(October 3, 2016 at 7:08 pm)Gemini Wrote:(October 2, 2016 at 7:01 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I kinda agree with Arky ... sometimes absence of evidence is evidence of absence. I wonder what other questions to which I might apply this principle?
That aphorism should definitely be qualified by saying that for something which is weakly observable, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If it's the sort of thing that doesn't leave much evidence, like the fossilization of Precambrian organisms, then failing to find an abundance of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Which I guess is another way of saying that there's no shortcut for busting out Bayes' Theorem and crunching the numbers.
Well, I'm actually twisting Sagan's words, and you're getting them right. But I'm also being sarcastic, and pointed, knowing that his OP is not really about getting killed while cutting trees.
