Re: OT: unicorn, was: one of the many reasons why removing non-free is a dumb idea
On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 10:23:30AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> Actually, absence of evidence really is evidence of absence.
Uh, no it's not. Eg, "I don't have any bug reports for debootstrap 0.3;
that's evidence that there aren't any bugs in it." The lack of evidence
is due to the fact that (almost) no one else has seen debootstrap 0.3,
so there hasn't been any opportunity to file bug reports about it;
not that there aren't any bugs.
> Or maybe there really is a little unicorn in your sock drawer.
That's Occam's razor, which says you should draw the conclusion that
requires the least on assumptions for which there's no evidence. ("There's
no unicorn" requires no assumptions; "There is a unicorn" requires the
assumption that it hides whenever you try looking for it, that it's always
very quiet, and that it hid when you tried hooking up the flashlight and
webcam...)
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we can.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
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