On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 12:44:27PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 02:08:23AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > 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."
> It's totally inadequate evidence, but nevertheless it's evidence.
I don't think it's possible to have evidence for something that's false,
although it's certainly possible to mistakenly think something is evidence
for something it's not.
> But this is also a matter of degree -- if there's no evidence after
> one person searches for one hour, that means less than if there's no
> evidence after a thousand people search for five years.
It depends if they're looking over the same ground with the same tools.
> If Sven has spent a lot of time attempting to find DFSG free adsl support
> software for a specific card, and has contacted the manufacturer and
> even the manufacturer of that card is not able find such software,
> that's a different kind of evidence than no bug reports being filed on
> a newly released piece of software.
This isn't absence of evidence, it's written and spoken testimony that
people aren't aware of something -- ie, you've got people actually saying
"no, I don't know of any such thing", rather than just a lack of people
saying "yes, look over here".
> Occam's razor is another set of words for talking about the absence
> of evidence.
Occam's razor gives you the ability to draw some conclusions in the
absence of evidence. It doesn't let you make use of the absence of
evidence to make positive claims. (And in particular, it requires some
evidence in order to make the alternative more complicated to explain. You
need someone to have looked in the sock draw, and not to have found a
mini unicorn, eg.)
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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