> It's a principle that the person who presents a positive case is the one who needs to come up with the evidence
Great, a nice positive claim — where’s your evidence for it?
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/678/does-a-ne...
It boils down to negative claims being quite sweeping, eg "there's no life on other planets" would be on the face of it quite hard to show.
> I would say that generally, the burden of proof falls on whomever is making a claim, regardless of the positive or negative nature of that claim.
If your intent was to convince me that I’m right, you are doing a wonderful job. :)
I might add: your selective quoting of this link also throws some doubt on your claim in another thread that we can solve all of confirmation bias through the educational system...glass houses, stones, etc. - we all preferentially seek out evidence that supports our prior beliefs, and we do it throughout our lives. It takes crazy, sustained effort to avoid, not just a lesson in separating fact from fiction!
If every claim and it's negative need to be proven, how do you think we proceed? Add in that you can formulate the negative without using standard polarity flippers like "not" and "never". We have to start somewhere, and generally the guy who says "God exists" is the guy who has to make the case. The one who says "There's no god" might need to explain what he means, but he doesn't need to go get a bunch of evidence. I doubt that you disagree with that example.
The question of which is the positive claim arises because it's possible with some fancy footwork to act like you're not saying "God Exists". This is what needed to be picked apart, or not, in the case of the economic argument at the top of the thread.
> I might add: your selective quoting
I didn't quote anything, I referenced the entirety. Part of the point of that is so we avoid picking out a headline and then claim to be finished.
But the fact remains, in school we don't spend much time thinking about all those critical thinking skills. If we at least tried it, kids would be better at it. Much like physical training, it's something that should be brought to our attention in school but needs to be maintained.
