Tuesday, June 27, 2006

If sock monkeys were Defense Secretaries

There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist.

Now, give me that banana.

3 comments:

Bix said...

This sounds like, or at least reminds me, of the argument mathematicians use to defend the concept of zero. I won't argue the concept because I'm not a mathematician, but apparently, not all cultures came to this realization.

punkinsmom said...

I can't prove to you that I don't have a banana, but I don't.

Please tell me that our Rummy is not using the impossibility of disproving a negative to argue that WMD's could still exist. God help us. (And you can't prove that there is no God so therefore he must exist.)

Jim Donahue said...

In context (and minus the banana), that's what he was arguing. (I don't have a date for the quote handy, but it was a while ago.)