re: #9 ralphieboy

“There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.”

Donald Rumsfeld

This still, years later, amazes me that anybody could be that willfully stupid. The impossibility of proving a negative was drilled into my head starting around fourth grade. Did Rumsfeld not have parents? Did he never attend even the most basic schooling?

The constellation of logical fallacies (such as arguing from ignorance) should be a mandatory part of every child’s education, starting at a very young age, imo. I don’t care if you are home schooled, you should have to be able to identify fundamental logical errors to get a diploma or GED, without exceptions.

Of course, that would mean 90% of the US would never have passed high school, but then, I’m a curmudgeon that way.