selig wrote:As to your previous comments, you say it's so much easier to prove Reason alters the sound. And yet. No one has been able to do just that - and yet countless people have indeed proven the "negative", as you say. So which one is easier?
It is easier IF (and only if) the proposition is true. It's not a tool to convince them (or determine who is right or what is true), it's only to define who has the burden of proof (it's used in legal too: cops have to prove culpability, otherwise defendants would have to prove their innocence, which is impossible, so the burden is always on the cops). If it is determined that the burden of proof falls on them and they don't recognize that fact, don't even engage, it's useless, they won't respect the rules of a fair debate (starting with rule 1: provide evidence of your claim [FAIL], rule 2: respect Occam [FAIL], rule 3: asking for evidence requires you to effectively review it when provided [FAIL], and so on and so forth).
Logically speaking though, you can't say "it is proven that Reason doesn't alter the sound", because you cannot test all possibilities (specifically, you can't test the stupid ones, like "it alters the sound in alternate dimensions", or "at the subatomic level" or whatever bullshit they'll throw at you). That proposition is not formally provable - which they'll take as being "false", another of their common mistakes ("two parallels never cross" is unprovable AND true, so "provable/unprovable" and "true/false" are completely unrelated).
It reminds me of a dialog I read not too long ago, about creationism:
- You can't provide a formal proof that earth wasn't created 6000 years ago.
- We don't need to, we have the fucking bones.
We can't prove Reason doesn't alter/color/dull the sound, but we don't need to, because we use it everyday and can see/ear that it doesn't, because it's been tested every which way by a huge number of very knowledgeable people (you being one of them), because it contradicts basic known facts, but most importantly, because it's not on us to do so.
And we have the fucking bones!
(the unprovability of the general (unbounded) proposition doesn't preclude formally proving that Reason doesn't alter the sound
in a particular (bounded) setup, which is what you set up to do in this thread: this one is definitely in the provable set, and I'm pretty sure you'd have won the argument had they managed to define their particular setup. Or provide evidence. Or anything, really. Right now, you're just waiting for your opponent to find the ring. I admire your patience).