Street Epistemology - Practice

[curiosne]

Yes, I like the word principles so let's use that instead.

If you would like my principle, here it is:

1. There is a positive correlation between the quantity and quality of evidence for what I deem to be an out of the ordinary claim.
   
2. All the available evidence I can find will get me towards a certain confidence level on how much I believe the claim in question.
   

Does that sound like a good principle? If yes, let's move on otherwise please explain your reasoning.

Your #2 I would agree with, and would add that we need to weigh anything against. 

The first principle , is where we disagree, as I have been discussing.    By out of the ordinary; do you mean frequency of occurrence?  How does that effect your knowledge of what happened?     It seems to me, that statistics of frequency may be useful when you do not have knowledge (to bolster assumptions or possibly predictions), but have little weight when evidence points towards the less ordinary.   These bolster assumptions based on probability, but have little to do when talking about knowledge and epistemology.

I work quite a bit, troubleshooting  machine controls.  Frequency of certain types of failures often come up as a starting point, but then I need to look for evidence and reason to support and gain knowledge.  I'm not a happy camper, when I have to rely on just that initial guess or what may ordinarily occur.  Also the out of the ordinary happens quite often.  Working as a contractor, I often am involved in the out of the ordinary.  Where the average customer may have the odd problem maybe once a year or so, I am often called in, because the solution is  particularly difficult to find.  And sometimes they knew the solution, but didn't want to consider it; because it was out of the ordinary, and I get to be the hero when they did all the work.

It doesn't matter if it's frequency, it's what ever variable you're looking at that you deem to be out of the ordinary. However, maybe out of the ordinary isn't a good word to use in this case. Let's rephrase #1 to:

1. There is a positive correlation between the quantity/quality of evidence for a claim where you have low confidence of it's truth...ie to get from low to high confidence, you would thus need more evidence.
   
2. All the available evidence I can find will get me towards a certain confidence level on how much I believe the claim in question.
   

Do you agree with the rephrased principle?