This video says everything about it that need be said

The title is a quote from Carla in Scrubs after she told a really bad joke, for those of you who are going "where have I heard that before?"


Keeping in mind that I have the childish habit of calling him a butt face:

Me: So's your face
James: So's your mom's face
Me: So's your butt... oh wait, I already said that
James: *sigh*
Me: Get it?
James: Yeah, butt face, I see what you did there.


I laughed for like 20 minutes before I even sent it because I thought it was so funny.   I was so proud of myself for coming up with that lol
Just thought I should share

It all comes down to falsifiability.   If there is absolutely nothing anyone could say or do which would convince you otherwise then there is no way to assess the truth value of your claim.

I started thinking about this because of a discussion with mathematicalbagpiper.   he asserted that mental disorders do not exist and I said that's not true at all.   While we do need to relax a little about diagnosing people, and it is possible to be weird without having a problem, it has been demonstrated that certain people exhibit symptoms way outside the statistical norms and this causes them serious issues in functioning.
For example, schizophrenics hear voices.   This is kind of a problem.

As we were bantering back and forth, he eventually told me that he believes that all doctors and drug companies are making us sicker on purpose so they can make money, and that the government is supporting this behavior by suppressing all studies which demonstrate cures and destroying all evidence that there's such a huge conspiracy going on.   Of course he can't prove it to me, because all the documents are destroyed.   How convenient.

That's exactly the problem: it's too convenient.   If all the proof is destroyed how does he know it's true?   How does anyone know it's true?   Clearly there is some evidence out there if someone knows this is the case.

To demonstrate why this is a problem, let me replace a few words in his argument:
We are all in the matrix, being used as battery power.   The machines who run the matrix don't want you to know that that's the case, so they destroy all the evidence of it.
Is this a good reason to believe we're in the matrix?   NO!!!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof! and I would say it is quite an extraordinary claim that literally every doctor and every scientist and every government official knows we are making you sick and doesn't care because they're making money.  The claim is that literally everyone of those people is a despicable asshole who's out to get you.   If even one person who learned of this wasn't, we'd all know about it.   I guess all the good people get killed by the CIA before they can tell us?

If you can't prove it there's no reason for me to believe it, anymore than there's a reason for me to believe the crazy guy on the corner who thinks we're in the matrix.

EDIT: the point of this post is not that he's wrong, it's that i have no reason to believe it's right.   There are millions of conspiracy theories out there and the significant majority of them are wrong.   I am not required to waste my time with your theory if you have no evidence to support it.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence?           true
Absence of evidence is evidence?                                  false