Back to the op.

This:


Is quite wrong. It is perfectly legitimate for me to say: you are making the proposition, you have the burden of proof. I do not have to disprove what you are proposing, you are the one who must present evidence that what you say is true.

The last line is just wrong wrong wrong: the truth of a proposition does not at all lie in the failure to disprove it. Proving the denial is certainly a bonus, but we don't establish truth in this manner.

If you mention Voltaire, Arouet responds

hi splendour

I keep her on ignore so that I won't fall into the trap of replying to her posts directly. Having to interact with her directly is way too frustrating of an experience.

What's great is that she has mentioned a few dozen times that she is putting me on ignore, yet she continues to quote back my posts. I'm still convinced that she doesn't really understand that there's an actual ignore function that we can use.

This is simply a fancy way to state a probability principle. And the common saying is a bit lacking. A more accurate statement is that if someone expects their claim of something extraordinary to be accepted as more than 50% likely to be true, alternative explanations have to be even more unlikely. If a guy who lies 5% of the time told you he ate seven hot dogs yesterday, you would tend to believe him. But not if he told you he ate twenty hotdogs. However if your friend who you have never seen lie, said he ate twenty hot dogs you would accept his claim. But that doesn't mean that the first guy's claim should be dismissed out of hand. He might have been in a hot dog eating contest. But you will remain skeptical unless he produces pictures of himself in the event.

LOL. Actually I missed that! Good catch! I have a slightly different version myself: "the truth doesn't always make common sense."

What does it mean?

If the prior probability of A is very small (that is, if A is an extraordinary claim), and if the posterior conditional probability of A given B is near one (that is, if B proves A beyond some reasonable threshold), then the prior probability of B is also very small (that is, then B is also an extraordinary claim).

slow pony and all that jazz

I agree with a lot that you say aj but read Thompson's "Anatomy of the Soul" some time.

The biblical heart is the mind, conscience, will and emotions together.

Too many people use the word "heart" amorphously without thinking what it means.

The more extraordinary the claim, the less evidence needed.

I like it.

vixticator has sex with chickens and has half human half chicken children running around plotting to take over the world with nuclear weapons that he smuggled to him in his bum. They are secret double agents working for the United Kingdom and North Korea.

For a bold claim like that I would need to see a feather.

I did not have sexual relation with any chickens! These allegations are false!

I plead the 5th to the rest.

Here is the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSDAXGXGiEw

Kind of like saying we're knee-deep in very very rare things.

I don't normally dig up old posts, but -

seriously if i ever see splendour comment on anyone elses link that it is biased (and i think i seen her do that quite a few times now) im gonna call her out on this link.

The guy who said this is a Satan-worshipping paedophile. An extremely cunning one that cannot be detected or exposed by ordinary investigative means.

Nice one.

Price: "Life is full of extraordinary events that we believe without extraordinary proof. Robert Ripley recorded thousands of extraordinary people and extraordinary events which we believe without extraordinary proof."

I think he mean's Ripley's "Believe It or Not".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ripley

Wiki: "Some[who?] have called Ripley a liar and accused him of exaggerating the facts, but throughout the years, he always gave appropriate sources. He claimed to be able to "prove every statement he made.", and the major reason he could make such a claim was that behind him stood the work of the indefatigable professional fact researcher, Norbert Pearlroth, who assembled Believe it or Not!s vast array of odd historical, geographical, and scientific facts and also verified the small-town claims submitted by readers. Pearlroth, who spoke 11 languages, spent 52 years as the feature's researcher, working in the New York Public Library ten hours a day, six days a week, finding and verifying unusual facts for Ripley and, after Ripley's death, for the King Features syndicate editors who took over management of the Believe it or Not!' panel."

Only a skeptic doesn't know truth is stranger than fiction.

FYP

I'll leave defining who falls under "some people" as an exercise to the reader. Hint: Splendour is one them.

Not surprising at all. The majority of the U.S. population believes in God and ghosts.

You couldn't even get the quote in the thread title right splendour

I lifted it from the second paragraph of the article.

Sorry I'm not as anal retentive as you are and didn't quote it word for word from Hume.

God loves you?