OUTBURST #1

October 22, 2024

In writing this Blog, it is not my intent to concentrate on events-of-the-day, but today’s news has prompted me to adjust my approach a little to allow for an occasional Blog Outburst, due to something timely in the news. 

Yesterday’s post (October 21st) began with a claim that we live in an increasingly irrational culture, and the news cycle over the last couple of days has proffered a wonderful example of this – of irrational nonsense that is offered as sense.

The question in view is how does one provide evidence of something that did not happen?  How do you “prove” a non-event?  It is impossible to prove that something did not happen; to use an old Gertrude Stein quote (apparently about Oakland, CA),”There is no there there.” 

It is axiomatic that you cannot prove a negative.  You can’t prove that something didn’t happen, because nothing happened for which evidence can exist. So, a demand to produce evidence about a non-event is self-contradictory!!!  One cannot get something from nothing, or have something about nothing.  This is nonsense!  It is irrational.

The example comes from the U.S. Presidential election campaign. I don’t want to get into partisan politics, or into media bias; I simply want to focus on the nature of the evidentiary requirement that has been in the news about the failure one of the U.S. Presidential candidates to provide evidence that the opposing candidate did not work at a McDonald’s restaurant as a teenager more than 40 years ago. 

One must note that the candidate claiming to have worked at McDonald’s has yet to produce any evidence in support of the claim that would be admissible in a court of law, let alone conclusive, but the opposing candidate is, according to the media, at fault for the lack of evidence against the claim. In truth, the onus is entirely on the candidate claiming the truth of the event.

Again, how does one prove that an event did not happen?  What evidence can there be of an event that never was?  (One thing I learned in high school – and that was a very long time ago – is that you cannot prove a negative.) This demand for evidence is nonsense, but the people making the demand do so with straight faces.

Apparently, “they” do not teach the “Can’t prove a negative” axiom any more, although perhaps the greater problem is that today’s “journalists” just don’t care; a couple of generations or more ago, I think there were more real journalists who would have had enough sense, and integrity, to avoid this silliness.

There is a piece of evidence from me that we live in an irrational culture.