse to answer because you have no answer, or because you agree?

You should believe it to. If you do not believe it, it is because you are committing the incredulity fallacy!

I would be committing the fallacy of incredulity if I cannot imagine a way it could be true and reject it on that basis. “Not believing it” is not fallacious in and of itself as you seem to indicate.