Quote:
Originally Posted by 14cobster
also..... http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...er/theory.html
and in particular "Logicians note that it is easier to prove that there are such beings than to prove there aren't simply because we only need to find one of them to accomplish our proof, and thus will not have to look everywhere--unless we are so unlucky that where the one Martian is just happens to be the last place we look. But in the final analysis, it is not being "negative" that makes a proposition difficult to prove, but the breadth of the assertion. For instance, "there is gravity on every planet in every universe" could be disproven by searching just one planet and finding no gravity, but if we kept finding gravity we could never decisively prove it true, any more than if we kept failing to find Martians in the universe would we be able to decisively prove that "there are no Martians in the universe." Thus, what people call the "you can't prove a negative" axiom is actually nothing more than the eternal problem of induction: since we can't test a proposition in every place and at every time, we can never be absolutely certain that the proposition remains true in all times and places. We can only infer it."
This is something I have brought up before because it's is perfectly obvious that you
can prove a negative.
It isn't even as simple as saying it's just a matter of scope because there, for example, are infinite number of integers and yet we can prove that no even integers other than two are prime. (By induction is we wish
).
The situation is, in reality, simply that it is
impractical to completely prove that OLP is not rigged because of the vast number of permutations of methods of rigging that the riggies come up with.
Even if we could it would be pointless because the riggies would do one of the following:
1) Attack the integrity of those who developed the method
2) Attack the integrity of the data
3) Attack the integrity of those who programmed the test
4) Attack the integrity of those carrying out the test
5) Attack the integrity of those reporting the results
or
"All of the above".