RE: Evidence for Believing
September 24, 2019 at 12:17 pm
(This post was last modified: September 24, 2019 at 12:20 pm by EgoDeath.)
@Lek
Consider a hypothetical car accident that was witnessed by 10 people. The facts in this hypothetical situation are as follows:
-The accident occurred on the corner of Nathaniel Rd. & Mandalay Ave.
-Two cars were involved, a blue car and a red car, no other cars contributed to the accident
-The blue car had three people inside, including the driver
-The red car had one
-The blue car rear-ended the red car, causing the driver of the red car to break an arm upon impact
-The driver of the blue car was thrown through her windshield, the two passengers were unscathed
We could go on and on about the details, but let's just take these details and move forward.
Assuming the ten people who witnessed the incident were interviewed exactly twenty minutes afterward, and could know all of these details, given they were close to the scene of the accident, how probable do you think it is that all ten people will get all of these details exactly right? I'd argue it's unlikely.
Two out of ten might claim they saw a blue car and a purple car, with the other eight having the colors of the cars correct.
Ten out of ten agree that the accident happened on the corner of Nathanial and Mandalay... but...
Three out of ten people might fault the red car, with the other seven saying it was definitely the blue car's fault.
Ten out of ten agree that no other cars contributed to the crash... but...
One person out of the ten might say the driver of the red car looked fine, while the other nine say it looked like he broke his arm.
So on and so forth.
The problem with personal evidence is that our brains, our memories, are not as reliable as we think. Our minds play tricks on us all the damn time. Have you ever heard of false memories? Sometimes, we can have a specific memory about an event or incident, but have details about the incident completely wrong. Or, our brains could just be making up the whole memory to fill in the space of some narrative our minds our trying to create without our knowledge.
I think you're overestimating the power of personal testimony as evidence. Eye-witness evidence is often considered the most unreliable type of evidence in a court of law. Granted, a jury could be swayed a personal account of someone witnessing a crime. Still, it's much better to have prints on the gun, and gun powder residue on the guy's jacket, and a receipt for that jacket in the suspect's name, than to just have someone saying, "I saw person A shoot person B."
Do you at least understand where we're coming from?
Consider a hypothetical car accident that was witnessed by 10 people. The facts in this hypothetical situation are as follows:
-The accident occurred on the corner of Nathaniel Rd. & Mandalay Ave.
-Two cars were involved, a blue car and a red car, no other cars contributed to the accident
-The blue car had three people inside, including the driver
-The red car had one
-The blue car rear-ended the red car, causing the driver of the red car to break an arm upon impact
-The driver of the blue car was thrown through her windshield, the two passengers were unscathed
We could go on and on about the details, but let's just take these details and move forward.
Assuming the ten people who witnessed the incident were interviewed exactly twenty minutes afterward, and could know all of these details, given they were close to the scene of the accident, how probable do you think it is that all ten people will get all of these details exactly right? I'd argue it's unlikely.
Two out of ten might claim they saw a blue car and a purple car, with the other eight having the colors of the cars correct.
Ten out of ten agree that the accident happened on the corner of Nathanial and Mandalay... but...
Three out of ten people might fault the red car, with the other seven saying it was definitely the blue car's fault.
Ten out of ten agree that no other cars contributed to the crash... but...
One person out of the ten might say the driver of the red car looked fine, while the other nine say it looked like he broke his arm.
So on and so forth.
The problem with personal evidence is that our brains, our memories, are not as reliable as we think. Our minds play tricks on us all the damn time. Have you ever heard of false memories? Sometimes, we can have a specific memory about an event or incident, but have details about the incident completely wrong. Or, our brains could just be making up the whole memory to fill in the space of some narrative our minds our trying to create without our knowledge.
I think you're overestimating the power of personal testimony as evidence. Eye-witness evidence is often considered the most unreliable type of evidence in a court of law. Granted, a jury could be swayed a personal account of someone witnessing a crime. Still, it's much better to have prints on the gun, and gun powder residue on the guy's jacket, and a receipt for that jacket in the suspect's name, than to just have someone saying, "I saw person A shoot person B."
Do you at least understand where we're coming from?
If you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
