Sagan’s “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is nonsense. Here’s why

[Apology]

ECREE says that if P(A|X) << 0.95, if we are to add a new piece of evidence E such that P(A|X & E) >= 0.95, P(A|E) will need to be >> 0.95 to compensate.

That's much clearer than ECREE, I'm going to go with it.

 

[Frying Dutchmen]

Not only because this is a debate - and a rational debate cannot be conducted if those rules are not abided by - but also because that is the job of critical and sceptical thought – to expose the irrationality or woo that has (in many cases unwittingly) spread through society as “popular aphorism”. ECREE is however not merely a popular aphorism, it is used by (so called) skeptics in formal debates about what can or cannot be accepted as evidence – it posits a position concerning the rules of evidence that is in fact an illogical and antiscientific position.

Hardly I mean do you even read your own tosh? Are you still crying over the fact that antidotes are not and will never be accept as straight up evidence of a claim, your position against ECREE is so weak a light breeze hitting a wall in a house would knock it down

 

[Rramjet]

You seem, like Rramjet, to be wanting to claim that ECREE has done irreparable damage to mankind's scientific endeavours and unless it is once and for all rejected we're heading for a whole new dark age.

Do you have any evidence of this happening?

This is precisely the type of overblown, misrepresentative “straw-man” rhetoric that I have come to expect from you. I very nearly added you into that list - alongside RoboT and SOhdner in my previous post – I refrained – I am beginning to question my own reasoning as to why I did not.

 

[Rramjet]

ECREE is a layman's terms description of Bayesian inference.

That is simply not true!

In Baysian inference, the accumulation of a weight of evidence changes the probability (or degree of confidence in the truth) of an hypothesis. ECREE on the other hand states that all that is required is “extraordinary evidence”. There are no admissions of probability or weights of evidence – simply that once you have “extraordinary evidence” then a positive conclusion can be reached. In the reverse, if extraordinary evidence is not presented, then despite all the other evidence we might have available, we can simply reject the hypothesis. That is not Baysian in the least!

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Hardly I mean do you even read your own tosh? Are you still crying over the fact that antidotes are not and will never be accept as straight up evidence of a claim, your position against ECREE is so weak a light breeze hitting a wall in a house would knock it down

Now, hold on I say hold on a minute there, son.

Rramjet is right about one thing - anecdotes *can* be evidence. Just not in the small quantities they're ever presented with, not with the inconsistencies that they tend to have, and not with the high false positive rates for the claims they're commonly used as evidence for. So for all practical purposes you're correct, but still.

ECREE on the other hand states that all that is required is “extraordinary evidence”.

Well, yes. So long as P(A|E) >> 0.95, it doesn't matter if E is a multi-decade longitudinal study or a single alien ray gun. You're the one imposing magical binary properties. lrn2bayes.

 

[Egg]

Here is a direct misrepresentation of my contentions – either that or none of you have yet been able to grasp my point in this regard (which I have nevertheless been forced to repeat to the point of tedium).

Whether something is considered extraordinary or not will depend on the context in which it is placed.

Monetary denominations for example. Some denominations (or type of manufacture), in one cultural or historical setting would seem entirely ordinary, but in another, extraordinary. The same with the number of flagella on a bacteria. Some have many, others few. The number that Azotobacter posesses is ordinary when compared with those with many, but within its own genus, it has an extraordinary number.

In reference to SOhdner’s misrepresentation:

Egg, I would not have expected you, one of the very few rational people posting in this thread, to have fallen for the dirty tricks campaign of my opponents – you have clearly understood RoboT for what he is in that regard – you should not hesitate to place SOhdner into the same class.

...just laying it out for you to clarify what some were perceiving as an inconsistency, which, by the way, I think you've just done a good job of.

Seems a bit harsh on SOdhner. I didn't get the impression that was a deliberate misrepresentation. Keep in mind it takes some patience to glean your precise position on every point from some of the walls of text in this thread .

 

[Akhenaten]

Not only because this is a debate - and a rational debate cannot be conducted if those rules are not abided by - but also because that is the job of critical and sceptical thought – to expose the irrationality or woo that has (in many cases unwittingly) spread through society as “popular aphorism”.

Who put you in charge of writing the job description for 'critical and sceptical thought'?

ECREE is however not merely a popular aphorism, it is used by (so called) skeptics in formal debates about what can or cannot be accepted as evidence – it posits a position concerning the rules of evidence that is in fact an illogical and antiscientific position.

I'd like to see some examples of these formal debates, as well as some evidence of the damage that has resulted from the shocking behaviour of these (so-called) skeptics.

 

[Akhenaten]

You seem, like Rramjet, to be wanting to claim that ECREE has done irreparable damage to mankind's scientific endeavours and unless it is once and for all rejected we're heading for a whole new dark age.

Do you have any evidence of this happening?

This is precisely the type of overblown, misrepresentative “straw-man” rhetoric that I have come to expect from you.

What then, do you see as the real, tangible consequences of the continuing use of ECREE?

Perhaps more to the point, what would you expect to happen if every single person here agreed with your assessment that ECREE is nonsense?

I very nearly added you into that list - alongside RoboT and SOhdner in my previous post – I refrained – I am beginning to question my own reasoning as to why I did not.

RoboTimbo
SOhdner
Akhenaten

There you go. Next time you feel the urge you can just copy-and-paste.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Rramjet, here are some questions still outstanding that you haven't answered without hypocrisy. When will you be doing so?

You must remember Rramjet's Rule of Reversal: He thinks nightclubs, cats, refrigerators, and usual and expected numbers are extraordinary but believes that an alien raygun, alien spaceship or alien body would be ordinary, if one were to ever be found.

He has his preconceived idea that there are aliens among us so naturally he would think those things are ordinary. A pity he can't produce one to show how ordinary they are.

Rramjet, why do you continue to waffle and run away from the substantive questions?

I asked:

"Rramjet, can you give an example of extraordinary anecdotal evidence?"​

Your inability to answer the question speaks volumes.

I asked:

"Rramjet, why do you assert that usual and expected numbers are extraordinary?"​

You've never answered that without hypocrisy.

I asked:

"Rramjet, how can you make the hypocritical statement 'The more a claim matters to us, the greater weight of evidence we require.' when the moderated UFO thread is you presenting anecdote after anecdote to justify your irrational belief system?"​

You've never answered that either.

I asked:

"Do you remember being caught flat-footed in your outright lie about why you started this thread?"​

You've never acknowledged your lying.

When will you be answering these outstanding substantive issues? They'll need to be addressed before we can discuss your imagined issues with ECREE.

 

[Paul2]

Beautiful. Trial law complely refutes formal logic... refutes the very foundation of science.

You seem to think that logic is always completely absent from trial law. How odd. Of course, trials are human endeavors, with even more than its share of illogic and inconsistency, perhaps, but, then again, science is not a pure, perfect pursuit anyway. So how does any of your point reject the notion that there is such a thing as better or worse evidence at a trial, even if we grant all the illogic, ad hominems, etc., at a trial?

 

[Paul2]

I was not really talking about definitions, but yes, I would go with your example. Beauty is subjective. The idea of science - of logic - is to eliminate subjectivity. Beauty is absolutely subjective, and hence not in the realm of science. Any time you introduce process - or language - that is subjective, you have exited the realm of science/logic and entered the realm of woo. The realm of the psychiatrist and the fortune teller alike.

Anyhow your statement is a tautology, so not a valid argument in any way.

Merely including a tautology in a post does not invalidate points in the post., necessarily.

Are you claiming that there is no subjective element when science weighs evidence, in principle? Science seems a very human endeavor, and extracting all subjectivity out of it looks to be a difficult task.

 

[SOdhner]

Whether something is considered extraordinary or not will depend on the context in which it is placed.

I agree with your statement above. You, however, have applied it inconsistently in this conversation. Yes, "extraordinary" is subjective. Yes, it depends on context. But when someone says that a four dollar bill is extraordinary because it's an unusual denomination (this is demonstrably true) you say that's an invalid use of extraordinary. But the flagellum? Oh, that's fine then.

This makes no sense.

In both cases, we have something where the number is ordinary for the specific item (all four dollar bills are worth four dollars, all of this specific critter have X flagellum) but extraordinary in a broader context (most types of paper money don't have a four dollar variety, most critters of that same basic type don't have that many flagellum).

You've never been able to explain why some things are allowed to be extraordinary by your rules, and others are not.

 

[RoboTimbo]

I agree with your statement above. You, however, have applied it inconsistently in this conversation. Yes, "extraordinary" is subjective. Yes, it depends on context. But when someone says that a four dollar bill is extraordinary because it's an unusual denomination (this is demonstrably true) you say that's an invalid use of extraordinary. But the flagellum? Oh, that's fine then.

This makes no sense.

In both cases, we have something where the number is ordinary for the specific item (all four dollar bills are worth four dollars, all of this specific critter have X flagellum) but extraordinary in a broader context (most types of paper money don't have a four dollar variety, most critters of that same basic type don't have that many flagellum).

Nicely put. Obviously, I've been too subtle for some.

You've never been able to explain why some things are allowed to be extraordinary by your rules, and others are not.

Thus his hypocrisy. I was hoping he would learn from my subtle questioning but no such luck.

 

[I Am The Scum]

Utterly wrong. Holy smokes... this definition depends on the education and or knowledge of the listener as a criterion of validity. The exact kind of subjectivity proposed by the frauds.

And why is this wrong? I agree, it's relative to the individual. I think I made this clear in the post you quoted (though to be fair, "subjective" wasn't actually the right word to use).

This isn't complicated. We all know that not everyone shares the same beliefs. We all know that not everyone perceives evidence the same way. We all know that, given the previous two points, not everyone is going to come to new conclusions in the same way. This is simple. But when I propose a model that addresses these issues and attempts to make sense of how people come to new beliefs, then it's a big deal? Now I'm not allowed to take these facts into account? Give me a break.

Can anyone explain to me why my definition doesn't work? "It's relative to the individual," is not a very good criticism, because the model addresses a phenomenon wherein different people handle the same information in different ways. Pointing out such relativity only strengthens my argument.

 

[CAC Wirraway]

Beautiful. Trial law complely refutes formal logic... refutes the very foundation of science.

In formal logic we allow hearsay ("the experiments conducted by Warren and Marshall demonstrated X" is hearsay. We weren't there and did not see it, they just told us about it.)

In formal logic we reject "ad hominem" and "ad verecundiam." A scientist is not right/wrong because he has/does not have a doctorate. Our conclusion is based on repeatable evidence, not credentials.

In formal logic we do not accept "preponderance of evidence." We require absolute consistent results. One exception is enough to disprove the rule.

Furthermore, in the court they reach conclusions which are, with rare exception, not subject to revision due to further evidence. Folks are found guilty or innocent and go to jail or not. In science we adopt positions that are subject to revision upon further evidence. That is the perhaps the single biggest difference between "science" and "religion." Religion holds dogma that cannot be challenged by any amount of evidence. Science holds tentative conlusions awaiting further evidence. When science takes a firm stance it has become dogma... just another form of religion.

you're talking about the scientific method, not formal logic.

unless you really are claiming that formal logic can prove the existence of flying saucers. what are you doing, blindly accepting propositions as evidence without taking the time to evaluate their value?

the tools a trial lawyer uses for this are suitable for taking a hard look at evidence offered to support extraordinary claims like little green men.

was the witness drunk? half asleep? biased? is a USAF record from 1955 reliable if the investigator was interviewing a drunk, half asleep and biased witness? is it even an actual report or is it something like the so-called MAGIC documents would be laughed out of any court as forgeries. you don't think credentials matter when an expert interprets evidence? in that case, the internet is full of 14 year olds who have an opinion on UFOs.

how do you think science actually works? do you read peer reviewed journals and know how they work? do you read the rebuttals and replies that attack methodology, results and conclusions? there are challenges to weight of evidence and its interpretation that are the equivalent of what goes on in a courtroom.

and don't play trial lawyer if you aren't one. with the right foundation, the results of scientific experiments and the reports made of them are admissible over hearsay objections.

formal reasoning to prove the paranormal? really??????

 

[CAC Wirraway]

I think Sagan wasn't proposing a standard of proof for "extraordinary claims" so much as making the observation that claims running contrary to the current state of science are necessarily going to stoke a firestorm of criticism from many interested parties that can last years, and rightly so. if you want to challenge newton, you'd better be as articulate and smart as einstein. if you're going to adopt the meteor strike theory at the KT boundary, having the name "alvarez" helps, because in both cases, you're going to have to defend your position against very smart, very motivated and often very biased opposition until you win over the majority of science.

 

[Rramjet]

...just laying it out for you to clarify what some were perceiving as an inconsistency, which, by the way, I think you've just done a good job of.

Thank you…

Seems a bit harsh on SOdhner. I didn't get the impression that was a deliberate misrepresentation.

Perhaps …all I can say is that I have had the advantage of the experience of his posts in the UFO thread to form my opinions about his tactics…

Keep in mind it takes some patience to glean your precise position on every point from some of the walls of text in this thread .

Sure. But I have at least attempted to clarify my position on specific points whenever they are raised – it is just that once I have so clarified, my opponents wait a few posts so that clarification is not immediately accessible, then start their obfuscations all over again – as if I have not clarified… they never pick up on my clarifications and continue the debate from that point, they simply revert back to their original contentions as if I had said nothing at all… and of course that is why the thread seems interminable – my opponents keep reverting back to their original arguments, arguments I have already countered.

Moreover, in consideration of “walls of text”, it is very easy for my opponents to make glib and (often one line) unfounded assertions, but for me to counter those assertions - and to point out their erroneous nature - often takes a great deal of carefully worded and detailed explanatory text. This has been the bug-bear of critical and rational thinkers throughout history – shallow, seemingly attractive, but irrational and glib, one-liners are so very easy to say and produce at will – but to counter them often takes a great deal of research and explanation – and then you can just feel the audience's eyes glaze over…

 

[Rramjet]

I think Sagan wasn't proposing a standard of proof for "extraordinary claims" so much as making the observation that claims running contrary to the current state of science are necessarily going to stoke a firestorm of criticism from many interested parties that can last years, and rightly so. if you want to challenge newton, you'd better be as articulate and smart as einstein. if you're going to adopt the meteor strike theory at the KT boundary, having the name "alvarez" helps, because in both cases, you're going to have to defend your position against very smart, very motivated and often very biased opposition until you win over the majority of science.

Sagan was proposing that for him, nothing short of “hard evidence, rigorously and sceptically examined” would suffice for him to believe in UFOs as ET.

He then sought to impose that personal preference on the wider community with his statement of ECREE.

ECREE however is antiscientific in that it negates the legitimacy of a weight of evidence being able to legitimately influence our thinking on the probability of the veracity of certain hypotheses. For Sagan, you either have “extraordinary evidence” or you do not. If not, then we can reject the hypothesis out of hand. That is simply antiscientific. It is not how science works and it is certainly not how humans work in day to day settings. One does not have to be an Einstein to be able to note that much.

Moreover, if we cannot define what makes evidence extraordinary – and do so in such a way as to rule out anecdotes and photographs being able to fulfil the requirements of ECREE – then ECREE is nonsense on that level also. One does not have to be an Einstein to be able to note that much either.

 

[RoboTimbo]

One doesn't have to be an Einstein to answer the questions below either, but Rramjet doesn't seem to be able to.

You must remember Rramjet's Rule of Reversal: He thinks nightclubs, cats, refrigerators, and usual and expected numbers are extraordinary but believes that an alien raygun, alien spaceship or alien body would be ordinary, if one were to ever be found.

He has his preconceived idea that there are aliens among us so naturally he would think those things are ordinary. A pity he can't produce one to show how ordinary they are.

Rramjet, why do you continue to waffle and run away from the substantive questions?

I asked:

"Rramjet, can you give an example of extraordinary anecdotal evidence?"​

Your inability to answer the question speaks volumes.

I asked:

"Rramjet, why do you assert that usual and expected numbers are extraordinary?"​

You've never answered that without hypocrisy.

I asked:

"Rramjet, how can you make the hypocritical statement 'The more a claim matters to us, the greater weight of evidence we require.' when the moderated UFO thread is you presenting anecdote after anecdote to justify your irrational belief system?"​

You've never answered that either.

I asked:

"Do you remember being caught flat-footed in your outright lie about why you started this thread?"​

You've never acknowledged your lying.

When will you be answering these outstanding substantive issues? They'll need to be addressed before we can discuss your imagined issues with ECREE.

 

[Rramjet]

One doesn't have to be an Einstein to answer the questions below either, but Rramjet doesn't seem to be able to.

As others have noted:

It seems to me that these questions in particular have been addressed almost to the point of tedium. I can't work out if you continue to bring them up because you don't understand his answers (and the points he was trying to make in the first place) or if you're just intentionally being difficult.

I of course have a much stronger opinion about your tactics than the ever diplomatic Egg - but it is beneath me to express them here.