What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

@Simon Moon, what I question is whether meeting a “burden of proof” is a useful epistemic obligation for a couple of reasons.

First, I agree with @Belacqua; it’s more of a debate tactic than tool of serious inquiry. If the goal is, as you wrote, to “separate fact from fiction” then reliving critics of a proposition from any obligation to defend their opposition to it. If the goal is to increase understanding, allowing "one side" to be a default position is literally half as effective.

I see it more as a 'conflict resolution' tactic. We have people with different opinions. How can we sensibly go about determining who is correct and who is not? And, given the possibility that neither may be correct, how can we eliminate the falsehood?

One method of reducing flights of fancy that are not likely to be true is to require that there be some support for the viewpoint. That support is the burden of proof. The one making a positive existential claim is the one that needs to supply the evidence for that claim.

The alternative, to ask that those who disagree be able to prove without a doubt that an idea is wrong, is much less useful. Why? Because there are ideas that are *consistent* without being *true*. All that asking for proof against does is shows an idea is inconsistent. While a useful filter at times, it is a very, very weak one. The goal is to determine whether an idea is false or not. While inconsistency does prove falsity, While inconsistency does imply falsity, there are many false ideas that are perfectly consistent.

So, the point of the burden of proof is to deal with the distinction between 'consistent' and 'true'. We ask for a reason to believe a new idea and not simply a reason to not believe it. The burden of proof is a 'BS elimination scheme'.