Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

[pocaracas]

Bayesian probabilities... hmmm.... How about we apply it to psychology?

What are the odds that an extraordinary claim has extraordinary origins, with the prior knowledge that humans have:
- a fertile imagination
- the ability to Willingly Suspend Disbelief
- the ability to lie
- the tendency to follow charismatic people
- a prior belief system already composed of a few similar extraordinary claims
- a natural evolutionary based tendency to accept a claim if it comes from a trustworthy source (parents at a young age, for example)
- a relatively short lifespan
- a brain that tends to be affected by the Dunning Kruger effect ("a cognitive bias wherein persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is.")
- an inability to accurately assess non-intuitive probabilities
- senses that make it challenging to measure the very small quantum world and the very large extra-galactic Universe.
- etc, etc, etc...

Yet that would be all wiped away in a second if the paralyzed guy got up and walked. Instead of applying the probability to the event, you are applying it to the reliability of the witness. So you really are not talking about the event anymore, you are describing an a priori assumption that witnesses cannot be reliable in the case of extraordinary events without any actual facts that would mitigate these issues on a case by case basis.

Of course I am.
That's what everyone is doing.
You either believe the account, or you don't. To believe the account, you have to assume the witnesses to be reliable.

And I can provide you with a few actual witness accounts, with photographic evidence and all.... and the account is false and shouldn't be trusted. They were fooled.

Every day(?), many preachers claim to heal paralyzed people, all over the world, in front of crowds of people. Many of those present believe they are witnessing a real healing... but no. They were fooled.

It is totally possible to fool a witness into providing a truthful extraordinary account.... however, it is not an accurate description of the real event. It is not truth.

Should I, an external, independent actor, trust an account, if it has clear markers of what is still done in the present to fool people?