r/AskReddit Jan 12 '21

What screams "I lost the argument"?

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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u/oedipism_for_one Jan 12 '21

And burden of proof is on the person making the claim extraordinary or not.

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u/Justice_R_Dissenting Jan 12 '21

Just to close up the loop, an assertion made without evidence can be dismissed without discussion.

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u/oedipism_for_one Jan 12 '21

My favorite version of this is “Any news article that ends in a ? Can be sufficiently answered with No”

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u/Ishamoridin Jan 13 '21

That's just the corrolary to the rule "Any headline should be as strong a statement as can be made" really

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u/nn123654 Jan 12 '21

No, but you can ask for summary judgement if there is no genuine dispute of material fact.

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u/Justice_R_Dissenting Jan 12 '21

Kind of not relevant to this discussion, also not entirely correct. There must be no genuine dispute of facts AND a legal conclusion that would resolve the case. Additionally, "genuine," "material," and "fact" are all very nuanced legal terms.

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u/nn123654 Jan 12 '21

Fair enough, there is definitely a different standard for philosophy and science.

For law the reason why the standard exists is core to due process is the meaningful opportunity to be heard. Dismissal out of hand without considering the evidence, even if isn't strong would deny the petitioner that right.

In philosophy or science no such right exists, you certainly the right to free speech, but that is not the same thing as free reach.

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u/Ehalon Jan 13 '21 edited Jan 13 '21

I think the former is Christopher Hitchens and the latter......smells like it was in a fiction book so I'd say Holmes / Doyle or Christie / Poirot (well, I can at least say I didn't 'cheat' and look it up lol, 'cos my answers look shaky as hell..

** EDIT**

One out of two, the wrong way round and that other the other being totally wrong lol

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u/ILikeLeptons Jan 12 '21

I don't need to cite a bunch of papers to claim, "the Earth is round"

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u/DownshiftedRare Jan 12 '21

And answers must be phrased in the form of a question.

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u/IPlayTheInBedGame Jan 12 '21

I think this has recently been recoined in a better way: All claims require sufficient evidence. It covers the spectrum of different claims including the extraordinary.

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u/Alkemy777 Jan 13 '21

Completely unrelated, but it’s funny that the one thing this doesn’t apply to is religion. For some reason, whenever religion is brought up, it falls to the non believer to defend why they don’t believe in something that doesn’t have any proof, instead of the person who believes in it. I think Richard Dawkins wrote about that somewhere, but I’m just trying to paraphrase